“Oh, you trust a United States naval officer to find any place he has sailing orders for,” returned Jacob Farnum.  “I wonder if he’ll attempt to come into this harbor?”

“There’s safe anchorage, if he wants to do so,” replied Captain Jack.

While Somers was busy putting the foreman and the machinists ashore, Mr. Farnum, Jack and Hal remained on the platform deck, watching the approach of the naval vessel, which was now plainly making for Dunhaven.

Suddenly, a broad beam of glaring white light shot over the water, resting across the deck of the “Farnum.”

“I guess that fellow knows what he wants to know, now,” muttered Benson, blinking after the strong glare had passed.

“There, he has picked up the ‘Pollard,’ too,” announced Hastings.  “Now, that commander must feel sure he has sighted the right place.”

“There go the signal lights,” cried Captain Jack, suddenly.  “Hal, hustle below and turn on the electric current for the signaling apparatus.”

Then Benson watched as, from the yards high up on the gunboat’s signaling mast, colored electric lights glowed forth, twinkling briefly in turn.  This is the modern method of signaling by sea at night.

“He wants to know,” said Benson, to Mr. Farnum, as he turned, “whether there is safe anchorage for a twelve-hundred-ton gunboat of one hundred and ninety-five feet length.”

Reaching the inside of the conning tower at a bound, the young skipper rapidly manipulated his own electric signaling control.  There was a low mast on the “Farnum’s” platform deck, a mast that could be unstepped almost in an instant when going below surface.  So Captain Jack’s counter-query beamed out in colors through the night: 

“What’s your draught?”

“Under present ballast, seventeen-eight,” came the answer from the gunboat’s signal mast.

“Safe anchorage,” Captain Jack signaled back.

“Can you meet us with a pilot?” questioned the on-coming gunboat.

“Yes,” Captain Jack responded.

“Do so,” came the laconic request.

“That’s all, Hal,” the young skipper called, through the engine room speaking tube.  “Want to row me out and put me aboard the gunboat?”

In another jiffy the two young chums had put off in the boat, Hal at the oars, Jack at the tiller ropes.  The gunboat was now lying to, some seven hundred yards off the mouth of the little harbor.  Hastings bent lustily to the oars, sending the boat over the rocking water until he was within a hundred yards of the steam craft’s bridge.

“Gun boat ahoy!” roared Hal, between his hands.  Then, by a slip of the tongue, and wholly innocent of any intentional offense, he bellowed: 

“Is that the ‘Dad’ boat?”

“What’s that?” came a sharp retort from the gunboat’s bridge.  “Don’t try to be funny, young man!”

“Beg your pardon, sir.  That was a slip of the tongue,” Hal replied, meekly, as he colored.  “Are you the gunboat ‘Hudson?’”