HE CAUGHT THE ASTONISHED TAR BY THE SCRUFF OF THE NECK AND THE SLACK OF HIS TROUSERS. —[Page 26].

THE
DREADNOUGHT BOYS
ON A SUBMARINE

BY
CAPTAIN WILBUR LAWTON

AUTHOR OF “THE BOY AVIATORS SERIES,” “THE DREADNOUGHT BOYS ON BATTLE PRACTICE,” “THE DREADNOUGHT BOYS ABOARD A DESTROYER,” ETC., ETC.

NEW YORK
HURST & COMPANY
PUBLISHERS

Copyright, 1911,
BY
HURST & COMPANY

CONTENTS

The Dreadnought Boys On a
Submarine.

CHAPTER I.
UNCLE SAM GETS FIRST CALL.

“So your final answer is no?”

“Yes. And with a big N, Mr. Ferriss. I have put my best work of head and hand into the Lockyer submarine, and Uncle Sam gets first call on her services.”

“You remind me of a copy book with your sentimental morality,” sneered Jasper Ferriss, with the bitter inflection of a man who has fought a losing fight and knows it.

“Why,” he went on persuasively, “you know as well as I do that the government is notoriously slow pay. By the time the red tape is unwound at Washington you’ll be penniless, and the boat a rust-eaten wreck. Our concern, on the other hand, offers you a fat figure, down on the nail. Come, say the word and I’ll write you a check now.”

“Don’t trouble yourself, Mr. Ferriss,” smiled Channing Lockyer, as the other’s be-diamonded hand sought his breast pocket to produce his check book—the magic volume which could have told many tales of its adventures with Jasper Ferriss.

“My answer to you and your concern regarding your proposition is No,—first, last and all the time,” he went on.

“Why?”

Jasper Ferriss was angered. Despite his experience and skill in putting through all manner of “deals” requiring the exercise of the nicest diplomacy, he could not help showing his chagrin. He showed it in the way his black brows contracted till they met in one thick band across his puffy, florid countenance. Showed it, too, in the quick way in which he rubbed his blue, clean-shaven chin, with its triple folds of fat, and in the sharp, impatient beat of his patent leather boot on the floor of the dusty shipyard office in which they sat talking by Channing Lockyer’s battered old desk, with its litter of blueprints and plans.

“Why?”

The question was shot out as if it had been a projectile.

“Why?” echoed Channing Lockyer. “Because your firm proposes to build submarines of my type for a foreign power—a power that may some day be at war with us. I believe—it may be an inventor’s conceited folly—but I believe that with a fleet of Lockyer submarines the power controlling them will be absolute mistress of the seas. Naturally, as a descendant of Jefferson Lockyer, I don’t want to see any country but my own with such powerful engines of war at its disposal.”

The confidence of inventors in their works was not new to Jasper Ferriss. But somehow the enthusiasm of this tall, pale young man, with the workman’s clothes and the long, nervous fingers, infected him. But it made him burn with an ardent desire to secure possession of the secret of the Lockyer submarine for his own company. However, while Channing Lockyer had been talking the other had managed to control his irritation, and now could speak with his accustomed smoothness.

“I understand and honor your feelings, Mr. Lockyer,” he said suavely, “but a man’s first duty is really to himself, especially to a man in your position. But when is the government going to test your craft?”

It was an old trick of Jasper Ferriss’s to abruptly change the subject when things weren’t going his way.

“I am expecting the officer who will be in charge of the experiments, and his picked crew, within a few days,” was the reply. “A short time will be spent in making them familiar with the construction, and then, after she is launched, we shall go ahead with the real tests.”

“And the launching will be?”

“As soon as possible. But there will be no public ceremony. Only the workmen, who are pledged to secrecy, will know if she is a success or a failure. Naturally we wish to keep it all as quiet as possible.”

“The men are still working on her?”

The question seemed hardly necessary. Through the open windows there floated the busy sounds of activity from the fenced-in yard. From a tall, narrow shed built against the seaward side of the high fence came the loudest demonstration of activity.

A rattling volley of riveters’ hammers, accompanied by the snorting snarl of the whirring pneumatic drills eating through steel plates, was punctuated by shouted orders and the clamor of metal on metal.

“We are putting on the finishing touches,” explained Lockyer. He sighed as he spoke. The “finishing touches” he referred to might mean the last strokes of his own career as well as the end of the preliminary stages of the submarine’s construction. Ferriss’s eyes followed the tall, slender young form as the youthful inventor strode up and down the tiny office, with its tumble-down, dust-covered desks, their pigeon-holes crammed full of blueprints and working drawings. No gilt and gingerbread about Channing Lockyer’s office. It was business-like as a steam hammer.

“Looks soft as rubber,” mused Ferriss, “but he’s tough as Harveyized steel; and a blessed sight less workable.

“Well, Mr. Lockyer,” he went on, rising, “I must be going. But I am stopping in the village, recollect, so that if you change your mind, or Uncle Sam doesn’t appreciate the boat, we stand ready to negotiate for her.”

“I won’t forget,” laughed the inventor, “but really, Mr. Ferriss, you are wasting your time. Either the United States gets her, or, if she isn’t good enough for Uncle Sam, I’ll sink her to the bottom of Long Island Sound.”

“Fine talk! Fine talk!” chuckled the amiable Mr. Ferriss, as he stepped into the noisy, bustling yard, so effectually cut off from outside observation by its high fence with the spikes on top. “But our figures will look mighty comfortable to you when you are on the brink of ruin. And you will be if the Lockyer doesn’t come up to government requirements.”

“Time enough to talk about that when the crash comes,” laughed the young inventor gaily enough. But as Ferriss’s portly, expensively dressed form vanished through the door he sank into a chair, and sat staring at the opposite wall, deep in thought. Things were coming to a crisis at the Lockyer boatyard.

Channing Lockyer was in his twenty-fifth year. Just twelve months before this story opens he had been left a considerable fortune by his father, who during his lifetime had done all he could to discourage his son’s “fantastic mechanical dreams,” as he called them. With the money in his possession, however, young Lockyer, with the true fire of the inventor, had started out to realize his fondest hope, namely to build a practicable submarine boat capable of making extended cruises without the drawback of the accompanying “parent boat.”

