There were lectures on gunnery that day to the gun captains, and the boys off duty who were interested in the subject might listen to this instruction. Phil Morgan and Torrance availed themselves of the privilege.
The two younger chums, Michael Donahue and Ikey Rosenmeyer, were not, it must be confessed, so well employed. During this first day aboard the Kennebunk there was bred between these youths a scheme which certainly would not have met with the approval of the executive officer.
In their quarters aboard the destroyer Colodia they would not have been able to stow the junk they now secured away from the watchful eyes of the master-at-arms. In the destroyer their ditty boxes had to hide any private property the boys wanted to stow away.
But a man could lose himself in the various decks of the superdreadnaught. Even the officers' quarters were forward with the crew's, the ship was so huge. There were unused rooms and compartments for which Ikey and Frenchy did not know the names, or their uses.
In one of these unoccupied compartments the two found a lot of lumber and rubbish amid which were some joints of two-inch galvanized pipe the plumbers and pipe fitters had left when the ship was being furnished.
"Gee, Ikey!" murmured the agile-minded Irish lad, "I've got an idea."
"I bet you," returned Ikey. "You always have ideas. But is this one worth anything?"
"Listen here!" and Frenchy, with dancing eyes, whispered into his friend's ear the details of the new-born scheme.
"Oi, oi!" cried Ikey. "It is an idea, sure enough. But it is trouble you are looking for."
"Not a bit of it. We needn't tell anybody—not even Whistler or Al. Gee! it will be great."