THE DREADNOUGHT BOYS ON A SUBMARINE

BY CAPTAIN WILBUR LAWTON

AUTHOR OF “THE BOY AVIATORS SERIES,” “THE DREADNOUGHT BOYS ON BATTLE PRACTICE,” “THE DREADNOUGHT BOYS ABOARD A DESTROYER,” ETC., ETC.

NEW YORK HURST & COMPANY PUBLISHERS

Copyright, 1911, BY HURST & COMPANY

[3]

CHAPTER I. UNCLE SAM GETS FIRST CALL.

“So your final answer is no?”

“Yes. And with a big N, Mr. Ferriss. I have put my best work of head and hand into the Lockyer submarine, and Uncle Sam gets first call on her services.”

“You remind me of a copy book with your sentimental morality,” sneered Jasper Ferriss, with the bitter inflection of a man who has fought a losing fight and knows it.

“Why,” he went on persuasively, “you know as well as I do that the government is notoriously slow pay. By the time the red tape is unwound[6] at Washington you’ll be penniless, and the boat a rust-eaten wreck. Our concern, on the other hand, offers you a fat figure, down on the nail. Come, say the word and I’ll write you a check now.”

“Don’t trouble yourself, Mr. Ferriss,” smiled Channing Lockyer, as the other’s be-diamonded hand sought his breast pocket to produce his check book—the magic volume which could have told many tales of its adventures with Jasper Ferriss.

“My answer to you and your concern regarding your proposition is No,—first, last and all the time,” he went on.

“Why?”

Jasper Ferriss was angered. Despite his experience and skill in putting through all manner of “deals” requiring the exercise of the nicest diplomacy, he could not help showing his chagrin. He showed it in the way his black brows contracted till they met in one thick band across his puffy, florid countenance. Showed it, too, in the quick way in which he rubbed his blue, clean-shaven[7] chin, with its triple folds of fat, and in the sharp, impatient beat of his patent leather boot on the floor of the dusty shipyard office in which they sat talking by Channing Lockyer’s battered old desk, with its litter of blueprints and plans.

“Why?”

The question was shot out as if it had been a projectile.

“Why?” echoed Channing Lockyer. “Because your firm proposes to build submarines of my type for a foreign power—a power that may some day be at war with us. I believe—it may be an inventor’s conceited folly—but I believe that with a fleet of Lockyer submarines the power controlling them will be absolute mistress of the seas. Naturally, as a descendant of Jefferson Lockyer, I don’t want to see any country but my own with such powerful engines of war at its disposal.”

The confidence of inventors in their works was not new to Jasper Ferriss. But somehow the enthusiasm of this tall, pale young man, with[8] the workman’s clothes and the long, nervous fingers, infected him. But it made him burn with an ardent desire to secure possession of the secret of the Lockyer submarine for his own company. However, while Channing Lockyer had been talking the other had managed to control his irritation, and now could speak with his accustomed smoothness.

“I understand and honor your feelings, Mr. Lockyer,” he said suavely, “but a man’s first duty is really to himself, especially to a man in your position. But when is the government going to test your craft?”

It was an old trick of Jasper Ferriss’s to abruptly change the subject when things weren’t going his way.

“I am expecting the officer who will be in charge of the experiments, and his picked crew, within a few days,” was the reply. “A short time will be spent in making them familiar with the construction, and then, after she is launched, we shall go ahead with the real tests.”

“And the launching will be?”

[9]

“As soon as possible. But there will be no public ceremony. Only the workmen, who are pledged to secrecy, will know if she is a success or a failure. Naturally we wish to keep it all as quiet as possible.”

“The men are still working on her?”

The question seemed hardly necessary. Through the open windows there floated the busy sounds of activity from the fenced-in yard. From a tall, narrow shed built against the seaward side of the high fence came the loudest demonstration of activity.

A rattling volley of riveters’ hammers, accompanied by the snorting snarl of the whirring pneumatic drills eating through steel plates, was punctuated by shouted orders and the clamor of metal on metal.

“We are putting on the finishing touches,” explained Lockyer. He sighed as he spoke. The “finishing touches” he referred to might mean the last strokes of his own career as well as the end of the preliminary stages of the submarine’s construction. Ferriss’s eyes followed the tall,[10] slender young form as the youthful inventor strode up and down the tiny office, with its tumble-down, dust-covered desks, their pigeon-holes crammed full of blueprints and working drawings. No gilt and gingerbread about Channing Lockyer’s office. It was business-like as a steam hammer.

