The sergeant talked kindly to the man, and when he was quieted led him to the hospital, where a doctor attended to him. Here he entered into a long description of the pillar of "bottles," by which he evidently meant the incandescent globes. The doctor gave his patient a quieting potion, and in a short time he fell into a sleep. When he awoke from his sleep he was quiet, but his mind still dwelt on the pillar of "bottles," and he insisted on repeating his version of the affair to all the doctors. In the evening a carriage took the patient away, supposedly to the detention hospital. _CHAPTER VII_ ON BOARD THE "ILLINOIS" "Now for the battleship," said Johnny, "that's what I want to see." As they came on board the brick ship, the first words they heard were quite nautical. "It's eight bells." "Aye, aye, sir!" The bos'un, or whoever it was that received the order from the Lieutenant, climbed up and tapped out eight strokes on the big brass bell. About twenty people, with lunch baskets and camp-chairs, ran after him and watched the performance. "What's that for?" asked a young woman. "That tells the time of day," answered her escort. "But it's after 12 o'clock by my watch and he struck it only eight times." "Well, they--ah--they have a system of their own. It's very complicated." "Look at that crooked thing there," said one of the visitors, pointing to the air-tube leading to the stoker. "Is that their foghorn I've heerd about?" "They don't need no foghorns on warships. I jedge it's a shootin'-iron of some kind or other, maybe a gattlin' gun what jest blows the shot out. You see it's pointin' out like at an enemy." An elderly woman stepped up to the Lieutenant and said: "I'd like mighty well to see some of the Gatling guns." "Yes, ma'am, you will find them at the foretop." "How's that?" "At the turret in the fore-top." [Illustration: "MAYBE ITS A FOG HORN, OR A GATLING GUN."] "Do you mean up in the little round cupola?" "Cupola, great heavens," murmured the officer under his breath. Then he called a marine and had him show the woman to the fore-top. It is the experience of a lifetime for a naval officer who has cruised in the Mediterranean and rocked over the high waves of the south Atlantic to be placed in command of a brick battleship, which rests peacefully alongside a little pier and is boarded by hundreds of reckless sight-seers every day. The conning towers are of sheet-iron and some of the formidable guns are simply painted wood. It is said that if anything larger than a six-inch gun should be fired from the deck of the mimic battleship the recoil would upset the masonry and jolt the whole structure into a shapeless mass.