CHAPTER I THE PRINCIPAL HEARS SOMETHING ABOUT "PENNIES" Clang! "Attention, please." The barely audible droning of study ceased promptly in the big assembly room of the Gridley High School. The new principal, who had just stepped into the room, and who now stood waiting behind his flat-top desk on the platform, was a tall, thin, severe-looking man of thirty-two or three. For this year... more...

Chapter I A JOLT ON A QUIET DAY "There's just one thing that I keep thinking about on a day like this," Dave Darrin sighed contentedly. "What's that?" Tom Reade wanted to know. "Supper?" Darrin turned, favoring Reade with a flash of disgust from his large, dark eyes. "I'm still waiting for the information," insisted Tom after a short pause. "You may as... more...

CHAPTER I WEIGHING ANCHOR FOR THE GREAT CRUISE "It sounds like the greatest cruise ever!" declared Danny Grin, enthusiastically, as he rose and began to pace the narrow limits of the chart-room of the destroyer commanded by his chum, Lieutenant-Commander Dave Darrin. "It is undoubtedly the most dangerous work we've ever undertaken," Darrin observed thoughtfully. "All the... more...

CHAPTER I SULKING IN THE FOOTBALL CAMP "Football is all at sixes and sevens, this year," muttered DaveDarrin disconsolately. "I can tell you something more than that," added Tom Reade mysteriously. "What?" asked Dick Prescott, looking at Reade with interest, for it was unusual for Reade to employ that tone or air. "Two members of the Athletics Committee have intimated to... more...

CHAPTER I WANTED—-A DOUGHFACE! "Now, then, Danny boy, we——-" First Classman Dave Darrin, midshipman at the United States NavalAcademy, did not finish what he was about to say. While speaking he had closed the door behind him and had stepped into the quarters occupied jointly by himself and by Midshipman Daniel Dalzell, also of the first or upper class. "Danny boy isn't here.... more...

CHAPTER I A SPARK PUTS THREE BOYS AND A BOAT ON THE JUMP “Ho, ho, ho—hum!” grumbled Hank Butts, vainly trying to stifle a prodigious yawn. “This may be what Mr. Seaton calls a vacation on full pay, but I’d rather work.” “It is fearfully dull, loafing around, in this fashion, on a lonely island, yet in plain sight of the sea that we long to rove over,” nodded Captain Tom Halstead of the... more...

CHAPTER I WHY THE MIDSHIPMEN BALKED "So Tom Reade and Harry Hazelton have been here?" demanded MidshipmanDave Darrin. That handsome young member of the brigade of midshipmen at the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis was now in mufti, or cits,—meaning, in other words, that he was out of his Naval uniform and attired in the conventional clothing of a young American when calling... more...

CHAPTER I THE HIGH SCHOOL SNEAK "I say you did!" cried Fred Ripley, hotly. Dick Prescott's cheeks turned a dull red as he replied, quietly, after swallowing a choky feeling in his throat: "I have already told you that I did not do it." "Then who did do the contemptible thing?" insisted Ripley, sneeringly. Fully forty boys, representing all the different classes at the... more...

CHAPTER I READY FOR FIGHT OR FROLIC "Do you care to go out this evening, Danny boy?" asked Dave Darrin, stepping into his chum's room. "I'm too excited and too tired," confessed Ensign Dalzell. "The first thing I want is a hot bath, the second, pajamas, and the third, a long sleep." "Too bad," sighed Dave. "I wanted an hour's stroll along... more...

THE FILIPINO DANDY "We've solved one problem at last, Noll," declared Sergeant Hal Overton seriously. "Only one?" demanded young Sergeant Terry quizzically. But Hal, becoming only the more serious, went on earnestly: "At last we begin to understand just what the 'lure of the Orient' means! For years I've been reading about the Orient, and the way that this part... more...