“I say, my friend, are you not the youth who was appointed by the President?”
“And it was for services rendered, was it not?”
“It was from the kindness of the Secretary of the Navy and Commodore Lucien, rather.”
“You are the man we have been told of. Go aboard your flagship, put on your dry togs, and we’ll march you to the commandant at a quick step.”
The cadets showed that this advice chimed in with their humor, and springing into his boat, Mark sent it flying back toward the schooner, while the dripping Dillingham was surrounded by a squad of friends, to hide his condition, and marched off to his room to also get on dry clothes.
“Keep him there, Nazro, until I can get ready, for I wish to be in the procession,” said Winslow Dillingham, as he dove into his room to change his clothes, glad to escape the argus-eyed officers about the buildings and grounds.
To Mark Merrill his salt-water bath with his clothes on was nothing to speak of. He had lived so much in his skiff, been overboard so often that he thought nothing of it, though he did regret losing his temper with Winslow Dillingham, who had shown himself such a good fellow after all.
Of course he did not suppose that he would have drowned, for there were too many manly fellows upon the wall who could swim to allow that.
But, having placed his life in jeopardy himself, he was the one to prevent any fatality therefrom.
The idea that the youth could not swim had never entered his mind, for swimming like a fish himself and never remembering when he could not do so, he supposed it was the most ordinary accomplishment, and, as he had said, he merely wished to cool the temper of the one who had set upon him as a butt to be made fun of.
“What’s the trouble ashore, my lad?” asked Captain Jasper Crane, who was about to launch the schooner’s yawl to come to the shore when he saw Mark returning.
“Oh! nothing to speak of, sir, only I had to stop some funny business one of the boys played on me, and finding he could not swim I leaped in after him.”
“Just like you, Master Mark, just like you,” said Captain Crane, following the youth into the cabin.
“And I tells yer, lad, you’ll find more hard knocks to put up with among them brass-buttoned gentry ashore than you’d get as a foremast hand on a merchant craft.