Compressed air had solved the problem of running his engines, but the use of the new driving force had necessitated the invention of an entirely novel type of motor. But young Lockyer—a graduate of the Sheffield Scientific School of Yale, by the way—had perseveringly overcome all difficulties, and now, in the long, narrow shed over in one corner of the enclosed yard, stood the realization of his dreams. Through some friends of his late father’s the young man had succeeded in “pulling the wires” at Washington. As a consequence, after many wearisome delays, Lieutenant Archer Parry and a picked crew were to be sent to Grayport to make an extended series of tests with the new craft.

But in “pulling his wires” Lockyer had necessarily to allow a part of his secret to leak out. Now, at Washington “walls have ears,” and it was not long after he received the glad news that at last the Navy Department had decided to look into his type of boat, that Jasper Ferriss, promoter and partner in the Atlas Submarine Company, had come to young Lockyer with a proposal to sell his plant, stock, and experimental boat outright, for a sum that fairly staggered the inventor, who had, as Ferriss had hinted, run through almost his entire fortune in making his experiments.

Now, Lockyer was not ignorant that the Atlas people, having failed to sell their own gasolene and electric-driven boats to the government, were making diving torpedo boats for a certain Far Eastern power. He came of old Revolutionary stock, and the idea of selling his boat, the offspring of his brain and inventive power, for possible use against his own country was absolutely repugnant to him; wherefore Lockyer, as we have seen, had informed the Atlas concern in no uncertain terms that he would have nothing to do with their offers, flattering though they might seem. Jasper Ferriss had, however, perseveringly hung on, hoping against hope that something might happen to make the inventor change his mind. The news he had just received that a naval experimental force had actually been ordered to start for Grayport came as a rude shock to him.

In fact, after leaving Channing Lockyer, Mr. Ferriss took the first train to New York. In the Broadway offices of his firm a stormy scene followed his narrative of his failure to close a deal with Lockyer.

Camberly—Watson Camberly, the other partner of the firm—a middle-aged man of the same aggressive type to which Ferriss himself belonged, took him sharply to task.

“Looks to me as if you’ve bungled this thing badly, Ferriss,” he growled. “You say that if the government decides not to take the boat that there is a chance Lockyer will accept our offer?”

“He’ll have to, or be ruined,” was the prompt rejoinder.

“Then we’ve got him!” cried the other, bringing down a ponderous fist on the shiny mahogany directors’ table of the Atlas Submarine Company.

“I don’t think so,” rejoined Ferriss quietly; “from what I can gather, the boat is bound to be an unqualified triumph. The government—although of course I didn’t tell Lockyer so—will jump at her.”

“That is if she is a success?” asked Camberly, a peculiar light creeping into his eyes.

“Exactly. But, as I said, there is no doubt of that.”

“Unless——”

“Well, unless what? You don’t mean to cripple her, as we did the Grampus Concern when they began to be serious rivals?”

“That’s what I do,” growled Camberly. “It’s this way, Ferriss. We’ve got to have money. Our Far Eastern friends stand ready to pay us, you know how much, for the compressed-air boat. Thinking that Lockyer would be easy, we practically promised to close a deal with them. We’ve got to have it.”

“In other words, Lockyer’s boat has got to fail in her government tests?”

“You catch my meaning exactly,” said Camberly, a slow smile spreading over his heavy, coarse features. “I think we had better send for Gradbarr at once.”

Ferriss shrugged his shoulders.

“Too bad,” he sighed, an almost regretful expression coming over his face. “Lockyer is a decent young fellow, but impracticable—quite too fanatic in his ideas. I really wish we didn’t have to resort to such measures, Camberly.”

“Rot!” rejoined the other impatiently. “Isn’t it for his own good? We’ll pay him a bigger price than the government would; but business is business, and if Lockyer won’t come into camp willingly, we’ll have to drive him.”

He tapped a small bell on his desk, and to the obsequious office boy who glided in he gave a sharp order:

“Send to the yard for Tom Gradbarr. Tell him to report to me here as soon as possible.”

CHAPTER II.
THE DREADNOUGHT BOYS ON DECK.

“Pardon me, is this Mr. Lockyer?”

It was a warm afternoon, three days after the disgruntled Ferriss had departed, that the inventor looked up from his desk to see, standing in the open doorway of the office, a stalwart young figure that almost filled the opening. Behind the newcomer two other forms could be seen. One was that of a lad about the same age as the youth who had addressed him, and the other a squat, bowlegged old fellow, with a fringe of gray whisker running under his chin from ear to ear, like the crescent of a new moon.

“Yes, I am Mr. Lockyer,” rejoined the submarine boat builder, looking up quickly at his visitors. “Come in, won’t you? What can I do for you?”

As the lad who had first spoken advanced into the dingy office, Lockyer saw that he was a sun-bronzed young chap of about seventeen, dressed quietly, but neatly, in a gray-mixture suit. His companion, whose round, good-natured face was crowned by a shock of red hair, was about the same age and also wore a suit of plain but well-fitting clothes. The third member of the party, however, as before hinted, was a startling contrast. His stout figure was garbed in a checked suit, capable, at a pinch, of acting as a checker board; a singularly small derby hat hung to one side of his head, seemingly only being secured from slipping off by an outstanding ear; and round his neck was tied a silk handkerchief of gorgeous hue. Jacob’s coat would have looked pale and colorless in comparison with it.

The countenance of this gaudily apparelled person offered a singular contrast to his violent clothes. It was round, weather-beaten and good-natured, the face of a hale and hearty old fellow who has lived an outdoor life. Two blue eyes, set deep in a mass of furrows and crow’s-feet, twinkled brightly as he looked about him.

“My name is Ned Strong, boatswain’s mate of the Manhattan,” introduced Ned, who had been the first to enter the office. “This is my shipmate, Boatswain’s Mate Hercules Taylor, and this”—turning to the spectacularly garbed old man, “is Tom Marlin.”

“Aye, aye!” rumbled old Tom, from sheer force of habit.

“Why, you are some of the men who are detailed to the trial crew that is to try out my boat, are you not?” inquired the inventor, extending his hand cordially as he rose from his desk.

