“Started too late?” asked Jack.  “How was that?”

“Now, you laugh at me,” replied the Japanese.

“Laughing at you?  Not a bit!”

“You have told some one that I am a spy,” replied Kamanako, without a trace of grudge in his voice.  “So now, I cannot leave Spruce Beach.  Ticket agent, he will not sell me.  If I try to go on foot, the roads are watched.  If I take to woods, even, I shall be found.”

“Sorry,” nodded Jack Benson, and passed on.  “So the Secret Service net is around the place, and no suspected person can get away?” muttered the submarine boy.  “Well, that’s it should be.  I wonder if there are any more of this strange crew—­men or women spies that don’t happen to have suspected so far?  If there are, I don’t believe they’ll wriggle through the meshes of old Uncle Sam’s Secret Service net, anyway.”

His mind full of the doings of the day, Captain Jack Benson found Messrs. Farnum and to whom he surely had much to tell.

CHAPTER XVIII

“Remember what happened to the ’Maine’!”

“We’ll have no more trouble, I imagine,” nodded Jacob Farnum, with a satisfied air, when Jack, at a table in the corner of the dining room, had told, in low tones, all that had happened.

“The spies are all on the defensive, now, beyond a doubt,” added David Pollard.  “They’ll be too busy keeping their wrists out of handcuffs to devote any of their time to trying to get at the secrets of the ‘Benson.’”

“I hope you’re both right,” said Captain Jack, gravely.

“Why, what leads you to think that we may not be?” asked Farnum, curiously.

“Nothing in the way of facts,” Jack admitted.  “Yet there may be others of this infernal spy gang who have not yet shown their hands, of whose existence the Secret Service knows nothing.”

“Well, what can they do, if you don’t allow any strangers on board the boat?” asked Mr. Farnum, point blank.

“Nothing much,” muttered Benson, “unless—­”

“Well, unless what?”

“See here,” asked the submarine boy, “what is usually done to such spies by the United States Government?”

“Why, the law provides that, in war time, such spies can be shot in mighty quick order,” replied Mr. Farnum.  “In peace times the law doesn’t allow anything but sending spies to prison.”

“But what does the Government usually do?” pursued Captain Jack.  “It seems to me I’ve read of suspected spies being caught around American fortifications, trying to make notes, or take photographs.”

“Yes,” nodded the shipbuilder.

“And I think I’ve read, also, that such spies are generally warned and then let go.”

“That’s the usual procedure, I believe,” admitted Farnum.

“Then, after the spies who have been bothering us have all been rounded up and scolded, they’ll be given railroad tickets and allowed go on their way?” asked Jack.