ladder without
further parley. Ned lingered a moment to close the hatch.

"Hang onto your hats!" cried Jimmie the next instant.

"Let's get down quick!" urged Jack. "Those fellows up there seem to mean
business. My stars!" he added breathlessly, "that last one was certainly
a beauty! They are getting the range, too!"

Already Harry had started the pumps, filling the ballast tanks with water
to assist the "U-13" in the evolution of the dive. The rudders were
deflected to their extreme range. With decks inclined to an alarming
angle, the submarine fled toward the bottom like a hunted creature. Until
the gauges showed a depth of twelve fathoms, Jimmie held the levers in
position. Then he brought the craft to an even keel.

"It's plain to be seen that we'll not get much help from any ship on the
North Sea!" declared Jack at length, as the ballast tanks were found to
trim the vessel. "They're scared of us, I believe!"

"They haven't any reason to be scared of us!" stoutly protested Jimmie.
"We have never done a thing to them. We're absolutely neutral!"

"It seems to be one thing to be neutral," laughed Ned, "and quite another
thing to convince other folks of the fact!"

"They might at least have given us a chance to explain!" grumbled Jimmie.
"We had a white flag flying for them to see!"

"Yes," argued Ned, "but did you stop to think that we were showing
ourselves in a bad light? Remember the newspaper accounts of all the
damage done by a submarine? I'm not surprised they ran away."

"And then we come along in a submarine! Of course, we couldn't expect
them to wait for a German undersea craft to come popping out of the ocean
and waltz up alongside so they could say: 'Good morning, Mr. Dutchman!
Won't you please accept this fine ship?'" added Jack.

"Well, I'm it!" declared Jimmie, joining in the laugh that followed
Jack's facetious remark. "The joke's on me, all right! If I hadn't
painted that figure 'three' in the name, we would have been on our way to
England by this time! Oh, well," the boy added, "we'll get to England
before long, anyhow, so I should worry!"

"It all shows, boys," spoke up Ned, "that we've got to be mighty careful
about our appearance and the company we keep. We have gotten into this
scrape largely because we were found in possession of goods we had no
business to have. This last incident came about because we pretended to
be something we were not!"

"I think that ought to be a good lesson t