“Well, I should hope so, all of us except Os.”
“What’s the matter, Os? Aren’t you going to do your duty by them?”
“Not I, Creel; I’ll talk to you about that later.”
The time between the events of the [last chapter] and the above conversation had simply flown by for the midshipmen of Ralph’s class. For Ralph it had been an uneventful time. Each day had its hard work of studies, recitations and drills, and the end of his first year was now upon him. The second term was most satisfactory to him. He had developed a remarkable ability of quickly solving mathematical problems and in this subject he was now easily first in his class. Sometimes, with great regret, he thought of his watch; and whenever he thought about it he was always tremendously puzzled. He could not even imagine a solution to the mystery, but no further acts of hostility had developed against him by his unknown foe. Ralph did not worry about this unknown enemy but sometimes he wondered. The only man he could imagine who would harbor ill feelings against him was Short, but the latter was far away and Ralph had never heard of him since his dismissal.
Ralph’s average for the two terms in mathematics was 3.30, which gave him class rank of 17 in that subject. In rhetoric he was number 61, and in French number 73. His final rank in his class was 41. But in the other remaining years mathematics would become more and more important and Ralph had a feeling that by the time he graduated he would have high class rank.
Graduation happened on a bright June morning. The battalion was marched to the tune of: “Ain’t I glad to get out of the Wilderness,” to the chapel where the ceremonies were held. And each midshipman felt with joy he was getting out of the wilderness. At the Naval Academy, this tune has for many years been sacredly kept for that one day, and all midshipmen love it. Ralph and his classmates emerged after the graduation as third classmen, feeling far more important with their promotion than did the young men who had just been graduated. They immediately sat in the seats and walked in parts of the grounds that, as fourth classmen, they had been debarred from. And they enjoyed the great boon of addressing the now second and first classmen by name without the prefix of “mister.” And these young men were delighted to be “plebes” no longer, but “youngsters,” as third classmen are called at Annapolis.
On this night occurred the beautiful graduation ball. Ralph went but proved to be a wall-flower. He did not know any young ladies and would not have dared to dance even if he had, but he enjoyed the beautiful scene. “But I’ll go next year and dance too,” he remarked to his roommate, as they stood in a crowd of midshipmen, watching the dancers.
The next morning the midshipmen embarked aboard different ships for the summer practice cruise. Several ships had been detailed for this purpose, and Ralph with Bollup, Creelton, Himski and others of his class, was assigned to the monitor Puritan.
This was Saturday morning. On the night before not all midshipmen had been at the graduation ball, or at least had not spent the whole evening there, for shortly after ten o’clock a midshipman might have been seen to enter the Maryland Hotel. He did not stop at the desk to make inquiries but immediately ran up-stairs, then down the long corridor, and then knocked at the door of a room.
“Come in,” was heard from the inside, and the midshipman entered.