"Go ahead, tell them, Chip." Lee encouraged his Exec.

"Tell them what, Lee?" Chip asked, as if he had no idea what his captain was talking about.

Not one to be put off so easily, especially when he had the 'goods' on his 'old pal Chip', Lee said enthusiastically, "Tell everyone what you bought last week."

Chip looked to all the world as if he was thinking, 'Now what could our good captain mean?'

"If you don't tell them I will," teased Lee.

"Oh, you mean the horse?" Chip said innocently.

Chip, as usual, was not 'rising to the bait' and he never had as far as Lee knew, but this was too good of an opportunity to miss.

"You bought a horse, Mr. Morton, sir?" the na�ve Ensign Powell asked.

"Yes, he certainly did, Ensign Powell. I saw it yesterday. Tell them about your horse, Chip" Lee said with growing merriment. "What color is it?"

"Blue roan." Chip said, as if that was the norm for horses.

"A blue horse?", everyone said just about at once, so it sounded like a chorus.

"Navy blue, to be exact." Lee chimed in.

"There is no such thing!"

"You're kidding. . . !"

"Are you sure about that, Captain, sir", said one concerned officer.

These were some of the comments from the officers gathered in Seaview's wardroom on the first evening of her latest cruise. Some were thinking that their captain and his exec might have been 'celebrating' a little too much last night. After all there were stories of drunken men seeing pink elephants. . .

Crane and Morton's double dates did have a 'notorious' reputation, but of course, none of the Seaview officers had dared question either man directly, so it was more a matter of legend than fact.

A "Morton look" silenced them instantly.

"Yes. My horse happens to be a blue roan. . . ."

"Navy blue," chimed in a delighted Lee Crane again.

"Blue roan," corrected his calm friend.

To his fellow officers Chip explained patiently, "A blue roan is a black horse with a dusting of white and red hairs in its coat. It just looks blue."

His subordinates understood from his tone of voice that this meant, "Mr. Morton has spoken and that is the end of that."

The Captain was undeterred however.

"Navy blue," were his final words on the horse's color.

Chip was not off the hook yet. Lee was just getting warmed up.

"Tell them what you named the horse, Chip."

"Nimitz." Chip replied calmly.

"'Chester' Nimitz?!" exclaimed Admiral Nelson, who had been sitting back, listening to the amusing banter of his top command team. "What kind of name is that for a horse? If you had to name it after an 'Admiral', why couldn't you have come up with a more sensible name for the poor animal?"

"Which 'Admiral' do you have in mind, sir?" Lee, being too caught up in being pleased with himself, recklessly asked his boss.

Before the Admiral could answer, Chip said, in his calmest, most innocent voice, "I told you, Lee. My horse does NOT look like an "Horatio".

Nelson started to turn a particular shade of red, which all in the room had come to know as a "major storm warning".

Lee, with a startled expression on his face, suddenly realized that his bluff had been called and that he had been one-upped by THE master poker player of the Navy.

Either man's verbal responses were lost forever, when Doc suddenly started choking from having to suppress his laughter too long.

Every other officer in the room took this opportunity to release their own pent up gales of laughter by trying to be helpful.

"Are you okay, Doc?"

"Somebody get a corpsman in here!"

"Pounding him on the back isn't helping, Tom. Try the Heimlich maneuver!"

"Let me do it!"

"Somebody get a doctor!" This from young Ensign Powell.

"He IS the doctor!"

All this time, Chip Morton sat as quiet as the Sphinx. Only precious Ensign Powell dared look at the Exec.

"Hum," he wondered and fortunately for him, not out loud. "Does Mr. Morton look just a little bit like he just swallowed a canary?"