Beside them was another blue-jacket and old Tom, their acquaintance of their first day of naval life.
Ned felt a thrill, as, in his bosn's chair, he dangled on the side of the turret close to the glistening barrels of the huge guns, which could hurl a ponderous weight of metal, an 870-pound projectile, almost ten miles. He wondered if he would ever attain his present ambition, which was to serve on the crew in the big forward turret, the one he was then engaged in painting a dull-slate color.
Conversation is allowed among blue-jackets at work if they are discreet enough not to make their tones too loud, and relapse into silence when a petty or a commissioned officer happens along. Thus Ned and the convalescent Herc found time to ask many questions concerning the ship. Naturally, the talk drifted, as they worked, to the turret on which they were toiling.
"If I tell you boys a secret can you keep it—teetotal abstinence?" asked old Tom suddenly.
"You had better not confide in us, if you don't think so," rejoined Ned somewhat sharply.
"Oh, no harm meant," hastily put in Tom; "and at that, it isn't so much of a secret. It's been hinted at in the papers, and maybe you may have heard of it. Have you?"
"Why, how can we tell unless we know what it is?" questioned Ned, with a laugh.
"Well," confided old Tom seriously, and lowering his voice—though by this time the third man on their side of the turret was painting at some distance from them—"well, inside this here turret is one of the new Varian guns. They are the invention of Henry Varian, of Boston——"
"The inventor of that new explosive?" breathed Ned.
"Exactly; Chaosite, they call it. Well, this here gun is specially built to handle this explosive, but it's never been tried yet; and—here's the secret—Varian himself is to join us in Cuba and direct the firing tests of it. While the papers have got hold of the fact that we have the gun on board, none of them know that it is to be tested on this battle practice, or that Varian himself is to meet us at Guantanamo."