On the Friday of the same week the decisions on the senior boys’ investigations were announced, and I heard read out: “Wood, Quartus, to be flogged, to be kept back two days, and until he repeats by heart three hundred lines of any Latin author, and to be fined £2.” It would be difficult to imagine greater travesty of justice than to so punish a boy of thirteen, and moreover by fining his parents. I urged my flogging on the Monday should cancel that now ordered, but the Head dissented, adding, “I apologised for that; and you are such a bad boy, I’ll flog you before your Form.” My twenty-two classmates were marched in to the Sixth Form classroom, and I was ordered to get up. The culprit knelt on a bench, his elbows on a desk. Two prefects held his wrists (nominally) with one hand, and the tail of his shirt with the other. When the Master was about to strike, a noise made him look round: he saw all my classmates looking at the wall. He raged, vowed he would flog them all, but in vain; for when the top boys of the class were forcibly turned about by the prefects they faced round again, and my punishment was inflicted without the additional indignity intended. My class gave me £5. I chose the Fourth Book of the _Æneid_, and next morning repeated the three hundred lines.[8] I begged my parents to let me leave, offering to go into a London office, Green’s Merchant Service, or anywhere, to avoid remaining under the Head Master. My father was negotiating with Green & Co., when shortly after I returned to Marlborough College, in February 1852, I unexpectedly received a nomination for the Royal Navy, being ordered to report for examination at the Royal Naval College, Portsmouth Dockyard, in April. I was placed in charge of Mr. Eastman, a crammer at Portsea, for three weeks, that I might acquire the necessary amount of arithmetic to satisfy the Examiner; for at Marlborough nearly all my school-time was given to Latin and Greek. Thirty-eight boys faced Captain (later Admiral) Chads on the 15th April. He read out to us half a page from the _Spectator_ deliberately, with clear enunciation, and many repetitions, so that no boy could fail to catch the words. While the Examiner was reading, “And this was a very barren spot, barren, barren,” he passed up and down the room, and as he turned his back a boy held up a sheet of paper on which he had written “baron” with a big mark of interrogation. I had time only to shake my head when Captain Chads turned, and that boy did not get into the Navy. We were given a short paper on English history, but this presented no difficulties to me, because I had been taught it by my mother at home before I could read.