The Submarine Boys' Lightning Cruise The Young Kings of the Deep(txt+pdf+epub+mobi电子书下载)

作者：Durham, Victor G.

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The Submarine Boys' Lightning Cruise The Young Kings of the Deep试读：

"Perhaps they're coming to make a row about having so much gun-cotton stored close to the village," hinted Lieutenant Danvers.

The same thought was in Captain Jack Benson's mind. However, they were not long to be kept in doubt, for Jacob Farnum had moved hastily to the outer door.

"Good day, friends!" called the shipbuilder, as he pulled the outer door open, for he recognized most of the faces of men and women in the crowd. "What's wrong, friends!"

At the very doorstep the leaders of the crowd halted.

"The 'Mary Bond' isn't in yet, Mr. Farnum," called one of the men.

That was the name of a fishing smack that put out from Dunhaven at regular intervals through the winter. She carried a Dunhaven captain and mate, and, altogether, fourteen men and boys.

"When should she have been in!" queried Mr. Farnum. The crowd had halted, now, and all but their chosen speaker remained silent.

"Yesterday morning, sir," replied the spokesman.

"Do you people fear that harm has come to the 'Mary Bond!" queried the shipbuilder.

"Why, it must be so, sir. For the smack wasn't due to go out more'n some forty miles. With the winds we've been having lately she could come in, any time, within a few hours."

"Perhaps the captain had a poor run of luck," suggested Mr. Farnum. "He may be staying out longer than usual."

"No, sir, for all the reports that have come in off the sea are of big catches. The ocean has been swarming with fish these last few days," replied the spokesman.

"Then, friends, I take it there's something you want me to do. What is it?" demanded Jacob Farnum.

"We've come to ask you, sir, if you won't have one of your torpedo boats put out and look for the 'Mary Bond.' Your boats can go a big distance in a few hours. We're afraid, Mr. Farnum, that the smack's canvas or sticks may have suffered in the big blow of yesterday. We're afraid, too, that the 'Mary Bond' may be drifting about helplessly on the sea, just for the need of a little aid. We're afraid, sir, that good Dunhaven men may be in great danger of going to the bottom, and leaving behind families that—"

The spokesman stopped, a little choke in his voice. As though in answer sobs came from some of the women.

"Now, now, friends, if that's the trouble, we'll soon know about it," promised the shipbuilder, one of the biggest-hearted men living. "One of our boats is going out for practice. But, if you'll supply a good sea-going hand or two, the second boat shall go out and sweep the seas hereabouts, looking for the 'Mary Bond.'"

A cheer went up at once. Mr. Farnum flushed with pleasure. Not above doing a kind act, he also enjoyed having it appreciated.

"Who'll command the relief boat!" called one of the women. "JackBenson?"

"No," replied Mr. Farnum, shaking his head. "Captain Benson must go out on naval business to-day."

A murmur of disappointment went up from the crowd. Jack Benson was a young skipper on whose success a Dunhaven crowd would make bets.

"But, see here," proposed the shipbuilder, "I'll go out myself, on the 'Benson,' and take Williamson along with me. Now, you folks find any local salt-water captain and a couple of good deck hands to go with me."

"When will you start, sir?" asked the spokesman.

"The minute you have my helpers ready. There's Captain Allen among you now. If he'll go, he's as good a salt-water dog as I want on a cruise with me. Let him pick two sailors out of the crowd. We can start in five minutes."

Another cheer went up as Jacob Farnum, leaving the outer door open, hurried back to his own party. Captain Allen, a retired master of coasting vessels, had five times as many volunteers in the crowd as he needed.

"Jack, I'm sorry I can't go with you," sighed Mr. Farnum, as he returned. "But the call of humanity is too big a one. I'm going to take Williamson with me. The rest of you go with Lieutenant Danvers and his men. I'll hope to be able to go with you to-morrow, anyway."

"Isn't there a tug hereabouts that those people could hire?" questioned the naval officer.

"Oh, yes; there's a small one to the south of here, but her captain would charge at least fifty dollars a day," replied the shipbuilder, as he drew on a heavy deck ulster.

