A HIT WITH CHAOSITE.

"General battle practice to-day," cried a bosn's mate, as he hastened forward through the scrubbing stations the next morning.

Ned and Herc exchanged glances above their swabs.

At last they were to see what actual battle conditions were like. The practice hitherto had been merely target practice and mine-laying—the latter being dummies, of course. To-day, they had learned earlier, the ships were to be "cleared for action" just as in actual service, and steaming at eighteen knots, were to fire at the targets as they steamed by as if they were repulsing a hostile fleet. No wonder the jackies were on the tiptoe of expectation.

As for the two chums, they were in high spirits. Promotion loomed ahead of Ned, and Herc wished him success with all the warmth of his generous heart. Not a thought of envy entered his mind. He was as delighted as Ned himself over the big chance that had come to the Dreadnought Boy.

Each of my readers can imagine for himself what the two boys had had to say the evening before, when they had been reunited; and Ned had to tell his adventures over and over again, till Herc advised him to invest in a phonograph and talk his narrative into it for indefinite reiteration. "Pills" had patched Ned's injured leg so deftly that it hurt him hardly at all, and the doctor's suggestion that he go on the "binnacle list," otherwise the sick roll, had met with Ned's unqualified disapproval.

"I'm fit for duty. I want to do it, sir, if possible," he had said quietly but firmly, when the doctor suggested that he rest up for a few days.

The doctor, a veteran of thirty years' service, had thrown up his hands in amazement.

"I've been in the navy for more years than you've seen, my boy, by a long shot," he exclaimed, "and I never heard a seaman talk like that before. Well, if you want to work, go ahead, and my blessing go with you."

"I hope that young man is quite right in his head," the man of medicine had muttered to himself, as he heard the door of his sanctum closed by the first bluejacket he had ever met who was not anxious to avail himself of the restful idleness afforded by being on the "binnacle list."

Immediately after breakfast the Manhattan was a scene of the liveliest activity.

Rails came down and were stowed. Boats were lowered, ventilators shipped, war nets rigged, and every object on the deck that was not an absolute fixture vanished. The same thing occurred on other vessels of the fleet, in obedience to the flagship's signalled order:

"Clear for action."

It was like stripping human fighters for a ring contest.

Bugles shrilly sang the order from ship to ship of the squadron. While the smiling jackies bustled about on deck, stewards and orderlies below were stowing pictures and bric-a-brac between mattresses and placing all the ship's crockery and glassware in places where it was not in danger of being jarred to fragments by the earthquake-like detonations of the big guns.

In the meantime officers had invested themselves in their full-dress uniforms with side arms, and an hour after the order had been first transmitted the signal to "Up Anchor" fluttered out from the halliards of the flagship.

Aboard the Manhattan especially excitement ran at high tension, for Mr. Varian himself had come aboard that morning in a shore boat, and it was an open secret that the big twelve-inch gun, fitted with his Chaosite breech—was to receive its first sea test.

The first sight that greeted the eyes of Herc and Ned, reporting for duty in their turret as the squadron got under way beneath a pall of black smoke, was the unveiling, so to speak, of the inventor's masterpiece. Mr. Varian and Lieutenant Timmons, the ship's gunnery officer in command of the turret, had their heads together over the intricate piece of machinery as the two Dreadnought Boys entered the steel-walled box, in which they were practically a part of the machinery.

The inventor greeted them with a kindly nod. Perhaps the thought shot into his mind that had it not been for the pluck and clear-headedness of one of the Dreadnought Boys, he might not have been there.

"Is there any news, sir?" Ned asked respectfully, as soon as he got a chance to speak to the inventor.

"No. The launch that was sent to intercept the Pulsifers' vessel has not yet reported, but we may hear from her at any time now."

"Let us hope that the rascals haven't got a start and boarded some passenger vessel at sea," put in Lieutenant Timmons.

As the officer joined in the conversation Ned saluted and went to another part of the turret. It is not naval usage for an enlisted man to converse with an officer, and Ned was far too well-trained a young man-o'-warsman to break any rule, even the unwritten ones, which in the navy are almost as numerous as the codified regulations.

The excitement under which all hands labored was, however, far too keen to allow even the thoughts of the Pulsifers' capture to interfere with present duty.

Especially was this the case on two of the vessels of the squadron—the Idaho, the holder of the coveted meat-ball, and, as has been mentioned, the Manhattan, every jackie on board of which vessel longed with his whole soul to see the gunnery flag flying from the Dreadnought's main.

