With midshipmen who were destined to get their diplomas such doubts were to be charged only to modesty, and were therefore to their credit.

Yet, every spring dozens of Annapolis first classmen are miserable, instead of feeling the joyous appeal of the budding season.

They are assailed by just such fears as had reached Dave Darrin.
Dalzell, on the other hand, was tortured by no such dreads.

He went hammering away with marvelous industry, and felt sure, in his own mind, that he would be retired, in his sixties, an honored rear admiral.
Had there been only book studies some of the first classmen would have broken down under the nervous strain.

However, there was much to be done in the shops---hard, physical labor, that had to be performed in dungaree clothing; toil of the kind that plastered the hard-worked midshipmen with grime and soot.