The men of the third class were more particularly interested in the newcomers, as they had so lately been in the same predicament, while the older cadets of the second and first classes looked down with supreme contempt upon the “cubs,” only worthy of their attention if any fun could be gotten out of them. So a detail was made to keep an eye upon the entrance gate to the academy grounds, where a marine and his musket constantly paced, for the arrival of the cubs, especially the lad from Maine. The new appointees began to arrive on time, pale, nervous, and with forebodings of the future, some of them having read or heard that young gulls were plucked of their feathers by those who had risen to the height of sea eagles. There was legendary lore on tap that new boys who ran the gauntlet of the sawbones and examiners were then taken in hand for instruction by the cadets by a process called hazing. Now, the new men held somewhat of a hazy view of what hazing was exactly, as, though it was fun for the hazers, it might be death to the hazed, and they stood more in awe of their learned companions-to-be than they did of the commandant and his whole crew of professors. And they were right, as many a man can testify to-day. One by one the new men arrived at Annapolis, and turned their uneasy footsteps in the direction of the mecca of their hopes and fears. They passed by the grim sentinel at the gate, and he knew them at a glance, try as they might to disguise their identity as appointees. They went, according to orders, to report to the commandant, passed that ordeal, and faced another in the surgeon, who was all business, and as merciless as a guillotine. Then they had reason to regret that they had not studied harder at school and played less, that they had not realized that spelling, reading, and a few other things were necessary to education. Their handwriting was a scrawl which horrified them, and their pride took a tumble under the inquisition of an examination that shattered their vanity to atoms. Some of them were undoubtedly greenhorns, others were city boys, with an air of assurance which the first broadside of their judges laid low, and others were quiet, diffident fellows, with the look about them to go in and win. And while the cadets were watching and waiting for the coming of the lad appointed for meritorious services, they became interested in the splendid handling of a schooner rushing into port in a gale, and to their amazement the one at the helm landed and announced himself as: “Mark Merrill, the man from Maine.” CHAPTER IX. GOING ASHORE. Leaving Mark Merrill facing the crowd of midshipmen who met him as he landed, I will ask my reader to return with me until I explain the fact of his arrival as helmsman of a schooner yacht, and his appointment to a cadetship in the naval school.