Eph’s jaws snapped with a slight noise.  He remained silent, for a few moments, before he replied: 

“So far, that trick is known only to the Pollard people and a few officers of the Navy.  The fewer that know, the better the chance of keeping it a secret.  Don’t you believe me?”

“That’s one way of looking at it, perhaps,” nodded a reporter.  “But there’s another side to that, too, Somers.  The United States now own some of your boats, and the money of the people paid for those boats.  Now, don’t you think the people of this country have a right to know some of the secrets for which they pay good money, and a lot of it?”

On hearing the question put that way Eph looked tremendously thoughtful for a few seconds.

“Why, yes, undoubtedly,” admitted the carroty-topped submarine boy.  “I never thought of it that way before.”

“Then—­”

“See here,” interrupted Eph, “it was the Secretary of the Navy, who on behalf of the people, bought our boats.”

“Yes—­”

“He acted as the agent of the people,” Eph continued.

“Well—­”

“Therefore,” asserted Eph Somers, with a roguish twinkle in his eyes, “the Secretary of the Navy is the proper official for you to go to in search of that information.  And you may tell the Secretary—­”

“Stop making fun of us,” interposed a newspaper man.

“You may tell the Secretary,” finished Eph, “that I said I had no objection to his giving you the information you want.”

The newspaper men after gazing briefly at the innocent-looking face of the carroty-topped one, began to grin.

“Young Somers is all right,” declared one of the visitors.  “He knows when to talk, and also when to hold his tongue.”

“I never was sized up so straight before,” grinned Eph, “since I was caught stealing grapes behind the Methodist church.”

Before the newspaper men departed in their boats they had obtained some amusing and interesting points for a news “story.”  Yet not one of them had gained any inside information as to the closely guarded secrets of the submarine.  Eph, from his very disposition and temperament, made undoubtedly the best press agent the Pollard Company could have had.  Hal Hastings, while wishing to be obliging, probably would have said his whole “say” in twenty or thirty words.  Jack Benson would have sung the praises of the Pollard boats readily enough.  But it was Eph, alone of the three, who could give to such an interview the humor and wit that American newspaper readers enjoy.

One “reporter” in the party that was rowed back to the beach was not known to his associates.  Wherever several newspaper men are gathered at a point on business it is generally easy for a stranger, not connected with the press, to push himself into the group.  The stranger, in this instance, had given the name of Norton, claiming to be from an Omaha paper.