Читать книгу Midshipman Merrill онлайн

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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.