E-text prepared by Jim Ludwig
Note: This is book four of eight of the Submarine Boys Series.
THE SUBMARINE BOYS AND THE SPIES
Dodging the Sharks of the Deep
by
VICTOR G. DURHAM
1910
CONTENTS
CHAPTERS
I. "Guess Day" at Spruce Beach
II. Trouble in the Making Stage
III. On the Edge of the Spider's Web
IV. Kamanako Appears on the Scene
V. Eph Learns Something New
VI. The Little Russian has His Way
VII. A Pointer Jolts the Submarine Captain
VIII. Even Up for Mr. Kamanako
IX. "Dog, Who is Your Master?"
X. M. Lemaire Proves His Training
XI. Jack's Friends Do Some Fast Guessing
XII. In the Power of the Spies
XIII. The Fellow Who Showed the White Flag
XIV. A Remembrance From Shore
XV. Captain Jack Becomes Suspicious
XVI. The Government Takes a Hand
XVII. Drummond's Little Surprise--For Himself
XVIII. "Remember What Happened to the 'Maine'!"
XIX. A Joke on the Secret Service!
XX. A Bright Look and a Deadly Warning
XXI. A French Rat in the Corner
XXII. Gallant Even to the Foe
XXIII. "Good-Bye, My Captain!"
XXIV. Conclusion
CHAPTER I
"GUESS DAY" AT SPRUCE BEACH
"Has anyone sighted them yet?"
"No."
"What can be the matter?"
"You know, their specialty is going to the bottom. Possibly they've gone
there once too often."
"Don't!" shuddered a young woman. "Try not to be gruesome always,
George."
The young man laughed as he turned aside.
Everyone and his friend at Spruce Beach was asking similar questions.
None of the answers were satisfactory, because nobody knew just what
reply to make.
Everyone in the North who has the money and leisure to get away from
home during a portion of the winter knows Spruce Beach. It is one of
nature's most beautiful spots on the eastern coast of Florida, and man
has made it one of the most expensive places in the world.
In other words, Spruce Beach is a paradise to look at. The climate, in
the winter months, is mild and balmy. Health grows rapidly at this
favored spot, and so fashion has seized upon it as her own. True, there
are yet a few cottages and boarding houses left where travelers of
moderate means may find board.
The whole air of Spruce Beach is one of holiday expectancy. The winter
visitors go there to enjoy themselves; they expect it and demand it.
They are gratified. From the first of December to the middle of March,
life at Spruce Beach makes you think of a great, jolly, unending picnic.
The greatest cause for regret is that more people of ordinary means
cannot go there and reap some of the plentiful harvest of fun and frolic.
The thousands of tourists, hotel guests and cottagers at Spruce Beach
had been promised that by the middle of December they would have a
treat the like of which few of them had ever enjoyed before. The
Pollard Submarine Boat Company, so named after David Pollard the
inventor--the company of which Jacob Farnum, the shipbuilder, was
president--had promised that by that date their newest, fastest and most
formidable submarine torpedo boat, the "Benson," should arrive at Spruce
Beach, there to begin a series of demonstrations and trials.
Still more extraordinary, the captain of this marvelous new submarine
craft of war was known to be a boy of sixteen--Jack Benson, after whom
the new navy-destroyer had been named.
Newspaper readers were beginning to be familiar with the name of Captain
Jack Benson. Though so young he had, after a stern apprenticeship,
actually succeeded in making himself a world-known expert in the handling
of submarine torpedo boats.
Those lighter readers of newspapers, who scoffed at the very idea of a
sixteen-year-old boy handling a costly submarine boat, were sometimes
reminded that the same thing happens at the United States Naval Academy
at Annapolis, where the young midshipmen are given instruction and often
are qualified as young experts along similar lines.
More remarkable still, as faithful readers of newspapers knew, Captain
Jack Benson had associated with him, on the new torpedo boat, two other
sixteen-year-old boys, by name Hal Hastings and Eph Somers. It was also
rumored, and nearly as often believed, that these three sea-bred young
Americans knew as much as anyone in the United States on the special
subject of submarine boat handling.
