Full of pent-up feelings which he dared not express Bligh turned and left.
"Dismiss the battalion, sir," ordered Cadet Commander Stonewell to Cadet Lieutenant-Commander Farnum.
"Companies are dismissed," rang out through the corridor. "Go to your rooms immediately and turn in. Company officers make the usual taps inspection."
CHAPTER XV
STONEWELL RECEIVES A LETTER
When Henry Bligh became a midshipman he was not at all a vicious young man. But he arrived at Annapolis with an unformed character. His predominating trait was a desire for applause, and early in his fourth class year his football ability had many times earned for him vociferous applause. It was his predominating desire, a passion to become personally famous, that had urged him to give the signal for the Gates forward pass when playing against Harvard—the dishonor attached to the act had not been clearly fixed in his mind. The immediate result, his dismissal from the football squad in disgrace, his execration by the entire brigade of midshipmen—the change of his position from one of bright fame to contemptuous disesteem, had immediate effect upon the unformed character of Mr. Henry Bligh. He was plunged in the blackest of gloom and he brooded day and night over his troubles.
It was a pity he had no close friend to talk with, no older midshipman to be advised by. Amongst the midshipmen there had been a burst of anger against him and then he had been left entirely alone.
No organized "coventry" was declared against him, but a most effective, far-reaching one existed. Its direct result was to make Bligh continually unhappy, and this engendered in him passionate anger. Anger must find an object, and Bligh's directed its full force upon Stonewell and Blunt. The former, so he believed, had been the cause of all of his troubles; the latter had supplanted him at football, had defeated him in a personal fight.