"Aye, aye, sir. The gig is waiting to take you aboard, sir. Ensign Summerville sent his regrets, sir, and he is too busy attending to matters wirelessed from the flagship to come ashore himself."
"Very well, we may as well get aboard, then," said Ned.
At this moment Rankin emerged from the hotel. He had evidently been busy removing traces of battle from his face, for his sallow countenance shone with soap. To say that he looked surprised when he saw Ned and Herc transformed into naval officers of rank much above his own, would be to put it mildly. That expressive word "flabbergasted" better describes the look on Rankin's well-soaped visage.
He was far too well trained in naval usage to put his astonishment into words, however. Returning from a furlough, he knew nothing, of course, of the change in the commanding officers of the Seneca; but he recognized that Ned, as his uniform showed, outranked Ensign Summerville, and from this fact deduced that he must have come to take command of the little gunboat.
He drew himself up and saluted with naval conciseness. The boys returned the salute with perfect gravity. To judge by the countenances of all three, no bystander would ever have guessed how it had been with them not so very long before.
Herc, however, noted, perhaps not without a certain malicious satisfaction, that over Rankin's right eye was a plum-colored discoloration which appeared to be swelling. Once, too, when on the way to the boat he happened to glance in Rankin's direction, he surprised a glowering look on the assistant engineer's face which was instantly wiped off when Rankin saw that he was being observed.
"Huh, that was a quick change, like sponging something off a slate," thought Herc to himself. "However, Mr. Rankin, I've no idea that you love your second in command any better than you ought to. I guess I'll keep my weather eye on you, for at times you certainly do look most uncommonly like a rattlesnake."
The coxswain had taken charge of the boys' suit and sword cases. Rankin carried his own valise. It did not take them long to reach the little wharf, alongside which lay the Seneca's gig, the four men of her crew smoking and lolling at their ease at her oarlocks.
Like a flash all inertia vanished as Ned and Herc hove in sight. The coxswain saluted once more. The men saluted. Ned and Herc saluted.