“Yes, sir,” nodded Ned. “We arrived a few minutes ago, and after engaging rooms at the hotel in the village we came down here. We thought that Lieutenant Parry might have arrived.”

“Why, no. I’ve just had a wire from him saying that he cannot get here till some time this evening. It seems to me,” went on Mr. Lockyer, surveying his guests with interest, “that you two lads must be the ones the newspapers call the ‘Dreadnought Boys.’”

“I guess we’ve occupied a good deal of valuable space to the exclusion of real news,” laughed Ned, coloring a little.

“Not to mention pictures,” grinned Herc. “They took one of me riding the ship’s goat. My freckles came out fine—like spots on the sun.”

“You’ll pardon my saying that you look very young to have distinguished yourselves so noticeably,” said the inventor.

“That’s what I say, sir,” struck in old Tom, in his deep, hoarse voice. “Why, I’ve bin in the navy fer forty years, in wood and steel, and nothin’ never happened to me the way it’s happened to them lads.”

“I guess it was just our luck,” laughed Ned good-naturedly; “you seem to have a splendid plant here, Mr. Lockyer,” he went on, by way of changing the subject. Ned was not one of those lads who likes to “blow his own trumpet.” Such swaggerers are usually found wanting when the time comes to try their metal.

“Yes; we’ve gone into the thing pretty extensively,” rejoined the inventor. “And now, perhaps, as your officers have not arrived, you would like to look over the plant. Have you ever seen a submarine before?”

“Yes, indeed,” replied Ned; “though I understand that your craft is far ahead of the ones we are at present using. On our return from Costaveza we were attached for a while to a ‘parent boat,’ and cruised around with the diving craft.”

“My type of submarine will do away with the parent boat,” declared Mr. Lockyer enthusiastically. “She has a cruising range of two thousand miles or more, if necessary. But there, you will think all that mere inventor’s enthusiasm. Within a week, however, I hope you will be able to see for yourselves what she is capable of.”

“Jer-uso-hosophat! If you’d told me ten years ago that we would be snoopin’ around the bottom of the ocean in such craft, I’d not have believed it,” declared old Tom, as they set out. “I’d have believed you could go to the bottom, all right; but I’d have likewise held that you’d stay there. But sence we’ve bin detailed to submarine dooty, I kin feel fins growing out o’ my shoulder blades, I relish being under so much.”

“Something fishy about that!” chuckled Herc.

While the boys are on their way across the busy yard let us introduce them more fully to the reader who has not already encountered them. Ned Strong and Herc Taylor, then, were two lads who, orphaned at an early age, had made their home for some years with a harsh, unsympathetic grandparent who owned a big farm at Lamb’s Corners, not far from Albany, New York. They had tired of the unceasing, monotonous round of farm duties, but could not very well see a way out of their hum-drum existence till one evening, in their local store, they saw one of the navy’s recruiting posters. They wrote for information to the Bureau of Navigation, and soon got replies that decided them as to their future careers. After a stormy scene with their crabbed relative, they set out for New York, their sole capital being some pocket money made by the sale of skins.

Assigned to the new Dreadnought battleship Manhattan, when they had passed their examination in New York, they at once plunged into some remarkable adventures. The Manhattan was ordered to Guantanamo for battle practice soon after the boys joined her. Of their experiences and many exciting adventures the readers can learn in the first volume of this series, “The Dreadnought Boys on Battle Practice.” Their signal services rendered when a flare-back occurred in a big-gun turret won them their promotions and medals from the government. This was only one of their many exciting and perilous adventures.

After a brief furlough they once more went to sea, this time aboard the destroyer Beale, which had been ordered to duty at Costaveza, a turbulent South American republic where a revolution was raging. While there they were able to distinguish themselves mightily by participating in some stirring naval engagements. These came about during their surprising cruise on a Costavezan destroyer. The final downfall of their old enemy, Hank Harkins, a ne’er-do-well from their native village, was also related in this volume, which is called, “The Dreadnought Boys Aboard a Destroyer.”

Although they had rendered American interests in Costaveza great service, the United States could not reward them, as the lads had been non-combatants, so far as theory was concerned. By way of recompensing them, however, they had been assigned to submarine work, the most interesting branch of the service to-day. On this duty they had once more encountered old Tom Marlin, who, the reader will recall, was their guide, philosopher and friend during their troublous early days on the Manhattan. Their commander, Captain Dunham, bearing the lads in mind, had later detailed them, with Lieutenant Parry, to the Lockyer secret tests. And garbed as we have seen, in ordinary clothes, the lads and old Tom had journeyed down to Grayport, expecting to meet there their superior officer.

As they left the tool-repair shop, Mr. Lockyer turned to Ned and remarked:

“And now we will see what some folks have called ‘Lockyer’s Dream.’”

He pointed to the long, narrow shed we have already noticed. The boys’ eyes sparkled with interested anticipation as they struck out with him across the yard. Old Tom, however, lingered. He had drawn out his inevitable black pipe and tried to light it. But in the brisk wind that was blowing he was compelled to seek the shelter of a small shack that stood, with open door, not far from the tool shed.

“Where’s your friend?” asked Mr. Lockyer, suddenly noting Tom’s absence from the party.

“Why, he——Oh, there he is!” cried Ned, who had just noted the ends of the old tar’s necktie floating out on the breezes as the mariner dodged into the shed.

“What’s he after in there?” asked the inventor in a sharp tone, staring back toward the shed into which Tom had dived.

“He’s lighting his pipe,” exclaimed Ned, craning his neck. “He——”

“WHAT!” roared the inventor in a shrill voice. His eyes seemed to distend and a look of alarm came over his face.

Before the Dreadnought Boys knew what was the matter he was off like a bullet from a rifle, crossing the yard in long jumps. In a few bounds he gained the shed, and, rushing into it, made straight for old Tom.

“Look! Look out there!” he exclaimed, pointing through the door in the boys’ direction.

Old Tom, somewhat astonished at the other’s vehemence, obediently glanced in the direction indicated. As he did so, Lockyer’s long fingers closed over the mariner’s and he seized the match from them and vigorously stamped it out. Then, with a quick movement, he caught the astonished tar by the scruff of the neck and the slack of his trousers, and, with a strength that the boys had never guessed he possessed, propelled that astounded mariner through the door and halfway across the yard. Arrived at a panting standstill, Mr. Lockyer seized Tom’s pipe from his mouth, and without a word of explanation chucked it clear over the high board fence and out of the place.

