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108 soon bite mine own ear, Herr Hamilton. Me burn a omelet!" and the cook was quite indignant, until Dick's laugh told him it was a joke.

Coming up on deck after a substantial meal, Tim Muldoon, who was first out of the companionway, uttered a cry.

"Hi, fellers, here's a ship that's been wrecked!" he cried. There was a rush to the rail and the boys saw, not far off, on the port side, a large vessel, with queer stumpy masts, on the tops of which were big, round objects.

"Is it sinking?" asked Henry Darby. "Can't we rescue the people?"

"That's a lightship," explained Captain Barton, who was just being relieved at the wheel by Widdy. "It's the one about twenty miles off Cape May, the southernmost point of New Jersey. We haven't made very good time during the night, or we'd be farther south. But I thought it best to proceed slowly, until I got better acquainted with the yacht."

"That's right," agreed Dick. "We're in no hurry." The lads watched the lonely vessel, anchored so far off from land, until they had left it quite a distance aft, and then they found new matters to occupy their attention.

"This is certainly great, Dick," remarked Paul Drew, some hours later, as he sat in a steamer chair near his chum. "It beats turning out at reveille, forcing yourself into a tight uniform, and getting ready for drill and chapel; doesn't it?"