Navy Boys Behind the Big Guns | Page 3

ecstatically, "we never was of such importance since we was
christened--hey, fellows?"
"Oi, oi!" murmured Ikey, wagging his head, "my papa don't even
suggest I should take out the orders to the customers no more. He does
it himself, or he hires a feller to do it for him.
"Mind, now! Last night he closed the shop an hour early so's to sit
down with my mama and me and Aunt Eitel in the back room, after the
kids was all in bed, and made me tell about all we'd done and seen. I
tell you it's great!"
"And before we began our hitch," Al Torrance chuckled, as he expertly
rounded a corner, "we were scarcely worth speaking to in Seacove.
Now folks want to stop us on the street and tell us how much they think
of us."
"Gee!" exploded Frenchy, "I could eat candy and ice cream all day long
if I'd let the kids spend money on me."
"We're sure some pumpkins," drawled Whistler Morgan, dryly, sitting
around in the front seat so he could talk with those in the rear. "I say,
Hans!"
"Yep?" was Seven Knott's reply.
"Do you really think we can get some of those fellows at Elmvale to go
to the recruiting office and enlist?"
"Yep. You fellows can tell 'em. You can talk better'n I can."
Seven Knott knew his shipboard duties thoroughly, and never was
reprimanded for neglect of them. But since the four chums had known
him well, the petty officer had been no conversationalist, that was sure.
"If this war was going to be won by talk, like some fellows in Congress
seem to think," Al Torrance once said, "Seven Knott wouldn't have a

chance. But it is roughnecks just like him that man the boats and shoot
the guns that are going to show Kaiser Bill where he gets off--believe
me!"
Elmvale was a factory town not more than six miles above Seacove. It
was on the river, at the mouth of which was situated the little port in
which were the homes of Whistler Morgan and his friends.
The biggest dam in the State, the Elmvale Dam, held back the waters of
the river above the village; and below the dam were several big mills
and factories that got their power from the use of the water.
On both sides of the stream, and around the cotton mills, the thread
mills, and the munition factories, were built many little homes of the
factory and mill hands. It had been pointed out by the local papers that
these homes were in double peril at this time.
Guards were on watch night and day that ill-affected persons should not
come into the district and blow up the munition factories. But there was
a second and greater danger to the people of Elmvale.
If anything should happen to the dam, if it should burst, the enormous
quantity of water held in leash by the structure would pour over the
village and cover half the houses to their chimney tops.
Two bridges crossed the river at Elmvale; one at the village proper and
the other just below the dam itself and about half a mile from the first
mill, Barron & Brothers' Thread Factory.
"Let's take the upper road," proposed Frenchy, as the car came within
sight of the chimneys of the Elmvale mills. "We've plenty of time
before the noon whistle blows. I haven't been up by the dam since
before we all joined the Navy."
"Just as you fellows say," Al responded, and turned into a side road that
soon brought them above the mills on the ridge overlooking the valley.
"I say, fellows," Whistler stopped whistling long enough to observe,

"there's a slue of water behind that dam. S'pose she should let go all of
a sudden?"
"I'd rather be up here than down there," Al said.
"Oi, oi!" croaked Ikey, "you said something."
"I wonder if they guard that dam as they say they do the munition
factories," Frenchy put in.
Al turned the machine into the road that descended into the valley by a
sharp incline. In sight of the bridge which crossed the river Whistler
suddenly put his hand upon his chum's arm.
"Hold on, Torry," he said earnestly. "I bet that's one of the guards now.
See that fellow in the bushes over there?"
"I see the man you mean!" Frenchy exclaimed, leaning over the back of
the front seat of the automobile. "But he isn't in khaki. And he hasn't
got a gun."
All the Navy boys in the automobile, even Seven Knott, saw the man to
whom Whistler Morgan had first drawn attention. The man had his
back to the road. He was standing upright with a pair of field glasses to
his