“All right, sir; we’ll promise,” came back from another reporter. “I suppose you’ll show us all over the craft?”
“From stem to stern?” put in a nautically inclined pressman.
“I’m afraid not,” rejoined the inventor, with a smile, as the eager horde hung on his words. “You see, there are several secrets about the boat that we can’t give out to the public, as yet.”
“We’ll have to be content with what we can get, then,” was the rejoinder. “But can our photographers get a snap of you gentlemen as you stand on deck?”
“Go ahead,” laughed Lieutenant Parry, with the air of a man resigned to the inevitable.
Click! Click! Click!
A perfect fusillade of photographic shutters snapped, and then the photographers begged for “just one more.” With great good nature this was given, the submarine party grouping themselves as directed. While this was going on, the shore boat had run in quite close to the submarine and, unnoticed in the excitement, a man had jumped from her upon the steel deck of the diving craft. He was a stout, fleshy man, of middle age, who, despite his weight, had displayed this alertness. His eyes, which were keen and shifty, glanced about him eagerly, as he set foot on the Lockyer’s deck.
For a minute he was not noticed, but presently the inventor spied him.
“I’m sorry,” he said, stepping up to him, “but I shall have to ask you gentlemen to come on board in a party or not at all. You will understand me when I say that we wish to keep you under our eyes.”