marine!" he shouted. "Oi, oi!"

"Hold on!" drawled Frenchy. "Nothing like it. There goes another. They
are at practice. The target's in range."

The four Seacove boys had seen something of gun practice on the
destroyer _Colodia_; but the secondary batteries of the smaller vessel
made no such racket as did the big guns of the _Kennebunk_.

The discharge of a turret gun aboard the superdreadnaught was an
important matter, and a costly one as well. The gun crews practiced all
the movements save the actual discharge of the guns every day. To burn
up several hundred pounds of powder and fire away the expensive
projectiles in rehearsal was a serious matter.

The gun crew that had made a clean hit on the submarine with its first
shell, had already shown what value practice shooting was. The high
standard of the gunnery in our Navy pays for all it costs.

These gunners had practiced at the schools and on other vessels before
being assigned to the superdreadnaught. No matter how much good powder
and shot had already been flung away in training that particular crew of
Turret Number Two, the sinking of the German submarine had paid for it
all.

Whistler and Torry did not, of course, actually fire the gun. The gun
captain did that. But the exact team work of the crew had much to do
with the score of the gun in target practice; and the two friends did
their work commendably.

There was a sharp lookout kept during target practice for other
submarines. The disappearance of the first periscope which had been
hailed from the masthead was the cause of much discussion. It was
generally believed that this first submarine had wisely made off when
its sister ship was so promptly sunk by the battleship.

Frenchy and Ikey almost burst from their desire to tell what they knew
about the mystery. But they did not dare.

It had been a lesson which the two mischief-loving boys would not easily
forget. While the whole ship's company was watching the imitation
periscope Frenchy and Ikey had slipped overboard through the ash-chute,
the real submarine might have torpedoed the _Kennebunk_.

The score of each gun crew was transmitted to Washington by favor of
the auxiliary steamer which towed the target, and she disappeared
coastward just at sunset. The superdreadnaught was under orders to
proceed on a southerly course, and parallel with the coast, for some
considerable distance. She was doing outside patrol duty on this, her
first real cruis