“What’s your draught?”

“Under present ballast, seventeen-eight,” came the answer from the
gunboat’s signal mast.

“Safe anchorage,” Captain Jack signaled back.

“Can you meet us with a pilot?” questioned the on-coming gunboat.

“Yes,” Captain Jack responded.

“Do so,” came the laconic request.

“That’s all, Hal,” the young skipper called, through the engine room
speaking tube. “Want to row me out and put me aboard the gunboat?”

In another jiffy the two young chums had put off in the boat, Hal at the
oars, Jack at the tiller ropes. The gunboat was now lying to, some seven
hundred yards off the mouth of the little harbor. Hastings bent lustily to
the oars, sending the boat over the rocking water until he was within a
hundred yards of the steam craft’s bridge.

“Gun boat ahoy!” roared Hal, between his hands. Then, by a slip of the
tongue, and wholly innocent of any intentional offense, he bellowed:

“Is that the ’Dad’ boat?”

“What’s that?” came a sharp retort from the gunboat’s bridge. “Don’t try
to be funny, young man!”