The buggy rolled along again.

“You didn’t tell them a word about Mlle. Nadiboff’s threats to you,” muttered Hal.

“I didn’t mean to,” Jack replied, simply.

“Why not?”

“Well, for one thing, I couldn’t swear that she did threaten me.  She may have meant it all for nonsense.”

“Yes,” mocked Hal Hastings.  “That, would be just like her!”

The submarine not being due to go out that day, the chums decided to remain on shore, in order to keep in touch with the march of events.  The day was so balmy that Mr. Farnum dropped into a chair on the porch, Pollard occupying the chair next to him.  Hal, buying a magazine at the hotel news stand, sat on the edge of the porch, his feet touching the ground.  Jack, his mind too full of problems to permit him to read, paced up and down the grounds.  Finally he strolled, out past the gate, crossed the road and began to stroll along the shingle of bench.

Jacob Farnum removed his cigar from between his lips long enough to remark: 

“As long as the lad keeps in sight, Pollard, it will be worth our while to keep an occasional eye on him.”

“And when he goes out of sight—? asked the inventor, slowly.

“It will be high time to call him back.  Somehow, Dave, I’m growing uneasy over the boy.  I can’t help the feeling that he’s running into a good deal of danger that’s likely to explode under him at any moment, just as that mine was intended to last night.”

“It makes one feel uncanny to be at Spruce Beach,” growled the inventor, savagely.

“Well, we can’t run away,” retorted Jacob Farnum, blandly.

“Why not, if we feel like it?”

The shipbuilder laughed.

“Why, Dave, a spirited lad like Jack Benson would be furious over anything that looked like a retreat.  He’d be savage.  Now, Dave, we can hardly afford to put such a slight on the boy who has had so much to do with our success.”

“I suppose not,” grunted Mr. Pollard, settling back in his chair.

“The odd part of it,” said Farnum, presently, “is, that while we’re the center of an international cyclone, so to speak, the rest of the folks at Spruce Beach don’t know a word about it.  Look at the crowds of folks around us who haven’t even a breath of an idea of what has happened, or is, likely to happen.  Not a soul around here, except our own few, have any idea that an attempt was made, last night, to blow up that mysterious-looking little submarine craft riding at her moorings out yonder.”

“I wonder what the crowd would do, if it did know?” asked Pollard, gazing out curiously over the throngs of pleasure-seekers.  “That shows what a dreamer you are, Dave, and how little you know of your own fellow citizens.  What would the crowd do?  Why, it would change itself into a mob.  Mlle. Nadiboff would be hustled off out of town, Lemaire would be lynched, or mighty close to it, and it would be strange if the mob didn’t march on the jail itself.”