“No, we’ll never again remember so much about rules and regulations as we do then.  No catching us in anything irregular; no sir.  And so with Mr. Renner, the new-made ensign.  He brings out the blue-book and shows the boson.  ‘Look,’ he says.  ’Paragraph fourteen thousand four hundred and forty-two,’ or whatever it was.  ‘Hose,’ he goes on to read, ’is expendible property, to be surveyed and wiped off the property-books by condemning to the scrap-heap and sold in the open market to the highest bidder.  There,’ says our new-made ensign to our boson, ’what it says.  And according to that, the admiral himself couldn’t take that hose from that scrap-heap without authority.  No, not if it was no more than an old shoe-lace, he couldn’t.’

“’But that won’t fill our water-tanks, and I’d like to use that hose, sir,’ says the boson.

“‘M-m!’ says Mr. Renner.  ‘M-m! now if Mr. Shinn was aboard—­’ Mr. Shinn was our executive.  ’But Mr. Shinn is ashore.  However, I’ll tell you what; I will speak to the captain about it,’ and he steps inside the bulkhead and writes a message to the skipper.

[Illustration:  He brings out the blue-book and shows the boson]

“Now our skipper was a good old soul, and thought a lot of his boson, and wanted to do everything he could to help him out, but also, like a good many other good old captains in the service, he’d forgotten a lot of this stuff about regulations.  Ordinarily—­say, if ’twas anything to be done out to sea—­he’d have said, ’Why, of course, Kiley; go ahead and do it,’ But this was in a navy yard, ashore, and when he gets a note with something about regulations in it, he begins to haul to.

“And many a good sea-going old skipper is bluffed the same way about anything that spells regulations, you betcher.  So now our good old skipper begins to tumble his hair and pull his moustache and look again at Mr. Renner’s note.  At last he tells the messenger to say to Mr. Renner that he will look into it and let him know.

“Another hour of studying, and the captain calls in his new yeoman that—­”

“Was that you, Dallie?”

“Never mind—­and cut out the personal questions, Reggie son.  And remember you don’t rate any more questions than anybody else here.  I’m telling you the story, and I’ll tell all that’s good for you and just the way it happened.

“Now if this yeoman had been better acquainted with his skipper, he’d have been of some use just then.  He might have suggested, in a way any of us can at times without interfering, or jarring an officer, even as topsided as a captain, how the thing could be fixed up without any correspondence game.  But this new yeoman hadn’t yet learned what his captain’s steaming radius was.  And the captain, having regulations on his brain and not getting the hint at the psychological time, he dictates a regulation communication to the commandant of the yard, which the new yeoman frames up just as he was told.  It was a letter inquiring of the commandant the status of the condemned hose in question, and could it not be loaned for temporary use, to be returned in due season—­say, next day? and so forth.