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
ball, and it was the last he asked of you if you were bearing down
on him. He was equally strenuous of work; indeed I have no clearer
recollection of him than his way of running from play to work or work
to play, so that there should be the least possible time between.
It is the 'time between' that is the 'slacker's' kingdom, and Scott
lived less in it than anyone I can recall. Again, I found him the
best of losers, with a shout of delight for every good stroke by
an opponent: what is called an ideal sportsman. He was very neat
and correct in his dress, quite a model for the youth who come
after him, but that we take as a matter of course; it is 'good
form' in the Navy. His temper I should have said was bullet-proof.
I have never seen him begin to lose it for a second of time, and
I have seen him in circumstances where the loss of it would have
been excusable.

However, 'the boy makes the man,' and Scott was
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none of those things I saw in him but something better. The faults
of his youth must have lived on in him as in all of us, but he
got to know they were there and he took an iron grip of them and
never let go his hold. It was this self-control more than anything
else that made the man of him of whom we