t care so much about that," contended Eph, warmly. "But it does
jar on me, sir, to have you take such a view of my friends. You don't
know them; you don't understand them as Mr. Farnum and Mr. Pollard do."

"Perhaps you wouldn't blame me as much for my opinions," replied Mr.
Mayhew, "if you could look at the matter from my viewpoint, Mr. Somers.
I am in charge of this cruise, which is one of instruction to naval
cadets, and I am in a very large measure responsible for the conduct
and good behavior of young men who have been selected as instructors
to the cadets. If you were in my place, Mr. Somers, would you be
patient over young men who, when they get ashore, get into one unseemly
scrape after another? Or would you wonder, as I do, whether it will
not be best for me to end this practice cruise and sail back to Annapolis,
there to make my report in the matter?"

"For heaven's sake don't do that," begged Eph Somers, hoarsely. "At
least, not until you have talked with Mr. Benson and Mr. Hastings.
You'll wait until morning, sir?"

"I'm afraid I shall have to, if I want to talk with your friends,"
replied the lieutenant commander, smiling coldly. "And now, Mr. Somers,
you and I had better leave here. The doctor and his nurse will want the
room cleared in order to look after their patients. I hope your friends
will be all right in the morning," added the naval officer, as the
pair gained the deck.

"Now, see here, sir," began Eph, earnestly, all over again. "I hope
you'll soon begin to understand that, whatever has happened, there are
no two straighter boys alive than Jack Benson and Hal Hastings."

"I trust you're right," replied Mr. Mayhew, less coldly. "Yet, what
can you expect me to think, now that Benson has been in such scrapes
three different times? And, in this last instance, he drags even the
quiet Mr. Hastings into the affair with him."

"I see that I'll have to wait, sir," sighed Eph, resignedly.

"Yes; it will be better in every way to wait," agreed the lieutenant
commander. "It is plain justice, at the least, to wait and give the
young men a chance to offer any defense that they can."

"Now, of course, from his way of looking at it, I can't blame him so
very much," admitted Eph Somers, as he leaned over the rail, watching
Mr. Mayhew going back through the darkness. "But Jack--great old
Jack!--having any liking at all for mixing up in saloons and such
places on shore! Ha, ha! Ho, ho!"

Wi