't it?" said Wickett; "all light and play
and color for a spell, and then--pff--lights out."

"Maybe," admitted Carlin, "but don't impede the speed of the story. Your
ship was racing for home."

"Our orders were to proceed by way of Suez and to rendezvous with the
battle-fleet at Guantanamo, Cuba. We got into Guantanamo the day before
the _Missalama_ arrived from the North. The _Missalama_ had orders to
proceed to the West Coast. Half a dozen of the officers already in
Guantanamo were ordered to her. I was one of them."

"Good night! But that was a jolt!"

"That's what it was. But that's the service."

"And couldn't you do anything about it?"

"What could I do? There were my orders. A couple of the fellows came as
near to being politicians then as ever they did in their lives. They
tried to reach people in Washington--bureau chiefs, senators,
influential congressmen--to have me detached and ordered home. But next
day was a holiday and the day after was Sunday, and the ship had to sail
by Sunday. And she did, and I with her."

"And how do you account for your being shunted off like that? Somebody
have it in for you?"

"No, no--not that. Simply the politicians. I don't suppose the service
will ever be free of the near-politicians. The navy has them--fellows
who are not good enough officers to depend upon themselves alone, and
not good enough politicians to go in for politics altogether. Somebody
with a good shore billet somewhere was probably due for sea-duty, and
not wanting to let go of a good thing, and having the pull, somebody
else went instead. And somebody else for that somebody else, and
somebody else again, and so on till at last the somebody else who could
be made to serve a turn happened to be me.

"'Hard luck, Dickie,' said the ward-room mess. 'But cheer up--in three
months you'll see the Golden Gate, and by then you'll be ready for a
little duty on your home coast. Then your lieutenant's straps and shore
duty, and your wife and baby to yourself for a while.' I had that
thought to cheer me through the night-watches around South America, but
at Callao we got orders to proceed to Manila, and after six months out
that way it was off to the Island of Guam, and from there to make a
survey of some islands in the South Sea. No way I could fix it could I
tell my wife to come and meet me at any certain place.

"But no task is endless. We were homeward bound at last. I remember how
I used to say at mess that