when he made his great marches, Scott was muscular and strongly
built. This was so far from being the case that there were many
anxious consultations over him, and the local doctor said he could
not become a sailor as he could never hope to obtain the necessary
number of inches round the chest. He was delicate and inclined to
be pigeon-breasted. Judging from the portrait of him here printed,
in his first uniform as a naval cadet, all this had gone by the
time he was thirteen, but unfortunately there are no letters of
this period extant and thus little can be said of his years on
the _Britannia_ where 'you never felt hot in your bunk because you
could always twist, and sleep with your feet out at port hole.'
He became a cadet captain, a post none can reach who is not thought
well of by the other boys as well as by their instructors, but none
of them foresaw that he was likely to become anybody in particular.
He was still 'Old Mooney,' as his father had dubbed him, owing to
his dreamy mind; it was an effort to him to work hard, he cast a
wistful eye on 'slackers,' he was not a good loser, he was untidy
to the point of slovenliness, and he had a fierce temper. All this
I think has been proved to me up to the
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hilt, and as I am very sure that the boy of fifteen or so cannot
be very different from the man he grows into it leaves me puzzled.
The Scott I knew, or thought I knew, was physically as hard as
nails and flung himself into work or play with a vehemence I cannot
remember ever to have seen equaled. I have fished with him, played
cricket and football with him, and other games, those of his own
invention being of a particularly arduous kind, for they always
had a moment when the other players were privileged to fling a hard
ball at your undefended head. 'Slackness,' was the last quality
you would think of when you saw him bearing down on you with that