It was not long after they sailed from England that the midshipmen decided that many of their dreams were coming true. The Colonsay, though she was a poor ship to look at, passed the great lowering battleships of the Home Fleet proudly, almost with a little toss of her head. They might frown contemptuously at her, but soon they would be buried in the Northern mists, ploughing up and down eternally, keeping station on the Flag, the bondservants of the wireless at Whitehall; and she would be away for a holiday. True, the wireless could reach her too, but it would not take the trouble. To Colombo and back she would be her own mistress, bound to drop a curtesy only now and then to other people’s admirals whom she might meet at ports of call.

And those who sailed in her might look further than Colombo. There they would take over the Pathshire from her homeward bound crew, and depart towards the freedom of the East. A small ship with its implied intimacy and informality; long cruises independent of even the ladylike China Squadron flagship; few fleet exercises; coaling with shore-labour; new countries, new faces, new interests—this was their prospect. It changed them all, and put new life and hope into them. For two years they were to be outside the vice whose jaws were Gibraltar Straits and the Shetland Isles. It was the release of their lives, a visit of slum children to the open fields. From the Home Fleet they came, and to the Home Fleet they would return, and they were all determined to make the best of the time that was to intervene.

“It’s extraordinary,” John wrote to his mother, “the contrast between this ship and the King Arthur. Ordith is odd to me—but nothing on earth to complain of; and the other two-stripers treat the Gunroom almost as equals off duty. Even on duty they are always polite, except when they let fly in moments of justifiable excitement, and that does no harm. And often they yield points of strict etiquette in a way that makes four hours on the bridge pass like two. I don’t know how long all this will last. I dare say that as the end of good things draws near, the good things themselves will deteriorate. But now everyone is so pleased with life that all goes well. Hartington, the Sub, I like immensely. You don’t know how much happier I am. There’s always something to which to look forward. I think the absence of that was the trouble of the King Arthur, and the trouble of all the unfortunates in home waters.”

The Colonsay put in to Arosa Bay to drop ratings who were taking passage to other ships, and of these the ship’s company took farewell with the air of schoolboys who, going out into the playing-fields, leave comrades to do impositions in class-rooms. At Gibraltar they did not tarry long. Soon after the Rock had gone down over the western horizon they were overtaken by a storm, which continued with extraordinary violence until they were within a few hours of Valetta. To reach the bridge was a formidable task. In the batteries, where the fo’c’sle gave shelter against the head wind, progress was comparatively easy, but, once over the break of the fo’c’sle, the trouble began. There was a space of several yards between the head of the battery ladder and the foot of the ladder that led to the bridge. Across this space had been stretched a rope, by clinging to which it was possible to avoid being whisked off the deck and blown, but for the friendly intervention of a davit or a sighting-hood, into the mountainous sea. John, heavy with sea-boots, and with skirts of oilskins clinging to his legs, held this rope and tried to advance, but the combined strength of legs and arms could not move him. While the boatswain’s-mate, secure under the lee of the bridge ladder, smiled at his attempts, John pulled and pulled but went forward not an inch. Then, suddenly realizing how ridiculous he must look, he burst out laughing, and swiftly choked because he had opened his mouth to the gale. And it was not until the boatswain’s-mate—himself securely lashed to a stanchion—came to his assistance, that John could move at all.

“Is this an official hurricane?” he said to Dyce, whom he was relieving.

“No, not yet. We are logging the wind as eleven. A hurricane is twelve.” He turned over the details of his watch. “Which battery did you come up?”

“Port.”

“Is that the driest to go down?”

John laughed. “There’s devilish little to choose. I think the port’s the better.”

Dyce ran his fingers over his face. “I’m sticky all over with it,” he said. “I feel as if I should crack if I grinned. It stings after a time. All the same, it’s exciting on watch. You never know when the foretopmast will go over the side.... Well, d’you know everything you want to know? Will you take over now? I’m going to the Gunroom to fug.”

“We’ve just had a green sea in there,” said John, “so the fug is considerable.”

The Colonsay entered Valetta white with salt. Ashore there, after coaling, John met Reedham and Ollenor, whose joy in having got so far East was overshadowed by the thought that, when their old shipmates had sailed for Port Said, they themselves would go westward again. “I’d give a year’s seniority to be coming out with you,” said Reedham. “Come and have a drink.”

