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Just as the young skipper stepped out on deck he heard the "Hudson's" bow-gun break out sharply in the halting signal. Taking a megaphone, Benson stood at the rail until the gunboat ranged up alongside. "Have you broken down?" came the hail from the gunboat's bridge. "I thought it best to stop speed, sir.
"What I said, or intended to say, was to bring your vessel so that the forward end of the submarine shed over there would be four points off the port bow." "What did you hear Mr. Benson say, Mr. Trahern?" demanded the gunboat's commander, turning to the ensign who had stood with him on the bridge. "Why, sir, I understood the lad to say what he states that he said." "You are sure of that, Mr.
In fact, when ordered aboard the gunboat, before eight o'clock the next morning, Jack Benson and Hal Hastings, in their best uniforms, and looking as natty as could be, appeared quite the ideal of young submarine officers. Passing scores of cadet midshipmen, they were ushered into Lieutenant Commander Mayhew's cabin. Doctor McCrea, the gunboat's surgeon, sat with the commanding officer.
Mayhew." "Success to you and vigilance!" muttered the naval officer. The gunboat's cutter came alongside, transferring Jack and Hal back to the "Farnum." Hal went directly below to the engine room. "You fixed the trouble with the 'Pollard'?" demanded Eph Somers, eagerly. "Yes," Hal admitted. "What was wrong?"
The hulk drifted quite into the midst of the fleet before being observed; and when she was hailed she bore down on the largest of the men-of-war as though she were a powerful ram, steered by a commander of desperate bravery. The great gunboat's deck rang with the bo's'n's whistle, as the crew were piped to repel boarders, and to their quarters at the guns.
The gunboat was now cruising leisurely over to where the "Hastings" waited. Danvers signed to the officer on the "Oakland's" bridge to keep an especial eye on the floating torpedo. As the "Oakland" slowed up, a cutter, in charge of an ensign, put away from the gunboat's side.
As for the young man himself, the thing that touched him most deeply was the quick, complete and manly acknowledgment of this lieutenant commander. "Mr. Farnum," inquired the gunboat's commander, "have you any tow boats about here that can be used in helping me to get the 'Hudson' off this sand ledge?"
In going that last eighth of a mile the gunboat's speed was gradually slowed. It was a pretty piece of ship-handling. The "Massapequa" lost headway gradually a hundred feet from where Eph sat solemnly blinking back at the sailors' faces along the forward starboard rail. An officer's uniform showed at the edge of the bridge, as he called: "Ahoy, there!" "Ahoy, yourself," answered Eph.
"Then just stand by to jot down such letters as I may call out to you. That gunboat's semaphore is at work again, and I feel curious to know what it is that she wants to say. Ah! just so; it is the cruiser she wants to talk to. Now, stand by."
A line between the gunboat's bow and the lighthouse on Groton Point, to the northward, was to furnish the imaginary starting line. This line the five competing submarine torpedo boats must, at second gunfire, cross as nearly together as possible. There were penalties, of course, for any one boat trying to steal a lead over the rest.
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