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lieutenant-commander. The battleship had the rank: a two-starred red
flag from her main. She was about as far away as she could be when
last heard from; but no matter; rank had to be served. The commandant
begging leave to be informed passed it on to her. Did she know
anything about the section of hose in question, and if so, what? And
forwarded it, care of postmaster at Manila, P.I. And when it came
back--after thirty or forty thousand miles of travel that was--the
battleship didn't know anything about the section of hose referred to.
Nor did the cruiser, which was in the Mediterranean when caught, only
she having lighter heels and hopping around more, it took eight months
to get her. There was still the beef-boat, which in the meantime had
gone to sea and returned home again, and was now again to sea, on her
way to the China station. They went for her, and after a stern chase that
lasted through six months and two typhoons and all kinds of monsoons
and trades, they got her; whereat she begged leave to say that at the
time of her collision with the collier Ariadne (for details of which see
letter to Secretary of the Navy on such a day and month of such a year)
many files of papers were lost. And evidently whatever pertained to the
section of hose in question was among the lost files; for certainly
among the existing files there was no reference to any section of
condemned hose-pipe. It took three months more to get that back to the
yard, and by that time the old commandant had been retired for age and
a new commandant had fallen heir to it.
"The new head read all the endorsements, by now forty-eight, and
pondered over them. For perhaps three days he paced the yard with it,
without being able to see where it concerned him; but he was very fond
of puzzling things out, and thinking he saw a way out of this, he
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.
"'And how the hell do I know?' says the new commandant, but not in
writing, and passes it on to the old Savannah captain, who was now
rear-admiral, with a division in the East waiting him to come and hoist
his pennant. And so again it was a chase of the Texarkhoma, which was
on her way to the Philippines via Honolulu and way ports. They were
too late for her at Honolulu, and at Guam, and again at Yokohama; but
they overhauled her at Hong-kong, where she'd been lying at anchor for
a week.
"The admiral had a lot of mail that morning in Hong-kong harbor, but
nothing to speed up his brain till he came to the