"Two, besides the dummies, will be plenty."
"Then I"ll run over to Mr. Partridge, the superintendent of the yard, and he"ll have a foreman and a gang attend to it," suggested the young submarine skipper.
Accordingly, this was done. Then the party slated for the afternoon cruise went over to the hotel. By the time that they came back from the midday meal the two service torpedoes were aboard the "Hastings"
and the target was in readiness to be towed out to sea.
This "target" was not a handsome-looking affair. It was an old scow, some thirty feet long and broad of beam, that had once been used, up the coast, in sea-wall construction work. Mr. Farnum had bought it a short time before and it now lay at anchor, near the beach, ready to be towed out to sea for its last service to mankind. The scow was heavily laden with rock, this being intended to sink the craft"s keel as far as was advisable. The old scow had now something more than four feet draught, with less than two feet of freeboard.
Two of the workmen, in an old whaleboat, waited to row the party out to the "Hastings." Jack was soon able to welcome Lieutenant Danvers on board the submarine.
"You can look around all you want, Ewald and Biffens," suggested Mr.
Danvers, "and see if you can find any great differences between this craft and the "Pollard" and the "Farnum.""
The two sailors, accordingly, made themselves wholly at home in the interior of the submarine.
"Both men have put in tours of duty on the first two boats turned out by your company," explained the officer. "They know all about the two Pollard boats that the Navy bought."
"Then they won"t find very much that is different on board the "Hastings,"" Jack replied. "All that is new here is in the way of a few more up-to-date little mechanisms and devices. A man used to running the old "Pollard" would really be wholly at home here."
A few minutes, only, were allowed for inspection of the newest submarine of the lot. By this time the workmen in the small boat had made fast a towing hawser between the bow of the old scow and the stern towing bitts of the "Hastings."
"Use my men all you need to, in casting off, or in boat handling generally," requested Lieutenant Danvers. Jack therefore ordered Ewald and Biffens forward on the upper hull to cast loose from moorings. Hal stood the trick in the engine-room, while Jack himself sat at the wheel in the tower.
In another minute, despite her rather heavy tow, the "Hastings" was nosing briskly out of the harbor. The gasoline engines this little craft were of a "heavy service" pattern, which adapted the submarine to the work of towing at need.
"How far out do you want to go, sir!" asked Captain Jack, as the Navy lieutenant took a seat beside him in the tower, after Eph and the sailors had gone below.
"We want to be sure to be well out of the path of coastwise vessels,"
replied Danvers. "That"s the main thing, you know. We can"t take any risk of sinking a merchantman while we"re having our fun."
"With this tow, then, it will be three o"clock before we get out where we really ought to be, sir."
"That will give us at least two hours of good daylight," nodded Mr.
Danvers. "Of course you know this coast well enough to pick your way back after dark?"
"I"d run the craft five times the distance, under water, and hit the harbor without thought of an accident," spoke young Benson, seriously, and with no thought of boasting.
"Jove, my young friend, if you can do a thing like that, you"re a genius at the work," muttered Danvers, after a swift, side glance at Skipper Jack.
"I"ve done as much before," laughed Jack. "Either of my friends could do it, for that matter."
"Then you"re veritable young kings of the deep!" declared Lieutenant Danvers, heartily.
"Oh, we"re not wonders," smiled Jack, goodhumoredly; then added, more seriously, "If we really do anything worth while, my friends and I, we"re to be regarded simply as the products of constant practice."
"You"re modest enough about it," agreed Danvers.
Presently, the naval officer himself took a hand at managing the submarine. Jack, knowing that the boat was in fine professional hands, slipped unconcernedly below, to chat with Hal Hastings, who sat doggedly by his engines.
"What"s the matter? What makes you look so solemn, old fellow?" asked the young submarine skipper, when he caught sight of his chum"s solemn face.
"Oh, you"d laugh, if I told you," smiled Hal.
"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.
Captain Jack was at the tower wheel again, as Eph and the two sailors returned from setting the scow loose.
"We"ve got to be sure to record one good hit against that old barge of stone," muttered Lieutenant Danvers, who stood beside the youthful submarine commander. "The sea is roughening, and I doubt if we could pick up that scow in tow again. We"ve got to destroy her, or she"d be a fearful menace to navigation, drifting about in the night in the path of incoming vessels."
"Oh, I guess you"ll get rid of her easily enough," spoke Jack, confidently. "You"re a professional at this business, sir."
"So are the two men with me," nodded the officer. "By the way, Ewald can just as well come on deck and take the wheel, if you want him to do so. Then you can go below and see all that we do with a torpedo."
"Now, that"s what I call a great idea," cried Benson, enthusiastically.
"I want to know just how a torpedo is handled at the time of firing."
"It"s the only thing you have left to learn about this business,"
smiled the naval officer. Then he pa.s.sed the word for Ewald. When that it sailor had taken the wheel, the naval officer and the young submarine skipper went below.
"We"ll swing in one of the dummy torpedoes, first, of course," announced Mr. Danvers.
One of the dummies was, therefore, hauled forward on a truck, then forced on into the torpedo tube. Jack watched, intently, this part of the business.
The torpedo itself was a cigar-shaped affair, with a propeller at the after end. This propeller was set in motion by means of an engine in the after part of the torpedo, the engine being so constructed that it was set in operation at the moment the torpedo left the tube and entered the ocean outside. The propeller was fitted with apparatus that would drive the torpedo in a straight line.
"The torpedo looks like a miniature submarine, doesn"t it?" muttered young Benson.
"It surely does," nodded the naval officer. "And, since the torpedo has to travel under water, what better model could have been chosen? Now, the engines in these dummy torpedoes can be set for two, four, six or eight hundred yards, and the torpedo, once it enters the water, travels forward, in a straight line until the engine gives out. That is, the torpedo travels ahead if it doesn"t hit something. So, in actual war conditions, we would always get nearer to the object than the distance for which the engine is set to run. The speed of a torpedo like this, under water, is a good deal better than thirty miles an hour, but the distance the torpedo can go is naturally short. That is a direct consequence of its speed. Now, Mr. Benson, would you like to know how to fire the torpedo, since it is already in the tube?"