“Looks soft as rubber,” mused Ferriss, “but he’s tough as Harveyized steel; and a blessed sight less workable.

“Well, Mr. Lockyer,” he went on, rising, “I must be going. But I am stopping in the village, recollect, so that if you change your mind, or Uncle Sam doesn’t appreciate the boat, we stand ready to negotiate for her.”

“I won’t forget,” laughed the inventor, “but really, Mr. Ferriss, you are wasting your time. Either the United States gets her, or, if she isn’t good enough for Uncle Sam, I’ll sink her to the bottom of Long Island Sound.”

“Fine talk! Fine talk!” chuckled the amiable Mr. Ferriss, as he stepped into the noisy, bustling yard, so effectually cut off from outside observation[11] by its high fence with the spikes on top. “But our figures will look mighty comfortable to you when you are on the brink of ruin. And you will be if the Lockyer doesn’t come up to government requirements.”

“Time enough to talk about that when the crash comes,” laughed the young inventor gaily enough. But as Ferriss’s portly, expensively dressed form vanished through the door he sank into a chair, and sat staring at the opposite wall, deep in thought. Things were coming to a crisis at the Lockyer boatyard.

Channing Lockyer was in his twenty-fifth year. Just twelve months before this story opens he had been left a considerable fortune by his father, who during his lifetime had done all he could to discourage his son’s “fantastic mechanical dreams,” as he called them. With the money in his possession, however, young Lockyer, with the true fire of the inventor, had started out to realize his fondest hope, namely to build a practicable submarine boat capable of making extended[12] cruises without the drawback of the accompanying “parent boat.”

Compressed air had solved the problem of running his engines, but the use of the new driving force had necessitated the invention of an entirely novel type of motor. But young Lockyer—a graduate of the Sheffield Scientific School of Yale, by the way—had perseveringly overcome all difficulties, and now, in the long, narrow shed over in one corner of the enclosed yard, stood the realization of his dreams. Through some friends of his late father’s the young man had succeeded in “pulling the wires” at Washington. As a consequence, after many wearisome delays, Lieutenant Archer Parry and a picked crew were to be sent to Grayport to make an extended series of tests with the new craft.

But in “pulling his wires” Lockyer had necessarily to allow a part of his secret to leak out. Now, at Washington “walls have ears,” and it was not long after he received the glad news that at last the Navy Department had decided to[13] look into his type of boat, that Jasper Ferriss, promoter and partner in the Atlas Submarine Company, had come to young Lockyer with a proposal to sell his plant, stock, and experimental boat outright, for a sum that fairly staggered the inventor, who had, as Ferriss had hinted, run through almost his entire fortune in making his experiments.

Now, Lockyer was not ignorant that the Atlas people, having failed to sell their own gasolene and electric-driven boats to the government, were making diving torpedo boats for a certain Far Eastern power. He came of old Revolutionary stock, and the idea of selling his boat, the offspring of his brain and inventive power, for possible use against his own country was absolutely repugnant to him; wherefore Lockyer, as we have seen, had informed the Atlas concern in no uncertain terms that he would have nothing to do with their offers, flattering though they might seem. Jasper Ferriss had, however, perseveringly hung on, hoping against hope that something might happen to make the inventor change his[14] mind. The news he had just received that a naval experimental force had actually been ordered to start for Grayport came as a rude shock to him.

In fact, after leaving Channing Lockyer, Mr. Ferriss took the first train to New York. In the Broadway offices of his firm a stormy scene followed his narrative of his failure to close a deal with Lockyer.

Camberly—Watson Camberly, the other partner of the firm—a middle-aged man of the same aggressive type to which Ferriss himself belonged, took him sharply to task.

“Looks to me as if you’ve bungled this thing badly, Ferriss,” he growled. “You say that if the government decides not to take the boat that there is a chance Lockyer will accept our offer?”

“He’ll have to, or be ruined,” was the prompt rejoinder.

“Then we’ve got him!” cried the other, bringing down a ponderous fist on the shiny mahogany directors’ table of the Atlas Submarine Company.

[15]

“I don’t think so,” rejoined Ferriss quietly; “from what I can gather, the boat is bound to be an unqualified triumph. The government—although of course I didn’t tell Lockyer so—will jump at her.”

