James B. Connolly

“ But mind, I’m not telling you to go and do anything like that.”
“No, of course not,” says our Captain’s yeoman, and rubs his fat chin.
“But if you do,” says Dalton, and sets his head sideways to see how Reginald was taking it—“if you do, you’d make a hit with your skipper, you betcher—only he’d never tell you.”
“Why wouldn’t he, if he liked it?”
“Why? ’Twouldn’t be regulations. And now, you fellows, beat it. Seven bells gone and the Old Man is due aboard at twelve o’clock. Besides, I want a chance to peruse a little improving literature before I turn in myself. So beat it, all of you.” ”

“ But everybody was present or accounted for, and the skipper gave the captain of marines the devil, and the marine captain gave the devil to his marine guard, the Georgia boy, who by this time was beginning to doubt that he hadn’t been asleep.
“Next afternoon the Admiral was on deck taking the air, and after a while he asks, ‘Where was that marine guard standing when he heard that air-port unscrewing and that splash last night?’ And they dug the marine out of the brig and brought him up, and he stood on the same spot leaning over the rail, and the Old Man stands there and takes a look down. ”

“ After he had done he pushed himself by the palms of his hands, rolled on to his back, rearranged his row of tin letter-files, shifted his electric wall-light, readjusted his neck to his improvised head-rest, picked up a fat folk-lore volume, and waited, with his eyes twinkling down on us, for somebody to say something. ”

“ Sure I am. If there’s one thing on earth we’re going to do then, it’s to live up to regulations.
"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 bosun.
“‘Look,’ he says. ‘Paragraph fourteen thousand four hundred and forty-two,’ or whatever it was. ‘Hose,’ he goes on to read, ‘is expendable 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. ”

“ I might say that the captain’s yeoman, having by now come to understand his skipper, drew up that particular endorsement, and he thought it pretty hot stuff, and that it would end the whole matter. And so did the new commandant back in the yard when he got it, and he shipped it on to the Bureau of Heavy Jobs with a flourish. But did it? Not much. Down there the swivel-chairs revolved a few more hundred times and they discussed it over a few dozen lunches, and then back it came with a new touch. Why did the necessity no longer exist? they asked, and shipped it by mistake to the new commandant. ”

“ Laying the Hose-pipe Ghost
BY JAMES B. CONNOLLY
SOMETIMES, for one reason or another, or perhaps without reason at all—it just happens so, say—a handful of gossiping yeomen find themselves together, and when that comes about, from some member (if the session stretches to any length at all) is sure to come a story of particular interest to the guild; and perhaps it ought to be explained that a yeoman’s story is never mistaken in the Navy for a stoker’s, a gunner’s, a quartermaster's—it is never taken for anybody’s but a yeoman’s. ”

“ And he looks to see if there was an air-port handy. And there was—the air-port of the flag-office. ‘H’m!—h’m!’ he says. ‘That’s all now, Lyman,’ to the marine officer. Nothing more; but an hour later the marine was released from the brig—nobody knew why.”
Throughout all the story Dalton had been sitting atop of the coffer-dam, hands with flat palms pressing down, his feet hanging, with heels drumming against the coffer-dam sides. ”

“ Heels didn’t like—to be told of it, he snaps his heels together, starts his arm as if to salute, but stops in time, says, ‘Yes, sir,’ goes off to his little desk, and typewrites Endorsement No. 1 to the back of the captain of the Savannah’s letter, gets the commandant’s signature, and sends the messenger with it to the captain of the yard. ”