They arrived on time, sure enough; and George and Dick were already on the island to receive them. After they had squatted down on the floor of the shack, George lost no time in beginning.
“Before I begin my yarn, fellows, I want to say that I have had a good talk with Dick about the Boy Scouts, and I have also been reading carefully the scout oath and law, and other things given in the manual. I understand more about it than I did before, especially about the first point of your oath, which is: ‘To serve God and my country, and to obey the Scout Law.’ In the Navy, we have to take an oath of allegiance, too, but are supposed to serve our country principally through fighting, while you are trained to serve your country in all sorts of different ways. In the Navy and the Army we have to fight with shot and shell and cold steel; but this is not the only kind of fighting a fellow may have to do in order to serve his country. He has got to fight the evil in himself in order to be trustworthy, helpful, brave, and all the other things that your scout law requires. These things that you have to learn are the very foundations of service; and, if you should engage in military work later on, your training in these things will make you far better soldiers or sailors than you otherwise would be. I can only say that I wish I had had such training before I went to Annapolis. The fact is, every man has to know how to fight, whether he is a soldier, or a sailor, or a civilian; and, unless you know how to fight against meanness, and falsehood, and cowardice beforehand, you won’t make so good a military man or so good a citizen when the time comes.”
“How about your story, George?” remarked Dick.
“All right,” replied George. “Here goes: I was staying with my chum, John Stimson, over the week-end a while ago, and, as we were going in to dinner with his father, Admiral Stimson, I stepped back at the door to let the old gentleman pass, but he held out his hand and signed for me to go first—I suppose because he was my host. As he did so, he said with a smile, ‘After you, pilot!’ Of course I walked in ahead of him, in obedience to his order, but I couldn’t make out what he meant by ‘pilot’, and the conversation was such that I could not butt in with a question about it. After dinner I got hold of John, who explained to me that it was a custom in the Navy, commemorating the act of Captain Craven of the U. S. S. Tecumseh at the battle of Mobile Bay.
“John said his father was never tired of telling the story, and was sure that he would be glad to tell it to me then and there. He asked me to wait a minute while he went to his father’s study to find out, and returned in a few minutes with this message: ‘By all means,—come in right away.’
“Well, boys, I wish I could tell it to you the way the old Admiral told it to John and me. But, as I can’t do that, I’ll just give you the facts: The Confederate fleet were up in the bay, protected below by strong coast fortifications on either side. The Tecumseh was the first ship in the line of Union vessels which were fighting their way up into the bay against the bombardment of the forts. Captain Craven was up in the turret with the pilot, who was pointing out the channel through the mine fields which had been carefully prepared by the enemy. But a mistake was made in the ship’s course which brought her into contact with a mine, striking her so that she went on her beam ends.
“You understand what this means?” said George, after a little pause, and he held up his two hands to indicate the angle to which the deck of the vessel would rise under the circumstances.
“Then she settled down with a kind of shivering motion and began to sink as the sea flowed in through the gash in her side.
“The inside of the turret was a small place and the two men shut up there were in close quarters. The only way out was the way they had come in, through an opening in the turret deck, like one of the manholes you see leading underground from the surface of the street. There was a little ladder in this manhole, and only room enough for one man to pass at a time. As the vessel settled and sank, it was inevitable that the water should rise in the manhole and ultimately fill the turret. There was no time to lose if either one was to make his escape from the death trap. It must have seemed a long wait to the two men as they stood facing one another and taking in their situation. But it probably wasn’t as long as it seemed before Captain Craven pointed to the manhole with the words that Admiral Stimson had quoted to me:
“‘After you, pilot.’