On the afternoon of the first Sunday after the Pathshire sailed from Colombo for Singapore, Hartington was sitting alone in his cabin when a double knock sounded at the door and the curtains were drawn aside. A pale face, with thin lips, watery, protuberant eyes, and a pitted forehead fringed with straight, clipped hair, was thrust into the cabin.

“Hullo, Aggett! Come in.”

Aggett smiled, exposing the gaps in his teeth, and entered awkwardly. He was an Engineer-Lieutenant of the older, rougher school. Round his neck, instead of a collar, he wore a white scarf that was not clean. The creases in his fingers and the thick cuticles which grew high on his nails were stained with oil and dirt. But that scarred forehead and those strange eyes which had the extraordinary opaque appearance of great age—almost as if they had done service once before to some other being now dead—proclaimed their owner’s intelligence. A flabby vicious little man, but no fool, this Aggett appeared. And, to one who cared to seek further, to contrast the darting movements of his hands with the cumbrousness of his feet, or to remark how strong and decided a voice proceeded from that poor body, Aggett seemed more than intelligent. He possessed force and wariness, a rare power to stake all at need, combined with a distrust of his fellows, which was valuable because it was discriminating. He was a man whom it was impossible to imagine as a child. No lasting affection of wife or mother could be easily thought of as connected with him. He could have no home, no ties. He passed, surely, from ship to hotel, from hotel to ship, making hundreds of acquaintances but not a friend, despising and using all he met, never introspective or lonely, sufficient unto himself.

He threw over the cabin a quick glance of disapproval. It irritated him that anyone should take trouble to decorate his habitation; and he was the more irritated in this instance because Hartington’s taste, unlike that of many officers who tried to make their cabins “tiddley,” could not be easily scorned as effeminate. The few photographs, in the simplest of wooden or silver frames; the books, with their appearance of dignity and quietness; the pictures—here a Medici reproduction of a DÜrer drawing, there a water-colour landscape of the hills about Fiesole—were such as no woman was likely to have chosen. Aggett wanted to say what he said usually to officers whose walls were not so bare as his own, “This place is like a whore’s boudoir;” but his sense of the appropriate overcame him, and he said:

“Well, Hartington-me-lad, sittin’ in your country residence, eh? Let’s ring for the family butler.”

“Which means you want a cocktail? Put your head out and ask one of the snotties in the casemate to send for Ah Foo.”

Aggett did as he was bid, sat down on the edge of a chair, and took a cigarette from a paper packet concealed in his breast-pocket.

“Ordith wants you to come in to supper to-night in the Wardroom. Can do?”

“Yes. I shall have to leave you early, though. I’ve got the Middle. I shall want some sleep first.”

“Right.... Ordith asked me to come with the invite. He’s workin’—always workin’.”

“Gunnery?”

“Yes. Fellows in the Wardroom don’t know how much work he puts in. I know him better than most. I do know. They think he’s slack ’cause he only takes a watch now and then. But I give you my word”—he leaned forward and smacked Hartington’s knee—“I give you my word there’s not a man in this ship or any other damned ship who does more work than Ordith.”

“I believe it. And he has brains.”

“Brains!” Aggett exclaimed. “I should jus’ say he has. One o’ the smartest men alive. And no slop or sentiment. On and on like a well-lubricated engine. And an eye to the main chance—why, I’ll tell you.” He hitched up his chair closer to Hartington’s, and continued with slow emphasis: “Ordith’s a man worth watchin’. Head an’ shoulders above the Service truck. All the powers have an eye on him. Ordith and Co.? Why, you mark my words, Ordith’s goin’ to control more ’n that some day.... Good fellow, too. Think so?”

“I like him,” Hartington answered, “though I don’t know him well. None of us knows him well, so far as I can see. He keeps to himself.”

“He keeps to himself where the blamed fools are concerned. An’ he looks round slow, an’ takes his pick o’ the best.”

Hartington laughed. “So it’s a particular compliment to be asked to supper?”

“Well,” said Aggett slowly, “I wasn’t thinkin’ o’ that. But I dare say you’re right. He’s not a friend to be sniffed at.”

Ah Foo, light-footed and blue-clad, came in with cocktails.

“Rum crowd of snotties in your Gunroom,” Aggett said, when he had sipped his drink and thrown a slice of lemon-peel into the wastepaper basket. “They want shakin’, I think.”

“Why? What have they done wrong?”

“Oh, nothing in particular; but they seem to take life too easy to my way of thinkin’. Got a nice, thick stick? A taste o’ that would do ’em good.”

“Well, you look after them in the Engine-room,” Hartington said, “and I’ll see about the Gunroom; then we shan’t quarrel.”

Aggett emptied his glass and rose. “Don’t think I’m tryin’ to poke my finger into your pie. You can mollycoddle the young gents to your heart’s content, for all I care. But you’ll find it doesn’t pay in the long run. You mark my words.”

