cheering the members of the wrecked tender's crew.

"Welcome home again, Mr. MacMasters!" was the greeting of the officer of
the watch as the ensign led his party up the ladder.

"And mighty glad we are to get here," declared Ensign MacMasters.

The boys and men scrambled aboard and bade good-bye cheerfully though
gratefully to the cutter's crew. The latter craft turned on her heel and
shot away toward the distant coast.

Already the huge battleship was under way again. She was running with
few lights. And where she was running was a question that even the
members of the crew the boys put the question to could not answer.

It was generally known that Captain Trevor had received orders by
wireless that had changed the plan of the cruise entirely. Instead of
running back up the Atlantic coast, they had put to sea.

It was the next day before the _Kennebunk's_ company in general knew
that she was bound first for the Azores. That meant a European cruise,
without a doubt. All the "old timers" were agreed upon that.

It was finally rumored about the ship that the report of the
_Kennebunk's_ cruise to the southward, and the score of her gun crews at
target practice, together with her good luck in sinking a German
submarine with the first shot ever fired from her guns, had so impressed
the Department that she was to join the European squadron under Admiral
Sims at once.

"There's a chance for you boys to see some real action," declared one of
the masters-at-arms. "If the Hun comes out of Kiel, we'll be there to
say 'How-do!' to him."

The boys who had been absent from the battleship for so long found,
however, that the spiritual atmosphere of the crew was not much changed.
There were still a lot of "croakers" as Torry called them.

"They are ghost-ridden, as sure as you're born, Whistler," Torry
declared. "Somebody has heard that clock ticking again. It doesn't seem
to be at work all the time. Just now and then. 'The death watch' they
call it."

"Stop it!" ordered Whistler. "The less said the soonest mended about
such things aboard ship. We boys don't believe such foolishness, do we?"

"How about the old witch's prophecy?" asked Torry wickedly. "Suppose we
should tell these garbies about them?"

"Don't you dare!" cried Whistler.

That very morning, after sick call, he was ordered to appear before
Captain Trevor in the commander's office, and there found assembled
Ensign MacMasters and several of the other office