Читать книгу Ralph Osborn, Midshipman at Annapolis. A Story of Life at the U.S. Naval Academy онлайн

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“Block,” interrupted Bollup, “here is another young gentleman for you; he wants a mattress and a hammock, and a locker. Can you fix him up right away?”

“Indeed I can. What’s your name, young sir?”

“Ralph Osborn, sir.”

“Avast your sir, when you’re talking to any one forrud of the mast, Mr. Osborn. This is your first lesson in man-of-war manners. Keep your ‘sirs’ and your ‘misters’ for the quarter-deck; they’ll be mightily missed there if you don’t put them on. Do you smoke cigarettes, Mr. Osborn?”

“I neither smoke nor chew, sir.”

“Never mind the ‘sir,’ sir. I’m glad you don’t smoke cigarettes; I report all midshipmen who do that. They’re regular coffin nails, but chewing is healthy; no sensible man ever objects to a person chewing; and a pipe now and then is a good thing for anybody. But no cigarettes, mind you, no cigarettes.” And Chief Master-at-Arms Block glared at Ralph in a way that would have surely intimidated him had he been guilty of the habit Block so heartily despised.

“Now this way,” continued the huge and formidable-appearing, yet kindly chief master-at-arms. “Here’s your locker key, No. 57, and I’ll send that make-believe sailorman down to you with your mattress, hammock and hammock clews, and I’ll tell him to put in the clews for you and show you how to swing the hammock. And, Mr. Osborn, I’m glad to know you; your classmates are a fine lot of young men, the best I’ve known in the thirty years I’ve been aboard the Santee.”