The Dreadnought Boys in Home Waters

by John Henry Goldfrap

It was no time then to try to fix the blame. Turning to Kenworth, who was standing with chalky-white face by his side, Ned curtly ordered him to go below and summon the engineer and the ship's armorers to the bridge.

When they came, he gave swift, incisive orders to have the ship examined from stem to stern, and any damage she might have sustained reported to him immediately. Herc, who by this time of course was by his young leader's side, was ordered to take charge of this work.

The next half hour was the most anxious Ned had ever passed; but he knew that yet more suspense was bound to follow when it came to testing how hard and fast the Seneca was piled on the shoal.

There was a possibility that she might get off under her own steam. But of course this could not be foretold till an actual trial could be made. For the present, with engines that had ceased revolving, the Seneca lay helpless and motionless on the shoal.

Ned's naval training stood him in good stead then. Without a quiver of a lip or a flicker of an eyelid to betray the ordeal through which he was passing, he stood erect on the bridge awaiting the report of the investigators. Only the pallor under his tanned cheeks showed what he was enduring.

If naval tugs had to be sent for to extricate the Seneca from her predicament, Ned knew that his brief career as a naval commander was over before it had well begun. Then, too, with this thought mingled another.

Had Kenworth deliberately given the order that had resulted in the grounding of the ship, or had he lost his head and "piled her up"? Judging from the conversation he had overheard, Kenworth was determined to stop at nothing to discredit and disgrace Herc and himself with the Navy Department.

But it was inconceivable, almost, that he should have formed his plan and executed it so quickly. Ned was more inclined to put the entire affair down to stupidity. But he knew that as commander of the Seneca, he, and not Kenworth, would assuredly be held responsible for any damage done.

It was at this moment that he was aroused by the clicking and whining of the wireless spark in its little metal house just abaft of the funnel. The stinging, whip-like crack and the crepitant sputter of the spark as it leaped back and forth across its gap like a caged animal was borne with clean-cut distinctness to his ears.