CHAPTER II:  HOW EPH FLIRTED WITH SCIENCE

Jack Benson was the first of the trio to move.

Without a word he broke into a run, heading for the narrow little shingle of beach.

“Got an idea, Captain?” shouted Jacob Farnum, darting after his young submarine skipper.

“Yes, sir!” floated back over Jack’s shoulder.

“Then what’s at the bottom—­”

“Eph and the boat, both together, or I miss my guess,” Captain Jack shouted back as he halted at the water’s edge, where a rowboat lay hauled up on the shore.

Jacob Farnum’s face showed suddenly pallid as he, also, reached the beach.  Hal, who was in the rear, did not seem so much startled.

“Do you think Eph has gone off on a cruise all alone?—­that he has come to any harm?” gasped the shipbuilder.

“I don’t know, but I’m not going to worry a mite about Eph Somers until I have to,” retorted Jack Benson, easily.

“Eph can generally take care of himself,” added Hal Hastings.  “He rarely falls into any kind of scrape that he can’t climb out of.”

“But this is a bad time for him to take the ‘Farnum’ and cruise away,” objected the owner of the yard.  “The ‘Hudson’ may be here at any hour, you know, and we ought to be ready for orders.”

As he spoke, Mr. Farnum scanned the horizon away to the south, out over the sea.

“There’s a line of smoke, now, and not many miles away,” he announced.  “It may, as likely as not, be smoke from the ‘Hudson’s’ pipe.”

“Going out with us, sir?” inquired Captain Jack Benson, as Hal took his place at a pair of oars.

“Yes,” nodded the owner of the yard, dropping into a seat at the stern of the boat, after which Benson pushed off at the bow.

Down on the seashore, on this day just past the middle of October, the air was keen and brisk.  There had been frost for several nights past.  Sleighing might be looked for in another month.

“Cable’s gone from this buoy,” declared Captain Jack, as Hal rowed close.  “Over to the other one, old fellow.”

Here, too, the cable was missing.  Evidently the “Farnum” had made a clean get-away.  If there had been any accident, it must have taken place after the new submarine boat had slipped away from her moorings.

“Humph!” grunted Jack, scanning the sea.  “No sign of the boat anywhere.  Eph may be anywhere within twenty miles of here.”

“Or within twenty feet, either,” grinned Hal, looking down into the waters that were lead-colored under the dull autumn sky.

“What are we going to do, Captain?” inquired Jacob Farnum.  “There are Grant Andrews and three of his machinists coming down to the water.”

“I reckon, sir, we’d better put them aboard the ‘Pollard’ first, sir,” Benson suggested.

Mr. Farnum nodding, the boat was rowed in to the shore and Andrews and his men were put aboard the “Pollard” at the platform deck.  Captain Jack Benson unlocking the door to the conning tower, was himself the first to disappear down below.  When he came back he carried a line to which was attached a heavy sounding-lead.