“For what?” asked Captain Jack, smilingly.

“Oh, just to see what turns out to be wrong with the fellow.”

“What can be, wrong with Henderson?”

“I didn’t say anything was, did I?” queried Eph Somers.

“And I don’t believe anything can be,” responded Jack Benson, hopefully. 
“Mr. Farnum has looked over the man’s Navy discharge papers, and
Mr. Farnum isn’t an easy one to take in.”

CHAPTER XVII

IN THE GRIP OF HORROR

Before five o’clock that afternoon Dunhaven lined the water front.  That is to say, fully five hundred people of the little seaport town were on hand.  The “Pollard” was a local enterprise.  If the great United States Government expected to buy the boat, the people of the village wanted to be on hand and give a rousing send-off to a homemade craft that might yet be destined to become famous.

Cheer after cheer went up.  Hats, parasols and handkerchiefs were waved.

“I don’t know,” growled one old salt in the shore throng.  “If it was a human sort of craft, meant to ride the waves as a good ship should, I’d have more faith in her.  I’m afraid that boat’ll go to the bottom one o’ these days, an’ forgit to come up again.”

The old salt was promptly voted a croaker.  Hadn’t the “Pollard” been given abundant tests by her crew?  Had she failed to come up yet?  So the cheering redoubled when Captain Jack came up on the platform deck, followed by the builder and the inventor.

“Thank you, my friends!” shouted Jacob Farnum, making a trumpet of his hands.  “We all thank you!  Now, Captain Benson, make as handsome a flying start as you can.”  Jack already stood by the wheel, where he could reach all the controls.  Down below the gasoline motor throbbed, making the hull vibrate.  Power had been ready for the last ten minutes.

Captain Jack moved the speed wheel around to the six-mile notch.  The twin propellers aft began to churn the water lazily, causing the “Pollard” to slip away from her moorings.  Ere they had gone a hundred yards Jack swung on much more speed.  By the time that the submarine reached the mouth of the little harbor she was traveling at eighteen miles an hour, her bow nosing into the waves and throwing up a fine spray, some of which reached the platform, deck.  Astern, her propellers were tossing the water into a milky foam.  Truly, she made a gallant sight!

For half a mile Captain Jack kept out to sea.  Then he turned the craft’s nose northward.  For another hour the “Pollard” was kept at the same speed, behaving handsomely.  Then Captain Jack turned the wheel over to big Bill Henderson, going below to have his supper with builder and inventor.

“As soon as the other watch have had supper,” proposed Mr. Farnum, “I think, Captain, we’ll drop fifty feet below the surface and run for an hour or more.  The Navy men will want an even sterner test than that.  We want to make sure that everything about the craft is running at the top notch of perfection.  A fortune for Pollard, and another for myself, are at stake on what we show the Navy in the next three days.”