as Mr. Renner, but not so
young he didn't know enough not to bother the ship's boson when he's
gettin' results. And I snakes the hose off that scrap-heap, and before
he's back on the quarter I had it bustin' with navy-yard water-pressure,
and you betcher he sees it over the side, but he don't look too hard at
it. No, sir, he don't,' goes on the boson. 'And now take a word from
me--and it ain't out of any drill-book your division officer 'll read
to you. Let me have that endorsement gadjet and I'll lash it to the
fluke of one of our mudhooks next time we come to anchor, and after it's
laid a while on the bottom of Singapore harbor, or wherever it is we
next let go, under twenty, thirty, or forty fathom of water, whatever it
is, I'll let you see what it looks like.'

"'No, no, Kiley, don't you do it,' says the gunner. 'Don't you do it.
Some crazy Parsee diver might spot it and go down and bring it up; and
besides, you oughtn't let it get wet--it'd spoil all that nice
typewriting. Give it up to me and I'll take it up on the after-bridge,
and if it's too stiff for wadding, I'll tie it across the muzzle of the
first six-pounder we salute the port with, and let you see how it looks
then.'

"'What you two pirates need,' says the admiral's yeoman, 'is to learn a
little respect for the shore-going departments where your orders are
made out,' and goes back to his office and takes that hose-pipe
communication and reads through the sixty-seven endorsements again, and
then he carefully typewrites on a new leaf:

"'_Endorsement No_. 68
U.S.S. _Texarkhoma_,
Hong-kong, China,
Date So and so.

"'Respectfully returned, with the information that the need of the
section of hose-pipe no longer exists, for the reason that we
filled the _Savannah's_ tanks with it seven years ago.

"'Very respectfully,

"'Your obedient servant,'

"and signs his own name and rating, Percy Algernon Willoughby--call him
that--Chief Yeoman, U.S. Navy, and glues that on behind the other
sixty-seven endorsements and gloats over it, and for a few minutes feels
like a bureau chief himself. Then for another minute or two he thought
of mailing it to them. And he could see them reading that in Washington!
There would be an endorsement to go ringing down the departmental
ancestral halls! And as for the other yeomen, his colleagues in the
service, for generations his name would resound among 'em. But he
decided that t