This "target" was not a handsome-looking affair. It was an old scow,
some thirty feet long and broad of beam, that had once been used, up
the coast, in sea-wall construction work. Mr. Farnum had bought it a
short time before and it now lay at anchor, near the beach, ready to
be towed out to sea for its last service to mankind. The scow was
heavily laden with rock, this being intended to sink the craft's keel
as far as was advisable. The old scow had now something more than four
feet draught, with less than two feet of freeboard.

Two of the workmen, in an old whaleboat, waited to row the party out to
the "Hastings." Jack was soon able to welcome Lieutenant Danvers on
board the submarine.

"You can look around all you want, Ewald and Biffens," suggested Mr.
Danvers, "and see if you can find any great differences between this
craft and the 'Pollard' and the 'Farnum.'"

The two sailors, accordingly, made themselves wholly at home in the
interior of the submarine.

"Both men have put in tours of duty on the first two boats turned out
by your company," explained the officer. "They know all about the two
Pollard boats that the Navy bought."

"Then they won't find very much that is different on board the
'Hastings,'" Jack replied. "All that is new here is in the way of a few
more up-to-date little mechanisms and devices. A man used to running
the old 'Pollard' would really be wholly at home here."

A few minutes, only, were allowed for inspection of the newest submarine