Having completed his work on the wireless plant at the Navy Yard, Bowen
thought himself due for a lay-off. And he did want to be home for a
while, but orders came to have installed before the end of the year an
experimental plant on Light-ship 67, which guarded Tide Rip Shoal to the
eastward.

Bowen, with his two helpers and his apparatus, took passage with Baldwin
on the wheezy little _Whist_ to where, twenty miles east by south from
the end of the breakwater, lay the tossing light-ship.

Baldwin was well acquainted with old 67. Every once in a while the
commandant would order Baldwin to make this trip for the accommodation
of somebody or other in the yard. "But a wonder," he observed now, as he
had observed a score of times before on nearing her--"a wonder they
wouldn't put one of those new class o' steam lightships out here. If I
was you, Bowen, I'd have an eye to the life-boat you see hanging to her
stern there."

"Why?"

"Well, if the old hooker went adrift, you might need it."

"What's her sails for?"

"I dunno. I often wondered, though. They've been tied up, just like you
see 'em now--stopped snug and neat between gaffs and booms--for, oh, I
dunno--twenty years now, I reckon. I know I've yet to see 'em hoisted.
But when'll I come and get you?"

"I'll send word to the yard station by wireless, to Harty or whoever's