ck on board, since we can't do anything here. One of
us will keep watch, and the rest of us can get some of a night's sleep
yet."

"Why, yes, if you youngsters can sleep, after such happenings," laughed
Kimball.

By this time Lieutenant Foster and two of his marines had followed the
trail of footprints as far as the hard road. Here all trace was lost.

"What you want to do, Williamson," declared Jack, as soon as the
submarine people were back on their own craft, "is to get into some
dry clothes and make yourself a pot of hot coffee. Then get in between
blankets for a sleep. I'll finish out your watch."

Nor was Benson alone in his watch, for a cutter from the gunboat,
containing a corporal and two marines, beside sailors to row the boat,
moved slowly around the submarine at a distance of fifteen or twenty
yards.

After the rest had gone below, Captain Jack, hanging over the rail of
the platform deck, saw other lanterns gleaming in and around the clump
of bushes.

"That must be the Secret Service people, pulled out of their comfortable
beds," mused Benson, smiling. "Won't they feel upset at any such
thing happening hours after they've arrived on the spot?"

After Eph Somers had reported on deck to take his watch, Jack went
below, once more dropping into sound slumber. The smell of coffee and
bacon was wafted in from the galley when the young submarine captain
next awoke.

"Well," announced Eph, as Jack and Hal came forward for their breakfast,
"Trotter and Packwood haven't caught the fellows that laid the mine."

"It doesn't look strongly probable that they'll catch them, either,"
Jack replied. "I don't believe that the fellows who did that trick are
any of the regular spies. For that matter, we now of only three spies
here who are men. Drummond is under arrest, and so is Gaston. Neither
of them could have had a hand in it. And there were two, so, if M.
Lemaire was in it, he had an unknown accomplice. But I don't believe
M. Lemaire had any personal hand in laying that mine. I've a notion
that he considers himself entirely too high class to go into any mere
blasting operations."

"'Mere blasting operations' is good," smiled Hal Hastings, "when we
stop to think what those 'blasting operations' might have done for us
if it hadn't been for Williamson."

"Anyone taking my name in vain?" demanded the machinist, smiling as he
put in an appearance at that moment.

"We're trying to see," Eph explained