"You saw our young captain come up while I was with the 'Pollard' down
on the bottom, didn't you?" inquired the yard's owner.

"Yes," admitted Mr. Melville, grudgingly, while Don half scowled, then
turned his head away. "But how is the thing done?"

"That," replied Jacob Farnum, courteously, "at the request of Captain
John Benson, must remain a secret for the present."

"Oh!" said the capitalist, but his tone was ominous.




CHAPTER III

MR. MELVILLE HURLS THE CRASH


It was really a wonderful, even if a very simple, revolution in the
handling of submarine boats that Jack Benson had thought out.

Up to that time many scores of lives had been lost, in different parts
of the world, when the crews of submarine boats had found, for one reason
or another, that they could not raise their craft from the bottom of the
depths. Formerly, when crews found themselves placed in that
predicament, death followed.

Jack's solution was wonderfully simple. In brief, when the "Pollard" lay
on the bottom of the little harbor at Dunhaven, the young captain had