A
small boat was lowered, and, in this, Captain Jack Benson was put on
the desolate shore.
Then the tug went back over by the fort. Jack grew tired of waiting,
for it was some two hours ere the tug finally left the ordinance wharf
at Fort Craven.
It was warm out there, on the low, sandy cliffs, provided one got into
a position sheltered from the ocean winds. So Jack, in the weariness
of his waiting, threw himself down in a sheltered hollow.
Finding that the sun shone disagreeably in his eyes, the submarine boy
pulled his cap forward over his face.
Then, in the course of a very few minutes, the inevitable happened. Jack
Benson drifted off into sleep.
He awoke with a fearful start, for he had no idea how long he had slept.
Yanking out his watch and noting the time, the submarine boy concluded
that he had not been asleep more than twenty or thirty minutes.
"But I might just as easily have slept for hours," Benson reproached
himself. "Then what a hero I'd have felt. Asleep on post!"
At that moment Jack Benson heard a faraway whistle, across the bay.
Showing just the top of his head above a ridge of sand, Captain Jack
saw the Army tug just pulling out from the dock across the bay.
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