Be that all as it might, it was known to every man, woman and child at
Spruce Beach that the "Benson" was due to arrive on this December day
and the whole picnicking population was out to watch the incoming from
the sea of the strange craft.
More than that, the United States gunboat, "Waverly," had been for two
days at anchor in the little, somewhat rockbound harbor just north of
the beach. It was to be the pleasant duty of the naval officer
commanding the "Waverly" to extend official welcome to the "Benson" as
soon as that craft pointed its cigar-shaped nose into the harbor.
The first boat built by the submarine company had been named, after the
inventor, the "Pollard." The second had been named the "Farnum," in
honor of the enterprising young shipbuilder who had financed this big
undertaking. And now Spruce Beach was awaiting the arrival of the
company's third boat, the "Benson," so-called in recognition of the hard
and brilliant work done by the young skipper himself.
That this was to be something of a social and gala occasion, even on
board the gunboat, was evident from the fact that on the naval vessel's
decks there now promenaded some two score of ladies and their escorts
from shore, and on the hurricane deck lounged musicians from hotel
orchestras on shore, these men of music having been combined to form a
band, in order to make the occasion more joyous.
"Look at that shore, black with people!" cried a woman to one of the
naval officers on the deck of the "Waverly."
"There must be at least ten thousand people in that crowd," laughed
Lieutenant Featherstone. "I wonder whether they're more interested in
the boat, or its boy officers?"
"Are Captain Benson and his comrades really as clever as some of the
newspapers have made them out to be?" asked the woman doubtfully.
"Judging by letters I've had from friends who are officers at the Naval
Academy," replied Lieutenant Featherstone, "the young men must be very
well versed, indeed, in all the arts of their peculiar profession."
A cheer went up from the principal throng over at the beach. Smoke had
been sighted off on the eastern horizon, and this must come from the
long expected craft.
From boat to boat the news passed, and so it traveled to the deck of
the "Waverly," where the sailors received it with broad smiles. The
leader of the impromptu band raised his baton, rapping for attention.
But Lieutenant Featherstone, below, caught the leader's eye in time and
held up his hand for a pause.
"If you play, leader," called the officer, in a low voice that carried,
nevertheless, "don't imagine that your music is to welcome the 'Benson.'
Submarine boats don't travel under steam power. They can't."
So, too, on shore, the understanding was quickly reached that the smoke
did not indicate the whereabouts of the expected submarine. Half and
hour later it was found that the smoke came from the tug of a fruit
transporting company.
Where, then, was the "Benson?"
It was not in the least like young Captain Jack Benson to be behind time
when he had an appointment to get anywhere. Nor did that very youthful
companion expect to arrive late on this day of days.
Some miles away from Spruce Beach the submarine boat, as shown by her
submersion gauge, was running along at six miles an hour some fifty-two
feet under the surface of the ocean.
Young Eph Somers, auburn-haired and ofttimes impulsive, now looked as
sober as a judge as he sat perched up in the conning tower, beyond which,
at that depth, he could not see a thing. However, a shaded incandescent
light dropped its rays over the surface of the compass by the aid of
which Eph was steering with mathematical exactness.
Out in the engine room stood Hal Hastings, closely watching every
movement of even as trusted and capable a man as Williamson, one of the
machinists from the Farnum shipyards.
At the cabin table sat Captain Jack Benson himself, his head bent low
as he scanned a chart. His right hand held a pair of nickeled dividers.
Near his left lay a scale rule. A paper pad, half covered with figures,
also lay within reach.
On the opposite side of the table sat Jacob Farnum, owner of the Farnum
shipyard and president of the Pollard Submarine Boat Company. Beside
Mr. Farnum sat David Pollard, the inventor.
Readers of the preceding volumes in this series are familiar with all
these people, now decidedly famous in the submarine boat world. In the
first volume, "_The Submarine Boys on Duty_," was related how all these
people came together; how the boys, by sheer force of character "broke
into" the submarine boating world. In that volume the building of the
first of the company's boats, the "Pollard" was described, and all the
exciting adventures that were connected with the event were fully
narrated.
