e new arrival, looking
the boys over keenly.

"Are you Mr. Farnum?" asked Benson.

"Yes. Well?"

"Mr. Pollard put us to work here, Mr. Farnum."

"Oh! That's all right, then," replied the owner of the yard, amiably,
and entered the conning tower.

"Tumble down here, you two lazy young roustabouts!" sounded Owen's
voice a few minutes later.

"We seem to have made a hit with our foreman, don't we?" chuckled
Jack to his chum.

"Mr. Owen," Pollard was saying to the foreman, as the boys rejoined the
crew below, "we can't stand the ringing of hammers all the time, so,
for the next job, I think you'd better fit some of the feed pipes
connecting the gasoline tanks with the motor."

"All right, sir," replied Josh Owen, briefly. He turned to order
Jaggers and O'brien to bring forward one of the longer pieces of feed
pipe. This the foreman helped to fit in place.

"Mr. Pollard," reported Owen, soon, "this pipe is a small botch on
the part of the contractor."

"What's wrong" asked the inventor, quickly, springing forward and
bending over to examine.

"The pipe is about a half inch too long," replied Owen.

"But one of the superintendent's men over at the machine shop can cut
it to fit?" asked the inventor, looking uneasy.

"Oh, he can cut it all right, but there's the new thread to be cut,
too," explained the foreman, pointing. "I'm sorry, sir, but if you
want a good job, without any danger of botch, you'll have to wire the
contractors to rush a new pipe, cut exactly to the specifications."

"But that will delay us at least forty-eight hours, and the launching
date is so near at hand," protested the inventor.

"You'd better put your launching off two days, Mr. Pollard, than take
any chances of having a bad connection in your fuel feed pipes," argued
the foreman.

"Confound such luck!" growled Pollard, turning away. "Well, come over
to the office with me, and we'll wire a kick and a prayer to the
contractors."

Just as he turned, the inventor barely failed to overhear something that
Jack muttered in an aside to Hal.

"What's that you're saying, Benson?" demanded David Pollard.

"Oh, nothing much, sir," replied Jack, quickly. "I'm not foreman here,
nor much of anything, for that matter."

"Were you expressing an opinion about this pipe business?"

"Ye-es, sir."

"You agree with me that the pipe can be cut properly at the machine
shop of this yard?" insisted the inventor. It was strange to ask
suc