h a resounding crack, and I increased the
distance.

"Damn the torpedoes!" I shouted back as I disappeared into the
pleasant security of the sun-warmed woods.

_May 11th._ "What navy do you belong to?" asked an Ensign, stopping me
to-day, "the Chinese?"

"Why do you ask, sir?" I replied, saluting gracefully. "Of course I
don't belong to the Chinese Navy."

"What's your rating?" he snapped. "Show girl first class attached to
the good ship Biff! Bang! sir," came my prompt retort.

"Well, put a watch mark on your arm, sailor, and put it there pronto,
or you'll be needing an understudy to pinch hit for you."

As a matter of fact I have never put my watch mark on, for the simple
reason that I have been rather expecting a rating at any moment, but
it seems as if my expectations were doomed to disappointment.

Nothing matters much, anyway, now, however, for I have been selected
from among all the men in the station to play the part of a Show Girl
in the coming magnificent Pelham production, "Biff! Bang!" At last I
have found the occupation to which by training and inclination I am
naturally adapted. The Grand Moguls that are running this show came
around the barracks the other day looking for material, and when they
gazed upon me I felt sure that their search had not been in vain.

"Why don't you write a 'nut' part for him?" asked one of them of the
playwright as they surveyed me critically as if I was some rare
specimen of bug life.

"That would never do," he answered. "Real 'nuts' can never play the
part on the stage. You've got to have a man of intelligence."

"Look here," I broke in. "You've got to stop talking about me before
my face as if I wasn't really present. Nuts I may be, but I can still
understand English, even when badly spoken, and resent it. Lay off
that stuff or I'll be constrained to introduce you to a new brand of
'Biff! Bang!'"

Saying this, I struck an heroic attitude, but it seemed to produce no
startling change in their calm, deliberate examination of me.

"He'll do, I think, as a Show Girl," the dance-master mused dreamily.
"Like a cabbage, every one of his features is bad, but the whole
effect is not revolting. Strange, isn't it, how such things happen."
At this point the musician broke in.

"He ain't agoing to dance to my music if I know it. He'll ruin it." At
which remark I executed a few rather simple but nevertheless neat
steps I had learned at the last charity Bazaar to which I h