The Submarine Boys on Duty Part 5

"But that will delay us at least forty-eight hours, and the launching date is so near at hand," protested the inventor.

"You'd better put your launching off two days, Mr. Pollard, than take any chances of having a bad connection in your fuel feed pipes," argued the foreman.

"Confound such luck!" growled Pollard, turning away. "Well, come over to the office with me, and we'll wire a kick and a prayer to the contractors."

Just as he turned, the inventor barely failed to overhear something that Jack muttered in an aside to Hal.

"What's that you're saying, Benson?" demanded David Pollard.

"Oh, nothing much, sir," replied Jack, quickly. "I'm not foreman here, nor much of anything, for that matter."

"Were you expressing an opinion about this pipe business?"

"Ye-es, sir."

"You agree with me that the pipe can be cut properly at the machine shop of this yard?" insisted the inventor. It was strange to ask such a question of a boy helper, but David Pollard, facing a delay in the launching of his craft, was ready to jump at any hope.

Jack Benson hesitated.

"I want a reply," persisted Mr. Pollard.

"Why, yes," Jack admitted. "I don't want to be forward, but I feel pretty sure the pipe can be measured both for its own length and the length it ought to be. If there's a good metal saw over at the machine shop, and a thread cutter, this pipe ought to be ready for safe fitting in half an hour."

"That's the way it looks to me, too," broke in Mr. Farnum. "Send the pipe over, anyway, with the proper measurements, and Partridge can tell you what's what."

"I won't make the measurements. I won't have anything to do with it, or be responsible for a botched job," snarled the foreman.

"You don't have to, then," replied Farnum, taking a spring steel tape from his pocket. "Benson, you seem to have a clear-headed idea of what you're talking about. Take the measurements. This tape has been standardized."

It was not a matter of great difficulty. Jack, with his chum's aid, soon had the measurements taken.

"Since you youngsters know so much about it," growled Joshua Owen, "you two can carry the pipe over to the machine shop."

Other workmen sprang to help in pa.s.sing the pipe up through the manhole and down over the side of the hull. When Jack and Hal got the pipe up on their shoulders they staggered a bit under its weight. But they were game, and started away with it.

"That's a shame," growled Mike O'brien. "Boss, leave me go 'an be helpin' the b'yes with that load."

"Go ahead," nodded Mr. Farnum. O'brien went nimbly down the ladder, placing one of his own st.u.r.dy shoulders under the forward end of the pipe, while Benson got back with Hal Hastings at the other end. In about three-quarters of an hour the trio were back, with the pipe cut to the right length, and with a new screw-thread cut at the shortened end.

"Now, you can demonstrate your own work, Benson," laughed Mr. Farnum.

"Fit the pipe yourself, and call on the men for what help you want."

At that, Joshua Owen folded his arms as he stepped back scowling. Yet when the crew, under Jack's direction, had finished fitting the pipe in place, not even this angered foreman dared say that it was not fitted properly.

The next work called for fitting some pipe-joints, and in this a red lead cement was used. One of these joint-makings fell to Benson and Hal.

"Here's yer cement," muttered the scowling Dan Jaggers, pa.s.sing a rough ball of the stuff to young Benson.

"Is this the best you have?" asked Jack, eyeing the cement with disfavor.

"Yes," growled Dan, "and it's plenty good enough."

"I'd call it too dry," replied Jack, quietly.

"Are you bossing this job all the way through?" demanded Joshua Owen, angrily, stepping forward. "Mr. Farnum, Mr. Pollard, if these boys are to have charge of this work, I may as well stop."

"What's the matter?" asked Mr. Farnum, coining forward.

"This younker is grumbling about the red lead cement," snapped the irate foreman.

"What's the complaint, Benson?" asked the boatyard owner.

"No complaint, Mr. Farnum," Jack answered, quickly. "Only, I've got to make the joint fast with red lead cement, and it seemed to me that this stuff is too dry. If I use it, it won't fill out smoothly enough. It's dry and crumbly, and I'm afraid the joint would be very defective."

"Nothing of the sort!" snapped Joshua Owen. "Boy, you've no business trying to do a man's work, anyway. Give me that cement, and I'll make the joint fast myself."

"All right," nodded Benson, stepping back. He started to pa.s.s the chunk of cement to the foreman, but Mr. Farnum quickly took it from him, then cast a look upward. Asa Partridge, the yard superintendent, a man past fifty, stood on the platform deck, looking down through the open manhole.

"Come down here, Mr. Partridge," hailed the yard's owner, while Joshua Owen's scowl became deeper than ever. "Mr. Partridge, Benson says this cement is too dry to make a joint tight with. Owen says it isn't.

Who wins the bet?" the owner finished, laughingly.

Asa Partridge, a man of long experience in steam-fitting, took the chunk of cement, examining it carefully, then picked it to pieces before he rejoined dryly:

"Why, the boy wins, of course. Any apprentice ought to know that cement as dry as this stuff can't make a tight joint."

"Isn't there some better cement than this around?" called out Mr. Farnum.

"If there isn't," volunteered the superintendent, "I can send you over plenty. But the use of such stuff as that would leave some joints loose, and make a breakdown of the boat's machinery certain."

"You see, Owen," spoke the yard's owner, quietly, turning to the foreman, "you're letting your dislike for these boys spoil your value here as foreman."

"I've stood all I'm going to stand here," shouted Joshua Owen, in a tempest of rage, as he s.n.a.t.c.hed off his ap.r.o.n. "You're letting these boys run the job--"

"Nothing of the sort," broke in Farnum, icily. "They haven't tried to run anything. But any workman is ent.i.tled to complain when he's expected to perform impossibilities with poor material."

"There ye go, upholding 'em again," roared the foreman. "I'm through.

I've quit!"

"I don't know as that's a bad idea, either, Owen," replied Mr. Farnum, in the same cool voice. "When you don't care how you botch a job it's time for you to walk out. You can call at the office this afternoon, and Mr. Partridge will give you your pay."

Joshua Owen glared, amazedly, at his employer. Then, seeing that his threat had been taken at par, and that he was really through here, the infuriated man wheeled like a flash, leaping at Jack Benson from behind and striking the boy to the floor. But Grant Andrews, O'brien and others leaped at him and pulled him away.

Jacob Farnum pointed up the spiral staircase, as Jack Benson leaped to his feet, hardly hurt at all.

"You can't get out of here too quickly, Owen!" warned the owner.

"If you linger, I'll have you helped out of this boat! Grant Andrews, you're foreman here from now on."

"First of all, see that that fellow gets out of here in double-quick time."