"Halt!"

The command came like the crack of a pistol. Facing Ned stood a sentry in the uniform of the Coast Artillery. In his hands he gripped a carbine with a sinister-looking, blue-steel bayonet attached to its barrel.

"Here's where you turn back, friend, and pronto, too," grinned the sentry. He was a young fellow, with light blue eyes, stupid in expression, and a nose of the type generally described as "pug."

"I've got to get to the fort, I tell you," protested Ned.

His voice came from his parched throat like the cracked, whistling accents of a very old man. His clothes were torn in places from the beach plums, through which he had come with furious[Pg 137] haste, his eyes were red-rimmed and wild, and his hat was gone.

The sentry regarded him contemptuously. But his was a lonely post, a quarter of a mile out on the sandy Neck, and he decided to waste a little time with this peculiar stranger.

"Say, friend, you don't want the fort. It's your cage you want. Why don't you go right back to the Bronx, climb in, and shut the gate?"

"Look here," protested Ned, "I'm Lieutenant Strong of the Navy, at least I hold that temporary commission. I've been attacked by rascals while on duty and I'm suffering frightfully from thirst."

"I guess you are suffering from thirst," grinned the sentry. "Be a good boy and get back to the bug-house now, or I'll have to help you."

He glanced significantly at his bayonet.

"Great Scott! Do you think I'm crazy!" cried poor Ned.

[Pg 138]

"Think it?" the sentry raised his thin, pale eyebrows, "I know it, old pal. Run along and roll your hoop now, and don't give me no more trouble. If I was to let you into the fort, I'd be put in the guard-house for a month for letting a crank through."

"But I'm Lieutenant Strong, I tell you——"

The sentry interrupted by tapping his forehead.

"Sure you are. That's all right. You can be the President if you like; it's none of my funeral."

There was a sort of soothing intonation in his voice, as if he were trying to quiet a fractious child. The stupidity of the fellow almost drove Ned wild.

He plunged a hand into his pocket. He would show the fellow by documents that he was not an impostor.

"I'll show you papers that will prove who I am," he exclaimed.

Then, with a sudden chill of horror, he recollected[Pg 139] that all his papers—none of them, luckily, very important ones—had been taken from him by Saki and Kenworth. The sentry was watching him, as he frantically searched, with an amused expression.

"Say, what kind of a game are you trying to work, Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines?" he asked.

"It's not a game, I tell you," cried Ned furiously. "Those rascals who tied me took my papers. They have run off with them——"

"I guess it's you that have run off from your keepers," said the sentry, nodding his head sententiously.

It was hopeless. Even Ned, sore pressed as he was, saw that. The man was convinced that he was a crank or a crazy man of some sort and would have no dealings with him. Ned spied a canteen hung round the man's shoulder.

"At least, you'll give me a drink," he almost begged, so keen was his need.

[Pg 140]

"It ain't the sort of drink you want. Nothing but wate............