"I was dreaming. I'll bet I had a better dream than you did. I dreamed I was the captain of the 'Long Island,' with four gold stripes around my sleeve. Then I woke up. That was too fine a dream to sleep over very long at a time."
"Pipe down the guff," growled several voices from the depths of other hammocks. "What do you think this is—a pink tea?"
"No; it's a deck picnic," answered Sam, as the bugle blew the reveille, summoning all hands from their hammocks. The men in the corridor with the Battleship Boys scrambled down from their hammocks in no enviable frame of mind, for Hickey had spoiled at least five minutes of their sleep, which was of no small consequence at that hour of the morning. Sam seized his clothes and ran for the shower bath, anxious to get his bath over before the men of his division got there. They were not in a pleasant frame of mind, and the boy considered it prudent to keep clear of them until they "got their eyes open," as he expressed it to himself.
The early morning work was finished up and then came breakfast. By this time the battleship was swinging along past Fire Island light. The sea was fairly calm and the sun was shining brightly.
"I wonder what we are going to do up here?" questioned a jackie, as they were at their breakfast.
"Up here? Where are we headed for!" demanded Sam. "Looks to me as if we were going to butt into a sand bank, the way the ship was headed when I came below."
"I think we are going into Fort Pond Bay," answered someone.
"Never heard of the place. Is it a pond?" asked Hickey innocently.
"Hear the landlubber talk. Yes, red-head, it's a pond; a sloppy-weather pond with the current so swift at times that if you were to go swimming in it, you'd want your port and starboard anchors out all the time."
"What are we going to do in the pond?"