“‘Aye, aye, sir,’ says the trusty yeoman, and takes it off to his office and looks it over.  A wonderful thing it was by now, with its sixty-seven endorsements winged out on the back of it.  Just to read them took the Admiral’s yeoman an hour, and he wasn’t too slow a reader, either.  Well, he spreads it out and sizes it up.  And sucks three pipefuls, and takes a cruise down the passageway and has a chat with his old-time shipmates, the boson and the gunner.  The boson was Mr. Kiley, the same old boson of the Savannah, been with the Old Man when he was a middy in sailing-ship days—­couldn’t lose each other.  A lot of things about the new Navy the boson and the gunner couldn’t savvy, and when they got talking things over together they left their blue-book etiquette in their lockers.  The admiral’s yeoman tells ’em what the Old Man has caught in his mail, and then he asks the boson, ’Did you try to use that hose at all that day?’

“Try to?  No, but I did.  D’ y’ s’pose I was goin’ to lose out on a little thing like that ’cause of regulations?  And ’specially after the officer of the deck goes inside the bulkhead to give me a chance?’

“‘He didn’t go inside to give you any chance,’ says the admiral’s yeoman.  ‘That was to write a message to the skipper.’

“’ Sho-oo boy—­bubbles!  He was young enough, was Mr. Renner, but not so young he didn’t know enough not to bother the ship’s boson when he’s gettin’ results.  And I snakes the hose off that scrap-heap, and before he’s back on the quarter I had it bustin’ with navy-yard water-pressure, and you betcher he sees it over the side, but he don’t look too hard at it.  No, sir, he don’t,’ goes on the boson.  ’And now take a word from me—­and it ain’t out of any drill-book your division officer ’ll read to you.  Let me have that endorsement gadjet and I’ll lash it to the fluke of one of our mudhooks next time we come to anchor, and after it’s laid a while on the bottom of Singapore harbor, or wherever it is we next let go, under twenty, thirty, or forty fathom of water, whatever it is, I’ll let you see what it looks like.’

“‘No, no, Kiley, don’t you do it,’ says the gunner.  ’Don’t you do it.  Some crazy Parsee diver might spot it and go down and bring it up; and besides, you oughtn’t let it get wet—­it’d spoil all that nice typewriting.  Give it up to me and I’ll take it up on the after-bridge, and if it’s too stiff for wadding, I’ll tie it across the muzzle of the first six-pounder we salute the port with, and let you see how it looks then.’

“‘What you two pirates need,’ says the admiral’s yeoman, ’is to learn a little respect for the shore-going departments where your orders are made out,’ and goes back to his office and takes that hose-pipe communication and reads through the sixty-seven endorsements again, and then he carefully typewrites on a new leaf: 

“’Endorsement No. 68 U.S.S. Texarkhoma, Hong-kong, China, Date So and so.

     “’Respectfully returned, with the information that the need of the
     section of hose-pipe no longer exists, for the reason that we
     filled the Savannah’s tanks with it seven years ago.