“That is if she is a success?” asked Camberly, a peculiar light creeping into his eyes.

“Exactly. But, as I said, there is no doubt of that.”

“Unless——”

“Well, unless what? You don’t mean to cripple her, as we did the Grampus Concern when they began to be serious rivals?”

“That’s what I do,” growled Camberly. “It’s this way, Ferriss. We’ve got to have money. Our Far Eastern friends stand ready to pay us, you know how much, for the compressed-air boat. Thinking that Lockyer would be easy, we practically promised to close a deal with them. We’ve got to have it.”

“In other words, Lockyer’s boat has got to fail in her government tests?”

“You catch my meaning exactly,” said Camberly,[16] a slow smile spreading over his heavy, coarse features. “I think we had better send for Gradbarr at once.”

Ferriss shrugged his shoulders.

“Too bad,” he sighed, an almost regretful expression coming over his face. “Lockyer is a decent young fellow, but impracticable—quite too fanatic in his ideas. I really wish we didn’t have to resort to such measures, Camberly.”

“Rot!” rejoined the other impatiently. “Isn’t it for his own good? We’ll pay him a bigger price than the government would; but business is business, and if Lockyer won’t come into camp willingly, we’ll have to drive him.”

He tapped a small bell on his desk, and to the obsequious office boy who glided in he gave a sharp order:

“Send to the yard for Tom Gradbarr. Tell him to report to me here as soon as possible.”

[17]

CHAPTER II. THE DREADNOUGHT BOYS ON DECK.

“Pardon me, is this Mr. Lockyer?”

It was a warm afternoon, three days after the disgruntled Ferriss had departed, that the inventor looked up from his desk to see, standing in the open doorway of the office, a stalwart young figure that almost filled the opening. Behind the newcomer two other forms could be seen. One was that of a lad about the same age as the youth who had addressed him, and the other a squat, bowlegged old fellow, with a fringe of gray whisker running under his chin from ear to ear, like the crescent of a new moon.

“Yes, I am Mr. Lockyer,” rejoined the submarine boat builder, looking up quickly at his visitors. “Come in, won’t you? What can I do for you?”

As the lad who had first spoken advanced into the dingy office, Lockyer saw that he was a sun-bronzed[18] young chap of about seventeen, dressed quietly, but neatly, in a gray-mixture suit. His companion, whose round, good-natured face was crowned by a shock of red hair, was about the same age and also wore a suit of plain but well-fitting clothes. The third member of the party, however, as before hinted, was a startling contrast. His stout figure was garbed in a checked suit, capable, at a pinch, of acting as a checker board; a singularly small derby hat hung to one side of his head, seemingly only being secured from slipping off by an outstanding ear; and round his neck was tied a silk handkerchief of gorgeous hue. Jacob’s coat would have looked pale and colorless in comparison with it.

The countenance of this gaudily apparelled person offered a singular contrast to his violent clothes. It was round, weather-beaten and good-natured, the face of a hale and hearty old fellow who has lived an outdoor life. Two blue eyes, set deep in a mass of furrows and crow’s-feet, twinkled brightly as he looked about him.

“My name is Ned Strong, boatswain’s mate of[19] the Manhattan,” introduced Ned, who had been the first to enter the office. “This is my shipmate, Boatswain’s Mate Hercules Taylor, and this”—turning to the spectacularly garbed old man, “is Tom Marlin.”

“Aye, aye!” rumbled old Tom, from sheer force of habit.

“Why, you are some of the men who are detailed to the trial crew that is to try out my boat, are you not?” inquired the inventor, extending his hand cordially as he rose from his desk.

“Yes, sir,” nodded Ned. “We arrived a few minutes ago, and after engaging rooms at the hotel in the village we came down here. We thought that Lieutenant Parry might have arrived.”

“Why, no. I’ve just had a wire from him saying that he cannot get here till some time this evening. It seems to me,” went on Mr. Lockyer, surveying his guests with interest, “that you two lads must be the ones the newspapers call the ‘Dreadnought Boys.’”

“I guess we’ve occupied a good deal of valuable[20] space to the exclusion of real news,” laughed Ned, coloring a little.

“Not to mention pictures,” grinned Herc. “They took one of me riding the ship’s goat. My freckles came out fine—like spots on the sun.”

“You’ll pardon my saying that you look very young to have distinguished yourselves so noticeably,” said the inventor.

