es get $1
extra for every day their boat submerges up to $15 a month. Men acting
as mail-clerks draw up to $30 a month extra; ship's tailors up to $20 a
month extra. Men in the Flying Corps get 50 per cent more than the base
pay their rating calls for. Every man in the service draws a small extra
sum for good conduct.

A chief petty officer is not the highest rating of the enlisted service.
There is a most efficient body of men called warrant-officers, who wear
a sword, are called "Mr.," and draw up to $2,400 a year. There are
warrant boatswains, gunners, machinists, carpenters, pharmacists, and
pay-clerks. But they must remain in service, even as most commissioned
officers, till they are sixty-four, before they draw their pension of
three-quarters pay. Also, like commissioned officers, they get no
clothing allowance and have to pay for their food.

The matter of becoming a commissioned officer may interest the recruit.
One hundred appointments may be made to Annapolis every year from among
the younger enlisted men of the navy. Young fellows who wish to try for
this are given special opportunities for study. The proviso that an
applicant must be under twenty years of age and have been at least one
year in service to make Annapolis is going to bar the way to some. For
such there is another way--warrant. A warrant boatswain, gunner, or
machinist of four years' standing and still under thirty-five years of
age may take an examination for ensign. Twelve warrant-officers may be
made ensigns annually. If they pass, they thereafter go on up exactly as
any Annapolis graduate. A warrant pay-clerk may go up to be junior
paymaster, where he will rank with an ensign.

The foregoing is for the business or ambitious side. Somebody may ask:
Will the young fellow who looks on the navy as a business proposition
make a good fighting man?

Well, in the judgment of men who study the game, almost any young fellow
you meet along the street has it in him to make a good fighting man. The
fighting habit is more a habit of mind than of body. Habituating the
mind to the fighting game is what makes our sailors, soldiers, and
marines do the right thing almost automatically in crises; and this
almost automatically correct action makes for the greater safety of
shipmates or comrades in time of peril.

In this book only the work of our destroyers in this war has been spoken
of. That is because only our destroyers have come in contact with enemy