"Seeing omens of ill again!" persisted young Benson.
"I suppose," sighed Hal, "well, I have a sort of premonition."
"Pre—premo—" stuttered Captain Jack, holding comically to the port side of his jaw. "Oh, pshaw! Call it a plain United States 'hunch.' What's the tip the spooks are giving anyway, Hal?"
Hastings smiled again, though he went on:
"Oh, it's just a queer sort of notion I have that something is going to happen to us this afternoon."
"Right-o," drawled Jack. "You don't have to shove off from that, Hal. Something is going to happen to us. This afternoon we're going to have the first drill in the actual firing of submarine torpedoes."
"Oh, I know that," Hastings admitted, quickly. "But what I see ahead, or feel as though I see, is some kind of disaster. Now, you'll think I'm a sailor-croaker, won't you, Jack?"
"Disaster?" repeated Jack, slowly. "Well, to be sure, we've the outfit on board for a disaster, if we wanted one. Two real torpedoes that hold, between them, four hundred pounds of gun-cotton—or danger-calico, as Williamson would call it. But cheer up, old fellow. There's no danger, after all. Williamson and his pipe are on the other boat."
"Oh, of course nothing is really going to happen," laughed Hal. "It is just the feeling that is over me. That's all."
It was fully three o'clock by the time Lieutenant Danvers decided they were far enough out to sea, and far enough from any craft in those waters. Not a stick or a stack of another vessel showed within ten miles of them. The scow was accordingly cast loose and allowed to drift.