Picture-Play Magazine (Oct-Nov 1915)

rs, of the San Juan, stationed down the south ?" 'Dickie Sommers, of the San Juan? ss he saved us all down at 'jb I know him? Well, do you, Mi Ttirant?" if' We "Vol "Sax 4. ■ IS an 'Well, igol !" Saved you ?" returned the young offiHow?" Frances recounted the matter shortly, ti rely omitting her part in it. As she Id it, the officer listened politely, but is obviously unimpressed. "Now, I do call that hard luck — fate, iss Durant ! Poor Dickie ! Again — m so sorry !" ~ r'Why, what do you mean?" asked "•' j.lrances, warily watching his eyes. "" A hat are you so sorry about?" t "That he — poor Dick — he had to save : Tim." ' r' ! "Lieutenant Collins!" They had al ost stopped dancing. J' "Oh, you don't understand. Miss Duint ! I had so hoped— truly I had— " aat you could know each other and be ""iends. His ship's in the harbor, and :"ve been looking for him every minute ,pr the last hour. He's one of my best ;riends, so when I met you I hoped that ■|ou — but now you say that he's saved ou, too!" The officer broke off, shakig his head hopelessly. "Ale, too?" rejoined the girl, a little • isappointedly. "You speak as if he re always rescuing people." "He is, but truly, Miss Durant, believe me, he feels far worse about it han any one else. He considers himelf cursed by it. He's told me through ears how twice he thought he had lopes, and both times he had to go and j'eave the girl's life, and that was the end. I'd really given him up till you isked so interestedly for him, and then "U spoiled it all by confessing that he'd jsaved you, too." "What a terrible situation !" Frances laughed. "Isn't it? Dick has always said [here's no surer or more deadly way to lose a friend than by saving him— or her. It's really most discouraging." "Tell me about him, Lieutenant Collins," said the girl, as they danced on, now understanding each other a little better. "I've given up all hope of seeing him, since he had to save me. Is he Irish?" " 'Way back, maybe— on his mother's side. His father's family have been American— Virginians— since the time of PICTURE-PLAY WEEKLY Pocahontas. Fought for the colonies on land till the Revolution, then the first sea fighting Sommers struck for salt water under J. P. Jones. Dick's greatgrandfather was with Decatur, and his father was the youngest officer on the Merrimac. About all the whole line left Dick, though, was an appointment to Annapolis. Just accepted it when he got wind of the fracas with Spain. Thought he saw a chance for the first fight out this way, so turned up somehow in the Petrel and came in here with Dewey. After the smashing of the fleet in here, he cruised around the southern islands, picking up stray Spanish gunboats. One of them — the San Juan, which he now commands, couldn't be found, and Dick was sent in with a boatful of men one night to see if it was hiding in a river. Instead of returning to report, he captured it with his boat's crew." "They put him in command, then?" asked Frances innocently. "Not quite." Her partner smiled as he guided her carefully through the crowding dancers. "But that, and a few other things like it, kept him in the navy and made him a middy, anyway, without his going back to Annapolis. Besides, he studied and got up on theory at the same time that he learned practice. Admiral Barlow — particular friend of his — admitted he'd picked up enough practically to qualify him as an officer ; but said he'd need to go back to the academy to get the diplomatic side and training in international affairs necessary for a naval officer." Frances' partner checked his laconically breathless account, and laughed. "Well, what did Lieutenant Sommers do then?" the girl demanded impatiently. "Do? That was a couple of years after the Spanish War, when our relations with South American countries were rather delicate. The word had gone out to all officers to show especial courtesy and be particularly nice to all South American diplomatic, military, and naval officers wherever met. Well, just at this time, when Admiral Barlow and the rest of us regulars were ragging Dick about how superior to every occasion we were, he comes up to the admiral and tells him gravely that three Chilean, one Paraguayan, and two Bolivian naval officers were stopping in Manila, and that we ought to 23 see that they were asked to the reception. We found the Chilean officers, all right, but he had the admiral all excited, and six of us regular navy graduates chasing all over Manila for the Bolivians and the Paraguayan before it struck any of us that Paraguay never had a navy or even a boundary line within three hundred miles of either ocean, and that Bolivia, too, went into the same class with Switzerland as a sea power when Chile annexed what coast line she had, back somewhere in the eighties." "And then?" "Oh, the next time he showed up here — the admiral had been ragging us on our lack of adaptability to the native chiefs and such, and Dick was stationed down in the lower Sulu Sea — Dickie comes here browned up a bit and shaved and wigged a little, and makes Admiral Barlow himself receive him as a son of the Sultan of Sulu. More than that, he got away with it before a real son of the sultan who happened to be present !" "But didn't that get him in trouble?" "Dick? Well, we were all afraid it would ; but when the sultan heard of it, he was so pleased he wanted to adopt him. But still, ' Miss Durant," continued young Collins, seriously now, as they had stopped dancing and he stood fanning her vigorously, "that sort of thing has been the trouble with Dick — I mean the easy way he gets on with the natives. It's kept him down there around those southern islands all this time. Just because he's a good fellow and can blarney along those chiefs down there so they won't want to fight every two weeks, the government keeps him there. They've refitted the San Juan, and he's in command now. But Dick Sommers shouldn't stay all his life in a third-class, converted cruiser, keeping upstart Malays peaceful. It's some one else's turn down there. But he's such a good fellow that he'll keep on at it unless" — the young officer fanned very violently now — "unless some one better than we can make him see it." "But, Lieutenant Collins, he's not doing merely that !" protested Frances, hoping that her rising color would be charged to the heat of the room. I've heard he's been inventing a gun — a wonderful new gun." "Yes, I know. And he's done no end of valuable sounding and survey