CHAPTER XII.

"STOP WHERE YOU ARE!"

It is a curious fact that most absolutely overwhelming predicaments do not at first strike in upon their victims with the crushing force that would be imagined. This was evidenced by Herc's rejoinder to Ned's startling information.

"Great ginger!" he exclaimed, "I guess we're in just the place where we belong. If we hadn't gone blundering into that trap we wouldn't have been in this fix, and if we hadn't----"

"Left the farm and enlisted in the navy we wouldn't have been here either," retorted Ned.

A scrutiny of their prison confirmed Ned in his first judgment of its character. The walls, though padded, were solid, and seemingly impenetrable. The window was far too high up to be reached, and even if they could have got to it, it could be seen that the steel bars were set solidly into the masonry. The door, which was examined in its turn, proved to be likewise of solid oak. No lock appeared on it. Doubtless this was to prevent any of the unfortunates formerly confined in the place from injuring themselves on projecting bolts.

At the bottom of the door, however, a peculiar contrivance appeared. It was a small, hinged flap, which, when raised, revealed an opening some six inches square. The thought suggested itself to Ned that it might have been used once as a means for giving food or drink to the incurables confined within during their violent spells.

He opened the flap and thrust his hand through. A vague hope had entered his mind that he might be able to reach up as far as the bolts on the outside. If he could have done this he could have opened them. But, as might have been expected, this was not feasible. Ned had the exasperating experience of being able, by the utmost exertion, to touch the bottom of the bolt with his finger-tips, but that was all. Even then he had to shove his arm so far through the hole that it was grazed and sore when he withdrew it.

"W-e-l-l?" said Herc slowly, as they sank down side by side on a sort of bench, padded like the rest of the interior of the place.

"W-e-l-l?" retorted Ned, "so far as I can see, if we were sealed up in one of the _Manhattan's_ air-tight magazines we would have just about as good a chance of getting out as we have of escaping from this place."

"Same here," agreed Herc woefully. "What are we going to do? Do you think they'll starve us to death?"

Barren of hope as the situation appeared, Ned could not help smiling at Herc's woebegone tone.

"They'd hardly dare to do that," he rejoined; "this is the twentieth century, and such things as law and order prevail. No, I guess they have some sort of trickery on hand with which we might interfere, and they mean to keep us locked up here till they have carried out their rascally plans."

"Talking of plans, did they take back the ones of the pontoon aeroplane?"

"No," exclaimed Ned, brightening, "thank goodness that's one thing they seem to have forgotten. Anyhow I suppose they know they have us at their mercy and can get them any time they want them."

"Reckon that's it," agreed Herc.

Silence ensued. The two boys sat side by side in the pitchy blackness of their prison, for Ned, anxious to reserve it for emergencies, had extinguished the electric torch. Neither of them was a nervous sort of youth, but the long vigil in the dark was enough to get on anybody's nerves.

"This is certainly a tough situation," remarked Ned after a time. He spoke more for the sake of hearing his own voice than for any novel idea the words might convey.

"Not giving up, are you, Ned?" inquired Herc.

"Giving up?" grated out the elder Dreadnought Boy, "I'm like Paul Jones--I've just begun to fight."

"When did Paul Jones say that?" asked Herc.

"Why, that time that the British captain, Pearson, peered through the smoke surrounding his majesty's ship _Serapis_ and the little _Bonhomme Richard_.

"Pearson hailed Paul Jones and shouted out, 'Have you struck your colors yet?'

"It was then that Paul Jones sent back that answer. Those were grand words, Herc. They ought to be framed and placed on board every vessel in Uncle Sam's navy."

"Yes, Paul Jones was a wonderful sea-fighter all right," agreed Herc, "but I wonder what he'd have done if he'd been cooped up in here."

"Figured on some way of getting out," rejoined Ned promptly. "Time after time British frigates hemmed him in. They thought they had him trapped. But every time he slipped through their fingers and resumed his career as a sea tiger. With his little bit of a junk-shop fleet he did more to establish the name of Americans as sea fighters than any man in the republic."

"But how about Ben Franklin, who advanced the money to buy the ships, or at least saw that it was raised?" asked the practical Herc.

"Well, of course he helped," admitted Ned, "but even he couldn't save Paul Jones from his country's ingratitude. Why, it was a hundred years or more before his bones were discovered in an obscure spot in Paris, where he died in poverty, and were brought back to this country and buried with the honors they deserved."

"Humph!" observed Herc, "that was a pretty shabby way to treat one of our biggest naval heroes. Wish we had him here now. What was that old anecdote you told me once about Paul burning his way out of a prison some place?"

"Oh, that!" laughed Ned. "I guess that was a bit of imagination on the part of the writer. At any rate it isn't mentioned in the histories. It was one time that they locked Paul Jones in the cabin of a British vessel. They thought they had him safe. But he ripped out the lining of stuffed cushions of the captain's sofas and burned a way out through a port hole that they thought was securely locked. I read it in an old