“May I read this to you, Mr. Secretary?” begged Jack Benson.

“Do so, Lieutenant.”

“I will be back in a moment,” muttered the Secretary of the Navy, rising, and hastily quitting the room.

The instant that high official was gone Eph caught at his sides with his hands.

“Oh, wow!  Woof!  Umpah!” chuckled young Somers, his face distorted with glee.  “Some one catch me!  I’m choking!  Great Scott, what wouldn’t I have given to see that?  Hal, the quiet, the dignified?  Oh, dear!  Oh, dear.  Hal pounces on the fellow, to arrest him, and Hal is the one who gets pinched Woo-oo!  I can see Hal’s face right now I’ll wager an anchor to a fish-hook that the astonished look is stamped on Hal’s face so hard that it won’t come off for a week.  Oh—­woof!”

Eph was laughing so hard that the tears streamed down his face.

“Quit that!” commanded Jack, stepping over to his comrade, his own face stern.  “It’s no laughing matter.”

“Why, they won’t hang Hal!” sputtered Eph, as soon as he could talk.  “Hal will be at liberty almost at once.  But fancy the shock!  Imagine the dear old fellow’s astonishment, and the jolt to his feelings.”

Again Eph Somers went off into a paroxysm of laughter.  It seemed uncontrollable, for Eph had a strong sense of the ludicrous, and Hal’s face, as Somers pictured it, must have been a tremendously funny sight at the instant when Millard so neatly turned the tables.

“Come, quit your nonsense!” grumbled Jack, disgustedly.

“I can’t,” roared Eph, going off into still another burst of laughter.

Just at that instant Somers gave himself the lie.  The door opened, admitting the Secretary of the Navy.  In a fraction of a second Ensign Eph had straightened up, while his face was solemn enough for an Indian chief’s countenance.

“I have just been straightening out that little matter,” explained Mr. Sanders.  “I have talked with the police, and have described Hastings.  The police are in deep chagrin over their blunder.  Mr. Hastings is now at liberty and on his way here.”

At a motion from Mr. Sanders the two young officers seated themselves.  The Secretary turned to his desk to sign some papers.

From Eph, suddenly, came a suppressed, explosive sound.  Jack seated beside him on a sofa gave Somers an indignant elbow jab.  The Secretary glanced up, then resumed his writing.

A minute later there came from Eph the sound of another smothered explosion.  The picture of Hal Hastings’s indignant astonishment had once more been conjured up before young Somers’s face.  Poor Eph was red in the face with all the effort of keeping back his laughter.

“I fear you must have caught some cold, standing watch on the gunboat’s bridge,” said the Secretary, sympathetically.

That sobered Somers in an instant.  The notion that he—­he a sea-dog accustomed to stand watch in all weathers, could catch cold through exposure of the kind just mentioned made Eph feel a sense of ghastly humiliation.