rts. The commandant at Guantanamo
thought he might overtake the _Texarkhoma_ at Rio Janeiro, and
forwarded the packet to the American minister there. But having meantime
got another cable from the department to hurry and make a steaming test
of the cruise, the _Texarkhoma_ had stopped only long enough in Rio to
coal ship, and so the packet missed her there. On to her next stop,
Punta Arenas in Magellan Straits, the minister forwarded it, but the
flying battleship, with her stops three thousand miles apart, was moving
along faster than the mail steamers, which were stopping every few
hundred miles. So they missed her in the Straits, and again at Callao.
Not till she lay to anchor in San Francisco Bay did they overtake her,
and then her commander had only to say that he didn't know where the
hose came from originally; but he didn't see that it mattered, as the
necessity for the use of the hose no longer existed.

"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.

"'And how the hell do I know?' says the new commandant, but not in
writing, and passes it on to the old _Savannah_ captain, who was now
rear-admiral, with a division in the East waiting him to come and hoist
his pennant. And so again it was a chase of the _Texarkhoma_, which was
on her way to the Philippines _via_ Honolulu and way ports. They were
too late for her at Honolulu, and at Guam, and again at Yokohama; but
they overhauled her at Hong-kong, where she'd been lying at anchor for a
week.

"The admiral had a lot of mail that morning in Hong-kong harbor, but
nothing to speed up his brain till he came to the hose-pipe thing. 'Twas
then he went up on the quarter-deck and did a Marathon for an hour or
so, while the officer of the deck and every blessed marine and flat-foot
on duty stepped softly till he ducked below again.

"By and by, in his cabin, the admiral presses the buzzer, and in comes
his trusty yeoman, the