Our former readers will also remember all the wonderful adventures and
the rollicking fun set forth in the second volume, under the title of
"_The Submarine Boys' Trial Trip_." In this book, bristling with
adventures, and made lighter, in spots, by accounts of humorous doings,
was told how the boys gained fame as submarine experts. It was their
fine, loyal work that interested the United States government in buying
that first boat, the "Pollard."
The third volume in the series, entitled "_The Submarine Boys and the
Middies_" told how our young friends secured the prize detail at
Annapolis; where, for a brief time, the three submarine boys served as
instructors in submarine work to the young midshipmen at the Naval
Academy. Nor was this accomplished without serious, and even sensational,
opposition from the representative of a rival submarine company. Hence
the boys went through some rousing adventures. Incidentally, they
fell against practical instruction in hazing at the Naval Academy.
Adventures enough had befallen the submarine boys to last any man for a
lifetime. Yet, as fate decreed it, Captain Jack Benson and his staunch
young comrades were now destined to adventures greater and further
reaching than any of which they could have dreamed. In advance, this
winter trip to Spruce Beach promised to be little more than a pleasant
relaxation for the youngsters. What it really turned out to be will
soon be made clear in the pages of this volume.
"It seems a very risky plan that you're trying, Jack," remarked Jacob
Farnum, at last.
"Don't you want me to do it, sir?" asked the young skipper, looking up
instantly from his chart.
"Why, er--"
But here David Pollard, the inventor of these boats broke in, eagerly:
"Of course we ought to do it, Farnum. Jack is wholly right. If we enter
the harbor at Spruce Beach in this fashion, and carry through our entire
plan successfully, what on earth can there be left for opponents of our
class of boats to say?"
"Not _if_ we succeed, of course," smiled Farnum. "It's only the pesky
little 'if' that's bothering me at all. I don't want any of you to
think me a coward--"
"We know, very well, you're not, sir," Captain Jack interposed, very
quietly.
"But if we make any slip in our calculations," continued Jacob Farnum,
"the first bad thing about it is that we'll smash a fine boat which,
otherwise, the United States Government is likely to want at a price
around two hundred thousand dollars. That, however, is not the greatest
risk that I have in mind. On board this craft are five people without
whom it would be rather hopeless for anyone to go on building the
Pollard type of boat. Therefore, besides risking a valuable craft and
our own rather inconsequential lives, we go further and put the United
States Navy in danger of having only a couple of our boats. Now, the
fact is, we want the Navy to have three or four dozen of our submarine
craft, for we ourselves believe implicitly in the great worth of the
Pollard boats."
"That's just the point, sir," cried Captain Jack Benson.
"Eh? What is?" inquired Mr. Farnum, looking at his young skipper in
some bewilderment.
"Why, sir," laughed Jack, "the point is that we believe our boats to be
infinitely ahead of anything owned in any other navy on earth. We
believe it possible to do things, with boats like this one, that can be
accomplished with no other submarine craft in the world. Now, it's a
fact that, in all the navies, lest an accident happen to a submarine,
that craft is obliged to travel about, always, in the company of a steam
craft of war, which is known as the parent ship. Yet we've come,
straight from the shipyard at Dunhaven, many hundreds of miles, without
any such escort. We've been running along under our own power, night
and day, without accident, stop or bother. Thus we've shown that the
Pollard boat can do things that no other submarine craft are ever
trusted to try alone. And now, all that remains to show is that, at the
end of a long voyage, we can approach a coast, unseen, even though
thousands of people are probably looking for us, and that we can get
into a harbor without being detected; that, in fact, we could do
anything we might have a mind to do to an enemy's ships that might be
in that harbor. But now, sir, you propose that, lest we have accidents,
it will be best to rise to the surface and enter the harbor at Spruce
Beach as plainly and stupidly as though the 'Benson' were some mere
lumber schooner."
"I see the thing just the way Jack Benson does," murmured David Pollard,
thrusting his hands down deep in his trousers pockets.
"Oh, well, if I'm voted down, I'll give in," laughed Jacob Farnum. "I
wonder, though, how Hal and Eph feel about this?"
"I don't have to ask them," nodded Captain Jack, confidently.
"Why not?"
"We settled it all, days ago, sir."
