"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.