THE DAY OF MANY DOUBTS
Busy days followed, days which, for some of the first classmen,
were filled with a curious discontent.
Some, to be sure, among these midshipmen soon to graduate, took
each day as it came, with little or no emotion. To them the Naval
life ahead was coming only as a matter of course. There were
others, however---and Dave Darrin was among them---who looked
upon a commission as an officer of the Navy as a sacred trust
given them by the nation.
Dave Darrin was one of those who, while standing above the middle
of his class, yet felt that he had not made sufficiently good
use of his time. To his way of thinking there was an appalling
lot in the way of Naval duties that he did not understand.
"I may get through here, and out of here, and in another couple
of years be a line or engineer officer," Midshipman Darrin confided
to his chum and roommate one day. "But I shall be only a half-baked
sort of officer."
"Well, are cubs ever anything more?" demanded Dan.
"Yes; Wolgast, for instance, is going to be something more. So
will Fenton and Day, and several others whom I could name."
"And so is Darrin," confidently predicted Midshipman Dalzell.
But Dave shook his head.
"No, no, Danny boy. The time was when I might have believed extremely
well of myself, but that day has gone by. When I entered the
Naval Academy I probably thought pretty well of myself. I've tried
to keep up with the pace here-----"
"And you've done it, and are going to do it right along," interjected
Midshipman Dalzell.
"No; it almost scares me when I look over the subjects that I'm
not really fit in. It's spring, now, and I'm only a few weeks
away from graduation, only something like two years this side
of a commission as ensign, and---and---Dan, I wonder if I'm honestly
fit to command a rowboat."
"You've got a brief grouch against yourself, Davy," muttered Dan.
"No; but I think I know what a Naval officer should be, and I
also know how far short I fall of what I should be."
"If you get your diploma," argued Midshipman Dalzell, "the faculty
of the Naval Academy will testify on the face of it that you're
a competent midshipman and on your way to being fit to hold an
ensign's commission presently."
"But that's just the point, Danny. I shall know, myself, that
I'm only a poor, dub sort of Naval officer. I tell you, Danny,
I don't know enough to be a good Naval officer."
"Then that's a reflection on your senior officers who have had
your training on hand," grinned Dalzell. "If you talk in the
same vein after you've gotten your diploma, it will amount to
a criticism of the intelligence of your superior officers. And
that's something that's wisely forbidden by the regulations."
Dan picked up a text-book and opened it, as though he believed
that he had triumphantly closed the discussion. Midshipman Darrin,
however, was not to be so easily silenced.
"Then, if you're not fitted to be a Naval officer," blurted Dalzell,
"what on earth can be said of me?"
"You may not stand quite as high as I do, on mere markings," Dave
assented. "But there are a lot of things, Danny, that you know
much better than I do."
"Name one of them," challenged Dalzell.
"Well, steam engineering, for instance. Now, I'm marked higher
in that than you are, Danny. Yet, when the engine on one of the
steamers goes wrong you can hunt around until you get the engine
to running smoothly. You're twice as clever at that as I am."
"Not all Naval officers are intended to be engineer officers,"
grunted Midshipman Dalzell. "If you don't feel clever enough
in that line, just put in your application for watch officer's
work."
"Take navigation," Dave continued. "I stand just fairly well
in the theory of the thing. But I've no real knack with a sextant."
"Well, the sextant is only a hog-yoke," growled Dalzell.
"Yes; but I shiver every time I pick up the hog-yoke under the
watchful gaze of an instructor."
"Humph! Only yesterday I heard Lieutenant-Commander Richards
compliment you for your work in nav."
"Yes; but that was the mathematical end. I'm all right on the
paper end and the theoretical work, but it's the practical end
that I'm afraid of."
"You'll get plenty of the practical work as soon as you graduate
and get to sea," Dan urged.
"Yes; and very likely make a chump of myself, like Digby, of last
year's class. Did you hear what he did in nav.?"
"No," replied Dalzell, looking up with real interest this times
"If Digby made a fool of himself I'll be glad to hear about it,
for Dig was always just a little bit too chesty to suit me."
"Well, Dig wasn't a bit chesty the first day that he was ordered
to shoot the sun," Dave laughed. "Dig took the sextant, and made
a prize shot, or thought he did. After he had got the sun, plumb
at noon, he lowered the instrument and made his reading most carefully.
Then he went into the chart room, and got busy with his calculations.
The longer Dig worked the worse his head ached. He stared at
his figures, tore them up and tried again. Six or eight times
he worked the problem over, but always with the same result.
The navigating officer, who had worked the thing out in two minutes,
sat back in his chair and looked bored. You see, Dig's own eyes
had told him that the ship was working north, and about five miles
off the coast of New Jersey. But his figures told him that the
ship was anchored in the old fourth ward of the city of Newark.
Try as he would, Dig couldn't get the battleship away from that
ward."
Dan Dalzell leaned back, laughing uproariously at the mental picture
that this story of Midshipman Digby brought up in his mind.
