Page:Cornelia Meigs--The island of Appledore.djvu/180

160 scare,” said one of the boys who had brought them, “but we have to turn back here so we  might as well stop and look through the gate. It is the Great Lakes Naval Station, where they train the sailors for the warships. Oh, look, they’re drilling now!”

A squad of uniformed sailor boys came marching past, very neat with their blue coats,  their small white hats, their brown legs all  moving together. They swept by like a great perfect machine, minds and bodies all trained  to act absolutely together for the better accomplishment of a common purpose. They moved back and forth across the green, wheeling, turning, marching and countermarching. How hard they must have worked, Billy thought, to learn to do it so well, how each one  must be trying now to do his own part perfectly so that the whole might be perfect. It brought back to him a quick memory of the  night he had witnessed the war game, of the  early morning when he had watched the ships  go by and had seen, if only for a moment, what  the Navy really meant. From what port were those same ships sailing forth today, to play at  the new war game; over what seas would they