“These young fellers all seems practicing to scare ordinary folks; but, Lord love ’em, they is a clever lot o’ young sea cubs arter all, and in war times they can outfight a shark.”
Leaving good skipper Crane moralizing upon cadet midshipmen in general, Mark let fall his oars and sent his skiff shoreward.
It was an off-duty time at the academy, and the cadets were there whom he had left, with more who had been summoned to swell the procession. It had leaked out just who Mark Merrill was, for Commodore Lucien had been on a visit to the commandant, and had told of the pluck of the boy pilot of Hopeless Haven.
Then, too, the Secretary of the Navy had written a personal letter to the commandant, so of course it went the rounds that the “new man from Maine was a hero.”
Having made the discovery, Cadet Captain Byrd Bascomb and his clique meant to give the sailor lad a welcome, especially as they had found in him one who was a square good fellow.
When Mark landed he was somewhat nonplussed at the intention of the cadets to honor him.
They welcomed him with a hurrah, and Winslow Dillingham was on hand, as he expressed it:
“As dry as a ship on the ways.”
He offered his hand cordially, and said:
“We are quits now, aren’t we?”