others left the entrance to the cabin, As Evarts, his pistol now back
in his pocket, stepped sullenly outside, Harry Hazelton dropped back into
the doorway.

"Glad to meet you, Mr. Evarts," grinned the police officer, deftly slipping
handcuffs on the fellow's wrists.

"This is treachery!" stormed the prisoner. "I didn't surrender to you.
I only came out to talk with you."

"If you didn't surrender, then excuse me, and go ahead and put up a fight,"
laughed the policeman, handily removing Evarts's revolver from a hip
pocket.

"Now, look in here, Tom," urged Dick. "Do you see what caught my eye?"

Prescott pointed to a sharp-nosed cylinder, some eight feet long. Just as
it lay the propeller at the other end was invisible to one at the doorway
of the cabin.

"It's a home-made imitation of a Whitehead torpedo," Lieutenant Dick went
on, in explanation. "If it proves to be charged with explosives then the
mere having of it aboard this sloop will prove embarrassing to these two
prisoners to explain in court. If it isn't loaded, that will be almost as
bad, as such a torpedo can be rather easily loaded, and then set in
operation by clock-work machinery that will control the propeller."

"Young man, you seem to think you know a good deal about torpedoes,"
sneered Evarts.

"He ought to," Harry retorted quietly. "He's a West Point man and an army
officer. Therefore, he's a specialist in some kinds of explosives."

Evarts's face turned somewhat paler at this information of having an army
officer on hand as a witness.

"Do you call me a prisoner, too?" asked the man at the tiller uneasily.

"Something like it, I guess," nodded Dick.

"Say, but that's a pretty rank deal against an honest man," protested the
skipper hoarsely. "I hired this boat out to that man, the one you call
Evarts, but I didn't know what he was up to."

"You didn't know that torpedoes are used for wicked work either, eh?"
pressed Lieutenant Dick.

"I'll swear that I didn't know what it was that he brought on board," cried
the skipper. "Evarts said it was a new device for killing fish at
wholesale."

"You may be telling the truth," Tom broke in.

"I am," declared the skipper eagerly.

"Then explain it to the court," Reade continued. "If you can prove to a
judge and a jury that you're an honest man, and always have been one, you
may get off on the charge that will be made against you."

"Then you don't believe me?" asked the skipper anx