"Oh, well, you shouldn't go to fighting, then," remarked the master-at-arms, pulling open a steel-studded door and thrusting Herc before him into a narrow passage, lighted by electric bulbs, down one side of which was fitted a row of steel-barred cells. "We're a bit crowded," he remarked, "so I can't give you a cell to yourself. When a ship puts to sea out of a port there are generally a lot of men to be disciplined. Those who have overstayed their leave, and so forth. Therefore, I'll have to put you in here." He opened a door as he spoke, and pushed Herc into a cell in which two other men were already seated on a narrow bench which ran along one side. "You'll get a full ration at eight bells, for which you are lucky," remarked the master-at-arms; "the others get only bread and water." Clang! The steel door swung to, and Herc, for the first time in his life, was a prisoner. It did not make the experience any the less bitter to know that he was a captive and disgraced through no fault of his own, unless it had been from his exuberant swinging of the paint-pot in the enthusiasm of his newly-acquired "sea-legs." The Dreadnought Boy, despite his unpleasant situation, was naturally inquisitive enough to gaze about him on his surroundings. The cell itself was a steel-walled apartment about twelve feet square with no other furnishings than the narrow bench, which also was of steel. It was lighted by an electric bulb, set deep in the ceiling and barred off, so that it could not be tampered with by a meddlesome prisoner. The walls of this place were painted white. The floors red. It was insufferably hot and stuffy, and the songs of a group of roisterers confined in another cell, which broke forth as soon as the master-at-arms departed, did not tend to make the environment any pleasanter. "So this is the brig," mused Herc, "well, they can have it for all I want with it. It's not much better than the hog-pen at home." One of Herc's fellow prisoners, who had been sitting sullenly on the bench, now arose and began to pace back and forth. His companion did likewise. They had not paid the slightest attention to Herc hitherto, but now one of them spoke. "What you in for, kid?" "I guess you'll have to ask the master-at-arms," rejoined Herc, who was not prepossessed by his questioner's appearance. He was a heavy-set, low-browed man, with a pair of black eyebrows that almost met in the center of his forehead, giving him a sinister aspect. His companion was slight, and long-legged, with a delicate--almost an effeminate--cast of features. "Oh, well, if you don't want to talk you don't have to," growled the heavy-browed man. "Say, Carl," he went on, turning to his companion, "this is a nice, sociable cellmate they've given us, isn't it?" "You attend to your own affairs, Silas," snarled the other, who did not seem to be any more amiable than his heavy-browed friend; "leave the kid alone. We've got trouble enough of our own, haven't we?"