going to
my head," laughed Jack, his face still flushed. "The very idea of there
being in the United States Navy a fine and capable craft named after
me--"

"Oh, if the Navy folks object," laughed Farnum, "then they'll change the
name quickly enough. You understand, lad, the names we give to our
boats last only until the craft are sold. The Navy people can change
those names if they please."

"It will be a handsome compliment to me, Mr. Farnum. More handsome than
deserved, I fear."

"Deserved, well enough," retorted the shipbuilder. "Dave Pollard and I
are well enough satisfied that, if it hadn't been for you youngsters,
and the superb way in which you handled our first boat, Dave and I
would still be sitting on the anxious bench in the ante-rooms of the
Navy Department at Washington."

"Well, I don't deserve to have a boat named after me any more than Hal
does, or Eph Somers."

"Give us time, won't you, Captain?" pleaded Jacob Farnum, his face
straight, but his eyes laughing. "We expect to build at least five
boats. If we didn't, this yard never would have been fitted for the
present work, and you three boys, who've done so handsomely by us,
wouldn't each own, as you now do, ten shares of stock in this company.
Never fear; there'll be a 'Hastings' and a 'Somers' added to our fleet
one of these days--even though some of our boats have to be sold to
foreign governments."

"If a boat named the 'Hastings' were sold to some foreign government,"
laughed Jack Benson, "Hal, here, wouldn't say much about it. But call
a boat named the 'Somers,' after Eph, and then sell it, say, to the
Germans or the Japanese, and all of Eph's American gorge would come to
the surface. I'll wager he'd scheme to sink any submarine torpedo boat,
named after him, that was sold to go under a foreign flag."

"I hope we'll never have to sell any of our boats to foreign
governments," replied Jacob Farnum, earnestly. "And we won't either, if
the United States Government will give us half a show."

"That's just the trouble," grumbled Hal Hastings, breaking into the talk,
at last. "Confound it, why don't the people of this country run their
government more than they do? Four-fifths of the inventors who get up
great things that would put the United States on top, and keep us there,
have to go abroad to find a market for their inventions! If I could
invent a cannon to-day that would give all the power on earth to the
nation owning it,