THE PRIZE TRIP ON THE "DODGER" The following afternoon, at the hour for instruction in the machine shops, the entire first class was marched down to the basin, where the "Dodger" lay.

Squad by squad the midshipmen were taken on board the odd-looking little craft that was more at home beneath the waves than on them.
While the exact place and scale of importance of submarine war craft has not been determined as yet, boats of the Pollard type are certainly destined to play a tremendously important part in the Naval wars of the future.

Hence all of the midshipmen were deeply interested in what they saw and were told.
Some of these first classmen were twenty-four years of age, others from twenty to twenty-two.

Hence, with many of them, there was some slight undercurrent of feeling over the necessity for taking instruction from such very youthful instructors as Jack Benson, Hal Hastings and Eph Somers.
Had any of this latter trio been inclined to put on airs there might have been some disagreeable feeling engendered in the breasts of some of the middies.

But Jack and his associates were wholly modest, pleasant and helpful.
Beginning on the following day, it was announced, the "Dodger" would take a squad of six midshipmen down Chesapeake Bay for practical instruction in submarine work, both above and below the surface of the water.