Jack Benson made a little grimace.

“Serious business, this fighting on the ocean, isn’t it?” he replied.

“It’s stranger to think about than it is to be doing it,” replied Andrews, musingly.  “I know.  I was in the war with Spain.”

“How did you feel?” asked Eph, quickly.

“Tired, most of the time,” replied Andrews.  “Sick some of the time, and hungry the rest.”

“But about being scared?” insisted Eph.

“I was kept too busy, generally, to have any time to give to being scared.  I was a soldier, and a soldier is a good deal like any other workman.  He does his work by habit, and soon gets over thinking much about it.”

There was a long pause, broken by Eph, saying: 

“I wonder when they’re going to let the boat rise?”

“When they’re going to try to make it rise, you mean,” corrected Jack Benson.

“Same thing, I hope,” muttered Eph Somers.

After some minutes more Jacob Farnum stepped down below.

“Why, it looks cozy here at night, doesn’t it?” he called.

At sound of his voice the boys stepped out of the engine room into the cabin.

“Mighty comfortable sort of place,” continued the yard’s owner, looking around him.  “We’ll have to put in some books, won’t we, so you young men can read when you’re doing nothing under water?”

“Maybe the time will come when we can read,” laughed Hal.  “Just now, sir, I’m afraid we’re too busy with thinking and wondering.”

“I’ll confess to being a bit nervous myself,” responded Mr. Farnum.  “Somehow, there’s something uncanny about rushing through the depths of the ocean in this fashion, not having any idea what danger you may be close by.”

“Such as running into the hull of some big liner that draws more than forty feet of water,” hinted Jack.

“We’re fifty-eight feet below, now,” remarked Mr. Farnum.  “You didn’t guess that, did you?  We sank eighteen feet more, on an even keel.”

“Gracious!  You meant those eighteen feet, didn’t you?  It wasn’t accident?” gasped Eph.

“We meant it,” smiled the builder.  “But say, the air is getting a bit foul here, isn’t it?  We’ll have to try the compressed air equipment, now.”

By an ingenious mechanical contrivance the present air was forced, by compressed air draught, into compartments from which the bad air was expelled through sea-valves.  An instant change for the better in the atmosphere was noted.

“That’s another thing about this good old new craft of ours that works all right, so far,” remarked the builder.  “Boys, I’m beginning to have confidence that we’re going to see the surface again all right.  Hullo, there’s Pollard hailing us.”

“The air purified all right, didn’t it?” called down the inventor.

“Yes; couldn’t have been better,” declared the builder heartily.

“Then I’m going to make the supreme test,” came down from the man at the wheel.  “We’ll proceed to find out whether we can rise to the surface and stay there.”