True Blue: Stirring Stories of Naval Academy Life

# Exhibition Note: Ensign Clarke Fitch in Command; The Fight of His Life

This serialized naval adventure, authored by Ensign Clarke Fitch, U.S.N., concerns Clif Faraday, a naval cadet at Annapolis, and his attendant Hannibal. The narrative opens with a nocturnal horseback chase near the Patapsco River encampment of the Fourth Class, when Hannibal flees in panic from a mysterious figure he identifies as "the hoodoo"—a superstition-exploiting charlatan known as "the yellow man." After Hannibal's harrowing fall into marsh mud, he claims to have witnessed the hoodoo in company with three cadets. Clif investigates and briefly confronts the impostor, who escapes when a dog appears. The crisis intensifies when Hannibal reports the loss of an official dispatch case—a weighted leather envelope bearing commandant's orders to Lieutenant Disston—which he believes the hoodoo has stolen through magical compulsion. This maritime romance combines naval procedural detail with mystery elements and superstition-themed suspense.