“Well! What the——” began old Tom; but the habit of discipline was strong upon him, and, muffling his resentment, he turned upon Mr. Lockyer. “Well, sir,” he began, “I don’t take that very kindly. You might hev warned me and——”

“Warned you!” shouted the inventor. “Great heaven, man, it might have been too late. Do you know what is stored inside that place where you lit the match?”

Tom shook his head, while the boys leaned eagerly forward.

“Gun-cotton!” was the startling rejoinder.

“Gun-cotton!” echoed Ned. “Then Tom might have——”

“Blown us all to kingdom come, and the boat, too,” declared the inventor, who had now recovered his composure, though his face was still pale. It was old Tom and the boys who were shaky now.

“Good gracious!” quavered Ned, not able to repress a shudder as he realized their narrow escape. “But why don’t you put up some sign,—” he asked, “something to warn any stranger of the dangerous contents of the shed?”

For answer Lockyer swung the open door closed, and they now saw clearly enough that, emblazoned in big white letters on its outside, was the inscription:

“Gun-cotton! Danger! Persons entering this shed will wear felt-soled shoes.”

“I’m going to find out who left that door open,” said the inventor grimly; “but in any event, smoking is forbidden on these premises. It’s too dangerous.”

“A good order, too,” assented Ned. But old Tom’s face bore a lugubrious look.

“It’s all right for you who don’t smoke and can’t be persuaded to, shipmates,” he muttered so that the inventor would not hear, “but me and my old pipe’s bin messmates fer a long time, an’ I hate to lose it.”

“Cheer up. You can easily find it outside,” comforted Herc; “but you’ll have to confine your smoking to the evenings after this.”

“Reckon that’s so,” assented Tom, immensely cheered at the thought that his pipe was not irrevocably lost.

“And now we’ll continue our stroll,” said Mr. Lockyer. “First let us visit the construction shed, which I imagine will prove the most interesting.”

So saying, he struck out rapidly across the yard, his long legs opening and closing like the blades of a pair of scissors. They could not have been a hundred yards from the shed when the ground shook and there came the sound of a muffled explosion. As the inventor came to a sudden halt, a startled look on his face, a chorus of excited shouts arose from within, and presently a white-faced boy came rushing out. He was followed by another workman and then another. Panic seemed to have seized them. They hardly noticed our astonished group as they sped by.

“Good heavens! something has happened to the boat!” gasped Mr. Lockyer, turning pale and his slender form shaking like a leaf. He clapped a hand to his head. In the face of the sudden emergency he seemed crushed.

CHAPTER III.
THE WORK OF A DASTARD.

But the inventor’s inaction did not last for long. Like the workmen, he also started to run, but instead of his flight being away from the shed, it was toward it. The three man-o’-wars-men followed close at his heels.

As they neared the door a hulking big fellow lurched out, and Mr. Lockyer seized him eagerly.

“What is it, Gradbarr?” he demanded tremblingly. “What has happened?”

“’Splosion of some sort, sir,” was the hasty rejoinder. “Don’t go in there,” he exclaimed, as the inventor hastily darted forward once more. “It’s sure death.”

But what inventor would not dare death itself if there was the barest chance of saving his brain-child from harm? Shaking off the other’s detaining grip impatiently, Lockyer entered the shed, followed closely by Ned and his companions. Curiously enough, however, Gradbarr seemed inclined to follow, now that he had seen the inventor enter. His first panic appeared to have been dissipated. As old Tom’s form vanished within, he turned and followed.

“Got to see they don’t find out too much,” he muttered to himself.

Within the shed was intense gloom, lighted only here and there by scattered incandescent lights. The work being done was now all within the hull of the submarine itself, and consequently there was no necessity for bright illumination without. Cutting down light bills was one of a score of ways in which Lockyer was trying to eke out his dwindling fortune.

At first nothing very much seemed to be the matter. The gray and red painted outlines of the submarine bulked up through the gloom like the form of some fantastic and puffy fish. She was shaped like a short, very fat cigar, with a hump on the top where the conning tower, with its big round glass lenses—like goggle eyes—projected. A ladder was at her side, and up this Lockyer nimbly skipped, the boys after him.

As they gained the sloping deck, round which a low iron rail ran, a peculiar odor was noticeable. It was a sickening, pungent sort of smell, and the boys caught themselves swallowing chokingly as they inhaled it.

“Jeruso-hos-ophat, there’s bin some adult eggs busted around here!” gasped old Tom, holding to a hand rail on the conning tower.

“Smells like it,” agreed Ned. “What is it, sir?” he inquired of Lockyer, who was hesitating in front of the manhole which led down inside the boat.

“It’s a peculiar kind of gas which I use in starting the engines,” explained the inventor. “How it has been liberated I cannot imagine, but it is very volatile and must have caused the explosion we heard.”

“Do you think the boat is damaged?” inquired Herc.

“Impossible to say,” rejoined Lockyer nervously; “the hull seems all right outside. Wait till I open these ventilators and liberate the fumes, and we’ll go inside and find out.”

Familiar as the boys were with submarine construction, it was an easy task for them to aid the inventor in unclamping the deck ventilators. The gas rushed out in their faces, but they stepped aside and it did not harm them. All this was watched from the shadows of a corner of the shed by Gradbarr.

“Looks like I’ve failed, after all,” he muttered, as presently, the gas having cleared off, the inventor decided it was safe to descend and they entered the conning tower.

Stealthily as a cat, the machinist crept from his hiding place, and, ascending the ladder, followed them.

Within the conning tower the lads found themselves upon a steel ladder with chain hand-rails, much like what they had been accustomed to on a man-of-war. Descending this with quick, nervous steps, Lockyer darted for a door opening in the bulkhead at one end of the chamber, at the foot of the ladder, which was about ten by twenty feet. From this door slow, lazy curls of smoke were coming. Thanks to the opened ventilators, however, the interior of the submarine was comparatively free of gases, and the inventor unhesitatingly passed through the door. As he did so his foot caught against a soft, yielding object. The next instant a quick glance downward showed him that he had tripped on the recumbent form of a boy. In his hand the lad clutched a wrench. Stooping swiftly, Lockyer picked him up and bore him out into the other chamber, where, assisted by the boys, he stretched him upon a bench. Although the lad’s cheeks were ghastly pale, his chest was heaving, and presently he opened his eyes.