“That’s what I say, sir,” struck in old Tom, in his deep, hoarse voice. “Why, I’ve bin in the navy fer forty years, in wood and steel, and nothin’ never happened to me the way it’s happened to them lads.”

“I guess it was just our luck,” laughed Ned good-naturedly; “you seem to have a splendid plant here, Mr. Lockyer,” he went on, by way of changing the subject. Ned was not one of those lads who likes to “blow his own trumpet.” Such swaggerers are usually found wanting when the time comes to try their metal.

“Yes; we’ve gone into the thing pretty extensively,” rejoined the inventor. “And now, perhaps, as your officers have not arrived, you[21] would like to look over the plant. Have you ever seen a submarine before?”

“Yes, indeed,” replied Ned; “though I understand that your craft is far ahead of the ones we are at present using. On our return from Costaveza we were attached for a while to a ‘parent boat,’ and cruised around with the diving craft.”

“My type of submarine will do away with the parent boat,” declared Mr. Lockyer enthusiastically. “She has a cruising range of two thousand miles or more, if necessary. But there, you will think all that mere inventor’s enthusiasm. Within a week, however, I hope you will be able to see for yourselves what she is capable of.”

“Jer-uso-hosophat! If you’d told me ten years ago that we would be snoopin’ around the bottom of the ocean in such craft, I’d not have believed it,” declared old Tom, as they set out. “I’d have believed you could go to the bottom, all right; but I’d have likewise held that you’d stay there. But sence we’ve bin detailed to submarine[22] dooty, I kin feel fins growing out o’ my shoulder blades, I relish being under so much.”

“Something fishy about that!” chuckled Herc.

While the boys are on their way across the busy yard let us introduce them more fully to the reader who has not already encountered them. Ned Strong and Herc Taylor, then, were two lads who, orphaned at an early age, had made their home for some years with a harsh, unsympathetic grandparent who owned a big farm at Lamb’s Corners, not far from Albany, New York. They had tired of the unceasing, monotonous round of farm duties, but could not very well see a way out of their hum-drum existence till one evening, in their local store, they saw one of the navy’s recruiting posters. They wrote for information to the Bureau of Navigation, and soon got replies that decided them as to their future careers. After a stormy scene with their crabbed relative, they set out for New York, their sole capital being some pocket money made by the sale of skins.

Assigned to the new Dreadnought battleship[23] Manhattan, when they had passed their examination in New York, they at once plunged into some remarkable adventures. The Manhattan was ordered to Guantanamo for battle practice soon after the boys joined her. Of their experiences and many exciting adventures the readers can learn in the first volume of this series, “The Dreadnought Boys on Battle Practice.” Their signal services rendered when a flare-back occurred in a big-gun turret won them their promotions and medals from the government. This was only one of their many exciting and perilous adventures.

After a brief furlough they once more went to sea, this time aboard the destroyer Beale, which had been ordered to duty at Costaveza, a turbulent South American republic where a revolution was raging. While there they were able to distinguish themselves mightily by participating in some stirring naval engagements. These came about during their surprising cruise on a Costavezan destroyer. The final downfall of their old enemy, Hank Harkins, a ne’er-do-well[24] from their native village, was also related in this volume, which is called, “The Dreadnought Boys Aboard a Destroyer.”

Although they had rendered American interests in Costaveza great service, the United States could not reward them, as the lads had been non-combatants, so far as theory was concerned. By way of recompensing them, however, they had been assigned to submarine work, the most interesting branch of the service to-day. On this duty they had once more encountered old Tom Marlin, who, the reader will recall, was their guide, philosopher and friend during their troublous early days on the Manhattan. Their commander, Captain Dunham, bearing the lads in mind, had later detailed them, with Lieutenant Parry, to the Lockyer secret tests. And garbed as we have seen, in ordinary clothes, the lads and old Tom had journeyed down to Grayport, expecting to meet there their superior officer.

As they left the tool-repair shop, Mr. Lockyer turned to Ned and remarked:

[25]

“And now we will see what some folks have called ‘Lockyer’s Dream.’”

He pointed to the long, narrow shed we have already noticed. The boys’ eyes sparkled with interested anticipation as they struck out with him across the yard. Old Tom, however, lingered. He had drawn out his inevitable black pipe and tried to light it. But in the brisk wind that was blowing he was compelled to seek the shelter of a small shack that stood, with open door, not far from the tool shed.