CHAPTER II. First Battle on the Ocean
CHAPTER III. An Interview with the Secretary of the Navy
CHAPTER IV. Blowing Up of the Tien-Tsin
CHAPTER V. Prisoners of the Sea
CHAPTER VI. Out of a Living Tomb
CHAPTER VII. An Attack on the Japanese Troops
CHAPTER VIII. The Act of a Madman
CHAPTER IX. Another Blowing Up
CHAPTER X. The Fraudulent Message
CHAPTER XI. An Urgent Call for the Holland XI
CHAPTER XII. Defeat Turned Into Victory
CHAPTER XIII. The Central American Canal
CHAPTER XIV. Cast Upon the Shore
CHAPTER XV. Tidal Waves and Whales
CHAPTER XVI. Saving the Merchantman
CHAPTER XVII. Playing the Spy
CHAPTER XVIII. The Capture of Hang Chang
CHAPTER XIX. News of the President's Daughter
CHAPTER XX. The Cave Under the Ocean
CHAPTER XXI. Out of One Danger Into Another
CHAPTER XXII. A Run Not Wanted
CHAPTER XXIII. The Fight off Cape Nome
CHAPTER XXIV. Sinking of the Ivan II
CHAPTER XXV. In Which the Holland XI is Captured
CHAPTER XXVI. Prisoners on the Holland XI
CHAPTER XXVII. The Defeat of the Enemy
CHAPTER XXVIII. An Underwater Earthquake
CHAPTER XXIX. The Rescue of Jean Fevre
CHAPTER XXX. The Last Battle--Conclusion
PREFACE.
My object in writing this imaginary tale of a war of all nations in
years to come has been two-fold.
In the first place, I wished to draw the attention of my young readers
to the fact that naval science, as well as science in all other
branches, is making wonderful strides, and that for the future hardly
anything seems impossible. In years gone by electric lights, the
telephone and telegraph, not to mention wireless telegraphy, navigable
balloons, and even our railroad trains would have been laughed at as
impossibilities. Yet to-day we have all these things, and many others
equally wonderful, and each day we look forward to something even more
startling.
In the second place, I wished to draw attention to the fact that our
country is growing with marvelous rapidity. From thirteen States we
have multiplied to several times that number, and our flag waves from
the coast of Maine in the East to the coast of Luzon in the West, and
from Alaska in the North to Texas and Porto Rico in the South. What
a truly great country it is, and what glorious freedom it grants to
millions upon millions of people! In these days it is truly worth while
to be an American, and in the days to come the honor will probably be
even greater.
There is an important lesson to be learned from all this, and I would
that every lad who reads these lines would take that lesson to heart.
The opportunities for boys and young men were never greater than they
are to-day. The future lies with you, and you can make of it, and of
our grand country, what you will. The path to success is open to rich
and to poor alike, and even the humble rail-splitter or the canal-boat
boy can become President. Will you take hold of that opportunity or
will you let it slip by?
CAPTAIN RALPH BONEHILL.
THE YOUNG NAVAL CAPTAIN.
CHAPTER I.
THE UNITED STATES AGAINST THE WORLD.
"War is declared!"
"Impossible!"
"It is true. The news has just come by telephone from the cabinet
chamber at Washington."
"And against whom?"
"Against the world!"
"Are you joking, Andy?"
"Oscar, I was never more serious in my life. The War Department has
just sent the news to the office. The three new warships we are
building must be completed without delay. The firm is offered a bonus
of fifty thousand dollars if we can float them complete by the first of
July."
"That is just six weeks off."
"Exactly, and it means that four months' work must be accomplished in
that time. We can't do it," and Andy Greggs shook his head doubtfully.
He was a tall, well-built fellow of eighteen, with blue eyes and
curly brown hair. He was a machinist, employed in the great Standard
Shipyard of Bridgeport.
"We can do it and we will," answered Oscar Pelham decidedly. "We can
work nights."
"It won't be enough."
"Then the firm will have to double the force."
"Where are you going to get the men?"
"Advertise for them--hunt for them--take them from other shipyards if
necessary. If Uncle Sam wants those ships he is going to have them. But
a war against the world! It's enough to stagger a fellow, Andy."
"So it is, Oscar, but it was bound to come, sooner or later. Foreign
nations have been watching the United States with great envy since we
whipped the Spaniards and gathered in Porto Rico and the Philippines,
and when Cuba became a new state and Canada broke loose from England, I
reckon they thought we were getting too big for our boots."
"No, the real trouble started in China," was the answer from Oscar
Pelham. "England, France, Germany, Russia and Japan wanted to carve up
poor China to suit themselves during the Yellow War of 1925 and Uncle
Sam wouldn't allow it. Then South Africa tried for liberty again, and
that put England's nose out of joint worse than ever when we helped the
Boers to freedom. Then came the old quarrel about that money Turkey is
owing us, and when we turned the Turkish kingdom inside out in 1928
that set all the rest of Europe in a rage."
"Well, we were justified in going for the Turks. They are the worst
heathens on the face of the globe, outside of the Chinese."