“Thank goodness you are all right, then, Sim!” breathed Mr. Lockyer. The lad, a slight young chap of about sixteen, with a mop of curly hair and large, round blue eyes, looked up at him.

“Did I do it, Mr. Lockyer? Did I do it?”

“Do what?” asked the inventor, in the indulgent tone he might have used to one whose mind was wandering.

“Why, turn off the gas valve. I tried to; but I don’t know if I made good before everything began to get wavy and it all went dark.”

“I don’t understand you,” said the inventor; “I thought the gas came from a leak. Do you mean that some one was tampering with the valve?”

“I saw Gradbarr, the new man, slip into the torpedo room, sir, while no one was looking. He had that wrench with him. I was following him to tell him that no one was allowed in there without your orders, when he came running out. I ran in to see if he had done any mischief, but the explosion came just as I got to the valve. I think I turned it off, though.”

“You did, Sim!” exclaimed Lockyer, glancing into the steel-walled space beyond the chamber in which they were assembled. “I can see the valve is at ‘off.’ My boy, I don’t know how to thank you. If it hadn’t been for your presence of mind more gas would have escaped and the boat been blown up.”

Then, turning to the others, who looked rather puzzled, the inventor rapidly explained.

“The gas is kept in a pressure-tank forward. I filled the tank recently to test out the engines, but a pipe did not fit, and it was disconnected. When the pipes were unjointed an open end was, of course, left in that chamber. It was thus a simple matter, by turning on the valve, to flood the chamber with gas.”

“But how did it ignite?” asked Ned.

“Evidently, that plumber’s torch overturned near the door, touched it off,” was the rejoinder. “Great Heavens, if Sim had not done the brave thing he did, the boat would have been ripped open as if she were made of tin. Only the fact that the full quantity of gas was not released saved the boat.”

Herc had picked up the wrench Sim had clasped in his unconscious hand, and was examining it curiously.

“See, sir,” he said, extending it, “it’s marked T. G.”

“Tom Gradbarr!” exclaimed Mr. Lockyer; “those are his initials.”

“Who is this Gradbarr?” asked Tom; “what kind of er craft is he?”

“Why, he is a singularly capable man, who applied for work here a few days ago. He came highly recommended, so I put him to work helping the gang that is cleaning up the hull, for you see, practically all the work is completed.”

“Would he have had any object in injuring the boat?” asked Ned, for Sim’s story had naturally aroused all their suspicions.

“None that I know of,” was the rejoinder; “but, still, in work of this kind it is hard to tell who may seek to damage you.”

“But surely he would have attacked the engines first if he had wished to disable the craft,” commented Ned, after a moment’s thought.

“Ah! but he could not do that,” said the inventor quickly; “the engine room is kept locked always. No one but myself has the key. It is there that most of our secrets are.”

“But the bulkhead door must have been locked, too,” persisted the boy.

“By Jove, so it was, and only Anderson, the foreman, had the key. I’ll send for him, and find out about this. Of course, to get into the gas compartment, the man must have had the key.”

“Evidently,” said Ned dryly, “and if I may offer a word of advice, sir, you will examine this chap Gradbarr before he gets a chance to leave the yard—hullo! what’s that?”

A rivet had fallen from the ladder above and dropped clattering to the iron-grated floor behind him. It had been dislodged by Gradbarr’s foot, but the fellow, who had been listening to every word uttered below, was too quick to be discovered by Ned’s upward glance. With the agile movement of a snake, he slipped from the deck and down the ladder before his presence was even suspected.

“Now we will take a look about us,” said Mr. Lockyer; “feel like moving, Sim?”

“Oh, I’m all right now, sir,” said the youngster rising, though rather weakly, to his feet; “say, but that gas does knock a fellow out when it gets going.”

“Yes, but on board the boat, when she is in commission, there will be no danger from it,” declared the inventor; “automatic valves to regulate it safely have been provided for.”

As he spoke he fitted a key to a door in an after bulkhead, similar in all respects to the forward partition, and led the way into a long, low room with steel-riveted walls, filled with peculiar-looking machinery. The boys could make out the forms of cylinders and crankshafts, but every other device about the place was strange to them.

The engine-room was unlike any other they had ever entered. It was spotless, and every bit of metal fairly gleamed and shone. Queer-looking levers and handles were everywhere, and at the farther end of it were several gauges affixed to another steel bulkhead.

“Behind those gauges are the air-tanks to drive the engines,” explained the inventor. “Here are the pumps for compressing it. We can carry a pressure in our tanks of six hundred pounds to the square inch, which is sufficient to drive the boat at thirty miles an hour on the surface, and from eight to fifteen under the water. We have triple propellers, each driven independently. If one breaks down it makes little difference.”

“Wow!” exclaimed Herc. Ned looked astonished. Old Tom only gasped.

“If you can do all that, sir,” he said, “your craft’s the marvel of the age.”

“That’s just what I think she is,” said Lockyer with a laugh.

“And these pumps here?” asked Ned, indicating an intricate mass of machinery painted red and green, and brass-mounted.

“Those are the pumps for regulating the rising and lowering apparatus. As you, of course, know, below us and in the extreme bow and stern are tanks which, when we wish to sink, are filled with sea-water. If we want to rise and float on the surface, we set our compressed air at work and drive out the water. The empty tanks, of course, supply sufficient buoyancy to float the boat.”

“And you have no storage batteries or gasolene engine or electric motors,” gasped Ned.

“No. I think that in the Lockyer boat we have successfully abolished the storage battery, with its dangerous, metal-corroding fumes, and the bother of having two sets of engines, the gasolene for the surface and the electric for under-water work. We have a dynamo, however, to furnish current for lighting and other purposes.”

“How do you get your air-supply when you are running under water?” asked Ned, his face beaming with interest.

