et to which they were attached. Gun drill would
hereafter occupy a part of their time each forenoon.

As the weather cleared the lookouts all over the ship kept sharper watch
than they had before for any moving object on the sea. They had seen the
smoke of steamships and the sails of other vessels during the storm, but
had not spoken a single craft since leaving port.

The _Kennebunk_ frequently received and sent wireless messages; but the
messages were evidently unimportant for they caused no flurry of
excitement. The Seacove boys were expecting some news of submarines, or
the capture of the "mother ship," which they believed was cruising off
the coast to supply German U-boats with fuel. But no news of this kind
came to their ears.

The big battleship was now nearing the point where they could expect to
meet the auxiliary naval vessel towing the target.

"Pretty soft! Pretty soft!" said one chap in Whistler's gun crew
disgustedly. "Pretty soft for us! We fellows going out to target
practice, while those battleships already on the other side of this
periscope pond may be fighting the Fritzies off Heligoland."

"We'll get a chance at a sub maybe," said another more hopefully.

"No such luck," growled the first speaker. "We'll just about get shot at
with a torpedo from one of those pirates. We'd never have the good luck
to plant a shell in a U-boat where it would do the most good. No, sir!"

There was so much that was new for the four boys from Seacove to learn
aboard the superdreadnaught that they did not worry much about getting
into immediate action. Target practice with the big guns would spell
excitement enough for the time being, they thought.

Meanwhile Michael Donahue and Ikey Rosenmeyer were having a secret all
to themselves that kept them breaking out in "the giggles" at
unseasonable times, so that the master-at-arms gave them two reprimands
within the twenty-four hours. Another would be likely to put their names
on the report--an incident that was always to be regretted.

The battleship was steaming through a flattening sea at half speed. Word
had been passed from one of the masthead lookouts that smoke was
sighted. The executive officer said it was probably the auxiliary ship
with the target in tow. The report brought almost everybody who was free
to the open decks.

But Frenchy and Ikey showed an unexplained lack of interest in this
incident. They remained below and, seizing their chance unobserved,