“Take navigation,” Dave continued.  “I stand just fairly well in the theory of the thing.  But I’ve no real knack with a sextant.”

“Well, the sextant is only a hog-yoke,” growled Dalzell.

“Yes; but I shiver every time I pick up the hog-yoke under the watchful gaze of an instructor.”

“Humph!  Only yesterday I heard Lieutenant-Commander Richards compliment you for your work in nav.”

“Yes; but that was the mathematical end.  I’m all right on the paper end and the theoretical work, but it’s the practical end that I’m afraid of.”

“You’ll get plenty of the practical work as soon as you graduate and get to sea,” Dan urged.

“Yes; and very likely make a chump of myself, like Digby, of last year’s class.  Did you hear what he did in nav.?”

“No,” replied Dalzell, looking up with real interest this times “If Digby made a fool of himself I’ll be glad to hear about it, for Dig was always just a little bit too chesty to suit me.”

“Well, Dig wasn’t a bit chesty the first day that he was ordered to shoot the sun,” Dave laughed.  “Dig took the sextant, and made a prize shot, or thought he did.  After he had got the sun, plumb at noon, he lowered the instrument and made his reading most carefully.  Then he went into the chart room, and got busy with his calculations.  The longer Dig worked the worse his head ached.  He stared at his figures, tore them up and tried again.  Six or eight times he worked the problem over, but always with the same result.  The navigating officer, who had worked the thing out in two minutes, sat back in his chair and looked bored.  You see, Dig’s own eyes had told him that the ship was working north, and about five miles off the coast of New Jersey.  But his figures told him that the ship was anchored in the old fourth ward of the city of Newark.  Try as he would, Dig couldn’t get the battleship away from that ward.”

Dan Dalzell leaned back, laughing uproariously at the mental picture that this story of Midshipman Digby brought up in his mind.

“It sounds funny, when you hear it,” Dave went on.  “But I sometimes shiver over the almost certainty that I’m going to do something just as bad when I get to sea.  If I get sent to the engine room I’ll be likely to fill the furnaces with water and the boilers with coal.”

“Rot!” objected Dan.  “You’re not crazy—–­not even weak-minded.”

“Or else, if I’m put to navigating, I’m fairly likely to bring the battleship into violent collision with the Chicago Limited, over in Ohio.”

“Come out of that funk, Davy!” ordered his chum.

“I’m trying to, Danny boy; but there’s many an hour when I feel that I haven’t learned here all that I should have learned, and that I’ll be miles behind the newest ensigns and lieutenants.”

“There’s just about one thing for you to do, then,” proposed Dan.

“Resign?” queried Darrin, looking quizzically at his chum.