“When the submarine is afloat you will see that alongside her periscope she will carry another pipe. This is of sufficient length to allow us to run twenty feet under water and still suck in air. Like the periscope pipe, this air-tube will telescope up, folding down inside the submarine. When we are too far below to use this device, we run on air already compressed in reserve tanks. We can carry enough for five hours of running without renewing it. In case the pressure is not high enough, we expand it,—heating it by electric radiators.”

“And your fresh air?”

“Still compressed air,” laughed the inventor. “We drive out the old foul atmosphere through specially devised valves, the fresh air taking the place of it.”

“Then the only time you have to utilize the gas is in starting your engine?” asked Ned.

“That’s the only time,” smiled the inventor. “It enters the cylinders just as gasolene does in a gasolene motor, and is ignited or exploded by an electric spark. This gives the impetus to the engines, and then the gas is cut off and the compressed air turned on.”

The boys looked dazed. The Lockyer seemed to be in truth a wonderful vessel. But as yet she had not entered the water. Even making due allowances for an inventor’s enthusiasm, it began to appear to the boys, however, as if they were on board a craft that would make history in time to come.

“Now forward,” said Mr. Lockyer, leading the way through the cabin to the room in which the explosion of the released gas had occurred, “we have the torpedo room. Two tubes for launching two Whitehead torpedoes are provided. Compressed air is used here, too, you see. But a charge of gas is exploded in the tube to fire the torpedoes.”

He indicated a maze of complicated pipes and valves leading to the rear of the torpedo tubes. Steel racks lined the sides of the place, which was in the extreme bow of the craft and, therefore, shaped like a cone. These supports were for the torpedoes. Resting places for ten—five on each side—had been provided.

Many other features there were about the craft which it would only become wearisome to catalogue here. They will be introduced as occasion arises and fully explained. As they emerged from the torpedo room, a heavy-set man in workman’s clothes, with a foot rule in one hand and a wrench in the other, came forward, advancing through the door in the bulkhead. As it so happened, Ned was in front and the newcomer rudely shoved him aside on his way through the door.

“Get out o’ my way,” he growled. “Don’t you see I’m in a hurry? Where’s Mr. Lockyer?”

“Here I am, Anderson,” rejoined the inventor, stepping forward. He had just completed a careful examination of the room in which the explosion of gas had occurred. This investigation confirmed his first decision that little damage had been done to the craft, thanks to young Sim’s plucky work.

But as Mr. Lockyer’s gaze lit on Anderson an angry expression came into his eyes, replacing his look of satisfaction at the discovery that no damage had been done.

“Ah, I want to speak to you, Anderson,” he said, with a sarcastic intonation in his voice; “but when last I saw you, you were in too much of a hurry to stop. You and your men were all running for dear life, leaving this lad here unconscious in the gas-filled torpedo room.”

“I wasn’t running away,” muttered Anderson. “I was looking for you, and I——”

“Well, never mind about that now, Anderson,” intercepted Mr. Lockyer crisply. “I daresay it was as you say. Fortunately, no damage was done. But that is not thanks to you. I am disappointed in you, Anderson. I made you foreman here, hoping that you would prove as capable as my estimation of you. Instead I find that you gave a newcomer the key to the torpedo room when you know it was against my strict orders for any one to enter it till the break in the pipe had been adjusted.”

“I gave that man the key so as he could take a look at the pipe,” explained Anderson. “He said he thought he knew how repairs could be made on it.”

“It makes no difference, it was against my orders,” snapped Mr. Lockyer. “You could have asked me first had you wished to do such a thing. Then, too, the door of the gun-cotton shed was left open. How did that happen?”

“I dunno,” grumbled Anderson. “I suppose you’ll blame that on me, too.”

“If you are yard foreman, you certainly were responsible for it,” was the rejoinder.

Some of the other panic-stricken workmen had returned now and stood clustered on the steel ladder and about the foot of it, listening curiously. Apparently their presence made Anderson anxious to assert his independence for he burst out in an insolent voice:

“I guess I know more about my business than any crack-brained inventor. I’m not going to be talked to that way, either, Mr. Lockyer. Understand?”

“I understand that you can walk to the office and get your pay, Anderson,” was the prompt retort. “The sooner you do so, the better it will suit me. You have been getting more and more impudent and shiftless every day. This insolence is the last straw. You are discharged.”

Anderson grew pale for a minute under the black grime on his face. But he quickly recovered himself, and his eyes blazed with fury. He took a step forward and shook his fist under Lockyer’s nose.

“Fire me if you want to,” he grated out; “but it will be the sorriest day’s work you ever did. I know a whole lot about your old submarine tea-kettle that you wouldn’t want told outside. I’ve held my tongue hitherto, but I shan’t now. You’ll see.”

“That will do, Anderson,” said Mr. Lockyer, turning away. “This has gone far enough. Men, you can knock off for the rest of the day. By to-morrow I will have a new foreman for you. Come, gentlemen, we have about exhausted the possibilities of the submarine for this afternoon.”

CHAPTER IV.
ANDERSON DINES ON MUD.

As the others turned to follow, Sim held back, but Mr. Lockyer turned to him and beckoned for him to make one of the party. Leaving Anderson in the midst of the gang of workmen, they made their way to the office, where Mr. Lockyer, unlocking a safe, drew forth a roll of bills. Selecting one, he presented it to Sim, who gave a cry of surprise as his eyes fell on its denomination.

“A hundred dollars! Oh, Mr. Lockyer, I couldn’t think of it! Why, sir——”

“Now, see here,” laughed the inventor, “I’m getting off cheap. If you hadn’t shut off that gas, I might have lost many times the amount of that bill.”

The lad was not proof against this line of reasoning, and finally placed the bill in his pocket. Soon afterward Anderson presented himself at the wicket, and was paid off by Mr. Lockyer’s solitary clerk and bookkeeper. His sullen face was unusually ferocious as he glared in at the inventor and his young friends.

“I ain’t through with you yet, Lockyer,” he roared, apparently in an insane access of fury. “I’ll fix you. You’ll see. I hope you and your submarine go to rust and ruin on the floor of the Sound. I hope——”

“That will do, Anderson,” said the inventor quietly. “I wish to hear no more from you.”