"And they both agreed with you?"
"Down to the last jot, Mr. Farnum. They saw the beauty and the boldness
of the plan."
Oh, well, go ahead, then, responded Mr. Farnum, rising and standing by
the cabin table. "Of course, the picturesque and romantic possibilities
of the scheme are plain enough to me. We'll have the people at Spruce
Beach agape with curiosity, then wild with enthusiasm. And, really, to
be sure, we have to arouse the enthusiasm of the American people over
this whole game. That's the surest way of forcing Congress to spend
more money on our boats."
"Where are you going, Jake?" called the inventor, as his partner started
aft.
"To the stateroom, to get a little nap," replied the shipbuilder. "We're
not by any means due at Spruce Beach yet."
"Jake Farnum is surely not a coward," chuckled Mr. Pollard, as the
stateroom door closed. "Nor is he over anxious about any detail in our
little game, or he couldn't go to sleep at this important time. I know
I couldn't get a wink of sleep if I turned in now. I've simply got to
sit up, wide awake, until I see the finish of your bold stroke, Jack
Benson."
Captain Jack laughed easily, then glanced at his watch to note the lapse
of time since he had made his last calculation of their whereabouts. It
is one thing to be in the open air, navigating a vessel, but it is quite
another affair to be fifty-odd feet below the surface, calculating all
by the distance covered and the course steered.
"Any deviation in the course, Eph?" Captain Jack called up into the
conning tower.
"Not by as much as a hair's breadth," retorted young Somers, almost
gruffly, for with him, to depart from a given course, was well nigh
equal to a capital crime.
Jack touched a button in the side of the table. Obeying the summons,
quiet Hal Hastings thrust his head out into the cabin.
"Just the same speed, Hal?" the young captain asked.
"Hasn't changed a single revolution per minute," Hastings answered,
briefly.
With his watch on the table before him, and employing the scale rule and
dividers, the young submarine skipper placed a new dot on the chart.
"Something ought to be happening in three quarters of an hour," Benson
remarked, with a chuckle, to Mr. Pollard.
Less than half an hour later the young submarine skipper climbed up into
the conning tower beside Eph.
"Same old straight course, eh, lad?" asked Jack quietly.
"You know it," retorted Eph.
"Then we're where we ought to be," responded Jack Benson, bending
forward. With his right hand on the speed control he shut off speed.
"Now, just sit where you are, Eph, until I come up again," advised the
young commander.
"Going to the surface?" demanded Somers, with interest.
"Pretty close," nodded Benson.
Calling Mr. Pollard to his aid, Jack began to operate the machinery that
admitted compressed air to the water tanks, expelling the water
gradually from those same tanks. This was the means by which the
submarine boat rose to the surface. All the time that he was doing this,
Jack Benson kept his keen glance on the submersion gauge. At last he
stopped.
"How is it up there, Eph?" he called, pleasantly.
"Why, of course there's a lot of good daylight filtering down through the
water now," Somers admitted.
Captain Jack went nimbly up the spiral stairway. Now, he had still
another piece of apparatus to call into play. This affair is known to
naval men as the periscope.
In effect, the periscope is a device which in the main is like a pipe;
it can be pushed up through the top of the conning tower, through a
special, water-proof cylinder, until the top of the periscope is a foot,
or less, above the surface of the water.
The top of this instrument is fitted with lenses and mirrors. Down
through the shaft of the periscope are other mirrors, which pass along
any image reflected on the uppermost mirror of all. At the bottom of
the periscope is the last mirror of the series, and, opening in upon
this, there is an eyepiece fitted with a lens.
As Captain Jack Benson applied his right eye to the eyepiece he was able
to see anything above the surface of the water that lay in any direction
that the periscope was pointing.
"Right opposite Spruce Beach, as the chart showed!" chuckled the young
commander. Under the magnifying effect of the eyepiece lens Benson
could see the beach, the flag-bedecked hotels, and the moving masses of
people on the shore. Yet, all this time, he was out at sea, more than
a mile from the beach. The periscope itself, if seen from a boat an
eighth of a mile away, would undoubtedly have been taken for a floating
bottle.
