“Turn out below, there, to help make fast!”

“Take the lever, Williamson,” directed Eph.  “Come along lively, Truax.”

“Humph!  Let Williamson go,” grumbled Truax.

“You come along with me, my man!” roared Eph, his face blazing angrily.  “Hustle, too, er I’ll report you to the captain for disobedience of orders.  Then you’ll go ashore at express speed.  Coming?”

Sam Truax appeared to wage a very brief battle within himself.  Then, nodding sulkily, he followed.

“Hustle up, there!” Jack shouted down.  “We don’t want to drift.”

Jack Benson stood out on the platform deck, holding to the conning tower at the port side.  A naval launch had just placed a buoy over an anchor that had been lowered.

“Get forward, you two,” Jack called briskly, “and make the bow cable fast to that buoy.”

Hal still sat at the wheel in the tower.  As Eph and Truax crept forward over the arched upper hull of the “Farnum,” Hal sounded the engine room signals and steered until the boat had gotten close enough to make the bow cable fast.  Then the stern cable was made fast, with more line, to another buoy.

“A neat hitch, Mr. Benson,” came a voice from the bridge of the “Hudson,” which lay a short distance away.  Jack, looking up, saw Lieutenant Commander Mayhew leaning over the bridge rail.

“Thank you, sir,” Jack acknowledged, saluting the naval officer.

The parent vessel and her two submarine charges now lay at anchor in the harbor at Port Clovis, one of the towns down the coast from Dunhaven.  This mooring overnight was to be repeated each day until Annapolis should be reached.

Within fifteen minutes the craft were surrounded by small boats from shore.  Some of these contained merchandise that it was hoped sailors would buy.  Other boats “ran” for hotels, restaurants, drinking places, amusement halls, and all the varied places on shore that hope to fatten on Jack Tar’s money.

“I’d like to go ashore, sir,” announced Sam Truax, approaching Captain Jack.

“When?”

“Now.”

“For how long?”

“Until ten o’clock to-night.”

“Be back by that hour, then,” Jack replied.  “If you’re not, you’ll find everything shut tight aboard here.”

Truax quickly signaled one of the hovering boats, and put off in it.  Eph watched the boat for a few moments before he turned to Captain Jack to mutter: 

“Somehow, I wouldn’t feel very badly about it if that fellow got lost on shore!”

CHAPTER VI

TWO KINDS OF VOODOO

On the second day of the cruise Jack Benson returned to full duty.

For four nights, in all, the submarine squadron tied up at moorings in harbors along the coast.  On the fifth night, as darkness fell, the squadron continued under way, in Chesapeake Bay, for Annapolis was but three hours away.