"WE ARE PART OF THE FLEET."

After some little difficulty the boys ascertained that the Manhattan lay up the North River, off the foot of Seventy-second Street and Riverside Drive. They could go to Seventy-second Street in a subway express, they were informed, and then walk across to the boat landing, where they would be almost sure to find a launch from the big Dreadnought waiting to take off the shore-leave men.

"Say!" gasped Herc, as the two, having descended into the "tube" and seated themselves in the lighted car, were whirled northward through pitch darkness toward their destination, "how far does this hole in the ground go?"

"Almost as far as Yonkers, I guess," replied Ned; "or so I've heard. Don't you like it?"

"Not much," rejoined Herc; "it's like trying to talk in a boiler factory."

The two boys had their suitcases tightly clutched between their knees, but nevertheless, when they reached the Grand Central station, the inrush of passengers, tumbling and pushing like mad to get seats, swept the lads' possessions before them as if the two pieces of baggage had been chaff in a high wind.

"Hey! come back with those gripsacks!" yelled Herc indignantly, seizing the arm of a puny-looking lad who was stumbling forward over the red-headed lad's particular possession. "Haven't you any manners?"

The town-bred lad turned a sharp, ferret-eyed face on the young sailor.

"Say, greenie, where do you come from, Painted Post or far Cohoes 'where the wind flower blows'? Just keep an eye on your own junk, or else hire an express wagon."

The indignant Herc stooped to rescue his suitcase, and by the time he raised a red and angry face, the sharp-faced lad had gone.

"Good thing he did get out of the way, or I'd have fetched him a clip on the ear!" grumbled Herc, as he resumed his seat by Ned, who had by this time retrieved his property also.

"No use losing your temper," counseled Ned; "just keep cool. Hullo, there is an old lady and a younger one standing up over there. The old one looks feeble. I'm going to give them these seats. Come on and get up."

"All right," muttered Herc, "but I don't see any one else doing so. See, all the men are seated and the women all seem to be standing up. What's the use of being different to the others? We'll only get stared at."

"All the more reason that we should be polite. The first duty of a sailor is to be kind and courteous to those weaker than himself," rejoined Ned in an undertone, as the boys rose to their feet.

With a courteous bow, Ned approached the ladies and motioned behind him to where he supposed two seats were vacant.

"Will you avail yourself of our places, madam?" he said, addressing the older lady and removing his navy cap.

Herc, with an awkward grin, also uncovered his red thatch and made a sweeping motion behind him with his big hand.

"Thank you very much, sir," rejoined the elderly lady, "my daughter and myself would be very glad to accept your kindness, but others seem already to have availed themselves of it."

"What's that?" cried Ned, wheeling, with a red face, and clapping his eyes on the seats they had just vacated.

Sure enough, as the elderly lady had said, they were occupied.

Two stout, red-faced men, with well-rounded stomachs and fingers covered with diamonds, lolled at their ease in the just vacated seats, reading their papers. They had slipped into the places while the boys were requesting the two ladies to take them.

"Well, what do you know about that?" sputtered Herc indignantly. "They just sneaked into those seats like skunks into a wood pile."

"They'll come out of them a lot more easily," breathed Ned grimly, as he took in the situation.

Bending forward, he addressed the interlopers courteously enough, while those around who had witnessed the scene looked on curiously. It is not often that a subway passenger has the courage to resent any slight, however marked. From the compression of Ned's lips and the determined flash in his eyes, however, it was evident that he had no intention of allowing the two beefy newspaper readers to enjoy their stolen seats undisturbed.

"I beg your pardon," said Ned. "Perhaps you are not aware that my friend and I vacated those seats to allow these ladies to be seated."

One of the red-faced ones, slightly older, it seemed, than the other, looked up with a bovine stare in his heavily rimmed eyes.

He stared at the Dreadnought Boys much as if they had been some strange visitors from another planet.

"I guess you don't know much about Noo Yawk," he said in a sneering tone, "or you'd have known that in the Subway it's 'first come, first served.'"

