When it was all over, and half the Jap force lay at the bottom of the sea while the rest ran for cover, pursued by American planes, the men on the _Plymouth_ wearily surveyed the damage done to their ship. It was plenty, but a month in port would fix her up again. As they headed slowly for Pearl Harbor for repairs, Scoot and March got the big surprise of their lives. They had no thought of making heroes of themselves, and they never could figure out how, in the heat of battle, any officer could have seen just what they did. Yet when the citations came along, Scoot and March both found themselves on the list commended for conspicuous gallantry in action. “My golly, we didn’t do anything,” Scoot had objected, even though he was beaming all over with pleasure. “Everybody else did the same kind of thing. All the crew were fighting just as hard as we were!” “Yes, but they didn’t all keep their heads under fire and show the spontaneously clear thinking that you two did,” Commander Seaton said to them in a friendly talk later. “That’s what counts—that’s what makes leaders of men. And the Navy needs leaders these days. By the way, the Skipper asked me if there was anything special we could do for you two—anything you wanted especially. I told him that you, Scoot, had wanted to be a Navy flier and that March had wanted to be a submariner. If you still feel that way, the Skipper’ll recommend your transfer to those branches.” March and Scoot were dumbfounded! And it had not been an easy thing to decide, though a few months before they would not have hesitated for an instant. Scoot still wanted to fly. March still wanted to go into the pigboats. But they had lived on the _Plymouth_, gone through battle with her, and they didn’t like the idea of leaving her now. It was March who made up his mind first. “I’m going to ask for the transfer,” he said. “I hate to leave this ship and the men on it and the action I know she’ll be seeing. After a battle or two you don’t feel like going back to school again. You want to go on to more battles. But I love the idea of submarines so much that I know I’d be a better man in a pigboat than I can ever be on a surface ship. So I’ll take a few months out, learn what I have to learn, and come back to this part of the world and really send some of those Jap ships to the bottom.” “Guess you’re right,” Scoot agreed. “It won’t be long!” So they had said farewell to the _Plymouth_ sadly as they stepped into the launch taking them ashore. And they had stood looking at the great gray ship as the little boat moved toward the Navy Yard pier. But now their eyes were set forward. They had a long way to travel to get home, a lot of hard work and studying to do before they could accomplish what they wanted. They stepped from the launch and stood on the pier. For a last moment they looked out at the _Plymouth_ once more.