Theirs was to be the duty of sailors before the mast, and they were to be drilled and disciplined in all their duties as such.
If they were to command men they must learn the duties of those they were to order aloft, and, learning to obey to perfection, they could the better learn to thoroughly command.
Of course, having stepped up a grade and entered upon a higher plane of study and work, Mark Merrill was to go on the sea cruise.
Then, too, Scott Clemmons, Bemis Perry, and the others of his grade were to go with him, along with the men who had stepped into the places of those who had emerged from the embryo state of the cadet into the reality of the officer.
An old vessel of war of full rig, without steam, and sail only as a propelling power, a ship with a record away back two generations, was the craft that was to become the sea school of the young sailors.
They sailed in joyous spirits, all anxious to rove the deep blue sea.
“With a wet sheet,
And a flowing sea,
And a wind that follows fast.”
Mark Merrill was now like one in his true element.