"Come out of that! On deck there! Take the wheel, one hand, and stand by it!" Mr. Clarkson descended to the others with a serious look on his grimy face, and a sailor climbed the ladder and went down the mast.
"Gentlemen," said the first lieutenant, impressively, "we were mistaken, and we wronged Captain Blake. He is dead. He died at the beginning. He lies under a Gatling gun in the bottom of the tower. I saw Finnegan hanging to that gun, whirling around it, when the mast blew up. It is all plain now. Finnegan and the gun fell into the tower. Finnegan may have struck the stairs and rolled down, but the gun went down the hollow within and killed the captain. We have been steered and commanded by a drunken man—but it was Finnegan."
Finnegan scrambled painfully down the ladder. He staggered, stumbled, and fell in a heap.
"Rise up," said Mr. Clarkson, as they surrounded him; "rise up, Daniel Drake Nelson Farragut Finnegan. You are small potatoes and few in the hill; you are shamefully drunk, and your nose bleeds; you are stricken with Spanish mildew, and you smell vilely—but you are immortal. You have been a disgrace to the service, but Fate in her gentle irony has redeemed you, permitting you, in one brief moment of your misspent life, to save to your country the command of the seas—to guide, with your subconscious intelligence, the finest battle-ship the science of the world has constructed to glorious victory, through the fiercest sea-fight the world has known. Rise up, Daniel, and see the surgeon."
But Finnegan only snored.
THE WIGWAG MESSAGE
As eight bells sounded, Captain Bacon and Mr. Knapp came up from breakfast, and Mr. Hansen, the squat and square-built second mate, immediately went down. The deck was still wet from the morning washing down, and forward the watch below were emerging from the forecastle to relieve the other half, who were coiling loosely over the top of the forward house a heavy, wet hawser used in towing out the evening before. They were doing it properly, and as no present supervision was necessary, the first mate remained on the poop for a few moments' further conversation with the captain.
"Poor crew, cap'n," he said, as, picking his teeth with the end of a match, he scanned the men forward. "It'll take me a month to lick 'em into shape."
To judge by his physique, a month was a generous limit for such an operation. He was a giant, with a giant's fist and foot; red-haired and bearded, and of sinister countenance. But he was no more formidable in appearance than his captain, who was equally big, but smooth-shaven, and showing the square jaw and beetling brows of a born fighter.