Be that as it may, orders had only a few days before Kep's arrival been received at Plymouth dockyards that make things hum, as the saying is, and the lad wondered a good deal at all he saw in the dockyards. A swarm of bees about to swarm could not have been more busy and bustling.
The tall policemen who guarded the gates eyed everyone who sought entrance with considerable suspicion unless wearing the king's uniform, and even Kep came in for his share of this.
"Are you a young officer, sir?" said one, as the lad essayed to pass in, just as coolly as if the place were all his own.
"Halt! Are you a young gentleman, sir?"
Kep smiled his blandest, though with a slight air of hauteur in his manner.
"I hope so," he replied emphatically.
The policeman touched his hat.
And an Irish marine who was doing sentry-go, seeing this, shouldered arms as he passed, and Kep returned the salute with a flourish of his hand capwards as he had seen real officers do on the street, when the blue-jackets saluted.
"This is all very sweet," thought Kep, though the fact was that he was sailing under false colours, for the policeman's "young gentleman," really meant "junior officer," although it ought to have struck him as strange that even a naval cadet, if appointed, should be marching through the dockyard in mufti. And this incident, trifling though it appears, pleased Kep. It proved that he looked a little gentleman, and not a second-class boy, nor shop-keeper's apprentice out for a day.
But everybody was not quite so polite to our little hero, for during his peregrination he happened to stumble against a red-faced pompous looking old officer, and made bold to salute.