With that Dave stepped into his own room to dress. It was not
long before the two young naval officers left their rooms, each
carrying a suit case. To the top of each case was strapped a
sword, emblem of officer's rank, and encased in chamois-skin.

Going below, the pair breakfasted, glancing, in the meantime,
over morning newspapers.

Just before nine-thirty that same morning, our young naval officers,
bent on joining their ship, stepped along briskly through the
Brooklyn Navy Yard.

It was really an inspiring place. Sailors, marines and officers,
too, were in evidence.

In the machine shops and about the docks thousands of men were
performing what once would have passed for the work of giants.
Huge pieces of steel were being shaped; heavy drays carried these
pieces of steel; monster cranes hoisted them aboard ships lying
at the docks or standing shored up in the dry docks. There was
noise in the air; the spirit of work and accomplishment pervaded
the place, for word had come from Washington that many ships might
soon be needed in Mexican waters.

Eight dreadnoughts lay at their berths. Even as the boys crossed
the great yard a cruiser was being warped in, after an eighteen-thousand
mile voyage.

Alongside floating stages in the basins lay submarines and torpedo