hero.

On board the receiving-ship he was given an outfit of clothes and
bedding; but before he had learned more than the correct way to lash
his hammock and tie his silk neckerchief he was detailed for sea duty,
and with a draft of men went to Key West in a navy-yard tug; for war
was on, and the fleet blockading Havana needed men.

At Key West he was appointed fireman on a torpedo-boat, where his
work--which he soon learned--was to keep up steam in a tubular boiler.
But he learned nothing of the rest of the boat, her business, or the
reason of her construction. Seasickness prevented any assertion of
curiosity at first, and later the febrile symptoms which the examining
surgeon had noted developed in him until he could think of nothing
else. There being no doctor aboard to diagnose his case, he was jeered
by his fellows, and kept at work until he dropped; then he took to his
hammock. Shooting pains darted through him, centering in his head,
while his throat was dry and his thirst tormenting.

Life on a torpedo-boat engaged in despatch duty and rushing through a
Gulf Stream sea at thirty knots is torture to a healthy, nervous
system. It sent this sick man into speedy delirium. He could eat very
little, but he drank all the water that was given him. Moaning and
muttering, tossing about in his hammock, never asleep, but sometimes
unconscious, at other times raving, and occasionally lucid, he
presented a problem which demanded solution. His emaciated face,
flushed at first, had taken on a peculiar bronzed appearance, and there
were some who declared that it was Yellow Jack. But nothing could be
done until they reached the fleet and could interview a cruiser with a
surgeon.

The sick man solved the problem. He scrambled out of his hammock at
daylight in the morning and dressed himself in his blue uniform,
carefully tying his black neckerchief in the regulation knot. Then,
muttering the while, he gained the deck.

The boat was charging along at full speed, throwing aside a bow wave
nearly as high as herself. Three miles astern, just discernible in the
half-light, was a pursuing ram-bowed gunboat, spitting shot and shell;
and forward near the conning-tower were two blue-coated, brass-buttoned
officers, watching the pursuer through binoculars.

The crazed brain of the sick man took cognizance of nothing but the
blue coats and brass buttons. He did not look for locust clubs and
silver shields. These were policemen--his de