And he went out of the cabin, leaving Hartington to wonder what lay behind this visit and this invitation. He had noticed that Aggett was much in Ordith’s company, and had marvelled that one so uncouth should be so well received in that quarter. What was now afoot? What reason had Ordith to cultivate the acquaintance of the Sub of the Gunroom? And why had Aggett been sent—for it was plain that he had been sent—to sing Ordith’s abilities and importance.

When he left Hartington, Aggett went immediately to Ordith’s cabin. He found Nick in white trousers and a singlet, mopping his forehead so that sweat should not run down on to the drawings over which he was bending. At Aggett’s entry Nick looked up, a pair of dividers held between his fingers.

“Well?” he said.

“O.K. He’ll come.”

“Get a drink?”

“One cocktail.”

“Seem well disposed?”

“Fair to moderate. Likes you; doesn’t like me. Thinks I’m a coarse brute.”

Nick smiled. “Well, you’re not a fairy, Aggett. He’s a delicately nurtured young man, you must remember. Old county family, and God knows what!”

“I know about that,” Aggett answered. “I don’t go much by the fruit that grows on the family tree.”

“That’s where you are at fault.”

“Fault be damned. Then is that what you are at—makin’ the most of the Hartington family connection?”

Nick laid down his dividers and turned to face Aggett. “No,” he said. “That particular connection doesn’t happen to be of any use to me.”

“Well, what is it then? Look here, Ordith, I’m in with you in all your pretty little schemes—or am I wrong? No? Very good, then. I give you expert engineering advice—and you won’t find a better combination of theory and practice than there is in me. I help you all I can. Probably I get nothing out of it. I’m prepared to risk that. I’ll chance your caring to remember me when you are Ordith and Co. But I want to know right now what you are up to. Why are you bringing in this Sub? What the hell use is he to be? Tell me straight.”

“I will tell you straight, although, so far as you are concerned, it’s a side issue. Haven’t you observed that Hartington’s popular with the snotties? Haven’t you seen young Lynwood go into Hartington’s cabin evening after evening?”

“I dare say. Well?”

“Lynwood’s friend is Fane-Herbert. I foresee that when old Fane-Herbert and his wife and daughter come out East we shall see much of Lynwood, Hartington, and, of course, the son himself. Now Hartington may not appeal too strongly to old Fane-Herbert, but unless I’m much mistaken the women will take to him. He talks well. He may be persuasive and have influence. And I’d rather have him a friend than—the other thing. That’s the long and short of it.”

Aggett shot out a glance of suspicion; then covered it with a smile. He felt that even the cautious Ordith was looking uncommonly far ahead. Hartington to Fane-Herbert the snotty; the snotty to the women; the women to Fane-Herbert the father—it was a circuitous approach. He did not know that Ordith was now thinking, not of contracts but of personalities, not of the father but of the daughter. Aggett knew nothing of Margaret. His partnership with Ordith was a business partnership—loose and informal at that.

“I suppose you’re right,” he said. “Anyhow, I leave it to you.”

Nick turned to his drawings when Aggett had gone, but did not immediately begin to work. Aggett—what a dirty little man he was! But full of knowledge and energy which was useful now, which might be even more useful some day. It went against the grain that he should be even remotely connected with Margaret. He didn’t know; he should never know. And yet—those searching eyes would see, that alert brain form its conclusions. Probably Aggett would come and make his oily jokes about love and women and masculine weakness. They would be hard to endure. Nick thought for a moment that he would banish Aggett from his confidence, do without him. He was a mean creature; why not break with him? Then Aggett’s virtues rose up in his defence. He was a wonderful fellow to pick holes in an idea, to expose the impracticable in a theory—a destructive critic of great ability. And Nick knew how much he stood in need of informed destructive criticism. At night he would discover some improvement in breech mechanism, or a perfected driving-band or a brilliant new system of fire-control. When he rose in the morning he would be blind with enthusiasm, aware only of the excellence of his own idea. But the thing would need to be threshed out. Talk was the only method, so poor a critic was he of himself. And Aggett could talk admirably. He could put his finger instantly on a weak spot.... Yes, Aggett was indispensable. Sly jokes and indecencies, those unpleasant teeth, that grating laugh—they must be borne. Margaret or no Margaret, Aggett was necessary.

“Don’t be a fool,” Nick said aloud. “Don’t give way to your prejudices.”

He dipped his head into cold water and dried himself vigorously with a rough towel. Then he picked up his dividers, and, commanding concentration as others switch on an electric light, began to work quickly.

II

After supper, in a corner of the Wardroom Casemate, Nick and Hartington sat drinking whisky-and-soda. In front of them was a vacant chair, from which Aggett, ten minutes earlier, had been summoned to the Engineer’s Office. Now he returned.

“Just had a star-turn in Number Four stoke-hold,” he remarked. “Stoker off his chump.”

