HERC—A LIVING TARGET.

To the keen disappointment of the boys, however, they found out the next day that they were not, as they had anticipated, to go together in the target officer's "wherry," as the small boat he used was called.

Ned was to accompany the officer—a young ensign named Rousseau—while Herc was to take his place as acting signalman in one of the two big whale boats that were detailed to attend to the targets. The man who ordinarily undertook this duty being assigned to the signal post in the "flying bridge" of the flagship.

Immediately after breakfast, the Manhattan, which was to have sole charge of the target-placing, lowered the three boats and one of her "steamers." The targets were set up on the floats already provided for them before the call for the first meal of the day sounded.

These targets were huge sheets of canvas twenty feet high and twenty-five feet broad, which were to be towed to a distance of a mile and a half from the battle-practice ground and anchored. Each was marked into squares by thin lines, with a big square of black in the center for a bull's-eye.

There were ten of them, and they were to be ranged in a line. The first test to be applied was firing by the flagship from anchorage. This was more to get the range than anything else. The real practice would come later, when the ships in column steamed past the targets, firing one after the other at designated marks. This was to be the real test of the fleet's gunnery, and one in which the men of the Idaho felt confident they would again shine preËminent.

The Manhattan's gun crews, on the contrary, felt just as sure of capturing the scarlet "meat ball," the trophy of the fleet.

The Manhattan's steamer lay, with a full head of power, alongside the man-o'-war as Ned and Herc, with their signal flags, emerged from their quarters forward with the rest of the men assigned to placing the targets.

The targets, as has been said, had already been set in place on the big collapsible scows which had been towed out from the shore during the night. Nothing remained but to tow them out and place them.

The range would then be picked up as soon as Ned wig-wagged the ensign's signal to the flagship that all was ready. For this purpose, the commanders of the different vessels had been summoned by signal to appear on the Connecticut that morning and take part in a "counsel of war" in the rear-admiral's cabin.

As Ned clambered down the sea ladder after the ensign and took his place in the little boat he was to occupy, he saw, with a start of surprise, that among Herc's companions in the whaleboat were Carl Schultz, the black-browed Silas, and Kennell. He felt further misgivings as he took notice of the black glances Kennell cast at the unconscious Herc, who was far too engrossed in the excitement of his first real duty to pay any attention to his shipmates.

Rapidly the boats were towed out to the spot selected for placing the first target, and Ned, with a telescope to his eye, anxiously watched the flagship for the signal to stop.

At last he spied the expected flags fluttering up on the halliards and notified the ensign.

"Make it so," rejoined that officer, and Ned rapidly "wig-wagged" that the signal had been seen and would be carried out. Herc, at the same moment, was standing in the stern of the whaleboat, doing the same thing.

The first target anchored, the "steamer" towed her convoy to the next position, which was indicated by a signal from the flagship as the first had been. One after another the targets were anchored in position, and at last, about an hour before eight bells—noon—everything was ready for the range testing, and the signal recalling the steamer fluttered from the flagship.

The whaleboat on which Herc was stationed was in command of a petty officer, as was the other small craft. The only commissioned officer assigned to the comparatively unimportant duty of target placing was, therefore, the ensign in the wherry in which Ned was posted as signalman. In this boat there was but one oarsman; however, he seemed to be plenty for the craft, which was a light one and rowed easily.

One after another a final inspection was made of the targets, and after a thorough overhauling, all was pronounced ready for the tests to begin.

To ascertain if all was in order, the ensign had his boat rowed up to each of the targets in turn. Ned, at his side, sent the signal that each was O. K. successively back to the flagship as they were examined.

"Rather awkward, sir, if they were to fire at a target while we were standing on the scow," remarked Ned, as they stood on the undulating platform supporting the last screen of canvas.

"Well, rather, Strong," laughed the ensign. "I imagine our earthly troubles would be over very shortly."

"But if the shell passed above us, sir?" asked Ned respectfully, as he wanted to accumulate all the knowledge he could of gunnery.

"The air currents generated by the high velocity of the shell would sweep anything within even ten feet of it to destruction," rejoined the ensign learnedly. "Of course," he added laughingly, "nobody has ever tested it, but I should imagine that the gases generated by such a projectile would poison anything that happened to be in the vicinity as it passed."

Ned nodded thoughtfully.

As they regained the wherry he gazed about him.

The sea stretched sparklingly blue under the tropic skies as far as the eye could reach.

Right ahead of them was extended the line of snowy targets, seeming huge enough at such close range, small as they appeared to the battleships a mile and a quarter off. In spite of the beauty of the scene and the glorious crispness of the sea air, Ned felt an oppression, the cause of which he himself would have found difficult to determine.

"If I was superstitious, I should say that I had a premon—a premon—— Oh, I forget the word! But, anyhow, that I had a 'hunch' that something was going to happen," mused Ned to himself.

But it was no time for musing.

