“Well?”
“Well, it may be of the highest importance that no one should know that but ourselves and our officers. I’d like to kick myself overboard for not looking round before we started talking.”
At this moment Stanley, the man who had handled the bow oar in the boat the night before, came up to them. With him were the other volunteers of that heroic venture. In discussing the details of it and “fighting the battle o’er again,” the Dreadnought Boys speedily forgot the incident which had for an instant cast a cloud over Ned’s good humor.
Three more days of steady steaming brought the Beale within the tropics. It was delightful to the boys to be once more in Caribbean waters. The blue sea rippled by. Only a gentle swell made a pleasing contrast after the terrific “tumblefication” the Beale had been through on her way down the coast.
Awnings now made their appearance, and meals could be eaten without, as Herc expressed it, “hanging on with your toe nails.” White uniforms were the order of the day, and very natty the jackies and officers looked in their snowy regalia.
One morning, soon after they entered the “gulf-weed belt,” as sailormen call it, the crew was busy at brass work and in patching up the numerous small damages sustained by the destroyer in her rough experience off the American coast. The scene of activity was abruptly halted soon after five bells by a sudden cry of:
“Wreck ahead!”
The hail thrilled everybody. It meant a break in the monotony, and possible adventure.
“Where away?” was the hail from the small bridge forward of the conning tower, on which Ensign Conkling was on duty.
The next minute the officer’s glasses were eagerly scanning the glistening sea in the direction in which the lookout had indicated the wreck. A brief consultation followed. Ned, whose duty took him near the conning tower, heard Lieutenant Timmons remark to Ensign Conkling: