Just then taps sounded.  Out went the electric light, turned off at the master switch.

Dave Darrin dived under the bed clothes on his own cot and tried to still the beating of his own heart.

Two minutes later a brisk step sounded on the corridor of the “deck.”

Door after door was opened and closed.  Then the door to Dave’s room swung open, and a discipline officer and a midshipman looked into the room.

“All in?” the midshipman called.

A light snore from Dave Darrin’s throat answered.  In his left hand the discipline officer carried an electric pocket light.  A pressure of a button would supply a beam of electric light that would explore the bed of either midshipman supposed to be in this room.

But the officer saw Midshipman Darrin plainly enough, thanks to beams of light from the corridor.  Over in the opposite alcove the discipline officer made out, more vaguely, the lay figure and the doughface intended to represent Midshipman Dan Dalzell.

“Both in.  Darrin and Dalzell never give us any trouble, at any rate,” thought the discipline officer to himself, then closed the door, and his footsteps sounded further down the corridor.

“Oh, Danny boy, I wish I had you here right at this minute!” muttered Dave Darrin vengefully.  “Maybe I wouldn’t whang your head off for the fright that you’ve given me!  I’ll wager half of my hairs have turned gray in the last minute!”

However, Midshipman Dan Dalzell was not there, as Darrin knew to his own consternation.  Dave did not go to sleep.  Well enough he knew that he was on duty indefinitely through the hours until Dan should return.  If Midshipman Darrin fell into a doze this night he would be as bad as any sentry falling asleep on any other post.

So Darrin lay there and fidgeted.  Twenty times he tried to solve, in his own mind, the riddle of why Dalzell should be away, and where he was.  But it was a hopeless puzzle.

“Of course, Danny didn’t hint that he was going to French it tonight,” thought Dave bitterly.  “Good reason why, too!  He knew that, if I got wind of his intention, I’d thrash him sooner than let him take such a chance.  Oh, Dan!  Dan, you idiot!  To take such a fool chance in your last year here, when detection probably means your being dropped from brigade, and your career ended!”

For Dave Darrin knew the way of discipline officers too well to imagine that that one brief inspection of the room was positively all the look-in that would be offered that night.  Some discipline officers have a way of looking in often during the night.  Being themselves graduates of the Naval Academy, officers are sure to know that the inspection immediately after taps does not always suffice.  Midshipmen have been known to be in bed at taps, and visiting in quarters of other midshipmen ten minutes later.  True, the electric light in rooms is turned off at taps—–­but midshipmen have been known to keep candles hidden, and to be experts in clouding doors and windows so that no ray of light gets through into a corridor after taps.