CHAPTER IV:  MR. FARNUM OFFERS ANOTHER GUESS

Close at hand there was a loose board in the fence.  Through this Sam Truax thrust his head, peering up and down the street.  Not another soul was in sight.

With a chuckle Truax stepped through the hole in the fence.  Swiftly he gathered up the young submarine captain, bearing him through the aperture and dropping him on the ground behind the fence.  At the same time he took with him the small bag of sand.

“Knocked you out, but I don’t believe you’ll be unconscious long,” mused Truax, standing over his young victim, regarding him critically.  “There wasn’t steam enough in the blow to hurt you for long.  You’re sturdy, following the sea all the time, as you do.”

With a thoughtful air Sam Truax drew a small bottle from his pocket, sprinkling some of the contents over Jack’s uniform coat.  Immediately the nauseating smell of liquor rose on the air.

“Now, if someone finds you before you come to, you’ll look like a fellow that has been drinking and fighting,” muttered Truax under his breath.  “If you come to and get back to the yard without help, you’ll walk unsteadily and have that smell about your clothes.  Usually, it needs only a breath of suspicion to turn folks against a boy!”

[Illustration:  Down Dropped the Bag.]

Down Dropped the Bag.

Pausing only long enough to learn that Jack’s pulses were beating, and that the submarine boy was breathing, Truax stole off into the night, carrying the bag of sand under his overcoat.  At one point he paused long enough to empty the sand from the bag over a fence.  The bag itself he afterwards burned in the open fireplace in the room assigned to him at Holt’s Hotel.

For twenty minutes Jack Benson lay as he had been left.  Then he began to stir, and groan.  Then he opened his eyes; after a while he managed to sit up.

“Ugh!” he grunted.  “What’s the odor?  Liquor!  How does that happen?  Oh, my head!”

He got slowly to his feet, using the board fence as a means to help steady himself.  Then, though he found himself weak and tormented by the pain in his head, Benson managed to feel his way along the fence until he came to the opening made by the loose board.  Holding himself here, he thrust his head beyond.

Now, Hal and Eph, having waited for some time at the shore boat, before going out on board the “Farnum,” had at last made up their minds to go back and look for their missing leader.  They came along just at the moment that the young captain’s head appeared through the opening in the fence.

“There he is,” muttered Hal, stopping short.  “Gracious!  He acts queerly.  I wonder if anything can have happened to him?  Come along, Eph!”

The two raced across the street.

“Jack, old fellow!  What on earth’s the matter?” demanded Hal Hastings, anxiously.