“If you aren’t the luckiest lambs I’ve ever seen,” Marshall laughed admiringly; “you’re a regular lodestone, the three of you. Everything you touch turns to excitement. Now I’ve been here for three months, most of the time cooling my heels at the dock with no one to talk to except a lot of hayseed volunteers who haven’t even been to sea, and now you come along and relieve me and I suppose, ‘presto,’ there’ll be something doing at once.” “I hope not until we can get a little sleep,” Phil exclaimed, smiling at Marshall’s sincerity. “I am sleepy enough to drop off standing up.” “Well,” Marshall said as he pushed back his chair and arose from the table, “I’ll be finished packing in an hour, and then you can read your orders and take command. I don’t want to miss that boat, for she makes easy connections with the transport for home. Think of it, Perry, home! Doesn’t it sound fine?” Then, seeing that the name had not stirred his listeners to a great degree of enthusiasm, he exclaimed, “Well, if you’d been living by yourself for nearly a year and hadn’t seen anything but these natives, home would sound good to you, too.” The lads were soon asleep in steamer chairs under the quarter-deck awning, while Marshall busied himself with his packing. The Chinese servants moved about noiselessly and with deft hands quickly filled the two open trunks. Finally Marshall remade his toilet and appeared spick and span in a fresh and spotless white uniform. Refreshed by even this short nap the midshipmen opened their trunks, which had been carried over nearly sixty miles of rough country on the shoulders of stalwart native carriers, and in an incredibly short time appeared on deck as fresh in appearance as if they had both stepped from the proverbial band-box. A shrill whistle sounded on the gunboat followed by the call, “Lay aft, everybody.” The men filed aft on the miniature quarter-deck, lining themselves obediently on each side, and there waited. A smile stole irrepressibly to Phil’s face. Here on board this tiny ship, scarcely a hundred feet long and of a little over one hundred tons displacement, the far-reaching navy regulations were being carried out with as much form and punctiliousness as they would be on the biggest battle-ship. In a graceful speech Marshall bade farewell to his small crew and then he unfolded the paper in his hand signed by no less a personage than the admiral commanding the Asiatic fleet. “You are, upon the reporting of your relief, Midshipman Philip Perry, U. S. Navy, detached from the command of the U. S. S. ‘Mindinao’ and will proceed immediately to Manila, reporting your arrival, for passage to your home, to the senior officer present.” As soon as Marshall’s voice died away, Phil began to read his own orders, which he had kept safely pinned to the inside of his breast-pocket during the last few exciting days.