Every lunatic has loads of good reasons for anything he does," muttered Eph.
"Look here, fellows!" ordered Jack Benson, almost staggering as he approached them.
"Great Dewey! Am I going crazy, too ?" muttered Eph, staring hard.
"What I think I see in Jack's hands are some of the missing copper plates." "It's exactly what you do see," announced Jack Benson, his face beaming.
"But how---" "How they came to be there I don't know," Benson replied.

"But when I threw away your quarter, Eph, it rolled under the bench.
There wasn't supposed to be anything metallic under the bench, but I felt almost, sure that I had heard the silver strike against something metallic.

Even then it seemed like a crazy notion to me.

I didn't really expect to find anything, but some uncontrollable impulse urged me to go hustling under the bench.

And so I found these duplicate plates, wedged in behind a lot of junk and right up against the partition." Hal Hastings, in the meantime, had taken one of the plates from Lieutenant Jack's hand, and was now quietly fitting it where it belonged on the motor.
The six midshipmen, as soon as they realized what had happened, had sprung eagerly to the door of the engine room and stood peering in.