s that came rolling in. It was being deliberately run ashore. It
struck, and its fore-mast crumpled up and fell forward, carrying its
derrick-booms with it. There was the squeal of crumpled metal plates.

"Flyin' a yeller flag just now," panted one of the two privates. "We
started poppin' hexynitrate bullets at her an' she flung a shell at us.
She's a enemy ship. But what the hell?"

Smoke spurted up from the beached ship. Her stern broke off and settled
in the deeper water out from the shore. More smoke spurted out. Her bow
split wide. There were the deep rumbles of black-powder explosions.
Sergeant Walpole and his two followers stared blankly. More explosions,
and the ship was hidden in smoke, and when it blew away her funnel was
down and half or more of her upper works was sliding into the sea, and
she had listed suddenly.

* * * * *

Sergeant Walpole gazed upward. Futilely, of course; there was nothing in
sight overhead. But these explosions did look like the hexynitrate stuff
they put in small-arm bullets nowadays. A thirty-caliber bullet had the
explosive effect of an old-style six-pound T.N.T. shell. Only,
hexynitrate goes off with a crack instead of a boom. It wasn't an
American plane opening up with a machine-gun.

Then the beached ship seemed to blow up. A mass of thick smoke covered
her from stem to stern, and bits of plating flew heavily through the
air, and there were a few lurid bursts of flame. Sergeant Walpole
suddenly remembered that there ought to be survivors, only he hadn't
seen anybody diving overboard to try to get ashore. He half-started
forward....

Then the sea-breeze blew this smoke, too, away from the wreckage. And
the tramp was gone, but there was something else left in its place--so
that Sergeant Walpole took one look, and swallowed a non-existent
something that came up instantly into his throat again, and remembered
the urgent thing he had to do.

"Pete," he said calmly, "you hunt up the Area Officer an' tell him what
you seen. Here! I'll give you a report that'll keep 'em from slammin'
you in clink for bein' drunk. Grab a monocycle somewheres. It's faster
than a car, the way you'll be travelin'. First telephone you come to
that's workin', make Central put you in the tight beam to head-quarters.
Then go on an' report, y'self. See?"

Pete started, and automatically fumbled with his limp and useless arm.
Then he carefully tucked the unmanageable hand in