The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1904-09-13

| couple of assistants in the steam cut
| ter, and the blasphemous Murphy twin
was carried on board the ship of war.
They landed him in the brig in double
irons for resisting the master-at-arms
| Murphy the innocent needed some
surgical attention when they got him
into the brig, and the surgeon was
sent for. To the surgeon Murphy
the milkman protested that he wasn't
Dan, but Mike. The surgeon ridiculed
that story and told Mike that he
ought to be ashamed of himself for
rigging up such a yarn, after his eight
years decent service.
/ Mike continuing to protest that he
was the victim of monumental mis-
| take, the Legs was sent for by the
surgeon. Then the Legs, with the
saturine scepticism of all maSter-at-
arms,s looked Mike over and told him
to pipe down for soused sea law
yer or he'd get broken head.
| Mike, irons. bruises and all made for
the ter-at-arms, at that, and three
marines on guard had to be hurried
| ly called in to disentangle the inno-
cent twin from the Jimmy Legs
frame.
The executive officer of the ship,
who had sailed with the Murphy
twin who had deserted at Mare Is
land, entered the brig to take look
at the man who protested that he was
the victim of a twin mistake.
Look here, you ship-jumping scoun-
drel," said the First Luff, heatedly, to
the equally heated Mike the milkman,
! how do you dare to look me in the
eye and claim that 1 don't know you
ct I
! on the Mediterranean station, and
year and half in these waters? Pull
up your sleeve. you brazen reprobate,
and show me that tattooed dagger on
your right forearm!''
AT these words the master-at-arms
darted forward and pulled up the right
sleeve of the innocents shirt There
was the dagger, tattooed in two colors
on the milkman's right forearm.
! The executive officer had no means
of knowing that Mike, in a drunken
hour OF envy of his sailor brothers
/ tattooing, had had that dagger pricked
on his arm by a jap tattoo artist of
San Francisco only few months be-
fore. But it settled Mikes hash,
| To China he was carried on board
+, the man-o'-war. AS there was no
charge OF desertion against him on
account of his twin brothers ship
jumping, the ship jumper not having
/ peen absent the required 10 days, Mike
was merely brought before a summary
i Court-martial for leaving his ship
without permission, and a bunch of
extra duty was piled on him.
| They might just as we'll have SEN
fenced Mike to act as Secretary of the
Navy He didn't know a capstan bar
! from top'sl yard. and when they
put him 20 deck, restored to duty
or, rather, chucked into duty in his
absent brothers place-his situa-
, ton would have been laughable even to
Mike had it not embraced so many
elements of tragedy-his worried wife
and young ones back in San Francis
co, for one thing.
When Mike. on deck, declared that
he couldn't undertake any work that
he didn't know anything about the
First Lulf became sore for fair. The
executive officer was convinced that
Mike was playing a deep scheme TO
get out Of the navy on the ground of
insanity. The whole ships companv.
equally honest in their belief that
Mike was Dan. roared at Mikes lido
tic attempts to sailorize.
Mike hadnt been on deck for 10
minutes before he was slammed into
i the brig again, this time on the charge
of willfully neglecting duty and at
tempting to deceive his superior off,
GERS: and before the ship made Yoko-
hama Mike was scheduled for gem
eral Court-martiaI on all sorts of
charges.
The persistence with which he stuck
to his story that he was Mike and
/ not Dan Murphy might have caused
1 his shipmates to falter in their belief
! that he was lying had it not been for
that dagger on his right forearm.
That made it seem absolutely certain
to them that Mike was a brazen
schemer.
The situation was cleared and end
ed at Yokohama Dan the deserter
turned up there.
He had heard far back in Vallejo