ing on, but always hurried back to his coast chart-book. Interesting
things in chart-books--he used to read them aboard the destroyer.

That night the first mate came up on the bridge. Doc asked him what kind
of a light he expected to pick up. The mate told him. Doc thought he was
wrong, and said so.

Well, that was the light the old man had said they would make. Where was
he now? Asleep, and Lord knows he needed it.

Doc did not wake him up. He had argued enough with him, but he didn't
think the old man had allowed for the tides, and if anything happened
there would be no more arguments--he would just assert his rank and take
charge of the ship.

Doc went below, gave his worst wounded patient a night potion and saw
him to sleep. He also went down to see the chief engineer, who had been
wounded three times--once in the head. The Doc talked to him awhile--he
was inclined to rave--gave him a half-grain jolt of morphine and saw him
to sleep. He told the signal quartermaster that he had better have a nap
before he dropped in his tracks.

"But the night-watches, sir?"

"We'll leave the night-watches to the ship's crew and Providence. The
watch may sleep on the job, but the Lord won't--at least I hope not.
Anyway, I know I'm doggone tired," said Doc, and turned in.

Doc could have slept longer--about twenty-four hours longer, he thought,
when he found himself awake. It was a sort of grinding under the ship
which had wakened him.

By his illuminated wrist-watch he saw that it was three o'clock--three
in the afternoon, he hoped. But it wasn't. It was three in the morning.
He had been asleep two hours.

He went on deck just as his signal-officer came to tell him the ship was
ashore.

Doc found the old man and the mate looking over charts under a
hand-light in the chart house. "I could 'a' bet we'd 'a' picked up that
other light," the old man was saying.

"The bettin' part don't explain it," said the mate. "A fine place to be
high and dry and a U-boat come along in the morning and plunk us another
few shells between our livers and lights. I'm tired of keeping my mind
on U-boats."

That was when Doc horned in on the old skipper. "I been pretty easy with
you-all. You ought to been twenty miles farther east. You listened to me
and you-all would have been. Look here"--he hauled down the chart-book
and showed them. "And now I'll take charge."

It was low tide when she ran on to the beach. With the flood-tide and
the e