"I suppose these people expect you to go out for nothing," hintedLieutenant Danvers.

"Oh, yes, of course," nodded the shipbuilder. "But one can't be a crank, or a miser, when women are red-eyed and weeping from worry over their missing husbands and sons."

There was a suspicion of moisture in Mr. Farnum's own eyes as he snatched up a cap, bidding his own party a hasty good-bye ere he ran from the office.

"There goes a good-natured man," laughed Lieutenant Danvers.

"A big-hearted one, you mean, sir," corrected Captain Jack Benson. "He's a man with a heart bigger than any torpedo craft he could possibly build and launch."

"I wish him all luck," said the naval officer, heartily. "And that crowd, and also the poor seafaring men that put out in the like of the 'Mary Bond.'"

The crowd had gone from the office building, now, following Mr. Farnum and his volunteers down to the little harbor. Jack, his chums and the naval party slowly followed down to the water front.

Little time did the shipbuilder lose in getting under way. A rousing cheer ascended when the grim little "Benson" slipped her moorings and turned her nose out toward the sea.

"Your pipe-hungry machinist went on that craft, didn't he!" asked the naval officer, as the crowd began to turn back from the beach.

"Yes," nodded Captain Jack. "So there's nothing at all to prevent our getting the 'Hastings' out on the wave as soon as you like."

"I'm going to send my men up to the hotel, first, for a jolly big feed," proposed Lieutenant Danvers. "They've been on the rail, eating on the jump, and now they'll appreciate a good square meal."

"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.

"How far out do you want to go, sir!" asked Captain Jack, as the Navy lieutenant took a seat beside him in the tower, after Eph and the sailors had gone below.

"We want to be sure to be well out of the path of coastwise vessels," replied Danvers. "That's the main thing, you know. We can't take any risk of sinking a merchantman while we're having our fun."

"With this tow, then, it will be three o'clock before we get out where we really ought to be, sir."

"That will give us at least two hours of good daylight," nodded Mr. Danvers. "Of course you know this coast well enough to pick your way back after dark?"

"I'd run the craft five times the distance, under water, and hit the harbor without thought of an accident," spoke young Benson, seriously, and with no thought of boasting.

"Jove, my young friend, if you can do a thing like that, you're a genius at the work," muttered Danvers, after a swift, side glance at Skipper Jack.

"I've done as much before," laughed Jack. "Either of my friends could do it, for that matter."

"Then you're veritable young kings of the deep!" declared LieutenantDanvers, heartily.

"Oh, we're not wonders," smiled Jack, goodhumoredly; then added, more seriously, "If we really do anything worth while, my friends and I, we're to be regarded simply as the products of constant practice."

"You're modest enough about it," agreed Danvers.

Presently, the naval officer himself took a hand at managing the submarine. Jack, knowing that the boat was in fine professional hands, slipped unconcernedly below, to chat with Hal Hastings, who sat doggedly by his engines.

"What's the matter? What makes you look so solemn, old fellow?" asked the young submarine skipper, when he caught sight of his chum's solemn face.

"Oh, you'd laugh, if I told you," smiled Hal.

"Seeing omens of ill again!" persisted young Benson.

"I suppose," sighed Hal, "well, I have a sort of premonition."

"Pre—premo—" stuttered Captain Jack, holding comically to the port side of his jaw. "Oh, pshaw! Call it a plain United States 'hunch.' What's the tip the spooks are giving anyway, Hal?"

Hastings smiled again, though he went on:

"Oh, it's just a queer sort of notion I have that something is going to happen to us this afternoon."

"Right-o," drawled Jack. "You don't have to shove off from that, Hal. Something is going to happen to us. This afternoon we're going to have the first drill in the actual firing of submarine torpedoes."

"Oh, I know that," Hastings admitted, quickly. "But what I see ahead, or feel as though I see, is some kind of disaster. Now, you'll think I'm a sailor-croaker, won't you, Jack?"

