“Well!” demanded Jack Benson, his face radiant, as he thought of their “fighting chance.”
“It was the way you put the whole matter to Pollard,” replied Hal Hastings. “Jack, you’re a wonder with your tongue. I believe you could talk a hole through a thick board fence.”
“We’ve got our chance, anyway. And, oh, Hal! I believe it’s going to be our real chance in life!”
“You’ll soon be as wild about the ‘Pollard’ as the inventor himself,” laughed Hastings, good-naturedly.
“It isn’t going to be just the one boat, Hal,” urged his chum, seriously. “It’s the whole big problem of submarine warfare. It’s going to be the warfare of the future, old chum! And, starting this early, we may become Pollard’s real experts—his leading men when he’s famous, successful and rich! We may even become his partners, through getting up improvements on his ideas. Hal, boy, we may even put through our own design of submarine boat one of these days.”
“It’ll be huge fun, anyway, if we can get a chance to cruise on a submarine boat-under water and all!” glowed young Hastings. “Say, there must be a wonderful thrill to going down deep in the ocean.”
Thus they talked for another hour. It was very late when the two turned in, nor did they go to sleep at once. Yet, when the half-past six call came in the morning, both boys turned out in a jiffy. Excitement took the place of rest with them. They breakfasted with appetite. Shortly after half-past seven, though the yard was so near, Jack and Hal set out for their first day’s work at boat building.
The gate was open, though the yard, as they stepped inside, had a deserted look. The partly finished hulls of two schooners lay on the ways down by the water front. There were half a dozen sloops in various stages of completion. There were two houses, close to the water’s edge in which, as the boys afterwards learned, motor boats were built. But it was a rough shed, more than twenty feet high, and at least one hundred and twenty feet long, running down to the shore, that instantly caught Jack Benson’s glance.
“There’s where they must be putting the ‘Pollard’ in shape,” he cried, eagerly, as he pointed. Both youngsters hurried toward that shed. As they reached it the inventor came into sight around the end. He was hollow-eyed, though alert; he looked even more worried than he had looked the night before.
“Ah, good morning, boys,” was his greeting. “Early on hand, I see.”
“When a fellow’s whole heart is set on a thing, he isn’t likely to lie abed until the last moment, is he, Mr. Pollard?” inquired Benson.
That speech impressed the inventor most favorably. He could appreciate enthusiasm.
“Come inside, and I’ll show you something,” he said, producing a key and leading the way to a door in the side of the shed.
Through the long, high windows of the shed an abundance of light fell. But Jack, once inside the door, halted, looking with lips parted and eyes wide open.