“Do you think he cared?”
“Of course he did,” said Jack, positively. “He'd rather have gone hungry for a couple of days than have to report that bunch for hazing.”
“Then why was he so infernally stiff with the young men?”
“He had to be; that's the answer. That officer, like every other officer of the Navy detailed here, is sworn to do his full duty. So he has to enforce the regulations. But don't you suppose, fellows, that officer was hazed, and did some hazing on his own account, when he was a cadet midshipman here years ago? Of course! And that's why the officer didn't question us any more closely than he did. He was afraid he might stumble on something that would oblige him to report the whole crowd for hazing. He didn't want to do it. That officer, I'm certain, knew that, if he questioned us too closely, he'd find a lot more beneath the surface that he simply didn't want to dig up.”
“Would you have told the truth, if he had questioned you searchingly, and pinned you right down?” demanded Eph Somers.
[pg 134] “Of course I would,” Jack replied, soberly. “I'm no liar. But I feel deeply grateful to that officer for not being keener.”
Before nine o'clock the next morning news of the night's doings back of barracks had spread through the entire corps of cadet midshipmen.
With these young men of the Navy there was but one opinion of the submarine boys—that they were trumps, wholly of the right sort.
As a result, Jack, Hal and Eph had hundreds of new friends among those who will officer the Navy of the morrow.
Not so bad, even just as a stroke of business!