The scores stood even between the big guns of the two battleships now, and the open secret that the morning practice was to be made, in large part, with the Varian gun and explosive made the Manhattan's jackies fearful that they might lose, after all.

Jim Cooper, nervous and high-strung as ever, crouched in his seat beside the big weapon as the charge was rammed home and the breech slapped to on the heavy load of Chaosite, which the two Dreadnought Boys beheld for the first time. It was a pinkish, crystalline-looking substance, and its inventor claimed, as safe to handle as ordinary clay, which it resembled in its plasticity. Just to show its properties, before the charge was placed, the inventor picked up a chunk of the explosive and compressed it in his hands. He moulded it into several different shapes, and concluded the exhibition by throwing it on the flooring of the turret with force enough to have detonated a charge of dynamite.

"There is only one danger I apprehend from it," he had explained to Lieutenant Timmons, "and that is in the event of a 'flareback.' But under such conditions there is no powder made that is safe."

In reply to the officer's questions, the inventor explained that Chaosite was a slow-burning explosive, and if the much-dreaded flareback ever occurred in a gun in which it was being used, blazing particles of the freed explosive would be scattered about the turret. As Chaosite would only explode when confined, these particles would glow like hot coals till they burned out. The deadly peril consisted in the fact that the doors of the ammunition hoist opened directly into the turret. There were safety shutters to the hoist, but in action the reloading followed so fast on the firing of the guns that there was little chance of the safety devices being used.

The shaft of the ammunition hoist led directly down to the ammunition table below the water-line on which the explosive was piled, ready to be shot upward on electric elevators. Alongside the ammunition tables were the open doors of the ship's magazine. It does not require vivid imagination to picture what would be the result of blazing particles of a substance like Chaosite dropping down the hoist onto the powder and explosives piled below. Quick and utter annihilation would follow. Not a soul of the eight hundred odd crew and forty officers would stand any but the smallest chance of salvation.

The Dreadnought Boys, as well as the rest of the crew in the turret, were interested listeners to the conversation. All of them knew what a flareback was. One had occurred on the Georgia a year before, costing two lives. It is usually caused by fragments of burning powder being left in the chamber of the gun after a charge has been fired. An electric blower is attached to the big guns of Uncle Sam's navy, which is supposed to thoroughly clean the chamber after each discharge; but it is not careless sailor-proof, and occasionally the newspapers bear dreadful testimony to the result of a flareback, which occurs when the new load is ignited by the left-over fragments of the old one.

But the talk between Mr. Varian and the officer was suddenly checked.

"Boom!"

The flagship had fired, and, as the glass brought to bear by Lieutenant Timmons showed, had missed the first target.

At the distance of a mile and a half the targets, with their tiny boats bobbing at a safe distance, looked extremely small. Shooting at a potato on a fence post at twenty rods with a small rifle is easy compared to the task before Uncle Sam's gunners.

"Now, Cooper, steady, my lad!"

Lieutenant Timmons' voice sounded strained and harsh as the gun pointer squinted through his telescope and depressed his pointing lever ever so little. Already the range had been signaled from the fire-control wells.

The Manhattan was quivering to the speed of her engines, rushing her stripped form past the targets at eighteen knots.

Every man of that gun crew was under as painful a tension as the officer. As for the inventor, his face took on a deadly pallor as he leaned against the rear wall of the turret. In a few moments now he would know if his invention was a failure or a glorious success.

A tiny signal light—the message from the firing room glowed.

Cooper looked round. His wrinkled face was grotesquely knotted, like an ape's, in his excitement. His hand shook, but there was a glitter in his eyes that showed he meant to get that target.

"Brace yourselves, men!" warned the officer.

The boys stood as they had been taught, their knees slightly bent, so as to be springy. As they got the last order they stuffed cotton in their ears. Otherwise, the drums would have been shattered by the discharge.

"All ready, sir," breathed Cooper.

"Fire!"

There was a sharp click from the electric firing switch and a tiny spurt of bluish flame.

A shock like that of an earthquake followed. The mighty explosion seemed to rend the turret.

It had not died out before the glasses of the gunnery officer, the inventor and the gun-pointer were bearing on the distant target and the boats scurrying toward it. From the bridge and the quarter deck similar scrutiny was brought to bear.

Chaosite was almost smokeless, so their vision was not obscured, as with the old-fashioned powder—even the so-called "smokeless" making quite a smother.

"Hit, sir!" shot out Cooper dryly, as the signal man in the target boat wig-wagged the news.

"Now let the Idaho folks get busy!" cried the delighted gun crew.

The new explosive and the new gun had proven themselves one of the biggest naval successes of many a day.