“Doctor, am I—­am I—­”

“Is there any little confession you would like to make?  And wrong you may have done that you’d like to set straight, my man?  If so, we can take down a statement, you know.”

Truax groaned, but there was a look of great fright in his eyes.

“Doc, I—­I wonder—­if—­”

“Well, Truax?”

“Are we at anchor—­now?”

“Yes; in the little bay for the night.”

“Is—­is the ‘Farnum’ here, too?”

“Yes.”

“I—­I wonder if Jack Benson would come to see me for a little while?”

“Why, I’ll see, of course,” volunteered Doctor McCrea, rising and leaving the sick boy.

CHAPTER XXIV

CONCLUSION

Ten minutes later the naval surgeon returned with Benson.  With the latter was Hal Hastings.  Mr. Mayhew and Ensign Trahern hovered in the rear of the group.

“Here’s Mr. Benson, Truax,” announced Doctor McCrea.  “Now, my man, if there is anything of which you want to unburden your mind, go ahead and do it.  The rest of us can bear witness, and help matters straight if, in your better health, you have done anything that needs righting.”

Sam Truax feebly stretched out a hand that certainly was hot enough by this time.

“Benson,” he begged, weakly, “will you give me your hand?”

“Certainly,” nodded Jack, as he did so.

“I—­I wonder if you can ever forgive me?” moaned the ill man.

“Why, have you done anything that I don’t already know?” asked Jack.

“A lot!  Benson, I’ve been an all-around scoundrel.”

“That’s certainly surprising news,” commented the submarine boy, dryly.  “What have you been doing?”

“That assault back in Dunhaven—?”

“Was it you who knocked me out there, and sprinkled my clothes with whiskey?” demanded young Benson.

“Yes.”  In a somewhat shaking voice Truax confessed to the details of that outrageous affair.  From that he passed on to Jack’s never-to-be-forgotten trip into the suburbs of Annapolis.

“I found that mulatto in a low den,” confessed the sick man.  “I told him you carried a lot of money, and that he’d be welcome to it all if he’d decoy you somewhere, keep you all night, and then send you back, looking like a tramp, to the Naval Academy at the last moment.”

Truax also added the name by which the mulatto was known in Annapolis.

“But why have you done all this?” demanded Jack.  “What have you had against me?”

“I—­I didn’t do it on my own account,” confessed Truax.  “Did you ever hear of Tip Gaynor?”

“No—­never,” admitted Jack, after a moment’s thought.

“He’s—­he’s a salesman, or something like that, for Sidenham.”

“The Sidenham Submarine Company?” breathed Jack Benson, intensely interested.