s
hard as it has you. And it warns me, too, that my turn will probably
come next. I don't stand an awful lot higher in my markings than you
do."

"Doesn't it feel fine to be a bilger?" gulped Dalzell, staring at the
floor.

A "bilger," as has been already explained, is a midshipman who has
failed and has been dropped.

"Oh, but you're not a bilger, yet!" cried Darrin, leaping up and resting
both hands on his chum's shoulder.

"What's the odds?" demanded Dan grimly. "I shall be, after I've been
before the Board next Monday forenoon at ten o'clock."

"Nonsense! Not if you make a good fight!"

"Fight--nothing!" sighed Dan wearily. "In a fight there's some one else
that you can hit back at. But I won't have a blessed soul to fight. I'm
up against a gang who are all referees, and all down on me at the
outset."

"Nonsense," combatted Dave. "You----"

"Oh, that's all right, David, little giant," returned Dalzell with an
attempt at cheeriness. "You mean well, but a fellow isn't reported
deficient unless he's so far behind that the Board has his case settled
in advance. From all I can hear it isn't once in a camel's age that a
fellow so reported, and ordered before the Board, gets off with anything
less than a hard, wet bilge. What I'm thinking of now is, what am I
going to pick up as a career when I go home from here as a failure."

If it hadn't been for the pride he felt in still having the uniform on,
Dalzell might not have been able to check the tears that tried to flow.

"Come on," commanded Dave, leaping up, "we'll run up to the deck above,
and see if we can't find Mr. Freeman in."

"What good will that do?" demanded Dan. "Freeman is a first classman,
but he hasn't any particular drag with the Board."

"It won't do any harm, anyway, for us to have a talk with an older
classman," argued Dave. "Button your blouse, straighten your hair and
come along."

"So it's as bad as that, is it!" asked Freeman sympathetically, after
his cheery "come in" had admitted the unhappy youngsters.

"Yes," replied Dave incisively. "Now, the question is, what can be done
about it?"

"I wish you had asked me an easier one," sighed the first classman.
"You're mighty well liked, all through the Academy, Dalzell, and every
one of us will hate to see you go."

"But what can be done to ward off that fate?" insisted Darrin as
impatiently as a third classman might speak to a venerable first
classman.

"Well, now, I want to think o