"Let me try to get at your meaning, sir, if you please," begged Somers, after standing for a few seconds with clenched fists. "Do you mean that my friends have been going into tough resorts on sh.o.r.e?"

"Where else do sailors usually get drugged?" inquired Mr. Mayhew. "What kind of people usually feed sea-faring men with what are generally known as knock-out drops?"

"How should I know?" demanded Eph, solemnly.

"You see your friends, and you see their condition."

"Smell their breaths, sir. There isn't a trace of the odor of liquor."

The surgeon did so, confirming Eph's claim.

"But I remember that Mr. Benson came aboard, at Dunhaven, with a very strong odor of liquor," continued the lieutenant commander.

"That had been sprinkled on his clothes, sir," argued Somers.

"Perhaps. But then there was the Annapolis affair."

"Mr. Benson explained that to you, sir."

"It's very strange," returned the lieutenant commander, "that such things seem to happen generally to Mr. Benson when he gets on sh.o.r.e. I know I have been ash.o.r.e, in all parts of the world, without having such things happen to me."

"There is something behind this, sir, that doesn't spell bad conduct on the part of either of my friends," cried Eph, hotly. "There's some plot, some trick in the whole thing that we don't understand. And we might understand much more about it, sir, if your midshipman had arrested that pair of blackguards on the sloop, and brought them back with us."

"Had Mr. Benson and Mr. Hastings been members of the naval forces we could have done that," replied Mr. Mayhew. "Probably you don't understand, Mr.

Somers, how very careful the Navy has to be about making arrests in times of peace, when the civil authorities are all-supreme. We carried our right as far as it could possibly be stretched when we boarded and searched that sloop for you."

"I don't care so much about that," contended Eph, warmly. "But it does jar on me, sir, to have you take such a view of my friends. You don't know them; you don't understand them as Mr. Farnum and Mr. Pollard do."

"Perhaps you wouldn't blame me as much for my opinions," replied Mr.

Mayhew, "if you could look at the matter from my viewpoint, Mr. Somers. I am in charge of this cruise, which is one of instruction to naval cadets, and I am in a very large measure responsible for the conduct and good behavior of young men who have been selected as instructors to the cadets.

If you were in my place, Mr. Somers, would you be patient over young men who, when they get ash.o.r.e, get into one unseemly sc.r.a.pe after another? Or would you wonder, as I do, whether it will not be best for me to end this practice cruise and sail back to Annapolis, there to make my report in the matter?"

"For heaven's sake don't do that," begged Eph Somers, hoa.r.s.ely. "At least, not until you have talked with Mr. Benson and Mr. Hastings. You'll wait until morning, sir?"

"I'm afraid I shall have to, if I want to talk with your friends," replied the lieutenant commander, smiling coldly. "And now, Mr. Somers, you and I had better leave here. The doctor and his nurse will want the room cleared in order to look after their patients. I hope your friends will be all right in the morning," added the naval officer, as the pair gained the deck.

"Now, see here, sir," began Eph, earnestly, all over again. "I hope you'll soon begin to understand that, whatever has happened, there are no two straighter boys alive than Jack Benson and Hal Hastings."

"I trust you're right," replied Mr. Mayhew, less coldly. "Yet, what can you expect me to think, now that Benson has been in such sc.r.a.pes three different times? And, in this last instance, he drags even the quiet Mr.

Hastings into the affair with him."

"I see that I'll have to wait, sir," sighed Eph, resignedly.

"Yes; it will be better in every way to wait," agreed the lieutenant commander. "It is plain justice, at the least, to wait and give the young men a chance to offer any defense that they can."

"Now, of course, from his way of looking at it, I can't blame him so very much," admitted Eph Somers, as he leaned over the rail, watching Mr.

Mayhew going back through the darkness. "But Jack-great old Jack!-having any liking at all for mixing up in saloons and such places on sh.o.r.e! Ha, ha! Ho, ho!"

Williamson, now able to leave his motors, came on deck, asking an account of what had happened. The machinist listened in amazement, though, like Eph, he needed no proof that the boys, whatever trouble they had encountered, had met honestly and innocently.

"Of course that naval officer is right, too, from his own limited point of view," urged Williamson.

"Oh, yes, I suppose so," nodded Somers, gloomily. "I've been trying to tell myself that. But it would be fearful, wouldn't it, if the 'Farnum'

were ordered away from the fleet, and Jack disgraced, just because of things he really didn't do."

"It's a queer old world," mused the machinist, thoughtfully. "We hear a lot about the consequences of wrong things we do. But how often people seem to have to pay up for things they never did!"

"Oh, well," muttered Eph, philosophically, "let's wait until morning. A night's sleep straightens out a lot of things."

Williamson, however, having had some sleep earlier in the night, was not drowsy, now. He lighted a pipe, lingering on the platform deck. Eph, not being a user of tobacco, went below to find that Doctor McCrea, from the gunboat, was sitting in the cabin, reading a book he had chosen from the book-case.

"I've brought the young men around somewhat," reported the physician.

"I've made them throw off the drug, and now I've left some stuff with the nurse to help brace them up. They'll have sour stomachs and aching heads in the morning, though."

"But you noticed one thing, Doctor?" pressed Somers.

"What was that?"

"That there were no signs of liquor about them? Those boys never tasted a drop of the vile stuff in their lives!"

"I'm inclined to believe you," nodded the surgeon. "They have splendid, clear skins, eyes bright as diamonds, sound, st.u.r.dy heart-beats, and they're full of vitality. I've met boys from the slums, once in a while-beer-drinkers and cigarette-smokers. But such boys never show the splendid physical condition that your friends possess."

"You know, then, as well as I do, Doctor, that neither of my chums are rowdies, and that, whatever happened to them to-night, they didn't get to it through any bad habits or conduct?"

"I'm much inclined to agree with you, Mr. Somers."

"I hope, then, you'll succeed in impressing all that on Lieutenant Commander Mayhew in the morning."

With that the submarine boy pa.s.sed on to the starboard stateroom. He would have given much to have stepped into the room opposite, but felt, from the doctor's manner, that the latter did not wish his patients disturbed.

Eph slept little that night. Though Jack and Hal fared better in that single respect, Somers looked far the best of the three in the morning.

Jack and Hal came out with bandages about their heads, which buzzed and ached.

The two, however, told their story to Somers and Williamson as soon as possible.

"Just as I supposed," nodded Eph, vigorously.

"Why, how did you guess it all?" asked Benson, in astonishment.

"I mean, I knew you hadn't been in any low sailor resorts."

"Who said we had?" demanded Jack, flaring in spite of his dizziness.

"Some of the Navy folks didn't know but you had," replied Eph, then bit his tongue for having let that much out of the bag.

Doctor McCrea came aboard early. He looked the boys over.