"It sounds funny, when you hear it," Dave went on. "But I sometimes
shiver over the almost certainty that I'm going to do something
just as bad when I get to sea. If I get sent to the engine room
I'll be likely to fill the furnaces with water and the boilers
with coal."
"Rot!" objected Dan. "You're not crazy---not even weak-minded."
"Or else, if I'm put to navigating, I'm fairly likely to bring
the battleship into violent collision with the Chicago Limited,
over in Ohio."
"Come out of that funk, Davy!" ordered his chum.
"I'm trying to, Danny boy; but there's many an hour when I feel
that I haven't learned here all that I should have learned, and
that I'll be miles behind the newest ensigns and lieutenants."
"There's just about one thing for you to do, then," proposed Dan.
"Resign?" queried Darrin, looking quizzically at his chum.
"Not by a long sight. Just go in for a commission as second lieutenant
of marines. You can get that and hold it. A marine officer doesn't
have to know anything but the manual of arms and a few other little
simple things."
"But a marine officer isn't a real sailor, Danny. He lives and
works on a warship, to be sure, but he's more of a soldier. Now,
as it happens, my whole heart and soul are wrapped up in being
a Naval officer---a real Naval officer."
"With that longing, and an Annapolis diploma," teased Dalzell,
"there is just one thing to do."
"What?"
"Beat your way to the realization of your dream. You've got a
thundering good start."
Midshipman Dave Darrin was not the kind to communicate his occasional
doubts to anyone except his roommate. Had Darrin talked on the
subject with other members of his class he would have found that
many of his classmates were tortured by the same doubts that assailed
him. With midshipmen who were destined to get their diplomas
such doubts were to be charged only to modesty, and were therefore
to their credit. Yet, every spring dozens of Annapolis first
classmen are miserable, instead of feeling the joyous appeal of
the budding season. They are assailed by just such fears as had
reached Dave Darrin.
Dalzell, on the other hand, was tortured by no such dreads. He
went hammering away with marvelous industry, and felt sure, in
his own mind, that he would be retired, in his sixties, an honored
rear admiral.
Had there been only book studies some of the first classmen would
have broken down under the nervous strain. However, there was
much to be done in the shops---hard, physical labor, that had
to be performed in dungaree clothing; toil of the kind that plastered
the hard-worked midshipmen with grime and soot. There were drills,
parades, cross-country marches. The day's work at the Naval Academy,
at any season of the year, is arranged so that hard mental work
is always followed by lively physical exertion, much of it in
the open air.
Dalzell, returning one afternoon from the library encountered
Midshipman Farley, who was looking unaccountably gloomy.
"What's the trouble, Farl---dyspepsia?" grinned Dan, linking one
arm through his friend's. "Own up!"
"Danny, I'm in the dumps," confessed Farley. "I hate to acknowledge
it, but I've been fearfully tempted, for the last three days, to send
in my resignation."
"What's her name?" grinningly demanded Dalzell, who had bravely
recovered from his own two meetings with Venus.
"It isn't a girl---bosh!" jeered Farley. "There's only one girl
in the world I'm interested in---and she's my kid sister."
"Then why this talk of resigning."
"Danny, I'm simply afraid that I'm not made of the stuff to make
a competent Naval officer. My markings are all right, but I know
that I don't know enough to take a sailboat out and bring it back."
"Oh, is that all?" cried Dalzell laughingly. "Then I know just
what you want."
"What?"
"Drop into our room and have a talk with Darry. Dave knows just
how to comfort and cheer a fellow who has that glum bug in his
head of cabbage. Come right along!"
Dan almost forced Farley to the door of the room, opened it and
shoved the modest midshipman inside.
"Darry," Dan called joyously, "here's a case for your best talents.
Farley has a pet bee in his bonnet that he isn't fit to be a
Naval officer. He doesn't know enough. So he's going to resign.
I've told him you'll know just how to handle his case. Go after
him, now!"
Midshipman Dalzell pulled the door shut, chuckling softly to himself,
and marched back to the library. It was just before the call
for supper formation when Dan returned from "boning" in the library.
"Did you brace Farl up, Davy?" demanded Dan.
"You grinning idiot!" laughed Darrin. "What on earth made you bring
him to me?"
"Because I thought you needed each other."
"Well, perhaps we did," laughed Midshipman Darrin. "At any rate
I've been hammering at Farl all the time that he wasn't hammering
at me. I certainly feel better, and I hope that he does."
"You both needed the same thing," declared Dan, grinning even
more broadly as he picked up his hair brushes.
"What did we need?"
"You've both been studying so hard that your brain cells are clogged."
"But what did Farley and I both need?" insisted Midshipman Darrin.
"Mental exercise---brain-sparring," rejoined Dalzell. "You both
needed something that could take you out of the horrible daily
grooves that you've been sailing in lately. You both needed something
to stir you up---and I hope you gave each other all the excitement
you could."
In the way of a stirring-up something was about to happen that
was going to stir up the whole first class---if not the entire
brigade.
Nor was Dave Darrin to escape being one of the central figures
in the excitement.
Here is the way in which the whole big buzzing-match got its start
and went on to a lively finish.