“But you will. Don’t you fool yourself on that,” exclaimed the furious man, flinging out of the office with muttered imprecations on his lips.

“That feller needs a short cruise in ther brig,” commented old Tom, as Anderson dashed out of the place.

“I’m sorry to have had to get rid of him, for he was a competent workman,” said Mr. Lockyer. “But he has been becoming altogether too aggressive of late. By the way, I wonder where that chap Gradbarr is. I want to interview him, too, and find out how he happened to turn on that gas. It’s a horrible suspicion to have; but it looks to me almost like a deliberate attempt to wreck the craft.”

“That’s the way it looks to me, too, sir,” agreed Ned.

“By the way,” said Mr. Lockyer suddenly, “do you boys know anything about thread-cutting? I’d like to get that pipe connection fitted up to-night.”

“I guess we can help you,” said Ned, and, accordingly, they retraced their steps to the submarine shed. The workmen had all left by this time, but they found the tools they needed, and soon had the measurements of the connection, and the required pitch of the screw to be cut on the new pipe. This done, they started for the machine shop to finish up the work. Sim, however, who was still white and shaky after his experience, was ordered home by Mr. Lockyer.

“You’ve done enough for one day, Sim,” he said. “Be off home now, and report bright and early to-morrow.”

As Sim made off, the inventor looked after him.

“There’s a lad that has the makings of a fine man in him,” he said. “He applied here for work some weeks ago, and, being short of a helper, I gave him a job. He knew something about metal working, as his father was formerly blacksmith here. The man died some time ago, and since then I guess Sim and his mother have had a hard time to get along. That hundred dollars will look very large to them.”

“He certainly did a plucky thing,” agreed Ned. “It takes courage of the right sort to put through what he did.”

“Bother it all,” exclaimed the inventor, after a few minutes’ work on the pipe. “I’ve just recalled that we have no red lead to make the joint tight with. We used up our last yesterday. I wonder if one of you would mind going up to the village for some.”

“Not a bit,” said Ned. “I’m pining for exercise. Herc, here, and myself will be up there and back in no time.”

Thanking them, Mr. Lockyer gave them directions where to go, and some money. The Dreadnought Boys were soon off on their errand. The shop found, it did not take long to make their purchases and, with the parcel under Ned’s arm, they started back.

“There’s a short cut to the water, through that field there,” said Ned, as they came to a turning. “Let’s take it and save time.”

Accordingly, they presently emerged in a low-lying meadow, thickly grown with clumps of alders and other swamp shrubs. A path threaded among them, however, which apparently led almost direct to the boat yard.

“We’d have saved time if we’d known about this before,” observed Ned, and was about to add something more when he stopped short. From what was apparently only a short distance ahead, there had come a cry of pain.

“Oh, don’t, please don’t, Mr. Anderson.”

“You young blackguard, I’ll break your arm for you if you don’t tell me everything,” growled out a voice they recognized as that of the recently discharged foreman. “It was you that told on me, wasn’t it?”

Another cry of pain followed.

“It’s Anderson. He’s ill-treating that young Sim!” cried Ned, his face flushing angrily. The Dreadnought Boy hated to hear of anything weak and small being badly used.

“Come on, Herc, we’ll take a hand in this,” he said.

They advanced rapidly, yet almost noiselessly, and in a second a turn of the path brought them upon the two whose voices they had heard. Anderson had hold of Sim’s arm and was twisting it tightly while he pounded on the back of it with one burly fist to make the agony more excruciating.

“Here you, let go of that boy!” exclaimed Ned.

Anderson looked up furiously.

“Oh, it’s you interfering again, is it? Now you take my advice and keep out of this. I don’t know who you are and I don’t want to, but just keep on your way, or you’ll get hurt.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” rejoined Ned easily. “If you don’t stop ill-treating that boy, it’s you that will get hurt.”

“Is that so?” snarled Anderson. “Well, Mister Busy-body, I’ll just do as I please.”

So saying, he gave Sim’s arm, which he had not released, an additional twist, causing the frail lad to cry out again. But before the cry had completely left the boy’s lips, Ned’s hand had closed upon Anderson’s wrist, and that worthy, with a snort of pain, suddenly found himself staggering backward under the force of the quick twist the boy had given him.

“I’ll show you!” he cried, recovering himself and bellowing with rage. “Mind yourself!”

But it was Anderson who should have minded. As he spoke, he made a mad rush at Ned, who, not wishing to hurt the man, simply sidestepped as the other came on. But he left one foot extended, and as Anderson came in contact with it he tripped.

Floundering wildly, he sought to retain his balance. But the effort was in vain.

Splash!

Over he went, spread-eagle fashion, face down into a pool of stagnant swamp water.

“Haw! Haw! Haw!” laughed Herc. “Say, mister, you’re so fond of water that you just have to wallow in it like a hog, don’t you?”

Anderson scrambled to his feet a sorry sight. Mud daubed his face and the front of his clothing. Mud was in his hair, his eyes, his nose, and his mouth.

“I’ll fix you,” he cried, making another dash at Ned, but this time the Dreadnought Boy simply caught the enraged fellow’s wrists and held them to his sides as easily as if he had been restraining a fractious child.

“Now, see here, Anderson,” he shot out, “you’ve had trouble enough for one day. Don’t look for more. Now get!”

Cowed by Ned’s determined manner, but more especially by the easy fashion in which the boy had quelled him, holding him helpless as an infant, Anderson “got.” But as he strode off through the bushes there was a dark look on his face, a look that boded no good to the Dreadnought Boys, who, however, hardly gave the matter a further thought. Seeing Sim safe on his way home, they turned once more to their path and arrived at the boat yard in due time.

“Took you fellows longer than you expected, didn’t it?” asked Mr. Lockyer, as they appeared.

“We attended to a little business on the way,” replied Ned quietly; “and now if you are ready, Mr. Lockyer, we’ll fit that pipe.”

In the meantime, Anderson, instead of going home, had hied himself to the village hotel, which boasted of a drinking bar. In this place he sought solace for his woes as many another foolish or weak man has done before him. In the midst of his angry musings, a man stepped in who, apparently, recognized Anderson, for he stopped short and gave a low whistle.

