"Will Striker go with you?"
"Oh, yes, Luke and I always go together, if we can. He was my chum when we fought under Dewey and he has been my chum ever since."
"And a good fellow, too, Larry—a man with a heart of gold. If it wasn't that you and Tom Grandon were with me, I should have made him a mate long ago."
"I don't doubt that, sir—and he is worthy of it." Larry paused for a moment. "Of course, I don't know if they want any of us in the navy."
"Didn't you tell me before that they had several men you had met while under Dewey and some your brother Walter had met while fighting in Cuban waters?"
"Yes, but that was some time ago."
"If they took those chaps then it's likely they will take you now—unless, of course, they have all the men they want—which I doubt."
"We shall not go as ordinary jackies. Ben got a commission as a captain, and Luke thinks he might go as a gunner and I might go as an assistant gunner. We occupied those positions before we left our navy."
"Then I should certainly strike for the positions. They may need gunners even if they don't need common seamen," responded Captain Ponsberry.
As fortune would have it, the run to Nagasaki was made without incident worthy of special mention. Once there was a scare on board, as the water in the well hole increased with alarming rapidity. But the new leak was discovered in time, and the ship's carpenter had little difficulty in repairing it. They also sighted a vessel they thought might be a Russian warship, but she proved instead to be a Japanese coastwise freighter, carrying lumber from one port to another on the northern coast of Japan.