erybody's benefit. He was particularly strong on folk-lore, and
could dig up a few fat volumes any time on the folk-lore of any nation
we had ever heard of. He liked to lie flat on the coffer-dam to read,
with a row of tin letter-files under his head for a rest, the electric
bulb and its shade so adjusted as to throw all the light on the page of
his book. He had done a lot of reading and writing in his time, and his
eyes were getting a little watery. If he had had his way he would have
been an author. In the hours of many a night-watch he had tried his hand
at little sketches; but somehow or other he could not catch on, he said.
Perhaps if he had tried to write as he talked, tell the things just as
they popped into his mind, he would have been luckier; but that wasn't
literature, he said, and so most of his written things read like one of
Daniel Webster's speeches. We could listen to him talking all night
long; but when he brought out one of his manuscripts, it was good-night
and hammocks for all hands.

Taps had gone this night, and so it should have been lights out and
everybody below turned in; but this, as I said, was the admiral's
office, and only separated from the admiral's cabin by a bulkhead; and
even the busiest of Jimmy-Legs don't come prowling into the cabin
country of a flagship after taps. And the flag lieutenant and the flag
secretary were pretty savvy officers who never by any accident came
bumping in on Dalton's parties at the wrong time.

There came a knock at the door, and following the knock came the
captain's yeoman. Nothing wrong with the captain's yeoman, except that
his bow name was Reginald and he was rather fat for a sailor. Also he
had ambitions, which was all right too, only we knew that privately he
looked on the rest of us as a lot of loafers who would never rise to our
opportunities. He'd been wearing his first-class rating badge a month
now, and before his enlistment was out he intended to be a chief petty
officer; which was why he was working after-hours. But the captain's
yeoman, this particular captain's yeoman, has nothing to do with the
story, except that his errand set Dalton off on a new tack.

The captain's yeoman had come for a little advice. He always was after
advice--or information. A department document had come into the office
that day with seventeen endorsements on it, and it had him bluffed. We
all laughed at the face he drew. "But," said Dalton, turning on us, "so
would