thousand dollars. That, however, is not the greatest
risk that I have in mind. On board this craft are five people without
whom it would be rather hopeless for anyone to go on building the
Pollard type of boat. Therefore, besides risking a valuable craft and
our own rather inconsequential lives, we go further and put the United
States Navy in danger of having only a couple of our boats. Now, the
fact is, we want the Navy to have three or four dozen of our submarine
craft, for we ourselves believe implicitly in the great worth of the
Pollard boats."

"That's just the point, sir," cried Captain Jack Benson.

"Eh? What is?" inquired Mr. Farnum, looking at his young skipper in
some bewilderment.

"Why, sir," laughed Jack, "the point is that we believe our boats to be
infinitely ahead of anything owned in any other navy on earth. We
believe it possible to do things, with boats like this one, that can be
accomplished with no other submarine craft in the world. Now, it's a
fact that, in all the navies, lest an accident happen to a submarine,
that craft is obliged to travel about, always, in the company of a steam
craft of war, which is known as the parent ship. Yet we've come,
straight from the shipyard at Dunhaven, many hundreds of miles, without
any such escort. We've been running along under our own power, night
and day, without accident, stop or bother. Thus we've shown that the
Pollard boat can do things that no other submarine craft are ever
trusted to try alone. And now, all that remains to show is that, at the
end of a long voyage, we can approach a coast, unseen, even though
thousands of people are probably looking for us, and that we can get
into a harbor without being detected; that, in fact, we could do
anything we might have a mind to do to an enemy's ships that might be
in that harbor. But now, sir, you propose that, lest we have accidents,
it will be best to rise to the surface and enter the harbor at Spruce
Beach as plainly and stupidly as though the 'Benson' were some mere
lumber schooner."

"I see the thing just the way Jack Benson does," murmured David Pollard,
thrusting his hands down deep in his trousers pockets.

"Oh, well, if I'm voted down, I'll give in," laughed Jacob Farnum. "I
wonder, though, how Hal and Eph feel about this?"

"I don't have to ask them," nodded Captain Jack, confidently.

"Why not?"

"We settled it all, days ago, sir."

"And they both agreed with you?"

"Dow