"Is that so?" inquired Ned, keeping down his anger, while Herc was dancing about in the narrow space he could find in the aisle of the crowded car. The red-headed lad was biting his nails and scratching his head in a manner that boded a storm as surely as black clouds portend thunder.

"That being the case," Ned went on in a cool voice, "it's about time that the Subway learned a few manners. We gave those seats up for those two ladies, and not for you. Are you going to vacate them?"

"Aw, run along and roll your hoop!" sneered the younger newspaper reader, with an affectation of great languor. "You drunken sailors make me tired."

A brown hand shot out as the words left his lips, and the beefy one found himself propelled by the shoulder into the center of the car faster than he had had occasion to move for a long time.

At the same instant Herc, to his huge delight, perceived the signal for action and sailed in on his man. In another second the two beefy ones, dazed by the suddenness of it all, stood side by side in the center of the car, while Ned courteously aided the two ladies to the seats from which the interlopers had been so suddenly wrenched.

"This is an outrage!" bellowed the red-faced men in concert, as they found their voices. "Such a thing has never happened before."

"That's a pity," observed Ned contemptuously, while the delighted Herc whispered in a stage undertone:

"Mine came out like a soft, white worm out of a hickory nut."

"Conductor! conductor!" howled the man to whom Ned had given such a rough and ready lesson in manners, "come here and do your duty. We've been assaulted."

The conductor pushed his way through the crowded aisle, assuming an air of great importance.

"What's all this? What's all this?" he shouted.

"These two rowdy sailors deprived us of our seats," sputtered one of the red-faced men.

"Did you fellows do what he says?" demanded the conductor importantly.

"Sure they did. They pulled the gentlemen right out of them," piped up a voice in the background of the crowd—that of the ferret-faced youth.

"Gentlemen!" snorted Herc. "We'd call 'em hogs up our way!"

"We got up to give our seats to those two ladies, and are very sorry to have caused them this embarrassment," volunteered Ned. "But to see these two overfed fellows slip into the seats before we had hardly risen from them got our dander riz, and we undertook to put them out."

"Conductor, you will call a special policeman at the next station," shouted the man that Ned had hauled to his feet. "I'll make a charge against these desperate ruffians. They need a lesson."

Ned and Herc exchanged alarmed glances.

It might ruin their naval careers if, on the eve of joining their ship, they were to undergo the disgrace of an arrest.

"Better think it over," advised the conductor, who seemed disposed to make peace, and as he slipped by the boys, to regain his platform as the train slackened speed, he whispered:

"You'd best make a sneak, boys; that fellow is Dave Pulsifer, the big gun man, and the other's his brother. He's got lots of influence, and he means to make trouble for you."

Little as either of the Dreadnought Boys relished the idea of running away from trouble, yet the advice seemed good. They both knew enough of the law's delays to realize that, in the event of their being arrested on the red-faced man's charge, they would be liable to be held for some time before they could have chance of explaining the circumstances of the case to a magistrate.

As the train rolled into the Seventy-second Street station, therefore, they adroitly slipped by their friend, the conductor, and, as soon as he opened the door, shot out onto the platform.

The red-faced men, crying loudly for a special policeman, were in the act of following them, when—quite by accident, it seemed—the conductor's foot got in the way, and the first of the pair of worthies fell headlong over it, and his companion, who was pressing hard on his heels, piled on top of him.

By the time they had extricated themselves, during which period the crowd of passengers behind them, who were also anxious to alight, went almost crazy at having to wait a few seconds, the two lads were far down the sidewalks of Seventy-second Street. After a few minutes' brisk walk they reached the snow-covered slopes of Riverside Drive.

"Pulsifer! I know that name," Ned mused, as they hurried along. "I have it!" he exclaimed suddenly. "He's Dave Pulsifer, of Pulsifer Bros., the fellows who make guns in America and sell them to foreign governments."

"I'll bet those two were the brothers, then," suggested Herc. "They looked like two ugly pups of the same homely litter."

