"What! I'm to be locked up?" gasped Herc.
"Yes, in the brig."
In an instant the recollection of the boys' conversation with old Tom on the day they joined the ship flashed into Herc's mind. So then "the brig" that the old tar had been so reluctant to talk about, was the place in which they locked up malefactors and disgracers of the service, of whom it seemed he was one. Poor Herc felt ready to drop with shame and humiliation as—under the eyes of the hundreds of jackies going about their various tasks—he was marched aft by the master-at-arms. There was only one drop of relief in his bitter cup. It came when Ned pressed forward, at the risk of being severely reproved.
"Never mind, Herc, old fellow," he breathed. "I know you were in the right, and I'll see that Kennell gets what's coming to him, if it's the last thing I do."
"Come, sir! carry on," snapped the master-at-arms, who had pretended not to notice the first part of this conversation, being a really kind-hearted man, although bound by discipline, just as is every one else in the navy; "you must know it is a breach of discipline to talk to prisoners."
Prisoners!
Poor Herc groaned aloud.
"Come, come," comforted the master-at-arms, "it isn't as bad as all that. I am confident that you can clear yourself. Besides, it is your first offense, and you are a recruit, so perhaps the old man will be easy on you."
"It isn't that, so much as it's the disgrace of being arrested like this," burst out Herc.
"Oh, well, you shouldn't go to fighting, then," remarked the master-at-arms, pulling open a steel-studded door and thrusting Herc before him into a narrow passage, lighted by electric bulbs, down one side of which was fitted a row of steel-barred cells.