“Maybe, if I saw the fellow in command of the gunboat, then he’d give me an order allowing me to come on board.”

“I’m very certain the lieutenant commander wouldn’t do anything of the sort,” Benson responded.

The stranger gave a comical sigh.

“Then I’m afraid I don’t see a submarine boat to-night—­that is, any more than I can see of it now.”

“That’s about the way it looks to me, also,” Jack answered, smiling.  “Yet, believe me, I hate awfully to seem discourteous about it.”

“Oh, all right,” muttered the stranger, nodding to the two boatmen, who had rowed him out alongside.

“Good!” grunted Eph.  “I’m glad you didn’t let him on board, Captain.  On this cruise our luck doesn’t seem to run with strangers.”

“It doesn’t, for a fact,” laughed Jack Benson.

“Hi, ho—­ah, hum!” yawned young Somers, stretching.  “It will be mine for early bunk to-night, I reckon.”

At this moment a boat was observed rounding the stern of the “Hudson.”  It came up alongside, landing a marine sentry.

“Anybody on the ‘Farnum’ want to go ashore to-night?” hailed a voice from the gunboat’s rail.  “The shore boat will be ready in five minutes.”

“I believe I would like to take just a run through the village,” declared Jack, turning to his chum.  “Do you feel like a land-cruise with me, Hal?”

“I think I’d better go,” laughed Hastings.  “You seem to get into trouble when you go alone.”

“All right, then.  And, Eph since you’re so sleepy, you can turn in as soon as you want.  The boat will be under sufficient protection,” Jack added, nodding toward the marine slowly pacing the platform deck.

Williamson was called too, but declared that he felt like turning in early.  So, when the shore boat came, it had but two passengers to take from the submarine.  There were a few shore-leave men, however, from the gunboat.

“This boat will return to the fleet, gentlemen, every hour up to midnight,” stated the petty officer in charge, as Jack and Hal stepped ashore at a rickety little wharf.

“Judging from what we can see of the town from here, we’ll be ready to go back long before midnight,” Jack Benson laughingly told his companion.

“All I want is to shake some of the sea-roll out of my gait,” nodded Hastings.  “It surely doesn’t seem to be much of a town.”

By way of public buildings there turned out to be a church, locked and dark, a general store and also a drug-store that contained the local post-office.  But the drug-store carried no ice cream or soda, so the submarine boys turned away.

There was one other “public” place that the boys failed to discover at once.  That was a low groggery at the further end of the town.  Here two of the sailors who had come on shore leave turned in for a drink or two.  They found a suave, black-bearded man quite ready to buy liquor for Uncle Sam’s tars.