The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Submarine Boys and the Spies, by Victor G. Durham

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Title: The Submarine Boys and the Spies Dodging the Sharks of the Deep

Author: Victor G. Durham

Release Date: November 13, 2005 [eBook #17057]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SUBMARINE BOYS AND THE SPIES***

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