Besides the maps, there were to be produced some twenty or more battle plans. For these I hit on a device which I can recommend. I cut out a number of cardboard vessels, of different colors for the contending navies, and these I moved about on a sheet of drawing-paper until satisfied that the graphic presentation corresponded with facts and conditions. They were then fastened in place with mucilage. This saved a great deal of drawing in and rubbing out, and by using complementary colors gave vivid impression. In combats of sailing fleets you must look out sharp, or in some arrangement, otherwise plausible, you will have a ship sailing within four points of the wind before you know it. Nor is this the only way truth may be insulted. Times and distances also lay snares for incautious steps. I noticed once in an account of an action two times, with corresponding positions, which made a frigate in the meanwhile run at eighteen knots under topsails. By such shifts we scrambled along as best we could our first year, content with beef without horseradish, as Sam Weller has it; hitching up with rope when a trace gave way, in the blessed condition of those who are not expecting favors. But worse was to come. Besides the general offence against conservatism by being a new thing, the College specifically had poached its building from another manor. It stood upon the grounds of the Naval Training Station, for apprentices, which considered itself defrauded of property and intruded upon by an alien jurisdiction--an _imperium in imperio_. The two were not even under the same bureau, so the antagonism existed in Washington as well as locally; and now a Secretary of malevolent neutrality. Truly some one was needed "on deck;" though just what he could do with such a barometer did not appear, unless he bore up under short canvas, like Nelson, who "made it a rule never to fight the northwesters." And such was very much our policy; reefed close down, looking out for squalls at any moment from any quarter, saying nothing to nobody, content to be let alone, if only we might be so let. Small sail; and no weather helm, if you please. One most alleviating circumstance was the commandant of the training station, the local enemy, one of the born saints of the earth, Arthur Yates. Officially, of course he disapproved of us; professional self-respect and precedent, bureau allegiance, and all the rest of it, were outraged; but when it came to deeds, Yates could not have imagined an unkind act, much less done it. Nor did he stop there; good-will with him was not a negative but an active quality. What we wanted he would always do, and then go one better, if he could find a way to add to our convenience; and when we ultimately came to grief, after his departure, he wrote me a letter of condolence. Altogether, while clouds were gathering in Washington, it was perpetual sunshine at home as to official and personal relations.