Dave Darrins First Year at Annapolis | Page 4

chesty or snobbish," rejoined Darrin.
"Then you will kindly explain what he tried to do to me?"
"That's easy enough. That Naval officer recognized in you a rather
common type--the too-chummy and rather fresh American boy. Down
here in the service, where different grades in rank exist, it is necessary
to keep the fresh greenhorn in his place."
"Oh!" muttered Dan, blinking hard.
"As to your not wanting to go into the service," Dave continued, "if you
should fail, tomorrow, in your physical examination, you would be as
blue as indigo, and have the blue-light signal up all the way back
home."
"I don't know but that is so. Yes; I guess it is," Dalzell assented.
"Now, there are at least ninety-nine chances in a hundred that you're
going to pass the Navy doctors all right, Dan," his chum went on. "If
you do, you'll be sworn into the Naval service as a midshipman. Then
you'll have to keep in mind that you're not an admiral, but only a
midshipman--on probation, at that, as our instructions from the Navy
Department inform us. Now, as a new midshipman, you're only the
smallest, greenest little boy in the whole service. Just remember that,
and drop all your jolly, all your freshness and all your patronizing ways.

Just listen and learn, Dan, and study, all the time, how to avoid being
fresh. If you don't do this, I'm mighty confident that you're up against a
hard and tough time, and that you'll have most of the other midshipmen
down on you from the start."
"Any more 'roast' for me?" asked Dalzell plaintively.
"No; for, if you need any more, you'll get it from other midshipmen,
who don't know you as well as I do, and who won't make any
allowances for your greenness and freshness."
"My!" murmured Dan enthusiastically. "Won't I quiver with glee the
first time I see you being called for twelve-inch freshness!"
Yet, despite their wordy encounters, the two remained, as always, the
best and most loyal of friends.
For an hour and a half the two youngsters roamed about Annapolis,
taking many interested looks at quaint old buildings that had stood
since long before the Revolutionary War.
At last they turned back to the hotel, for, as Dalzell suggested, they
needed a long night's sleep as a good preparation for going before the
Naval surgeons on the next day.
Five minutes after they had turned out the gas Dave Darrin was soundly,
blissfully asleep.
In another bed in the same room Dan Dalzell tossed for fully half an
hour ere sleep caught his eyelids and pinned them down. In his slumber,
however, Dan dreamed that he was confronting the superintendent of
the Naval Academy and a group of officers, to whom he was
expounding the fact that he was right and they were wrong. What the
argument was about Dan didn't see clearly, in his dream, but he had the
satisfaction of making the superintendent and most of the Naval
officers with him feel like a lot of justly-rebuked landsmen.

CHAPTER II
THE FIRST DAY AT THE NAVAL ACADEMY
A few minutes before nine o'clock, the next morning, Dave and Dan
were strolling through Lover's Lane, not far from the administration
building at the United States Naval Academy.
Their instructions bade them report at 9.15. Dan was for going in at
once and "calling on" the aide to the superintendent. But this Dave
vetoed, holding that the best thing for them to do was to stick to the
very letter of their orders.
So, as they waited, the young men got a glimpse of the imposing piles
of buildings that compose the newer Naval Academy. Especially did
handsome, big, white Bancroft Hall enchain their admiration. This
structure is one of the noblest in the country. In it are the midshipmen's
mess, the midshipmen's barracks for a thousand young men, numerous
offices and a huge recreation hall.
"That's a swell hotel where they're going to put us up for four years,
isn't it?" demanded Dan.
"I fancy that we'll find it something more--or less--than a hotel, before
we're through it," was Dave's prophetic reply.
As, at this time in the morning, all of the enrolled midshipmen were
away at one form or another of drill or instruction, the central grounds
were so empty of human life that the onlooker could form no idea of
the immense, throbbing activity that was going on here among the
hundreds of midshipmen on duty.
"Here's some of our kind," spoke Dan, at last, as he espied more than a
dozen young men, in citizen's dress, strolling along under the trees.
"I guess they're candidates, fast enough," nodded Darrin, after briefly
looking at the approaching group.

"Cheap-looking lot, most of them, aren't they?" asked Dalzell
cheerfully.
"Probably they're