put them aboard the 'Pollard' first, sir,"
Benson suggested.

Mr. Farnum nodding, the boat was rowed in to the shore and Andrews and his men were put aboard the "Pollard" at the platform deck. Captain Jack Benson unlocking the door to the conning tower, was himself the first to disappear down below. When he came back he carried a line to which was attached a heavy sounding-lead.

"It won't take us long to sound the deep spots in this little harbor," said the young skipper, as he dropped down once more into the bow of the shore boat. "Row about, Hal, over the places where the submarine could go below out of sight."

As Hal rowed, Skipper Jack industriously used the sounding-lead.

For twenty minutes nothing resulted from this exploration. Then, all of a sudden, Benson shouted:

"Back water, Hal! Easy; rest on your oars. Steady!"

Jack Benson raised the lead two or three feet, then let it down again, playing it up and down very much as a cod fisherman uses his line and hook.

"I'm hitting something, and it is hardly a rock, either," declared young Benson. "Pull around about three points to starboard, Hal, then steal barely forward."

Again Benson played see-saw with his sounding-line over the boat's gunwale.

"If my lead isn't hitting the 'Farnum,'" declared the young skipper, positively, "then it's the 'Farnum's' ghost. Hold steady, now, Hal."

Immediately afterward, Benson caused the lead fairly to dance a jig on whatever it touched at bottom.

"What's the good of that, anyway?" demanded Jacob Farnum.

"You don't think I'm doing this just for fun, do you, sir?" asked
Captain Jack, with a smile.

"No; I know you generally have an object when you do anything unusual," responded the shipbuilder, good-humoredly.

"You know, of course, sir, that noises sound with a good deal of exaggeration when you hear them under water?"

"Yes; of course."

"You also know that all three of us have been practicing at telegraphy a good deal during the past few weeks, because every man who follows the sea ought to know how to send and receive wireless messages at need."

"Yes; I know that, Benson."

"Well, sir, I guess that the lead has been hitting the top of the
'Farmun's' hull, and I've been tapping out the signal—"

"The signal, 'Come up—rush!'" broke in Hal, with an odd smile.

"Right-o," nodded Jack Benson.

"How on earth did you know what the signal was, Hastings?" demanded
Mr. Farnum.

"Why, sir, I've been sitting so that I could see Jack's arm. I've been reading, from the motions of his right arm, the dots and dashes of the Morse telegraph alphabet."

"You youngsters certainly get me, for the things you think of," laughed the shipyard's owner.

"And the 'Farnum,' or whatever it is, is coming up," called Captain Jack, suddenly. "I just felt my lead slide down over the top of her hull. Hard-a-starboard, Hal, and row hard," shouted young Benson, breathlessly.

Though Hastings obeyed immediately he was barely an instant too soon. To his dismay, Mr. Farnum saw something dark, unwieldly, rising through the water. It appeared to be coming up fairly under the stern of the shore boat, threatening to overturn the little craft and plunge them all into the icy water.

Hal shot just out of the danger zone, though. Then a round little tower bobbed up out of the water. Immediately afterward the upper third of a long, cigar-shaped craft came up into view, water rolling from her dripping sides, which glistened brightly as the sun came out briefly from behind a fall cloud.

In the conning tower, through the thick plate glass, the three people in the shore boat made out the carroty-topped head and freckled, good-humored, honest, homely face of Eph Somers. The boat lay on the water, under no headway, drifting slightly with the wind-driven ripples. Then Eph raised the man-hole cover of the top of the conning tower, thrusting out his head to hail them.

"Hey, you landsmen, do you know a buoy from an umbrella!"

"Do you know the difference between a Sunday-school text and petty larceny?" retorted Jack Benson, sternly. "What do you mean by taking the submarine without leave?"

"I've been experimenting—flirting with science," responded Eph, loftily. "Say, if you landsmen know a buoy from a banana, get down to the bow moorings of this steel mermaid, and I'll pass you the bow cable. It's a heap easier to lead this submarine horse out of the stall, single-handed, than it is to take him back and tie him."

Hal rowed easily to the buoy, while Eph, returning to the steering wheel and the tower controls, ran the "Farnum," with just bare headway, up to where he could toss the bow cable to those waiting in the boat. A few moments later the stern cable, also, was made fast, in such a way as to allow a moderate swing to the bulky steel craft.

"Now, you can take me ashore, if you feel like it," proposed Eph, standing on the platform deck.

"Not quite yet," returned Skipper Jack, though the small boat lay alongside. "We've got some inspecting to do. But how did you get on board in the first place?"

"Why, the night watchman was in the yard for a few minutes, and I got him to put me on board. I figured I could hail somebody else when I was ready to go on shore."

"But what on earth made you do such a thing?" demanded Captain Jack, in a low tone. "It's really more than you had a right to do, Eph, without getting Mr. Farnum's permission."

"Why, I've known you to take the 'Pollard' and try something when Mr.
Farnum wasn't about," retorted Somers, looking surprised.

"You never knew me to do it when I could ask permission, although, as captain, I have the right to handle the boat. But that leave doesn't extend to all the rest, Eph. What were you doing down there, anyway?"

"Why, I came on board, and left the manhole open for ten minutes," answered Somers. "Then I found the cabin thermometer standing at 49 degrees. I wondered how much warmth could be gained by going below the surface I had been down an hour and five minutes when you began to signal with that sledgehammer—"

"Sounding-lead," Jack corrected him.

"Well, it sounded like a sledge-hammer, anyway," grinned young Somers.
"While I was down below I found that the temperature rose four degrees."

"Part of that was likely due to the warmth of your body, and the heat of the breath you gave off," hinted Benson.

"You could have gotten it up to eighty or ninety degrees by turning on the electric heater far enough," suggested Hal.

"I wanted to see whether it would be warmer in the depths; wanted to find out how low I could go and be able to do without heat in winter," Somers retorted.

"I could have told you that, from my reading, without any experiment," retorted Skipper Jack. "Close your conning tower and go down a little way, and the temperature would gradually rise a few degrees. That's because of the absence of wind and draft. But, if you could go down very, very deep without smashing the boat under the water pressure, you'd find the temperature falling quite a bit."

"Where did you read all that?" inquired Eph, looking both astonished and sheepish.

"Here," replied Jack, going to a small wall book-case, taking down a