forwarded it to the old commander of the _Savannah_, who now had a
battleship, the _Texarkhoma_, which was in winter quarters with the
battle fleet at Guantanamo, Cuba, from where he figured on getting an
answer in three weeks at least. But before the mail reached Guantanamo,
the _Texarkhoma_ had been detached by cable and ordered to the West
Coast by way of South-American ports. The commandant at Guantanamo
thought he might overtake the _Texarkhoma_ at Rio Janeiro, and
forwarded the packet to the American minister there. But having meantime
got another cable from the department to hurry and make a steaming test
of the cruise, the _Texarkhoma_ had stopped only long enough in Rio to
coal ship, and so the packet missed her there. On to her next stop,
Punta Arenas in Magellan Straits, the minister forwarded it, but the
flying battleship, with her stops three thousand miles apart, was moving
along faster than the mail steamers, which were stopping every few
hundred miles. So they missed her in the Straits, and again at Callao.
Not till she lay to anchor in San Francisco Bay did they overtake her,
and then her commander had only to say that he didn't know where the
hose came from originally; but he didn't see that it mattered, as the
necessity for the use of the hose no longer existed.

"I might say that the captain's yeoman, having by now come to understand
his skipper, drew up that particular endorsement, and he thought it
pretty hot stuff", and that it would end the whole matter. And so did
the new commandant back in the yard when he got it, and he shipped it on
to the Bureau of Heavy Jobs with a flourish. But did it? Not much. Down
there the swivel-chairs revolved a few more hundred times and they
discussed it over a few dozen lunches, and then back it came with a new
touch. Why did the necessity no longer exist? they asked, and shipped it
by mistake to the new commandant.