“Ha! what did I tell you?” cried Captain Byrd Bascomb, as a terrific squall struck the little vessel, causing her to lay over until her keel was visible. “Aha! well done that!” “Wasn’t it beautiful!” “That skipper knows himself and his ship, too!” Such were the admiring expressions that went up from the crowd of young sailors as the yacht was splendidly rescued from her danger and sent along, as before, in the same rushing style by her bold helmsman. “Ah! he is heading for an anchorage off here!” said Cadet Captain Byrd Bascomb, as the schooner’s sheets were eased off and her prow headed away before the wind. On she flew, at the same mad speed, reeling, staggering, rolling, until her boom ends dipped, but held on unswervingly straight toward the vessel-of-war anchored off the grounds in the Levern River. “By Neptune’s beard, men, but that is a youngster at the helm of that craft,” cried Byrd Bascomb, as he put his glass to his eye. It was not long before all could discover the truth of this, and that three men were all else to be seen upon the deck of the schooner, one of these forward, another at the foresheet halyards, the third at the main sheet. Like a rocket she sped under the stern of the vessel-of-war, and then there came an order from the helmsman, the sheets were hauled in and made fast, and luffing up sharp, the anchor was let fall, the sails came down on a run, and ten minutes after a boat left her side and pulled for the shore. The cadets lounged up to meet the single occupant of the little boat, which was a surf-skiff, and though tossed about upon the waves, was handled with a skill which caused the middies to set the rower down as a master of the oars. The oarsman sprang ashore, touched his hat politely, and asked nobody in particular: “May I ask where I will find the commandant of the Naval School?” Then the innate deviltry of the juvenile tar asserted itself, and a look of mischief flashed from eye to eye, a sort of telegraphy, which said: “Here’s fun for us.” They saw before them a bronze-faced youth of seventeen, perhaps, with a splendidly knit frame, clad in spotless duck trousers, a sailor shirt, beneath the wide collar of which a black silk scarf was knotted, and a tarpaulin cocked on the side of his head in a kind of devil-I-care way. “Have you the oysters the commandant ordered?” asked Midshipman Dillingham, with a look of intense innocence. The dark face of the young sailor flushed, but he responded with dignity: “My name is Mark Merrill, and I have orders to report here to be examined for the berth of midshipman in the United States Navy.” CHAPTER VIII. A RUMOR AFLOAT. There was quite a stir at the naval school, for a strange rumor was afloat. “Some one” had said that one of the officers had said that there was to be a new cadet at the academy, appointed under peculiar circumstances; that is, he had no political status environing him.