“That’s just the trouble,” grumbled Hal Hastings, breaking into the talk,
at last. “Confound it, why don’t the people of this country run their
government more than they do? Four-fifths of the inventors who get up
great things that would put the United States on top, and keep us there,
have to go abroad to find a market for their inventions! If I could invent
a cannon to-day that would give all the power on earth to the nation
owning it, would the American Government buy it from me? No, sir! I’d have
to sell the cannon to England, Germany or Japan—or else starve while
Congress was talking of doing something about it in the next session. Mr.
Farnum, you have the finest, and the only real submarine torpedo boat.
Yet, if you want to go on building and selling these craft, you’ll have to
dispose of most of them abroad.”

“I hope not,” responded the shipbuilder, solemnly.

Having said his say, Hal subsided. He was likely not to speak again for an
hour. As a class, engineers, having to listen much to noisy machinery, are
themselves silent.

It was well along in the afternoon, a little past the middle of October.
For our three young friends, Jack, Hal and Eph, things were dull just at
the present moment. They were drawing their salaries from the Pollard
company, yet of late there had been little for them to do.

Yet the three submarine boys knew that big things were in the air. David
Pollard was away, presumably on important business. Jacob Farnum was not
much given to speaking of plans until he had put them through to the
finish. Some big deal was at present “on” with the Government. That much
the submarine boys knew by intuition. They felt, therefore, that, at any