“Suppose we all go up to the hotel for luncheon!” proposed Captain Jack.

“Then how about having torpedoes aboard when we return?”

“How many real torpedoes will you want for to-day, Mr. Danvers?” Benson inquired.

“Two, besides the dummies, will be plenty.”

“Then I’ll run over to Mr. Partridge, the superintendent of the yard, and he’ll have a foreman and a gang attend to it,” suggested the young submarine skipper.

Accordingly, this was done.  Then the party slated for the afternoon cruise went over to the hotel.  By the time that they came back from the midday meal the two service torpedoes were aboard the “Hastings” and the target was in readiness to be towed out to sea.

This “target” was not a handsome-looking affair.  It was an old scow, some thirty feet long and broad of beam, that had once been used, up the coast, in sea-wall construction work.  Mr. Farnum had bought it a short time before and it now lay at anchor, near the beach, ready to be towed out to sea for its last service to mankind.  The scow was heavily laden with rock, this being intended to sink the craft’s keel as far as was advisable.  The old scow had now something more than four feet draught, with less than two feet of freeboard.

Two of the workmen, in an old whaleboat, waited to row the party out to the “Hastings.”  Jack was soon able to welcome Lieutenant Danvers on board the submarine.

“You can look around all you want, Ewald and Biffens,” suggested Mr. Danvers, “and see if you can find any great differences between this craft and the ‘Pollard’ and the ‘Farnum.’”

The two sailors, accordingly, made themselves wholly at home in the interior of the submarine.

“Both men have put in tours of duty on the first two boats turned out by your company,” explained the officer.  “They know all about the two Pollard boats that the Navy bought.”

“Then they won’t find very much that is different on board the ‘Hastings,’” Jack replied.  “All that is new here is in the way of a few more up-to-date little mechanisms and devices.  A man used to running the old ‘Pollard’ would really be wholly at home here.”

A few minutes, only, were allowed for inspection of the newest submarine of the lot.  By this time the workmen in the small boat had made fast a towing hawser between the bow of the old scow and the stern towing bitts of the “Hastings.”

“Use my men all you need to, in casting off, or in boat handling generally,” requested Lieutenant Danvers.  Jack therefore ordered Ewald and Biffens forward on the upper hull to cast loose from moorings.  Hal stood the trick in the engine-room, while Jack himself sat at the wheel in the tower.

In another minute, despite her rather heavy tow, the “Hastings” was nosing briskly out of the harbor.  The gasoline engines this little craft were of a “heavy service” pattern, which adapted the submarine to the work of towing at need.