Ben had found his way to New York, and Walter had drifted to Boston. After several adventures, the war fever had caught both, and Ben had joined the army to become "A Young Volunteer in Cuba," as already related in the volume of that name, while Walter had joined the armored cruiser _Brooklyn_ and participated in the destruction of the Spanish fleet in Santiago Bay, as told in "Fighting in Cuban Waters." While the three boys were away from home, Job Dowling had overreached himself by trying to sell some of the Russell heirlooms which it had been willed the lads should keep. The heirlooms had been stolen by a sharper, and it had cost the old man a neat sum of money to get them back. The experience made him both a sadder and a wiser man, and from that time on his manner changed, and when the boys returned from the war they found that he had turned over a new leaf. In the future he was perfectly willing that they should "do fer themselves," as he expressed it. After a brief stay in Buffalo, Walter had left, to rejoin the _Brooklyn_, which was bound for a cruise to Jamaica and elsewhere. At this time trouble began to break out between the United States troops in the Philippines and the insurgents who had been fighting the now-conquered Spaniards, and it looked as if another fair-sized war was at hand. This being so, Ben lost no time in reenlisting in the army, while Larry hastened to join Admiral Dewey's flagship _Olympia_ once more. "If there's to be any more fighting, I want to be right in it," was what the young tar said, and Ben agreed with him. How they journeyed to Manila by way of the Mediterranean, the Suez Canal, and the Indian Ocean, has already been related in "Under Otis in the Philippines." Ben was at this time second lieutenant of Company D of his regiment. With the two boys went Gilbert Pennington, Ben's old friend of the Rough Riders, who was now first sergeant of Company B of the same regiment, and half a dozen others who had fought with the young volunteer in Cuba. On arriving at Manila Larry found matters, so far as it concerned his ship, very quiet, but Ben was at once sent to the front, and participated with much honor to himself in the campaign which led to the fall of Malolos, a city that was at that time the rebel capital. As Company D, with Ben at its head as acting captain, had rushed down the main street of the place, an insurgent sharpshooter had hit the young commander in the side, and he had fallen, to be picked up later and placed in the temporary hospital which was opened up in Malolos as soon as it was made certain that the rebels had been thoroughly cleaned out. Fortunately for the young volunteer the wound, though painful, was not serious.