Now the battleship began to quiver, as the increased throbbing of her engines, the monstrous fore-waves, and the volumes of black smoke rushing from her stacks told the excited passengers that she was settling down to her best pace for the crucial test of speed. A government tug was passed, and for ten miles the _Retvizan_ ploughed her way fiercely northward, never deviating a foot to right or left, crushing the waves into a boiling cauldron of seething foam, dashing the spray high into the sunshine, until the second stake-boat, off Cape Porpoise, was passed, and with a long sweep outward she turned, to retrace the ten-mile course more swiftly than ever. Fred Larkin pervaded, so to speak, the ship. Note-book in hand, he interviewed the officers, chaffed the Russian Jackies, darted in and out of the cabins, and ranged boldly through the hidden passages below. In process of time he reached the engine-room, smearing himself with oil on the way, from every steel rod he touched. No sooner had he entered the room than he was pounced upon by one of the three or four engineers, naval and civil, who were busily watching the work of the great, pulsing heart of the vessel. "Larkin! How are you, old fellow?" And his hands were grasped and wrung, over and over, regardless of oil. "Holmes! Well, I didn't guess _you_ were here! Shake again!" It was Lieutenant-Commander Holmes, Assistant Engineer, who, with several subordinate officers, two of them from the Academy, had been detached by the Navy Department to watch the trip of the _Retvizan_ and report upon it. They mingled freely with the Russian engineers, and compared notes with them as the trial progressed. Norman Holmes explained this to the young reporter, who was an old and tried friend. "Where is Rexdale stationed?" "He's doing shore duty in Washington just now. Between you and me, Fred, I think he'll be a lieutenant-commander before long, and may command one of the smaller vessels on this station--a despatch-boat or something of the kind. I only wish I could be assigned to the same ship! You know Dave and I were chums in the Academy." "I know. And the trifling circumstance of each marrying the other's sister hasn't tended to produce a coldness, I suppose! But isn't that an awfully quick promotion for Rexdale? The last I heard of him he was only a lieutenant." "Well, we've built so many new ships lately," said Holmes, with his eye on the steam gauge, "that it has been hard work to man them. Two or three classes have been graduated at the Academy two years ahead of time, and promotions have been rapid all along the line. The man that commanded the gunboat _Osprey_, for instance, is now on an armoured cruiser, taking the place of an officer who has been moved up to the battleship _Arizona_, and so on. Why, in the course of ten years or more I may be a commander--who knows?" he added, with a laugh. "I suppose you hear from 'Sandy' and--what did you fellows call Tickerson?"