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Whether this could be done or not could only be ascertained by a more thorough examination of her bottom than had yet been possible. The midshipmen were summoned to assist. Adair and his officers stood with their sextants in their hands ready to note the sun's altitude should he burst forth, while the first lieutenant watched the chronometer. The tossing seas rose round the labouring ship.
The countess leaned back in her chair, as if she considered that conversation would be out of place while her daughter was playing. Count Smerskoff sat quietly for a quarter of an hour. When the door had closed behind him, and the sound of his footsteps along the corridor ceased, the girls burst into a fit of laughter, in which the midshipmen joined heartily. "Well done, Katinka!"
The midshipmen found the journey dreary and uninteresting in the extreme. After leaving the Crimea the country became a dead flat; which, though bright in summer, with a wide expanse of waving grain, was inexpressibly mournful and monotonous as it lay under its wide covering of snow.
Their dresses of dark blue cloth, cut pea-jacket shape, and besprinkled with buttons of burnished yellow, their cloth caps of like colour, encircled by bands of gold lace, their collars, embroidered with the crown and anchor, declare them, all three, to be officers in the service of that great maritime Government that has so long held undisputed possession of the sea midshipmen of the British navy.
Out of the scrub, when we were there, flew off two or three night-jars, very like our English species, save that they had white in the wings; and on the second visit one of the midshipmen, true to the English boy's bird's-nesting instinct, found one of their eggs, white-spotted, in a grass nest.
The roof of Captain Adair's house was also lined with canvas, as were the walls, and divided by partitions. Some of the midshipmen expressed their regret that there were no ladies among them. "The ladies are very much obliged to you," observed Charley Roy, who had joined the Empress, and was now senior mate on board. "I suspect that they would rather remain comfortably on shore.
"Well, there's plenty of water alongside, as far as the outward man goes, and iron dust is soon brushed off. However, as you say, perhaps a little too much is expected; at least, in five of the ships in which I was first-lieutenant, the captain was always hauling me over the coals about the midshipmen not dressing properly, as if I was their dry-nurse.
Darrin!" called the O.C. And, a moment later, "Mr. Dalzell!" Both wondering midshipmen approached the officer in charge for the day at Bancroft Hall, and saluted. "Mr. Darrin," stated Lieutenant Nettleson, "you and your roommate may go to your room to leave your books. In the room you will find some evidences of disorder. Do not attempt to set them straight.
The midshipmen complained, but the skipper replied that he gave them the best he had. Billy especially declared that he should die of inanition. "Salt junk never agreed with me at the best of times, and this is more like old horse than beef," he groaned, as he turned about a piece of black-looking stuff at the end of his fork.
His attitude was not that of the commander who declared: "I will see the man's backbone, by God!" He wished to secure discipline without cruelty. His greatest difficulty, at the start, was in making lieutenants. That he overcame by appointing senior midshipmen before the Ariadne was out of the Channel. He offered a lieutenancy to Ferens, who had the courage to decline it.
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