Dave waited, to peer into the face of the man who had stepped on his
shoulder.

It was Pennington, of course!

"I'll take pains not to go down ahead of you again, or to follow you up
a ladder," grunted Darrin suspiciously.

"Oh, are you the man on whose shoulder my foot rested?" asked
Pennington, with apparent curiosity.

"Didn't you know it!" questioned Darrin, looking straight into the
other's eyes.

Instead of answering intelligibly, Pennington turned and walked away a
few feet.

"Perhaps that fellow thinks he's going to vent his spite on me in a lot
of petty ways," murmured Dave. "If that is the idea he has in his head,
he's going to wake up one of these days!"

Following the last midshipman came Lieutenant-Commander Forman.

"After me, gentlemen," directed the chief engineer. He turned down a
narrow passage, only a few feet long, and came out in the furnace room.

Here huge fires glowed through the furnace doors. Four of the Navy's
firemen stood resting on their shovels. Instantly, on perceiving the
chief engineer, however, the men stood at attention.