“Yes,” added Monkey Stallings, “do we play the part of the torpedo, or the whale that we used to sing about, you remember in ‘Pinafore’? I don’t care who acts as the big fish so long as I’m allowed to be the shooting stick that gallops through the water and rams things in its way. You want to give Captain Conrad a hint that I’d make the finest torpedo in the bunch.”
“I guess that’s right, Monkey,” laughed Don Miller, who thought the new recruit as comical a specimen as he had ever met, and was never tired of being amused by his remarks and antics. “If they chucked you into a torpedo tube and shot you out headed for a hostile ship there’d sure be something doing right away. You’d beat any old torpedo that ever wiggled its way under water. But we can’t spare you, Monkey. We need you to keep the blues away, don’t we, fellows?”
“So say we all of us!” declared Sam Winter. “But, Hugh, you haven’t told us if we’re going to have any part in the torpedo-launching practice?”
“Nothing to count for much, I’m sorry to say,” replied the leader. “The boats are sent out to recover the torpedo that has been shot and some of us may be allowed to go along. Our time comes on the third day!”
“That sounds more like it, Chief!” exclaimed Billy gleefully. “Please let us know what the program calls for then.”
“You know,” said Hugh, “that the Coast Artillery have their summer maneuvers about this time, and it happens that some of the boys are occupying a certain fort not more than fifty miles away from here, practicing firing at a target away out on the water with some of the big coast defense disappearing guns of a modern make.”
“Oh! I begin to smell a rat!” Blake Merton exclaimed, his face lighting up with sudden enthusiasm and hope.
“Well, it has been arranged as a part of the practice for both arms of the Government service that the Naval Reservists try to take the fort by surprise. Of course the defenders will be on the watch every minute, and it is a part of the game that if those aboard the Vixen manage to get within a certain distance unobserved, after making a landing under cover of darkness, they will be credited with a victory; while the Coast Battery must be given a black mark. Well, that’s where the commander gave me to understand the scouts might be used to good advantage!”
“Go on and tell us some more, Chief! You’ve got the whole bunch worked up to fever pitch right now!” urged Billy.
“Are we to be detailed to take the fort by creeping up in the dark?” questioned Walter Osborne, plainly very much excited at the idea of such a thrilling episode. If successful, it would go down in history as a gallant deed, and perhaps engrave their names on the scroll of fame alongside that of Paul Revere, he thought.