"Oh, you would, would you? And take from me the alternate, too! Well, you're a cur, Bill Denman. Go ahead and report."

They were now on a block bounded by vacant lots, and no one was within sight. Denman stopped, threw off his coat, and said:

"No, I'll not report your opinion, but--you square yourself, Jack Forsythe, and I'll show you the kind of cur I am."

Forsythe turned, saw the anger in Denman's eyes, and promptly shed his coat.

It was a short fight, of one round only. Each fought courageously, and with such fistic skill as schoolboys acquire, and each was equal to the other in strength; but one possessed about an inch longer reach than the other, which decided the battle.

Denman, with nose bleeding and both eyes closing, went down at last, and could not arise, nor even see the necessity of rising. But soon his brain cleared, and he staggered to his feet, his head throbbing viciously and his face and clothing smeared with blood from his nose, to see between puffed eyelids the erect figure of Forsythe swaggering around a distant corner. He stanched the blood with his handkerchief, but as there was not a brook, a ditch, or a puddle in the neighborhood, he could only go home as he was, trusting that he would meet no one.

"Licked!" he muttered. "For the first time in my life, too! What'll the old gentleman and mother say?"

What the father and mother might say, or what they did say, has no part in this story; but what another person said may have a place and value, and will be given here. This person was the only one he met before reaching home--a very small person, about thirteen years old, with big gray eyes and long dark ringlets, who ran across the street to look at him.

"Why, Billie Denman!" she cried, shocked and anxious. "What has happened to you? Run over?"

"No, Florrie," he answered, painfully. "I've been licked. I had a fight."

"But don't you know it's wrong to fight, Billie?"

"Maybe," answered Denman, trying to get more blood from his face to the already saturated handkerchief. "But we all do wrong--sometimes."

The child planted herself directly before him, and looked chidingly into his discolored and disfigured face.

"Billie Denman," she said, shaking a small finger at him, "of course I'm sorry, but, if you have been fighting when you know it is wrong, why--why, it served you right."

Had he not been aching in every joint, his nose, his lips, and his eyes, this unjust speech might have amused him. As it was he answered testily:

"Florence Fleming, you're only a kid yet, though the best one I know; and if I should tell you the name I was called and which brought on the fight, you would not understand. But you'll grow up some day, and then you will understand. Now, remember this fight, and when some woman, or possibly some man, calls you a--a cat, you'll feel like fighting, too."

"But I wouldn't mind," she answered, firm in her position. "Papa called me a kitten to-day, and I didn't get mad."

"Well, Florrie," he said, wearily, "I won't try to explain. I'm going away before long, and perhaps I won't come back again. But if I do, there'll be another fight."

"Going away, Billie!" she cried in alarm. "Where to?"

"To Annapolis. I may stay, or I may come back. I don't know."

"And you are going away, and you don't know that you'll come back! Oh, Billie, I'm sorry. I'm sorry you got licked, too. Who did it? I hate him. Who licked you, Billie?"

"Never mind, Florrie. He'll tell the news, and you'll soon know who he is."

He walked on, but the child headed him and faced him. There were tears in the gray eyes.

"And you're going away, Billie!" she exclaimed again. "When are you going?"

"I don't know," he answered. "Whenever I am sent for. If I don't see you again, good-by, Florrie girl." He stooped to kiss her, but straightened up, remembering the condition of his face.

"But I will see you again," she declared. "I will, I will. I'll come to your house. And, Billie--I'm sorry I scolded you, really I am."

He smiled ruefully. "Never mind that, Florrie; you always scolded me, you know, and I'm used to it."

"But only when you did wrong, Billie," she answered, gravely, "and somehow I feel that this time you have not done wrong. But I won't scold the next time you _really_ do wrong. I promise."

"Oh, yes, you will, little girl. It's the privilege and prerogative of your sex."

He patted her on the head and went on, leaving her staring, open-eyed and tearful. She was the child of a neighbor; he had mended her dolls, soothed her griefs, and protected her since infancy, but she was only as a small sister to him.

While waiting for orders to Annapolis, he saw her many times, but she did not change to him. She changed, however; she had learned the name of his assailant, and through her expressed hatred for him, and through her sympathy for Billie as the disfigurements left his face, she passed the border between childhood and womanhood.

When orders came, he stopped at her home, kissed her good-by, and went to Annapolis, leaving her sad-eyed and with quivering lips.

