To Mark Merrill his salt-water bath with his clothes on was nothing to speak of. He had lived so much in his skiff, been overboard so often that he thought nothing of it, though he did regret losing his temper with Winslow Dillingham, who had shown himself such a good fellow after all.

Of course he did not suppose that he would have drowned, for there were too many manly fellows upon the wall who could swim to allow that.

But, having placed his life in jeopardy himself, he was the one to prevent any fatality therefrom.

The idea that the youth could not swim had never entered his mind, for swimming like a fish himself and never remembering when he could not do so, he supposed it was the most ordinary accomplishment, and, as he had said, he merely wished to cool the temper of the one who had set upon him as a butt to be made fun of.

“What’s the trouble ashore, my lad?” asked Captain Jasper Crane, who was about to launch the schooner’s yawl to come to the shore when he saw Mark returning.

“Oh! nothing to speak of, sir, only I had to stop some funny business one of the boys played on me, and finding he could not swim I leaped in after him.”

“Just like you, Master Mark, just like you,” said Captain Crane, following the youth into the cabin.

“And I tells yer, lad, you’ll find more hard knocks to put up with among them brass-buttoned gentry ashore than you’d get as a foremast hand on a merchant craft.

“My advice to yer would have been to stick to your little craft here and make money; but then you is high-minded and I knows it’s in yer to make a name for yerself, if yer sets about it, only the course are a rough one to sail. Maybe me and one o’ the boys better go ashore with yer next time, for we is some handy with our flukes when we is run afoul of.”

Mark laughed heartily, for it came into his mind how he had seen the skipper and his sons run afoul of, as he expressed it, one day in Portland, by a gang of roughs, and had a fair demonstration of how “handy they were with their flukes.”

To see him go ashore under an escort amused him greatly, as he pictured the cadet-midshipman being knocked about by the trio of salts from the Kennebec.

But he thanked the captain for his offer, and went on with his toilet. Meanwhile the skipper was called upon deck.

A boat had come alongside with a middy in command, sent from the man-of-war, to have the skipper of the strange schooner give an account of his seeking an anchorage where he had.

Having heard of the trouble Mark had met with ashore, Captain Crane gazed upon the spry young middy with no friendly eye.

“Are you the sailing-master of this craft?” asked the midshipman pompously.

“I am the mate, very much at your service, young officer.”

“Where is the master?”

“The capting is down in his cabing; but if you wish to see him I’ll send yer keerd, and maybe he’ll see yer, maybe he won’t.”

The face of the youth flushed at this, and he asked sternly:

“Is this a yacht on a pleasure cruise, my man?”

“Now, see here, my boy, I hain’t your man. I’m my old woman’s man, and nobody else has a claim on me, for I am o’ age.”

“Answer my question, sir.”

“Yes, it are a yacht on a cruise, but leetle pleasure I’m thinking it will bring her capting by coming into this port.”

“I wish the name of your vessel, her owner, and why she is here.”

“I suppose ef I don’t tell yer, you’ll tarn yer big guns on the craft; but as I said, I am only the mate, and the captain will be on deck in a minute, for he is down below changing his clothes, having just thrown a young admiral in the drink, and then had to jump in and pull him out to keep him from drowning, so you better be uncommonly polite to him, as the water are handy and real wet, too.”

The midshipman felt that he was being made fun of.

He saw the smiles on the lee side of the faces of his boat’s crew, and he knew that they saw that he was getting worsted.

His orders were simply to board the schooner and ascertain her name and business in the anchorage she had chosen.

That was all.

Much breath had been consumed thus far in conversation, and he had discovered nothing.

He was getting angry, and yet it came to him that disciplining himself was one of the first things taught at the Naval School.

If he could not command himself, he certainly could not expect to command men.

He saw that he had struck a rough old hulk, one that could be towed, but not rowed, and he decided to change his manner of attack by demanding to see the owner or captain of the vessel.