ace of Jimmie McGraw grinning above him.

"What's the use?" he demanded, sleepily and impatiently. "It will be
only another roasting day on a hot deck on an ocean fit to stew fish in.
What's the use of getting up? I'm going to sleep again."

Frank's intentions were all right, but he did not go to sleep again. As
he turned over and closed his eyes, Jimmie seized him deftly by the
shoulders and dumped him out on the scarlet rug which covered the floor
of the stateroom.

Frank was seventeen and Jimmie was younger, and so there was a mixture
of legs and arms and vocabulary for a moment, at the end of which Jimmie
broke away and made for the door, which he had thoughtfully left open as
a means of retreat.

Left thus alone on the tumbled blankets of the bunk from which he had
been hustled, Frank rubbed his eyes, threw a pillow at his tormentor,
and began making his way toward his cozy nest, much to Jimmie's disgust.

"Aw, come on!" the boy urged, still standing in a safe place by the
doorway. "It's hot enough to melt brass in here, an' the siren's been
shoutin' for half an hour! That means land--the Philippines! Perhaps you
think you're lookin' for Battery Park, in little old New York! Get up
an' look out of the port, over the rollin' sea, to the land of the
little brown men!"

Looking through the doorway, over the boy's shoulders, Frank smiled
serenely at what he saw and sat waiting for something to happen. Then
Jimmie was propelled headlong into the room, where he landed squarely on
top of the drowsy boy he had dragged out of bed. There was another
scramble for points, and then two boys of about seventeen showed their
faces in the doorway, laughing at the mix-up on the floor.

The transport's siren broke out again in its long, shrill greeting of
the land which lay above the rim of the sea, and Frank, catapulting
Jimmie against the wall at the back of the bunk, hastened to the open
port and looked out.

The boys who had entered the cabin so unceremoniously were Ned Nestor
and Jack Bosworth, who were traveling with Frank and Jimmie to the
Philippines, the party being under the direction of Major John Ross, of
the United States Secret Service.

They had left Panama about the middle of April, and it was now not far
from the first of June, the transport having been delayed for a week at
Honolulu, where she had put in for supplies. The boys had enjoyed the
trip hugely, but were, nevertheless, not displeased at the sight