"
Then Benson watched as, from the yards high up on the gunboat's signaling
mast, colored electric lights glowed forth, twinkling briefly in turn.
This is the modern method of signaling by sea at night.
"He wants to know," said Benson, to Mr. Farnum, as he turned, "whether
there is safe anchorage for a twelve-hundred-ton gunboat of one hundred
and ninety-five feet length."
Reaching the inside of the conning tower at a bound, the young skipper
rapidly manipulated his own electric signaling control. There was a low
mast on the "Farnum's" platform deck, a mast that could be unstepped
almost in an instant when going below surface. So Captain Jack's
counter-query beamed out in colors through the night:
"What's your draught?"
"Under present ballast, seventeen-eight," came the answer from the
gunboat's signal mast.
"Safe anchorage," Captain Jack signaled back.
"Can you meet us with a pilot?" questioned the on-coming gunboat.
"Yes," Captain Jack responded.
"Do so," came the laconic request.
"That's all, Hal," the young skipper called, through the engine room
speaking tube. "Want to row me out and put me aboard the gunboat?"
In another jiffy the two young chums had put off in the boat, Hal at the
oars, Jack at the tiller ropes.
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