"Attention! First division, right face! Forward march!"
The command was repeated for the other divisions. Snare drums rolled, the band changed to a livelier tune, to which each division marched off in steady lines, one division following the other. Soon all had disappeared, save a group of officers who remained chatting on the quarter-deck. These, too, soon turned and went below for the evening mess.
The day's work was done for all except those who were to go on watch duty for a two-hour trick.
Mess finished, Sam went out to the forward deck to growl at the jackies who had been responsible for the pig's foot on his own right foot. The pig's foot hurt him, and the lad limped painfully.
While Sam was forward Dan got out his ditty box, to which, by this time, he had become as much attached as were the other sailors to theirs. From the box he drew a recent letter from his mother, which the Battleship Boy, sitting on the steel deck under a wall lamp in a corridor, read over several times. It seemed a long time to Dan since he had left her at Piedmont, and had gone on to New York to enlist in the service of his country.
"I think I must know this letter by heart," mused Dan, folding the letter and tenderly laying it away in the precious ditty box. Then, fixing up his fountain pen, he began writing industriously, using his elevated knees for a desk, on which he had laid his writing pad.
"I have written in more comfortable places than this, but I never had more to say than I have this time," he said.
Mails were not very regular on shipboard, and sometimes it was a matter of weeks before a single mail was put over the side.
Dan was still writing, an hour later, when Sam came along looking for him.
"Oh, here you are, eh?"