But they were sadly mistaken if they hoped to rag that oddly-garbed individual.
"Sit you down," he said sternly. "Sit you down. You tink I haf not imparted ze instruction to ze midsheepmens before, eh? You make great mistake. Ze first zat acts ze light-headed goat he go in ze capitan's report: zen, no leave for a whole veek."
Taking up a piece of chalk the instructor wrote in a firm hand:—
"Mon frère a raison, mais ma soeur a tort."
"Now, zen," he continued, "zat young zhentleman with ze red hair. How you translate zat, eh?"
Mr. Midshipman Moxitter's particular weakness was French translation. It had caused him hours of uneasiness at Osborne and Dartmouth. By a succession of lucky shots he had foiled the examiners and had managed to scrape through in that particular subject.
Upon being asked to translate the sentence, Moxitter stood up, squared his shoulders, and said solemnly:—
"'My brother has reasons that my sister's a tart,' sir."
A roar of laughter, audible even in the captain's cabin, greeted this information. The rest of the midshipmen nearly succumbed to apoplexy, while even the Frenchman was obliged to pull out his pink silk handkerchief and press it tightly to his face.
"We vill not dispute ze point, monsieur," he said after an awkward pause. "Ze affairs of your family are of no concern to ze rest of ze class, mais you are a good-for-nothing rascal, I say. If you no better are at ze rest of ze work on ze sheep zen I say you are a young rotter."