opportunities. He'd been wearing his first-class rating badge a month
now, and before his enlistment was out he intended to be a chief petty
officer; which was why he was working after-hours. But the captain's
yeoman, this particular captain's yeoman, has nothing to do with the
story, except that his errand set Dalton off on a new tack.

The captain's yeoman had come for a little advice. He always was after
advice--or information. A department document had come into the office
that day with seventeen endorsements on it, and it had him bluffed. We
all laughed at the face he drew. "But," said Dalton, turning on us, "so
would most of you be bluffed if one of those winged-out documents came
at you for the first time. But you're foolish, son Reginald, to be
worrying over any little thing like that. Seventeen endorsements!
What's seventeen endorsements? I wonder what you'd think if you'd--Sit
down there and listen to me, and perhaps it'll be time well spent. If
you don't learn enough from it to get that C.P.O. you're after,
then--Well, I won't call you any names here now. Listen."

Now this story of Dalton's is a classic among yeoman, and only a yeoman
should tell it; but not even a yeoman, no matter how gifted he may be
with letter file or typewriter, has a rating to tell a story--no, no
more than anybody else aboard ship. Some of us had heard the story
before, and it had always been mangled in the telling, through the
teller not knowing all the facts, or having perhaps never met any of the
principal characters in it. But Dalton not only knew the tale from
beginning to end; he was, though he would never admit it in a crowd,
himself concerned in it. And now when he began to relate the history of
the famous length of hose-pipe, we knew that he would have it right.

"I was in--well, call her the cruiser _Savannah_--this time--"