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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: