out of that?" He glanced toward the
conning-tower. Other officers had joined them.

"We'll investigate," said Mr. Clarkson.

The door on the level of the main-deck leading into the mast was found
to be wedged fast by the blow of a projectile. Men, naked and black,
sprawled about the wreckage breathing fresh air, were ordered to get up
and to rig a ladder outside. They did so, and Mr. Clarkson ascended to
the ragged end of the hollow stump and looked down. Standing at the
wheel, steering the drifting ship with one hand and holding an empty
bottle in the other, was a man with torn clothing and bloody face. In
spite of the disfigurement Mr. Clarkson knew him. Jammed into the
narrow staircase leading below was the body of a man partly hidden by a
Gatling gun, the lever of which had pierced the forehead.

"Finnegan," yelled the officer, "how'd you get there?"

The man at the wheel lifted a bleary eye and blinked; then, unsteadily
touching his forehead, answered: "Fe' dow'-shtairs, shir."

"Come out of that! On deck there! Take the wheel, one hand, and stand
by it!" Mr. Clarkson descended to the others with a serious look on his
grimy face, and a sailor climbed the ladder and went down the mast.

"Gentlemen," said the first lieutenant, impressively, "we were
mistaken, and we wronged Captain Blake. He is dead. He died at the
beginning. He lies under a Gatling gun in the bottom of the tower. I
saw Finnegan hanging to that gun, whirling around it, when the mast
blew up. It is all plain now. Finnegan and the gun fell into the tower.
Finnegan may have struck the stairs and rolled down, but the gun went
down the hollow within and killed the captain. We have been steered and
commanded by a drunken man--but it was Finnegan."

Finnegan scrambled painfully down the ladder. He staggered, stumbled,
and fell in a heap.

"Rise up," said Mr. Clarkson, as they surrounded him; "rise up, Daniel
Drake Nelson Farragut Finnegan. You are small potatoes and few in the
hill; you are shamefully drunk, and your nose bleeds; you are stricken
with Spanish mildew, and you smell vilely--but you are immortal. You
have been a disgrace to the service, but Fate in her gentle irony has
redeemed you, permitting you, in one brief moment of your misspent
life, to save to your country the command of the seas--to guide, with
your subconscious intelligence, the finest battle-ship the science of
the world has constructed to glorious victory, through the fierc