CHAPTER IX. "YOUR DUTY IS TO OBEY!"

It was no time then to try to fix the blame. Turning to Kenworth, who was standing with chalky-white face by his side, Ned curtly ordered him to go below and summon the engineer and the ship's armorers to the bridge.

When they came, he gave swift, incisive orders to have the ship examined from stem to stern, and any damage she might have sustained reported to him immediately. Herc, who by this time of course was by his young leader's side, was ordered to take charge of this work.

The next half hour was the most anxious Ned had ever passed; but he knew that yet more suspense was bound to follow when it came to testing how hard and fast the Seneca was piled on the shoal.

[Pg 77]

There was a possibility that she might get off under her own steam. But of course this could not be foretold till an actual trial could be made. For the present, with engines that had ceased revolving, the Seneca lay helpless and motionless on the shoal.

Ned's naval training stood him in good stead then. Without a quiver of a lip or a flicker of an eyelid to betray the ordeal through which he was passing, he stood erect on the bridge awaiting the report of the investigators. Only the pallor under his tanned cheeks showed what he was enduring.

If naval tugs had to be sent for to extricate the Seneca from her predicament, Ned knew that his brief career as a naval commander was over before it had well begun. Then, too, with this thought mingled another.

Had Kenworth deliberately given the order that had resulted in the grounding of the ship, or had he lost his head and "piled her up"?[Pg 78] Judging from the conversation he had overheard, Kenworth was determined to stop at nothing to discredit and disgrace Herc and himself with the Navy Department.

But it was inconceivable, almost, that he should have formed his plan and executed it so quickly. Ned was more inclined to put the entire affair down to stupidity. But he knew that as commander of the Seneca, he, and not Kenworth, would assuredly be held responsible for any damage done.

It was at this moment that he was aroused by the clicking and whining of the wireless spark in its little metal house just abaft of the funnel. The stinging, whip-like crack and the crepitant sputter of the spark as it leaped back and forth across its gap like a caged animal was borne with clean-cut distinctness to his ears.

"Somebody working the wireless," decided Ned, for the arrival of a message is not attended by any sound audible outside the ear receivers.[Pg 79] "Who can it be? Trevor, the regular wireless man, is off duty. He was one of the emergency gang I sent below with all the other hands I could spare."

There followed a moment of indecision, and then a flame of anger swept Ned's face.

Whoever was sending out those thundering detonations of electricity that were splitting space like a scimitar was no novice. Moreover, he was trying to raise the Manhattan, the flagship of the Red Squadron, and using the secret code to do it.

"I'll find out what this means in two shakes," exclaimed Ned to himself. "I miss my guess if it isn't somebody trying, absolutely without orders, to flash news of this accident to the flagship and put me in bad."

He hastened from the bridge to the upper deck and through an alleyway to where a short flight of steel steps led to the wireless room, perched like a miniature pilot house astern of the funnel.

[Pg 80]

As he gained the door of the place and looked in, he stopped as abruptly as if he had been struck a blow in the face.

For an instant he stood there rigid, taking in the picture that had suddenly presented itself to his indignant gaze.

Bending over the key and sending out impatient waves of sound into the atmosphere was Kenworth. His pale face was alight with poisonous glee, as again and again he sent out the secret call for the flagship of the Reds.

Ned was into the room in a bound. In another instant he had Kenworth by the collar. The astonished and startled midshipman was as helpless as a puppy in Ned's powerful grasp.

"I—how—what's the matter?" he sputtered.

"What are you doing here, Mr. Kenworth?" demanded Ned sternly. He was in no mood to be trifled with. He fancied now that he saw the whole contemptible plot, swiftly as the storm had broken.
In another instant he had Kenworth by the collar.—Page 80

[Pg 81]

"Well, you see, sir—I—that is, when——"

"Answer me at once, please. What are you doing here?"

"I—I thought I'd practice up a bit."

"What!"

Ned's eyes blazed and a dangerous flicker of white came around his nostrils. He despised a liar more than he held contempt for a coward, and if he was not much mistaken, Kenworth was both.

"You see," stuttered Kenworth, absolutely shaken and flaccid, "I'm wireless officer, with Trevor as assistant. I'm not very good yet, and I——"

"On the contrary, it strikes me that you are remarkably efficient, Mr. Kenworth," snapped Ned; "and as for practicing, you assuredly choose an extraordinary time for it when the ship, for anything you know, is in danger."

"Danger?" exclaimed Kenworth, and Ned[Pg 82] thought that he caught an evil glint in the midshipman's eyes.

"That remains to be seen," rejoined Ned coldly. "Tell me if you can, why, without orders and without informing anyone, you were in here trying to raise the Manhattan. You are silent. Then I will tell you myself. You wanted to send out word of the accident."

Kenworth shuffled from foot to foot uneasily.

"My duty——" he began.

Then Ned boiled over.

"Your duty, Mr. Kenworth, is to obey my orders. You will now oblige me by going to your cabin, unless you wish me to adopt harsher measures."

With a half-hearted salute, Kenworth turned and without a word left the wireless room. But as he descended the companionway stairs he muttered to himself:

"I guess I've got you badly worried already, Mr. Monkey-on-a-Stick, and this is only the beginning.[Pg 83] I said I'd fix you and I will, too. If only I could have raised the Manhattan and got that message through with my version of the accident, Master Ned Strong's career would have ended with a hard bump."