n of the unconscious midshipman
before he answered briefly:

"Yes."

"Will it be a long job, Doctor?"

"Fifteen minutes, probably."

"Oh, good, if you can do it in that time!"

"Me go now?" asked Chow, with sullen curiosity, as the medical man
opened his medicine-case.

"Yes; if you don't try to leave the joint," agreed Dave. "And I'm going
outside with you."

Chow looked very much as though he did not care for company, but
Midshipman Darrin kept at his side.

"Now, see here, Chow," warned Dave, "this is the last day you sell
opium for white men to smoke!"

"You heap too flesh (fresh)" growled the Chinaman.

"It's the last day you'll sell opium to white men," insisted Dave, "for,
as soon as I'm through here I'm going to the police station to inform
against you. They'll go through here like a twelve-inch shot."

"You alle same tell cop?" grinned Chow, green hatred showing through his
skin. "Then I tell evelybody about you fliend in there."

"Do just as you please about that," retorted Dave with pretended
carelessness. "For one thing, you don't know his name."

"Oh, yes, I do," swaggered Chow impudently. "Know heap 'bout him. His
name alle same Pen'ton."

Seizing a marking brush and a piece of paper, Chow Hop quickly wrote out
Pennington's name, correctly spelled. His ability to write English with
a good hand was one of Chow's great vanities, anyway.

"You go back to your ironing board, yellow-face," warned Darrin, and
something in the young third classman's face showed Chow that it would
be wise to obey.

Then Hallam drew Darrin to one side, to whisper earnestly in his ear:

"Look out, old man, or you will get Pen into an awful scrape!"

"I shan't do it," maintained Darrin. "If it happens it will have been
Pen's own work."

"You'd better let the chink go, just to save one of our class."

"Is a fellow who has turned opium fiend worth saving to the class!"
demanded Dave, looking straight into Hallam's eyes.

"Well, er--er--" stammered the other man.

"You see," smiled Dave, "the doubt hits you just as hard as it does me!"

"Oh, of course, a fellow who has turned opium fiend is no fellow ever to
be allowed to reach the bridge and the quarter-deck," admitted Hallam.
"But see here, are you going to report this affair to the commandant of
midshipmen, or to anyone else in authority?"

"I've no occasion to report," replied Dave dryly. "I am not in any way
in command over Pennington. But I mean to p