“I’m not so sure that you’re right on this point, Jack,” clicked Mr. Farnum.  “I’ll say this much:  It would make me more uneasy to lose the services of you boys than it would to hear that Melville has a Navy crew for the boat he’s building.”

“Of course,” went on Jack, thoughtfully, after a pause, “if you, Mr. Farnum, could interest all the capital you want, on your own fair conditions, you wouldn’t have to be afraid of this man Melville.”

“No,” admitted the boatbuilder, making a wry face.  “But getting all that capital together is the problem.  You see, Jack, we know just how good a boat we have, but others don’t.”

“Others don’t?” repeated Captain Benson.  “That gives me an idea.”

“Another trouble,” pursued the builder, “is that this submarine business is just something of a speculation.  Suppose investors come forward with a lot of ready money to put into this enterprise?  Our boat is good, but how do the investors know that, within the next few months, some other inventor won’t come forward with a new type of submarine boat that will leave ours hopelessly behind?  Then the investors would stand to lose every dollar that they put in with us.  That’s the thought that makes investors shy.”

“Yet Mr. Melville did not seem to be afraid of the chance of losing,” remarked Jack Benson.

“He’s a gambler all the way through, and he has some moneyed friends of his sort,” replied Mr. Farnum.  “But it’s hard to find such investors.”

“Now, for that idea I mentioned,” proposed Captain Jack.  “You can see what you think of it.  Why not get people to talking about our boat?  Why not make them talk about it as the most wonderful thing possible in a submarine boat?  You know how I managed to leave the boat under water, and to return to it.  The thing has never been done before.  You know how simple the trick was, and that it was blundered upon by accident.  But the people of the country at large don’t know.  Show the trick is done.  When they hear about it, broadcast, won’t they think that the ‘Pollard’ is the only real thing in submarines?  Use the ‘Pollard’ type of boat, and no more men need be killed when a boat won’t rise.  That’s the way the people will talk.  So, Mr. Farnum, why not write to the editor of each of the biggest daily papers, inviting him to send a representative here on a near date, to see the thing done?  Don’t let the editors know just what feat is to be displayed.  Simply let them know, in a mysterious, general way, that the thing we will demonstrate revolutionizes the whole art of submarine warfare—­as it really does.”

“That will make people talk, surely,” acknowledged the young boatbuilder.

“And there’ll be pressure put upon Congress to buy your boat, and more like it,” urged Captain Jack.  “All the newspaper talk will be free advertising, and I imagine that the kind of advertising that newspapers are forced to give is all the best paying.”