"Let me have a peep," demanded Somers.
Eph looked briefly, then chuckled:
"Must be thousands of people over yonder, wondering what on earth has
happened to us!"
"Do you make out the gunboat, at anchor to the north of the hotel
section?" inquired Captain Jack.
"Oh, yes. Say, they'll have an awakening on that gray craft, won't
they?"
"If we don't make any slip in our calculations," answered Benson,
gravely.
"Well, we're not going to make any slip," asserted Eph Somers, stoutly.
"Now, keep quiet, please, old fellow. I want to do a little calculating
before we take the last, desperate step."
All this time the conning tower of the submarine was just a bit below
the surface. Nothing but the slender shaft and the small head of the
periscope was above the wash of the lazy waves.
Captain Jack soon had his calculation made. Then, with a quiet smile,
he remarked:
"I guess you'd better get below, Eph, for your part. I'll take the
wheel, now, and Mr. Pollard will attend to the submerging mechanisms."
Eph laughed joyously as he darted below. He had a part assigned to him
that was bound to be enjoyable.
"Mr. Pollard!" called down the young skipper, a few moments later.
"Aye, Captain Jack!"
"Let her down slowly, please, until the gauge shows just fourteen feet.
That's the greatest depth I dare try for the course we're going to
follow."
"Aye, Captain Jack. Fourteen feet it shall be."
For the benefit of some readers who may not understand, it is to be
stated that the charts of harbors bear markings that show the exact
depth of water at every point in the harbor at low tide. Thus, the
chart of the harbor just north of Spruce Beach had already told the
young submarine skipper just how far below the surface he could travel
with safety to his craft.
Further, he knew the draft of the "Waverly" to be eleven feet. So the
youthful commander could feel quite certain that he would be in no danger
of colliding, below the water-line, with Uncle Sam's gunboat.
On the deck of the "Waverly" itself there was the same spirit of
expectancy that there had been an hour earlier in the afternoon.
Lieutenant Featherstone, executive officer of the gunboat, was not,
however, impatient. In fact, he stood at the rail, aft, a pretty girl
beside him, and both were looking down musingly at the rippling water
below.
"As I was saying," drawled the lieutenant, "when--"
Just then he stopped, though he did not appear startled.
Straight up out of the watery depths shot a Carroty-topped boy, his wet
skin glistening in the sun.
"Good gracious!" gasped the girl. "Where did that boy come from?"
"Say, sir," called up Eph Somers, distinguishing the lieutenant in his
swift look, "where do you want the submarine boat to anchor?"
"What's that to you, young man?" called down Mr. Featherstone, bluntly.
"Oh, just this much, sir," retorted Eph, treading water, lazily; "I
belong aboard the 'Benson,' and I've been sent to inquire where you want
us to find our moorings."
"You from the 'Benson'?" snorted the lieutenant, incredulously. "Then
where is your craft!"
"Coming, sir."
"Coming?" jeered the lieutenant "So is Christmas!"
"The 'Benson' will be here first, sir," retorted Eph, splashing, then
blowing a stream of water from his mouth. "The 'Benson,' sir, is due
here in from twenty to thirty seconds!"
"What's that?" demanded the naval officer, sharply. Then a queer look
came into his face as a suspicion of the truth flashed into his mind.
He was about to speak when his feminine companion pointed, crying:
"What can that commotion mean out there?" There was a little flurry in
the waters, then a parting as something dull-colored loomed slowly up.
Barely a hundred feet away from the port rail of the gunboat the new
submarine boat, "Benson," rose into sight.
Eph Somers had left the craft, while still below surface, by means of
the clever trick worked out by Jack Benson and his comrades, as
described in "_The Submarine Boys' Trial Trip_."
Almost instantly the manhole cover was thrown open. Jack Benson, natty
as a tailor's model, in his newest uniform, stepped out on deck, waving
his hand to the gunboat.
"You'll have to consider that we got you, won't you, sir?" shouted the
young submarine captain.
Then, both on shore and on the decks of many craft, a realization of
what had happened dawned in the minds of thousands of people at about
the same instant. A great, combined cheer shot up--a cheer that was
a vocal cyclone!