"Not at this moment, thank you," replied Mr. Farnum. "That is all; you
may go, boy."

Plainly the boy who had brought the telegram was disappointed over not
getting some inkling of the secret. All Dunhaven, in fact, was wildly
agog over any news that affected the Farnum yard. For, though the
torpedo boat building industry was now known under the Pollard name,
after the inventor of these boats, the yard itself still went under the
Farnum name that young Farnum had inherited from his father.

While Jacob Farnum is reading the despatch carefully, for a better
understanding, let us speak for a moment of Captain Jack Benson and his
youthful comrades and chums.

Readers of the first volume in this series, "_The Submarine Boys on
Duty_," remember how Jack Benson and Hal Hastings strayed into the
little seaport town of Dunhaven one hot summer day, and how they learned
that it was here that the then unknown but much-talked about Pollard
submarine was being built. Both Jack and Hal had been well trained in
machine shops; they had spent much time aboard salt water power craft,
and so felt a wild desire to work at the Farnum yard, and to make a study
of submarine craft in general.

How they succeeded in getting their start in the Farnum yard, every
reader of the preceding volumes knows; how, too, Eph Somers, a native of
Dunhaven, managed to "cheek" his way aboard the craft after she had been
launched, and how he had always since managed to remain there.

Our same older readers will remember the thrilling experiences of this