“How do you do, Captain?” shouted a young man at the bow of one of the boats.

“Louder!” begged Eph.

“How do you do, Captain?”

“Louder.  I’m afraid the captain can’t hear you yet,” grinned the carroty-topped submarine boy.  “He’s over on the gunboat.”

“Then who are you?”

“Who?  Me?” demanded Eph, innocently.  “Oh, I’m only the Secretary of the Navy.”

“All right, Mr. Secretary,” laughed the same young man.  “We are coming aboard.”

“Aboard of what?” inquired Eph.

“Why, you’re submarine boat, of course,” came the answer.

“Guess not!” responded Eph, briskly.

“Why, yes; we’re newspaper men, and it’s business, not fun with us.”

The boat containing the speaker lay lightly alongside at this moment.  In another moment the young man in the bow would have clambered up on deck, but Eph called down to him: 

“Hold on!  Stay where you are.  My orders are to hit any fellow with a boathook who tries to come up here in the captain’s absence.”

“But we’ve got to have a look at your boat, don’t you see?” insisted the newspaper man, though, as Eph carelessly picked up a boathook, the would-be caller waited prudently in the bow of his boat.

Young Somers was surely in a state of uncertainty.  He had strict orders to allow no one aboard unless he knew them to be United States naval officers.  On the other hand, the auburn-haired boy knew how necessary it was for the submarine folks to keep on good terms with newspaper writers if the American people were to be favorably impressed with the claims of the Pollard boat.

“Now, see here,” said Eph, balancing the boathook, “I’m sorry to stand here making a noise like a crank, but have you any idea at all what orders mean on shipboard?  And I’m under the strictest orders not to let anyone aboard.”

“Get your orders changed, then,” proposed another newspaper man, cheerfully.

“If you’ll wait, I’ll see if I can,” muttered Eph, hopefully.

“Oh, we’ll wait.”

Williamson’s head had appeared in the manhole way.

“Come out on deck, and don’t let anyone on board unless we get orders to that effect,” murmured Somers, passing the conning tower.  Then, through a megaphone, the submarine boy hailed the gunboat, asking if it would be possible for him to talk with Jack Benson.  Benson soon afterward came forward on the “Waverly.”  Eph explained the situation.  Jack shouted back to allow the visitors on the platform deck, but not to let any of them into the conning tower, or below.

So Eph turned to the two boatloads of visitors, explaining: 

“Perhaps you men can get that all changed if you come out to-morrow, when the captain is here.  But the best I can do to-day is to let you up here on the platform deck.”

“Oh, well,” returned the first newspaper man to get up there beside the boy, “you can tell us, as well as anyone, about your trip down the coast and the way you slipped in here.”