"Disaster?" repeated Jack, slowly. "Well, to be sure, we've the outfit on board for a disaster, if we wanted one. Two real torpedoes that hold, between them, four hundred pounds of gun-cotton—or danger-calico, as Williamson would call it. But cheer up, old fellow. There's no danger, after all. Williamson and his pipe are on the other boat."

"Oh, of course nothing is really going to happen," laughed Hal. "It is just the feeling that is over me. That's all."

It was fully three o'clock by the time Lieutenant Danvers decided they were far enough out to sea, and far enough from any craft in those waters. Not a stick or a stack of another vessel showed within ten miles of them. The scow was accordingly cast loose and allowed to drift.

Captain Jack was at the tower wheel again, as Eph and the two sailors returned from setting the scow loose.

"We've got to be sure to record one good hit against that old barge of stone," muttered Lieutenant Danvers, who stood beside the youthful submarine commander. "The sea is roughening, and I doubt if we could pick up that scow in tow again. We've got to destroy her, or she'd be a fearful menace to navigation, drifting about in the night in the path of incoming vessels."

"Oh, I guess you'll get rid of her easily enough," spoke Jack, confidently. "You're a professional at this business, sir."

"So are the two men with me," nodded the officer. "By the way, Ewald can just as well come on deck and take the wheel, if you want him to do so. Then you can go below and see all that we do with a torpedo."

"Now, that's what I call a great idea," cried Benson, enthusiastically."I want to know just how a torpedo is handled at the time of firing."

"It's the only thing you have left to learn about this business," smiled the naval officer. Then he passed the word for Ewald. When that it sailor had taken the wheel, the naval officer and the young submarine skipper went below.

"We'll swing in one of the dummy torpedoes, first, of course," announcedMr. Danvers.

One of the dummies was, therefore, hauled forward on a truck, then forced on into the torpedo tube. Jack watched, intently, this part of the business.

The torpedo itself was a cigar-shaped affair, with a propeller at the after end. This propeller was set in motion by means of an engine in the after part of the torpedo, the engine being so constructed that it was set in operation at the moment the torpedo left the tube and entered the ocean outside. The propeller was fitted with apparatus that would drive the torpedo in a straight line.

"The torpedo looks like a miniature submarine, doesn't it?" muttered young Benson.

"It surely does," nodded the naval officer. "And, since the torpedo has to travel under water, what better model could have been chosen? Now, the engines in these dummy torpedoes can be set for two, four, six or eight hundred yards, and the torpedo, once it enters the water, travels forward, in a straight line until the engine gives out. That is, the torpedo travels ahead if it doesn't hit something. So, in actual war conditions, we would always get nearer to the object than the distance for which the engine is set to run. The speed of a torpedo like this, under water, is a good deal better than thirty miles an hour, but the distance the torpedo can go is naturally short. That is a direct consequence of its speed. Now, Mr. Benson, would you like to know how to fire the torpedo, since it is already in the tube?"

"Certainly, sir," nodded Jack. And then he continued as if reciting a lesson: "Just give that firing lever at the back of the after port a quick shove to the right and downward. That releases the charge of compressed air and forces the torpedo out. At the same instant the forward port opens, so that the torpedo can be shot out into the water. The compressed air also serves to keep the sea water from rushing in through the torpedo tube. When the lever is swung up and back again that closes the forward port, and it is then safe to open this after port."

"You've committed that to memory," laughed the naval lieutenant.

"Oh, we've often talked this over, all three of us," smiled Jack.

"Then, since you understand this part so well, Benson," proposed Mr. Danvers, "perhaps you'd like to go forward, on deck, and see when this dummy torpedo is fired?"

"I surely would," agreed the submarine boy "And Eph can just as well come with me."

The two submarine boys, therefore, hastened above, out on the platform deck, and then further forward on the upper hull, until they lay out along the nose of the "Hastings."

Danvers reached Ewald's side in the tower, while Biffens waited below, at the lever, for the firing signal.

The "Hastings" was now drifting, rather aimlessly, something more than four hundred yards away from the scow. As the sea was roughening all the while, the two submarine boys out forward were having a hard time of it. Added to that, icy spray was falling over them.