The whaleboats were beginning to back away to safe quarters before the firing commenced. At the ensign's command, the wherry followed them.

"Give them the signal to go ahead, Strong!" ordered the ensign sharply at length, as they lay bobbing at some distance from the targets. The bronzed arms of the oarsman were motionless and his eyes were fixed intently on the far-off line of battleships.

Ned stood erect in the stern of the plunging wherry. Awkward as the motion would have been to a landsman, to the Dreadnought Boy it was hardly noticeable.

His brown arms dipped and rose, and with their motion the red signal flag cut arcs against the blue sky.

Far off, on the bridge of the flagship, the lookout, gazing through his telescope, reported to the anxious group of officers that all was ready.

Rapidly the word was passed to the port twelve-inch turret, it having been decided to use the big guns on test work.

Boom!

The report followed a flash of red flame. The battleship trembled to her keel plates as the sound reverberated.

The shell sped screeching through the air.

"Phsiw-is-s-s-s-s-s-s-s!"

Straight for the end target it sped, and a second later the lookout, reading off Ned's wig-wagging signals, announced in a curt voice:

"Bull's-eye, sir."

A little chorus of congratulation followed among the officers.

"That's the stuff!" murmured the ensigns and middies.

"Excellent work," was the comment of their more dignified senior officers.

"Signal whaleboat Number One to replace canvas," ordered the ensign, and Ned promptly transmitted the signal to the boat in which Herc was signalman. The red-headed lad answered his chum's signal promptly, and in a minute the double-ender was scooting through the water on its errand.

The work of placing fresh canvas on the target did not consume long, and in a short time Herc, standing in the stern of the whaler, wig-wagged back to Ned that all was ready.

"Number One whaleboat signals 'all ready,' sir," announced Ned.

"Very well. Order them to pull away," said the ensign.

Ned transmitted the order, and the men who had been holding the boat to the scow by their boathooks cast off hastily.

Ned's attention was instantly turned to the ensign, awaiting fresh orders. Had it not been for that, he would have seen something transpiring on the whaleboat which would have filled him with rage.

Kennell it was who had charge of the stern boathook. His station was on the small grating astern of the petty officer's seat. On this grating Herc, too, was standing. As the boat was shoved off, Herc felt his feet suddenly twitched from under him, and the next minute he toppled headlong into the sea.

The crew of the boat, bending to their oars at top speed—for they knew that the deadly projectile would soon be winging toward them—apparently did not see what had occurred, and bent over their oars without a thought of Herc's peril. Kennell, with an evil grin on his hard features, clambered back into the boat with the look on his face of a man who has done a good day's work.

At the speed at which the whaleboat was urged through the water, it was out of earshot by the time Herc rose to the surface. Indeed, the unexpected immersion had resulted in his swallowing so much water that he was unable to shout.

Blowing a stream of water from his lips, he struck out for the nearest target, the one which had just been replaced.

"I'll just camp there till they see me," he thought.

A few strokes brought him alongside the float once more, and he scrambled up its wet sides, not without some difficulty. In fact, when he gained the flat upper surface of the target's support he was breathing heavily.

The sea, too, had risen since they had rowed out, and one of those sudden squalls that are so common in the tropics was whirling in from seaward. Herc did not see this, however—the mighty screen of canvas behind him veiled it from the boy's view.

The men in the boats had, however, spied the approaching bad weather, and orders were given to get up spray hoods in the bows of the craft.

"Well," thought Herc, "I'm being rocked in the cradle of the deep with a vengeance. However, I get a little rest from that eternal wig-wagging. That's one comfort."

Suddenly a thought struck him that sent a cold shiver down his spine.

In his new-found security he had given no thought to a peril that now loomed imminent.

He was seated on the float at which the flagship was firing.

At any moment they might send another shot toward it, and then what would happen?

"I'll signal them," thought Herc; but even as the thought entered his mind he recollected that as he had gone overboard the flags had gone with him.

He was marooned on a floating target, with every prospect of having a twelve-inch shell come shrieking toward him at any moment.

Suddenly Herc saw a string of flags hoisted on the flagship. Instinctively he knew what they meant.

Ned, his cousin and chum, had signaled that all was ready, and the Connecticut was about to open fire!

Situated far to the rear of the target as they were, Herc knew that those in the boats had not sighted him, and unless he was missed from the Number One whaleboat, his doom was sealed. He could have screamed aloud with real terror at the peril of his situation.

At almost the same instant his burning eyes saw a burst of flame suddenly flash from the side of the battleship. Herc's brain reeled. Already he could hear the scream of the shell, and in fancy saw his dismembered body flung in torn fragments before it.

"Phsiwis-is-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s!"

The projectile shrieked nearer and nearer and passed like a thunderbolt through the target, ripping it from top to bottom with a vicious hiss. It plunged into the sea far beyond, ricocheting from wave to wave for two miles or more.

But the float was empty of life.

Herc had vanished.