CHAPTER XII

A STORM AND A QUARREL

“The mail is going ashore, lieutenant. So hand over your letters, if you have any.”

It was the adjutant’s assistant, who was making the round of the transport, previous to his departure for the Nagasaki post-office. He already had one bag full of letters, and was now picking up a second.

“All right. I’ll have a letter for you in a few minutes,” responded Gilbert. “I just want to make sure that I put everything in this that I wanted.”

“Writing to your best girl, eh?” laughed the other officer. “Well, send her lots of kisses.”

“I haven’t got that far yet, Peters,” responded the young lieutenant, with a laugh equally hearty. “This is a strictly business letter.”

“Is that so? Seems to me we are pretty far away from home to do any business except that of fighting.”

“That is true, and yet--” Gilbert broke off short. “Hullo! What in the world does this mean?”

He had torn open the envelope addressed to Ralph Branders, and was now staring in amazement at the blank sheets of paper it had contained.

“Blank sheets, eh? Well, you must have been asleep when you put them into the envelope,” was the comment of the adjutant’s assistant. “Or else somebody has been putting up a joke on you,” he added.

Gilbert did not reply, for the reason that he was just then doing some rapid thinking. He remembered how he had been aroused by Nuggy Polk and how he had found the sealed envelope on the passageway floor.

“I believe he tampered with that letter,” he said to himself. “He took out my written sheets, and substituted these blanks. He is shrewder than I thought him to be.”

“Well, lieutenant, what are you going to do about it?” asked the adjutant’s assistant. “I’ve got to be going inside of ten minutes.”

“I’ll hunt up my letter--if I can,” burst out Gilbert; and, thrusting the empty envelope in his pocket, he hurried off.

He was thoroughly angry, and bent on hunting up Nuggy Polk and having it out with the young man. He had seen Nuggy at the stern of the transport, smoking, and had no doubt that he would still find the young man there.

But, half-way on his rapid walk toward the stern, Gilbert came to a sudden halt. What if Polk should deny everything, and what if the rascal had destroyed the written pages? He could not prove the young man guilty, and such an action would only let Polk know that he had discovered the deception. Would it not be better to let the fellow imagine that his plan to outwit his opponent had proved successful?

“I’ll let him rest, and write another letter in secret--and take good care that that goes,” said Gilbert to himself. “And in the second