the service coming to?" gasped Stearns ironically.
"Why, Willow, we never heard of such things when we were midshipmen
here. Now, did we?"

"I'm afraid we did--sometimes," admitted the junior officer. "But duty
is duty, you know, my dear Stearns. And this was an unusual fight, too.
The man who was whipped insisted on another fight right then and there,
and--he won the second fight."

"Bully!" chuckled the officer in charge. "Whew, but I wish I had been
there!"

"Stearns, you surely don't mean that?" gasped duty-mad Mr. Willow.

"You're quite right, Willow. No; I certainly don't want to be a
spoilsport, and I'm glad I wasn't there--in my official capacity. But
I'd like to have been divested of my rank for just an hour so that I
could have taken in such a scene as that."

"I'm--I'm just a bit astonished at your saying it, Stearns," rejoined
Lieutenant Willow. "But then, you're always joking."

"Perhaps I am joking," assented the officer in charge dryly, "but I
never lose sight of the fact that our Navy has been built up, at huge
expense, as a great fighting machine. Now, Willow, it takes fighting men
to run a fighting machine. Of course, I'm terribly shocked to know that
two midshipmen really had the grit to fight--but who were they! Mind
you, I'm not asking you in an official way. This question is purely
personal--just between ourselves. Who were the men? And, especially, who
was the fellow who lost the decision, and then had the utter effrontery
to demand a second chance at once, only to win the second fight?"

"Darrin was the man who lost the first fight and won the second,"
replied Lieutenant Willow.

"Mr. Darrin? One of our youngsters! Yes; I think I know him. And what
man of his class did he whip, the second time he tried!"

"It wasn't a man of his own class. It was Mr. Treadwell, of the first
class," rejoined Lieutenant Willow.

"What?" almost exploded the officer in charge. "Did you say that Mr.
Darrin fought with Mr. Treadwell, that husky top classman, and, losing
the decision on the count, insisted on fighting again the same evening?
Oh, say, what a fellow misses by being cooped up in an office like
this!"

"But--but the breach of regulations!" stammered the duty-mad lieutenant.

"My dear fellow, neither you nor I know anything about this
fight--officially. The Navy, after all, is a fighting machine. Do you
feel that the Navy can afford to lose a fighting man like that
youngster?"

So Lieutenan