o youngish men were standing. The face of
one of them looked familiar.

"How do you do, Captain?" nodded that one. "You don't recall me, I
guess. I saw you, yesterday, only for a moment at the rail of the
gunboat. My name is Hennessy, one of the newspaper men who visited
your wonderful craft yesterday."

"I am glad to meet you again," Jack replied, "and sorry that we couldn't
show you more."

"This is my friend, Mr. Graham," continued the newspaper man. "Graham
is the Washington correspondent for my paper, so of course he has heard
of your boats before."

"If you had been aboard," smiled Jack, "you might have seen something in
the way of a little news happening."

"What was that?"

"Why, we found a new Japanese steward, whom we had engaged, absorbed in
his study of some of our mechanisms. So we had to induce him to quit
our service and go back to shore again."

"A spy, eh?" smiled Graham. "There are many of them about. Wherever
there is anything connected with our national defense the spies of
Europe are sure to flock, until they have learned all they want to know.
And I suspect that they rarely fail, in the end. You were fortunate
to catch your Japanese at his tricks at so early a stage in the game."

"I wish all these spies could be herded together and hanged!" muttered
Captain Jack, in honest indignation.

"Do you?" asked Graham, looking at the boy, with a queer smile.

"Can you doubt it?" challenged Jack.

Graham was silent for a few moments, puffing at his cigar. Then,
speaking very slowly, he went on:

"Captain Benson, I wonder if you would be much offended if I offered you
some information that might prove of much value to you?"

"What makes you think, sir, I'm such a fool as that?" asked Jack, gazing
at the Washington correspondent in great astonishment.

"One sometimes has to use a good deal of caution, even in offering
well-intended information," replied the Washington correspondent,
"Benson, I've been stationed at the national capital for eight years,
now. I meet all kinds of people, and I see a good many others whom I
don't get to know, and don't want to know, and yet I become familiar
with their histories."

"I don't doubt that, sir," Jack assented. "The life of a Washington
correspondent must be full of interesting things and experiences."

"Washington itself is full of foreign spies," pursued Graham, studying
the ash on the end of his cigar. "After a newspaper man has bee