I enlisted in the navy. And it was good for me. To look out on the wide 'waters--day or night--'tis to calm a man's soul, to widen his thought. I had no ambition to rise. The blazing life of the four quarters of the world was soaking into me. My eyes, perhaps, were seeing too much, and my mind pondering on what I saw too much, to be breaking any ship records for efficiency. But I was getting my rating when it was time and I was forgetting old shore troubles, when there was a warrant-officer came to our ship. His name--no matter his name--he's no longer in the navy. He was the-- But you've seen the little man on the big job?--the sure sign of it being the pompous manner and the arrogant word. There he was, licking the boots of those above him and setting his own boots on the necks of those below! He strutted like a governor-general. Maybe you know what sort of talk is passed along the gun-decks when such a one is parading by! The ridiculousness of him was too wide a target for any man with an eye in his head to miss. I was never short of an eye, nor oil for the trunnions of my tongue, and no ship's company ever lacked a messenger to carry the disturbing word. For the fun I poked at him my bold superior had me spotted for his own target later. There was a chest of alcohol on the lower flag bridge and there was a marine sentry standing by it night and day. As much for the devilment as for the drink, four or five of the lads in our gun crew one night rushed the ladder to the bridge, stood the sentry on his head, broke open the chest, grabbed the alcohol, and got away. My warrant-officer says he saw me among 'em. 'Twas a hot night, like to-night, and in the tropics too, and he couldn't sleep, he said, and had to leave his room and come on deck. And so it was he happened to be where he could see me. He couldn't name the others. Indeed, he would not care to name others when he was not positive, and so do possibly innocent men an injustice, and so on. But he was positive about me. I was called. The sentry looked me over. He wouldn't swear it was me, but there was one man in the party about my height and build, and, like me, he was a very active man, judging by the way he went down the bridge ladder. Now, I knew who did it--I had been invited to be of the party, and I wasn't a bit too good for it; but I didn't feel like going and I didn't go. The man the sentry took for me was the man who had been the heavyweight slugger of the ship before I was drafted to her. We had already had the gloves on, and I had beaten him at a ship's smoker long before this. I waited to see would he speak up. He didn't, and I took my sentence--disratement and thirty days in the brig, ten of it on bread and water. I didn't mind the disrating, nor the brig and the bread and water; but I did mind being made out a liar.