Lieutenant Danvers quickly rang for speed and then brought the submarine boat within about three hundred yards of the scow, and at a position that pointed the nose of the "Hastings" at the middle of the scow's hull, the line of fire making a right angle with the scow.

"Get ready to watch, out there!" warned the naval officer.

"Now, Eph," glowed Jack, "we're going to see the thing we've so often dreamed about! We'll see that dummy torpedo leap forth, like a real one. For a little way, at least, we ought to see the track of the torpedo."

"Feel like betting the dummy will bit the scow?" questioned young Somers, half doubtfully.

"Of course it will," retorted Jack Benson, scornfully, "with naval experts on the job!"

Lieutenant Danvers gave the firing signal.

In the silence that followed, the two submarine boys hanging over the nose of the boat heard just a muffled click below. Then—

"There it goes!" shouted Jack Benson, with all the glee in the world.

Down beneath them, under the nose of the "Hastings" an object shot into brief view. First the war-head, then the middle, then the tail and propeller of a fourteen-foot Whitehead torpedo swept away from them, two or three feet below the surface of the waves. A line of bubbles came to the surface, showing that the torpedo was headed, straight and clean, for the stone-laden scow over on the ocean. Then the torpedo, still under water, passed out of their range of view.

"Hurrah!" yelled Jack Benson, leaping to his feet with all the glee and fervor of the enthusiast. "Hurrah!"

"Hurrah!" bellowed Eph Somers, for the glory of the game had gotten into his blood, too. Both submarine boys capered up and down on the platform deck.

But Lieutenant Danvers sat with left hand on the conning tower steering wheel, his watch in his right hand. He was counting the seconds.

"Look out for the signal," called the naval officer, coolly. "When I tell you, then look out for what happens over at the scow. Er—now!"

They were too far away to hear the impact, but the two submarine boys saw a slight commotion in the waters under the scow's rail. Then the dummy torpedo bounded back, rising and floating on the surface—spent!

Had that torpedo contained the fighting service charge of two hundred pounds of gun-cotton it would have shattered and sunk the biggest, staunchest, proudest battleship afloat.

"It's uncanny—isn't it?" gasped Jack Benson, feeling an odd shudder run over him.CHAPTER IIISTRUCK BY A SUBMERGED FOE

"Yep!" agreed Eph Somers, blaster of day-dreams. "But say?"

"Well?" demanded Captain Jack.

"At the same time," muttered Eph, grimly, "I'm glad that scow isn't a real battleship, with a half a dozen twelve-inch cannon turned on us."

"Humph!" muttered Jack, dryly, "if that scow were an enemy's battleship, twelve-inch barkers and all, we'd be twenty feet under the surface, and we'd be out of sight and out of mind."

"Quite right," nodded Lieutenant Danvers. "In a contest of that sort I'd feel fifty times safer here than on the battleship we were after. Now, Benson, you've seen the first part of it. We have the other dummy to fire. The real gunner, on a submarine, is the fellow at the wheel. Do you want to take the wheel, manoeuvre the boat and give the order for the next dummy shot?"

"Do I?" uttered Jack Benson. "Just!"

Orders were then given to place the other dummy torpedo in the tube, and this done, Jack took his place at the wheel, while Eph Somers and the lieutenant stood outside. At the naval officer's direction Jack Benson came up on the other side of the scow, about three hundred yards away, with the nose of the "Hastings" so pointed that the torpedo dummy could be delivered straight amidships.

At just the right moment Captain Jack passed the order to fire. Then he watched the scow with a strange fascination. Danvers stood, watch in hand.

"Now!" he shouted.

Barely two seconds later the second dummy torpedo rose, a few yards back from the side of the scow.

"That torpedo struck, full and fair," nodded Lieutenant Danvers, turning toward the conning tower. "Mr. Benson, if you always hit as full and well, you'll be an expert torpedoist."

"Why, it's nothing but holding the nose of your own boat full on the other craft, amidships, and the torpedo itself does the rest," uttered the young submarine skipper.

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