We
believe it possible to do things, with boats like this one, that can be
accomplished with no other submarine craft in the world. Now, it's a
fact that, in all the navies, lest an accident happen to a submarine,
that craft is obliged to travel about, always, in the company of a steam
craft of war, which is known as the parent ship. Yet we've come,
straight from the shipyard at Dunhaven, many hundreds of miles, without
any such escort. We've been running along under our own power, night
and day, without accident, stop or bother. Thus we've shown that the
Pollard boat can do things that no other submarine craft are ever
trusted to try alone. And now, all that remains to show is that, at the
end of a long voyage, we can approach a coast, unseen, even though
thousands of people are probably looking for us, and that we can get
into a harbor without being detected; that, in fact, we could do
anything we might have a mind to do to an enemy's ships that might be
in that harbor. But now, sir, you propose that, lest we have accidents,
it will be best to rise to the surface and enter the harbor at Spruce
Beach as plainly and stupidly as though the 'Benson' were some mere
lumber schooner."
"I see the thing just the way Jack Benson does," murmured David Pollard,
thrusting his hands down deep in his trousers pockets.
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