"The Chinese ought to be our friends in this war, for we did so much
for them when the other nations were after them. But England, Russia
and the Japanese have bought her, body and soul, and now she is against
us with all the rest."
"But we'll win out--we must win out!"
"Right you are! The Stars and Stripes forever!"
The conversation recorded above took place one spring morning of the
year 1936.
For two years the United States--that vast territory which now embraces
all of North America, from the Isthmus of Panama to Hudson Bay, and
takes in all of the West Indies, Hawaii, the Philippines, and half
a dozen other islands of the sea, as well as a corner of China and
another corner of Japan--had been at peace with the world. We say
peace. What we mean is, there was no war, but war talk was on every
tongue.
In the past twenty-five years the country had prospered immensely. We
now numbered over a hundred million of inhabitants, and nearly all of
these were well-to-do and had money in the bank.
Jefferson McKinley Adams was President, and had been for six years,
and under him were a standing army of five hundred thousand men, and a
navy of five hundred of the best warships which human ingenuity could
devise.
Many of the best of the warships had been turned out at the Standard
Ship Yard at Bridgeport, which, up to a year before, had been under the
personal supervision of Commodore David Pelham, the father of Oscar
Pelham, just introduced. David Pelham had been a retired veteran of the
Civil and the Spanish-American wars, and had followed his beloved wife
to her grave, leaving Oscar alone in the world.
Oscar Pelham was a young man of nearly twenty, well-built and strong,
with piercing black eyes and curly black hair.
At first he thought to follow his father into the navy, but he had a
strong taste for electricity and mechanics generally, and he ended by
entering the services of the ship building company, after spending
three years at Edison's Electrical University at Llewellyn Park.
Oscar was a smart young man, and already many of his electric and
other devices were beginning to attract attention. When the improved
submarine torpedo-boat destroyer, Holland X., was building at
Elizabethport he had gone to see her, and had come away much impressed
by the novel construction of the craft.
"I'll build such a boat myself some day," he said to his boy friends,
"only I'll make her better than anything afloat."
Some of his friends laughed at this, but others only smiled faintly.
"Perhaps the boy is right," said one old machinist. "He had a smart
father and a smart grandfather. Blood ought to tell."
And blood did tell, for, although only twenty years old, Oscar now
had the whole run of the extensive shipyard and hardly any plan went
through but what somebody came to him for his opinion on it.
Once Oscar disapproved of the plan of a new submarine boat, invented by
an old war captain from Vermont.
"That boat will sink fast enough," he said. "But she won't come up."
The experts laughed at him and said he was mistaken. Then the boat was
built. She sank on her first trial and blew up in her effort to raise
herself.
After that Oscar Pelham's opinion counted for a good deal in all
matters under consideration, so far as ship structure and the use of
electricity went.
"Can't git around him," said George Dross, the oldest engineer in the
yard. "He's got it all down on his finger tips. Him as tries ter corner
him will git bit sure!"
The visit to the Holland X. had never left Oscar's mind. He remembered
exactly how the submarine destroyer had been built and just how she was
worked.
Once, when some of the naval vessels were at Newport, the Holland X.
took a midnight trip among them, and Oscar was allowed on board.
The destroyer sank almost out of sight, and unknown to those on the big
warships, passed completely around and under, first one vessel and then
another.
"We could have blown every warship sky high!" said the inventor, but
of this Oscar was doubtful. Yet he realized that the Holland X. was a
grand boat and one calculated to do some terrific damage in a naval
contest.
"But I'll build a better--wait and see," he said, over and over again,
and when he was nineteen years of age he began to perfect the plans
which had rested so long in his brain.
His boat was to be built of aluminum and steel--aluminum on account
of its lightness and steel because of its strength. The craft was to
be one hundred and fifteen feet long, sixteen feet wide, and eight
to eleven feet six inches high. She was to be shaped like a stubby
cigar and have three windows of glass on each side and one in front,
and another in the stern. She was to have two small but exceedingly
powerful screws, operated by an electric engine. She was to carry
both natural and manufactured air, and had ample space for provisions
and water, as well as ammunition, the latter to consist principally of
torpedo tubes and dynamite bombs. She was to attain, under favorable
circumstances, a speed of twenty-three knots an hour, and must work
absolutely without noise, both while under water and while sailing over
the surface.
Luckily for Oscar Pelham, his father had been rich, and upon the
commodore's death, all the wealth went to the young inventor, to do
with exactly as the young man saw fit. Several thousands of dollars
were immediately spent upon a model of the Holland XI., as Oscar
christened his craft, and this model was, one dark night, taken out on
Long Island Sound for a trial.
No one was in the secret but Oscar and his particular friend, Andy
Greggs, and it must be confessed that Andy was almost as anxious for
success as the young inventor himself.
"If she runs all right, she'll be the biggest thing on the water," he
declared.
"You ought to say, under the water," said Oscar.
The trial took the best part of the night and when it proved a perfect
success Oscar Pelham could hardly contain himself.
"She'll be the submarine terror," he observed. "No warship, no matter
how big she is, will be able to stand up against her secret attacks."