And he did not come back.

CHAPTER I

She was the largest, fastest, and latest thing in seagoing destroyers, and though the specifications called for but thirty-six knots' speed, she had made thirty-eight on her trial trip, and later, under careful nursing by her engineers, she had increased this to forty knots an hour--five knots faster than any craft afloat--and, with a clean bottom, this speed could be depended upon at any time it was needed.

She derived this speed from six water-tube boilers, feeding at a pressure of three hundred pounds live steam to five turbine engines working three screws, one high-pressure turbine on the center shaft, and four low-pressure on the wing shafts. Besides these she possessed two "astern" turbines and two cruising turbines--all four on the wing shafts.

She made steam with oil fuel, there being no coal on board except for heating and cooking, and could carry a hundred and thirty tons of it, which gave her a cruising radius of about two thousand miles; also, with "peace tanks" filled, she could steam three thousand miles without replenishing. This would carry her across the Atlantic at thirteen knots' speed, but if she was in a hurry, using all turbines, she would exhaust her oil in two days.

When in a hurry, she was a spectacle to remember. Built on conventional lines, she showed at a mile's distance nothing but a high bow and four short funnels over a mighty bow wave that hid the rest of her long, dark-hued hull, and a black, horizontal cloud of smoke that stretched astern half a mile before the wind could catch and rend it.

She carried four twenty-one-inch torpedo tubes and a battery of six twelve-pounder, rapid-fire guns; also, she carried two large searchlights and a wireless equipment of seventy miles reach, the aerials of which stretched from the truck of her short signal mast aft to a short pole at the taffrail.

Packed with machinery, she was a "hot box," even when at rest, and when in action a veritable bake oven. She had hygienic air space below decks for about a dozen men, and this number could handle her; but she carried berths and accommodations for sixty.

Her crew was not on board, however. Newly scraped and painted in the dry dock, she had been hauled out, stored, and fueled by a navy-yard gang, and now lay at the dock, ready for sea--ready for her draft of men in the morning, and with no one on board for the night but the executive officer, who, with something on his mind, had elected to remain, while the captain and other commissioned officers went ashore for the night.

Four years at the Naval Academy, a two years' sea cruise, and a year of actual service had made many changes in Denman. He was now twenty-five, an ensign, but, because of his position as executive, bearing the complimentary title of lieutenant.

He was a little taller and much straighter and squarer of shoulder than when he had gone to the academy. He had grown a trim mustache, and the sun and winds of many seas had tanned his face to the color of his eyes; which were of a clear brown, and only in repose did they now show the old-time preponderance of white beneath the brown.

In action these eyes looked out through two slits formed by nearly parallel eyelids, and with the tightly closed lips and high arching eyebrows--sure sign of the highest and best form of physical and moral courage--they gave his face a sort of "take care" look, which most men heeded.

Some women would have thought him handsome, some would not; it all depended upon the impression they made on him, and the consequent look in his eyes.

At Annapolis he had done well; he was the most popular man of his class, had won honors from his studies and fist fights from his fellows, while at sea he had shown a reckless disregard for his life, in such matters as bursting flues, men overboard, and other casualties of seafaring, that brought him many type-written letters from Washington, a few numbers of advancement, and the respect and admiration of all that knew or had heard of him.

His courage, like Mrs. Caesar's morals, was above suspicion. Yet there was one man in the world who was firmly convinced that Lieutenant Denman had a yellow streak in him, and that man was Denman himself.

He had never been home since his departure for Annapolis. He had promised a small girl that if he came back there would be another fight, in which, as he mentally vowed, he would redeem himself. In this he had been sincere, but as the months at the academy went on, with the unsettled fight still in the future, his keen resentment died away, leaving in its place a sense of humiliation and chagrin.

He still meant to go back, however, and would have done so when vacation came; but a classmate invited him to his home, and there he went, glad of the reprieve from an embarrassing, and, as it seemed to him now, an undignified conflict with a civilian. But the surrender brought its sting, and his self-respect lessened.

At the next vacation he surrendered again, and the sting began eating into his soul. He thought of the overdue redemption he had promised himself at all times and upon all occasions, but oftenest just before going to sleep, when the mental picture of Jack Forsythe swaggering around the corner, while _he_ lay conquered and helpless on the ground, would accompany him through his dreams, and be with him when he wakened in the morning.