An ankle twisted while playing grommet hockey on the quarter-deck prevented John from going ashore at Port Said, Suez, or Aden, and his knowledge of these places extended no further than the tales told by other midshipmen of the marvellous things they saw there. Already they had entered the atmosphere of the East. Colours had grown brighter, near outlines more distinct. In the Canal they went into half-whites, and as they entered the Red Sea blue monkey-jackets were discarded altogether, and for the first time they wore white tunics as well as white trousers and boots. The heat made the outboard wall of the Gunroom too hot to lean against. The midshipmen who were working in the Engine-room came up from the watches, not red with heat, but white and trembling with exhaustion.

“This ship,” said Hugh, “may have a thousand advantages, but its engines are not among them. The Tiffeys say they are the hottest they have ever served with—and the Lord defend them from hotter!”

“What watches do you have to keep?” John asked.

“Now only one four-hour watch each day. It doesn’t sound much. You try it. The indicator diagrams are the worst business—one set to be taken every watch. I suppose I’m slow, but I can’t take a set—allowing for mishaps—in much less than half an hour; and the temperature up there, on the top of the cylinders, is anything from 135° to 160°. It’s a real relief to get away into the boiler-rooms for a spell. And the more warm and sooty lime-juice you drink the faster you sweat, so that’s no good. But, barring odd jobs, we have to ourselves twenty hours out of the twenty-four, which is a recompense for most evils.”

There were tales, too, of the stokers on duty on the evaporators, of how they worked in a temperature of 126°, and how they had fainted at their posts within three-quarters of an hour.

From Aden across the Indian Ocean the way was calm and blue. The sea was an enormous, flat, highly-polished sapphire, and its surface was so still by day and so luminous by night that it seemed hard like a jewel. Astern, the wake was thin and regular, and visible almost to the horizon. The ship, and all life in the ship, seemed to John somehow theatrical. The brilliance of colour, the flash of white uniforms in the sun, the absence of most of those Service activities that ordinarily distinguish a warship from a yacht, contributed to this effect. Superficially this life corresponded closely to that led by puppet naval officers on the civilian stage. Here were sea and blue sky, white ducks still new, the gleam of sun on gold-laced shoulder-straps and gilded buttons. It was all pleasant and unreal.

“This,” said Hartington, “is very like a poster advertising for naval recruits. It catches the eye but doesn’t convince the mind.”

“It gives one the idea of the stage, or of toys,” John answered. “The ship goes through the water like a toy boat that you pull by a string across a bath—nothing to interrupt quite regular bow-waves that go oiling on and on to the very edge.”

Hartington leaned across his bunk towards his cabin scuttle. “Listen, now,” he said. “Down there—by the water-line—not a muffled swish of waves, but, clear and distinct, the touch of particles of water on steel. Almost you can hear each bubble split and scatter.... You seem, as you go East, to be able to look at everything very close, every detail like a minutely accurate miniature—or, as you said, a toy that you can pick up and hold under your eye. I remember, when I was a small boy, I loved to pick up a toy horse and cart, or an engine or a house—just for the fun of feeling like a god. I was Destiny brooding over the nursery! I could throw a divine boot at my sister’s dolls’ tea-party—but I didn’t, because of the crockery. But often, when one of her dolls was ill, and the doctor had failed, and the bottles were empty of physic, I used to remove the roof of the house—my dramatic mode of entry—and take the patient from her bed, and cure her, and put her out in the garden. Nine times out of ten my sister approved the miracle; but now and then, when she had had ideas of her own about that cure—probably a journey round the world from the night-nursery to the school-room—she used to weep because I had spoilt everything. I remember her nurse asked me what I meant by interfering, and I said solemnly that I had meant well—which was quite true—but that I had been ‘playing at God.’ I shall never forget the effect of that remark.”

“And here and now,” John said, “one has a feeling of being in the doll’s house one’s self.”

“And a horrible idea that someone is ‘playing at God’ not very far off—Someone whose Hand might come suddenly out of nothing and pick the painted ship up out of the painted ocean and—and drop it into the nursery fire. I used to send tin soldiers to Hell that way.”

John smiled. “Is that the ‘fatalism of the East?’”

“No: it’s a Cockney picking up an idea of Time and Space and the other capital letters. ‘O Time and Change they range and range From sunshine round to thunder.’... Have you written more verse?”

“No.”

“What have you written?”

“Nothing. It’s too hot.”

They sipped Irish whisky and lemon beneath the electric fan whizzing and vibrating in its cage.