“Anderson! Wonder what he is doing here at this time of day.”

Stepping forward, he came up behind the disgruntled foreman with an appearance of great cordiality.

“Why, hello, old man,” he exclaimed. “Work through at the yard? What are you doing here at this hour?”

“Gradbarr!” exclaimed Anderson, surprised in his turn, as he faced the other. “Why ain’t you down at the yard?”

“Oh, after that blow-up I decided to quit. Too risky a job for a family man like me.”

“Where is your family?” inquired Anderson. “Never knew you had one.”

“Oh, in California,” was the reply.

“Hum, you keep far enough away from them,” commented Anderson; “and, by the way, I’ve got a bone to pick with you. You got me discharged over your borrowing of that key.”

“What!” exclaimed Gradbarr, with genuine surprise. “Fired? How’s that? Although, now I come to notice it, you do look a bit mussed up. Bin in a fight?”

“Why no,” was the sullen rejoinder. “What made you think that?”

“Well,” grinned Gradbarr, “men don’t generally roll in the mud if they can help it, and by the looks of you that’s what you’ve bin a-doin’. But tell me about how you come to be fired. If it’s my fault, I’ll make it right with you.”

Anderson soon related his own version of how he came to be discharged. He was in an angry, reckless mood, and did not care how loud he talked, so that he had for a listener Jeb Sproggs, the landlord of the hotel. Jeb listened with open mouth and ears to Anderson’s description of the “young whelps,” as he termed them, who had accompanied Mr. Lockyer, meaning, of course, Ned and Herc. “And there was an old geezer, too,” he went on; “looked like some sort of a retired fisherman.”

“Why them fellows is registered here,” put in the landlord, as Anderson concluded. “Yep,” he continued, “their names is Strong, Taylor, and the old feller’s called Marlin.”

“Then they weren’t mere butt-in visitors to the yard as I had them figgered out to be,” cried Anderson.

“Why no,” said Sproggs, discarding a badly mangled toothpick. “As I understand it, them lads is here on special duty connected with that diving boat. They’re in the Navy.”

“The Navy!” exclaimed Gradbarr. “Then I may be too late.”

“What’s that?” asked Anderson eagerly. “Do you know them?”

“No,” rejoined Gradbarr, “I don’t know them and I don’t much care to, from what you’ve told me about them. But I’ve got to be going on. Say,” he continued, in a whisper, bending over till his mouth was quite close to Anderson’s ear, “do you want to be put in the way of revenging yourself on Lockyer and that whole bunch?”

“Do I?” Anderson’s eyes lit up with a vicious flare. He involuntarily clenched his fists.

“Well, walk up the street with me a way and I’ll tell you how to get even.”

For a moment Anderson wavered. After all, this man was a stranger to him. It might be a trap to draw him out and discover if he cherished any harm to the submarine. But then his evil, vindictive nature asserted itself. He ached and palpitated with his every sense to avenge himself on the man who had humiliated him before the whole crew of workmen, and particularly was he desirous of making Ned Strong and his companion smart for the indignities they had thrust upon him.

“All right,” he said. “I’m with you.”

“A tool ready to my hand,” was the thought that flashed across Gradbarr’s mind as, arm in arm, the two worthies strolled from the hotel and slowly walked up the village street.

That evening, as the Dreadnought Boys and their weather-beaten comrade were returning to the hotel, they encountered Zeb Anderson. They would have avoided him if they could, but as he planted himself in their path there was no way of escaping a meeting. But that they were not anxious to court such an encounter, our party was showing by hurrying on, when Anderson caught Ned by the arm.

“I s’pose you think you and me had a brush and you win,” he said in a voice harsh with hate. “Well, just you wait. Our score ain’t evened up yet. You’re going ter sea on that old submarine I hear. Well,” he said, raising his voice, “I know more about her than you do. You’ll all go to the bottom every last man of you and leave your bones rotting there. That’s what I hope and that’s what will be.”

With this amiable prophecy, Anderson strode off down the street, casting back ever and anon a glance of hatred at the naval party.

“Wall,” exclaimed Tom Marlin, who had been made acquainted by the boys with what had occurred in the alder swamp, “if words could drown we’d be dead by this time, all right.”

“Somehow, though, I think that that man Anderson is a good fellow to watch out for,” replied Ned. “He has the look in his eye of a man who might become insane from brooding upon his fancied wrongs.”

“Hullo, there is the Lieutenant and Midshipman Stark, and there’s good old Stanley, too,” cried Herc suddenly, pointing to a group in front of the hotel. Hastening their steps, our party was soon respectfully saluting Lieutenant Parry and his aide.

The next morning work was resumed at the yard, with Andy Bowler, a capable workman, in Anderson’s place as superintendent. Sim was made his assistant, and work was rapidly rushed ahead. Sim proved himself, in spite of his tender years, to be a genius with machinery, and he and the Dreadnought Boys became firm friends. All this time the naval party was acquainting itself thoroughly with the principles of the Lockyer engine so that when the time came they could take sole charge of the craft and test her in every way.

All this time nothing further had been heard of Gradbarr, who, as we have seen, had failed in his first attempt to damage the submarine. He did not even appear to collect his money. Mr. Lockyer, with an idea of having him arrested, notified the police, but they could find no trace of him. Anderson was seen about the village and appeared to have plenty of money, although the source of his income was more or less of a mystery. But things were so busy at the yard that the boys or any one connected with the plant had little time to waste on speculations concerning the rascally pair. Work in the craft was rushed day and night. Rapidly it narrowed down to mere details.

One bright afternoon Mr. Lockyer seized up a megaphone and by its agency announced throughout the yard that the work was practically finished. What a cheer went up as the men gathered about him! Another shout arose when it was given out that each man that evening would find a ten-dollar bill awaiting him at the office.

“When is the launching set for, sir?” inquired Ned of Mr. Lockyer that evening.

“There will be no formal launching, with invited guests, a brass band, and all that; but we’ll run her off the ways to-morrow, if it’s a good day,” was the reply. “I can hardly believe that the crucial test is so near. I wonder, will she make good?”

“You’ll win out, sir, never fear,” Ned assured the inventor, who was beginning to show the effect of his long strain.