Young Benson stopped, bringing his heels together with a click.

“What do you want?  Where are you going?” demanded the marine.

“I know I look pretty tough,” Jack admitted, shamefacedly.  “But I belong aboard the ‘Farnum,’ one of the submarines that arrived last night.  And I’m due there at this minute.  Please don’t delay me.”

“All right,” replied the sentry, after surveying the boy from head to foot once more.  Then he added, in a lower tone, with just the suspicion of a grin showing at the corners of his mouth: 

“Say, friend, for a stranger, you must have had a high old frolic in the town last night.”

Jack frowned.  The sentry’s grin broadened a bit.  As he did not offer to detain the boy longer, Benson hurried on along one of the walks.  He took as short a course as he could making straight for the Basin, where he made out the “Hudson” and the two submarines.

“Hey!  There’s the captain!” shouted Eph, wonderingly, for Somers’s eyes were sharp at all times.

Out of the conning tower sprang Hal Hastings, looking eagerly in the direction in which Eph Somers pointed: 

“Eh?” muttered another person, lounging near the rail of the gunboat.  Then Lieutenant Commander Mayhew, after a keen, wholly disapproving look at the hard-looking figure of a young man at the landing, started, as he muttered: 

“Benson, by all that’s horrible!  How did he come to be in that fearful shape?  He must have been in one of the worst resorts within miles of Annapolis!”

“This isn’t the first time the young man has come back the worse for wear,” the lieutenant commander continued, under his breath.  “His friends were loyal enough to him, that time.  I wonder if they can be, to-day?”

One of the shore boats, waiting about in the Basin, put young Benson aboard the “Farnum” as soon as he explained who he was.  Hal and Eph stood awaiting the coming of their young commander, their faces full of concern and anxiety.  Both gripped Jack’s hand as soon as he gained the platform deck of the submarine.

“Come below,” whispered Hal.  “We’ll talk there.  You need a bath and to get into a uniform as quickly as you can.”

This need Jack Benson proceeded to realize without an instant’s delay.  While he washed himself off, in one of the staterooms aft, he talked through the door, which had been left ajar.  He continued his story while he dressed.

“We were fearfully anxious this morning,” Hal confessed.  “I went to sleep last night, and didn’t know of your absence until this morning.  Then Eph and I decided to come on down to the boat to see if you were here.  We were just planning to send quiet word to the Annapolis police when Eph spotted you coming.”

“And Truax?” inquired Captain Jack.

“He and Williamson are forward in the engine-room, now, at breakfast.”

“Oh, well, Truax wouldn’t know anything about the scrape, anyway,” returned Jack.  “His name was learned and used—­that’s all.”