something over yonder worth stopping to
look into."

David Pollard stopped the speed, then reversed sufficiently to correct
the headway, although he replied:

"I don't see anything, Benson. You've been below so long that up
here, in less light, you're a victim of shadows."

But Jack, who had snatched the marine glasses from the rack, and was
using them, retorted:

"The shadows I see, Mr. Pollard, are human shadows, clinging to something
in the water, and that something must be an overturned craft of some
sort."

"Let me have the glasses," requested Mr. Pollard.

After taking a long look the inventor replied, excitedly:

"Benson, you're right. There are some human beings in distress over
yonder. Thank heaven, we didn't go by them."

For the first time that night David Pollard turned on the powerful
searchlight, projecting abroad, brilliant ray off the starboard bow.
The bottom of a hull about forty feet long, presumably that of a sloop,
was what David Pollard now saw. Clinging to it were two men. One of
them appeared to be middle-aged, the other much younger. The overturned
boat was some three hundred yards distant.

"What have you stopped for? What's up?" called up Mr. Farnum.

"Wreck, sir. Two men in distress," Jack answered.

"We'll go close and contrive to take them off," announced the inventor.
Turning on slow speed, he swung the "Pollard's" prow about, making for
the wreck.

"You youngsters had better get out on deck, with lines to heave,"
suggested Mr. Pollard. So Jack called up Hal and Eph. After Benson
had stepped out on the platform deck Hal passed out three long, light
lines.

Up to within a hundred feet of the wreck ran the submarine boat, then
stopped, lying parallel with the capsized craft.

"Can you catch a line, if we throw it?" hailed Jack.

"Yes," came the answer. The voice was dull. There was no enthusiasm
about it.

"They don't seem very glad to see us," muttered the submarine boy to
the inventor, who had stepped out to the deck wheel. "I wonder if
they're dazed and weak?"

Then to the wrecked ones Jack called:

"How long since you capsized?"

"Since just after sundown," replied the younger of the pair clinging
to the hull. Again his voice was sulky.

"There's something queer about this," whispered Benson to Mr. Pollard.
"They don't seem a bit glad to be pulled off that hull. Besides, they
must have been the worst sort of lubbers to capsize a boat in any breez