“It will be a handsome compliment to me, Mr. Farnum. More handsome than
deserved, I fear.”

“Deserved, well enough,” retorted the shipbuilder. “Dave Pollard and I are
well enough satisfied that, if it hadn’t been for you youngsters, and the
superb way in which you handled our first boat, Dave and I would still be
sitting on the anxious bench in the ante-rooms of the Navy Department at
Washington.”

“Well, I don’t deserve to have a boat named after me any more than Hal
does, or Eph Somers.”

“Give us time, won’t you, Captain?” pleaded Jacob Farnum, his face
straight, but his eyes laughing. “We expect to build at least five boats.
If we didn’t, this yard never would have been fitted for the present work,
and you three boys, who’ve done so handsomely by us, wouldn’t each own, as
you now do, ten shares of stock in this company. Never fear; there’ll be a
’Hastings’ and a ’Somers’ added to our fleet one of these days—even though
some of our boats have to be sold to foreign governments.”

“If a boat named the ’Hastings’ were sold to some foreign government,”
laughed Jack Benson, “Hal, here, wouldn’t say much about it. But call a
boat named the ’Somers,’ after Eph, and then sell it, say, to the Germans
or the Japanese, and all of Eph’s American gorge would come to the
surface. I’ll wager he’d scheme to sink any submarine torpedo boat, named
after him, that was sold to go under a foreign flag.”

“I hope we’ll never have to sell any of our boats to foreign governments,”
replied Jacob Farnum, earnestly. “And we won’t either, if the United
States Government will give us half a show.”