thorough that a man needs to be perfect to have the honor of wearing the
blue shirt. Personally, when I finally emerged from the examining room,
I felt that my teeth were all wrong, my eyes crossed, my heart a wreck,
and that I was not only a physical ruin, but a gibbering idiot as well.
That I really passed the examination successfully was no fault of the
naval surgeon and his assistants.

After the medical department had finished with us, the enlistment papers
were completed, and we became full-fledged "Jackies," as "Stump" termed
it. The members of the battalion were rated as landsmen, ordinary
seamen, and able-bodied seamen, according to their skill, and a number
of men, hastily enlisted for the purpose, were made machinists, firemen,
coal-passers, painters, and carpenters. Some of these had seen service
in the regular navy, and they were visibly horny-handed sons of toil.
One Irishman, whose brogue was painful, looked with something very like
contempt on the Naval Reserve sailors.

"Uncle Sam is a queer bird," several of us overheard him remark to a
mate. "He do be making a picnic av this war wid his pleasure boats an'
his crew av pretty b'yes. If we iver tackle the Spaniards, there'll be
many a mama's baby on board this hooker cryin' for home, swate home."

"Hod," a six-footer, who played quarter-back on a famous team not long
ago, took out his notebook and made an entry.

"I'll spot that fellow and make him eat his words before we get into
deep water," he said, quietly. He was not the only one to make that
vow, and it was plain that Burke, the Irishman, had trouble in store for
him.