As soon as the anchors were down, all hands came on deck to get a whiff of the morning air.
"We'd better have breakfast before we tackle the valves, hadn't we, Matt?" inquired Speake. "I know I can work better on a full stomach, and I suppose the rest of you can."
"Good idea, Speake," returned Matt. "I had thought about that, but supposed you would like to loaf a little and not pen yourself up in the torpedo room with an electric stove."
"Those confounded valves bother me," grumbled Speake, "and I couldn't loaf and enjoy myself if I had to think about them."
"They bother me, too," added Glennie, "and I believe I'll go below and look them over."
"I'll go with you," said Clackett. "We can make a preliminary survey and then get busy right after breakfast. Plenty of chance to loaf during my watch below."
"Glad to see you fellows so industrious," laughed Matt. "Perhaps, if you are real smart, you can get those valves fixed by breakfast time, and the rest of us won't have to tinker with them."
"You'll be needed, Matt, when it comes to the fixing," answered Glennie, as he climbed into the conning tower.
"I guess I'll go down, too," yawned Gaines, "and catch forty winks on top of the periscope-room locker. This morning air is fine, but I'm satisfied to take my share through the open hatch."
He followed Clackett into the tower. Dick, descending to the edge of the rounded deck, peered into the clear depths of the water below.
"I can see our cable, mates," said he, "and our anchor with one fluke in the sand. Come on, Carl. Let's take a swim before breakfast."
"Nod me, Tick," answered Carl. "I feel like loafing, und shvimming iss too mooch like vork."
"I feel as Carl does," said Matt. "Take your swim if you want to, Dick, and Carl and I will be the anchor watch."
Dick was out of his clothes in a jiffy. "So long," he called, as he took a "header" from the bow of the boat.
He was perfectly at home in the water, and when Matt saw him swimming out toward a headland that walled in the cove on the south, he thought little of it. When he saw that Dick was intending to swim around the point, however, he stood up and called out a warning. But Dick only laughed and kept on until he was out of sight.