The boys gave the matter little more thought, though had they realized how intimately the Pulsifers were to be associated with their further career, they might have considered their encounter more seriously.

"Look, Herc, look!" cried Ned, as they came in sight of the river.

From the slight eminence on which they stood, the boys commanded a magnificent spectacle.

Up and down the majestic stream, as far as the eye could reach, the grim, slaty-hued forms of Uncle Sam's sea bulldogs swung at anchor.

From the funnels of some smoke was lazily floating, while others lay like sleeping monsters on the surface of the dark river.

Looking northward, the boys saw only a maze of cage masts—looking not unlike narrow waste-paper baskets turned upside down—and great dark hulls. Here and there a gaily-colored bit of bunting, which as yet meant little to the boys, fluttered from a masthead or from the signal halliards. Between the ships and the shore constantly darted light gasoline boats, or swift launches with big gray hoods over them.

"Just think, Herc, we are a part of all that!" breathed Ned reverently almost, indicating the formidable array of fighting craft with a wave of his hand.

"Gee! I feel about as big as an ant," whispered Herc, even his irrepressible nature overawed at the sight. "How in the world are we—little, insignificant specks—ever going to distinguish ourselves in all that big array of fighting ships and fighting men?"

"We must do our best, Herc," rejoined Ned simply. "And now let's be getting down to that landing place. I think I see some man-o'-war launches landing there. Maybe we will be lucky enough to find one of the Manhattan's boats."

As they started down an inclined road which led through the park and across the railroad tracks at its foot, they were accosted by a hearty voice just astern of them.

"Hullo, there, shipmates!" it hailed. "Where away?"

The Dreadnought Boys wheeled, and found themselves facing an elderly man, somewhat inclined to stoutness, but whose grizzled and weather-beaten face bore the true trademarks of an old man-o'-war Jack upon it.

"Why, you're from the Manhattan!" cried Ned, as his eyes fell on the other's name band, on which the name of the new Dreadnought was embroidered in gilt thread.

"Aye, aye, my hearties," was the rejoinder in a voice cracked with much shouting in heavy weather in all climes, "and you are a pair of rookies—land-lubbers, eh?"

"Well, I guess you might call us that," responded Ned, not best pleased at this free and easy mode of address, but judging it best to be as amiable as possible. "Can you tell us how to get aboard the Manhattan? We've just left the Naval Training School and are appointed to her."

"Get your rating?"

"Sure—ordinary seamen."

"That's good. Come on with me, boys, and I'll put you aboard ship shape and comfortable. It's a cold day when old Tom Marlin can't look out for a pair of greenies."

Piloted by their companion, the two boys soon arrived at the landing place, which was already crowded with sailors whose shore leave had expired.

"Which is the Manhattan?" asked Sam, gazing with eyes that were still awestruck at the immense vessels that lay out in the river and appeared several sizes too large for their mooring places.

"Right yonder, Bricktop," rejoined old Tom, pointing off to a vessel which, large as were the other battleships, seemed by her huge size almost to dwarf them. "That's the old hooker. The last output of your old Uncle Sam. Right in the next berth to her is the Idaho."

"What's that red flag, with a black ball in the center, floating from the Idaho's main?" inquired Ned, much interested.

"That? Oh, that's the meat-ball!" laughed old Tom.

"The meat-ball?" echoed the boys, much astonished.

"A sort of dinner flag, I suppose?" asked Herc, who was beginning to feel hungry.

"Not much, my lad," laughed the old sailor. "That's the gunnery pennant for the vessel making the best score at the targets. The Idaho won that off the Virginia capes on our last battle practice cruise. All the fleet's after it now, but if we have our way, the old Manhattan will be flying it after we get through peppering the marks off Guantanamo."

Each of the Dreadnought Boys found himself making up his mind, as old Tom spoke, that if it depended on them, the Manhattan would be the battleship to fly the coveted "meat-ball" when next the fleet made port.