e civilian get
up at once. Instead, he bawled lustily for help.

Joyce made a move to spring forward, but Dave caught him by the arm.

"Don't get forward, Joyce. If you do, you'll probably recognize the
midshipman. Then you'll have to report his name."

Answering the calls for help five other young men ran out of the same
house. The midshipman disdained to flee and stood his ground.

"We'll teach you!" snarled one of the newly arrived civilians, raising
his cane as though to bring it down on the midshipman's shoulders.

The midshipman, like a flash, wrenched the cane from the other's
hands and began to lay it lustily about him. The whole crowd,
therefore, including the young man who had first been knocked down,
joined in the attack.

"That's too much like cowardice, and we're bound to go to the rescue of a
comrade!" muttered Dave Darrin, his eyes blazing. "Come on, fellows--and
be sure not to recognize that comrade!"

In a moment the fight was somewhat more equal. Darrin, Dalzell and Joyce
were all accomplished and disciplined boxers. They closed with the crowd
around the midshipman.

Crack! thump! bump! Midshipman blows landed heavily and rapidly. The
civilians were soon worsted and scattered.

"Whoever you are, comrade," muttered Dave in a low tone, wheeling the
unknown midshipman around, "don't look our way and don't give us any
chance to recognize you. Scoot!"

"Po-o-o-lice!" lustily yelled one of the crowd of defeated civilians.

CHAPTER XIII

HEPSON IS "SOME WILD"

"Police!" bawled others of the civilians, taking up the hue and cry.

That spelled serious trouble if Dave and his friends should tarry there.
Midshipmen are in no sense free from arrest by the civil authorities, and
it is likely to fare hard with Uncle Sam's young sailors if they are
taken in by the civil authorities.

"Come along," muttered Darrin, leading the way. He did not run, but he
certainly walked fast, and in a direction away from Main Street. His two
companions followed him. The "unknown midshipman," taking Darrin's shrewd
hint, had already made himself invisible.

After the prompt drubbing they had received, not one of the young
civilians felt any desire to follow these husky midshipmen.

The police in Annapolis are few in number, and so do not always hear a
street summons. In this instance Dave and his friends turned a corner and
were soon away from the scene of the late affair.

"Now, I hope you've had all the