don't know but that is so. Yes; I guess it is," Dalzell assented.

"Now, there are at least ninety-nine chances in a hundred that
you're going to pass the Navy doctors all right, Dan," his chum
went on. "If you do, you'll be sworn into the Naval service as
a midshipman. Then you'll have to keep in mind that you're not
an admiral, but only a midshipman--on probation, at that, as
our instructions from the Navy Department inform us. Now, as
a new midshipman, you're only the smallest, greenest little boy
in the whole service. Just remember that, and drop all your jolly,
all your freshness and all your patronizing ways. Just listen
and learn, Dan, and study, all the time, how to avoid being fresh.
If you don't do this, I'm mighty confident that you're up against
a hard and tough time, and that you'll have most of the other
midshipmen down on you from the start."

"Any more 'roast' for me?" asked Dalzell plaintively.

"No; for, if you need any more, you'll get it from other midshipmen,
who don't know you as well as I do, and who won't make any allowances
for your greenness and freshness."

"My!" murmured Dan enthusiastically. "Won't I quiver with glee
the first time I see you being called for twelve-inch freshness!"

Yet, despite their wordy encounters, the two remained, as always,
the best and most loyal of friends.

For an hour and a half the two youngsters roamed about Annapolis,
taking many interested looks at quaint old buildings that had
stood since long before the Revolutionary War.

At last they turned back to the hotel, for, as Dalzell suggested,
they needed a long night's sleep as a good preparation for going
before the Naval surgeons on the next day.

Five minutes after they had turned out the gas Dave Darrin was
soundly, blissfully asleep.

In another bed in the same room Dan Dalzell tossed for fully
half an hour ere sleep caught his eyelids and pinned them down.
In his slumber, however, Dan dreamed that he was confronting
the superintendent of the Naval Academy and a group of officers,
to whom he was expounding the fact that he was right and they
were wrong. What the argument was about Dan didn't see clearly,
in his dream, but he had the satisfaction of making the
superintendent and most of the Naval officers with him feel like a
lot of justly-rebuked landsmen.

CHAPTER II

THE FIRST DAY AT THE NAVAL ACADEMY

A few minutes before nine o'clock, the next morning, Dave and
Dan were