“Mad?” Nick said.

“Fightin’ mad. Up with his shovel and started layin’ about him. But they brought him down all right—no damage, except to him. He’s unconscious. They’ve got him in the Sick Bay, but they can’t bring him round. All over with him, I’m told. Only a question of hours now.”

“That means a funeral,” said Nick gloomily. “Burials at sea are depressing affairs.”

“Don’t wonder he went mad. The heat’s fierce, an’ four hours in every twelve isn’t a kid’s job. Hope it don’t take the others the same way. We’re short enough o’ stokers as it is, without ’em dyin’ off.”

“You can hardly blame them for dying, Aggett,” the Commander put in from his distant seat.

“You stand rebuked,” Nick said.

Aggett drained his glass. “The Commander hasn’t got to run the boiler-rooms,” he observed. “It would be different, wouldn’t it, sir, if the Chief Boatswain’s-mate kicked the bucket?”

“Nothing to jest about.”

“No, indeed.”

“No, indeed,” the Commander repeated, and, picking up an illustrated paper, rattled his shirt-cuffs as he turned its pages angrily.

A man appeared at the Casemate door.

“Mr. Hartington ’ere, sir?”

“Yes.”

“Captain wishes to speak to you, sir, in the after-cabin.”

Hartington rose. “Sorry, Ordith.”

“All right, my dear fellow.”

The Commander threw aside his paper. “Hold on a minute Hartington.... You say this stoker is going to die, Aggett?”

“Probable.”

“What’s his name?”

“Hammond, Zachariah Peter, Stoker First Class.”

“Right. I’ll just go in and tell the Captain, Hartington, before you begin your pow-wow. I shan’t be a second. Come along with me.”

They went aft together, and, while Hartington waited, the Commander passed into the Captain’s quarters, and presently reappeared.

“All right, Hartington. He’s waiting for you.”

Hartington entered. The Captain, a tall, grave man, who, but for his beard and moustache, might well have been taken for a judge, was leaning back in an armchair, his feet thrown up on to the fender that surrounded the empty fireplace.

“Ah, come in, Hartington, and sit down. You will find cigarettes on the small table.”

Hartington offered him the silver box.

“Will you have one, sir?”

“Thanks, no; I never smoke. You light up, though. I want a few words with you.”

An uncomfortable silence followed while Hartington lighted his cigarette, took an ashtray from the mantelpiece, and sat down.

“Now,” the Captain said, “I want to talk to you about the Gunroom. I don’t know what your own views may be upon the treatment of midshipmen. I hope you have views. I hope you have thought the matter out. The Sub of a Gunroom, you know, holds a position of responsibility.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, what is your policy?”

“Put shortly, sir, my idea is to make the Gunroom tolerable.”

“You think it likely to be intolerable?”

Hartington paused before he answered. He had no knowledge of the Captain’s own views on this matter. Was he of opinion that midshipmen should be shaken? Was this interview to be an intimation that the Pathshire’s midshipmen were not being shaken enough? It would be dangerous to cross him. The Old School was strong, wonderfully tenacious, intolerant of heresy. It would be easy not to commit himself until the Captain’s attitude was made plain.

Then he saw the Captain’s eyes watching him, but their expression conveyed nothing save enquiry and interest. He decided to take the risk. Many and many a time he had wanted to test his views by laying them before a man with long experience of the Service. He said:

“A Gunroom can easily be an intolerable place, sir.”

“Still? I suppose the Service doesn’t change very fast.”

“There was a case before a Court of Enquiry only a few months ago, sir. I have heard that was pretty bad. The junior snotties in that ship were in the same Term as ours, so I have heard a good deal of it indirectly.”

“But perhaps that was an isolated case.”

“I don’t think so, sir. The Home and Atlantic Fleets——”

“Stop a minute.” The Captain took his feet from the fender, and raised himself in his chair. “That’s what I want to get at. I want to be quite frank, and I expect frankness from you. I know—of course I know—that this chasing of midshipmen goes on. But it is very difficult for one in my position—a Captain of a ship is more isolated than, perhaps, many of you imagine—it’s difficult to find out the exact extent of the evil. How much of it is genuine? How much exaggeration? And, more difficult still, what is the cause of it? Young officers nowadays are different from the old—differently educated. Osborne and Dartmouth aren’t the mill that the old Britannia was. They come to sea less prepared for—for whatever harsh treatment they may receive. You mentioned the Home and Atlantic Fleets. I’m afraid I interrupted you, but I think you were going to limit the system—to a certain extent, at least—to those fleets. Isn’t that so? Well—now, what’s the cause of it all? What is there behind it? Is it the drive at home, or is it something—something more fundamental, something in the very veins and arteries of the Service.”

“You are better able to judge of that than I am, sir.”

The Captain leaned back. “I want your opinion.”

“I think it goes on for three reasons, sir. First, it’s the Service tradition. There are hundreds of officers who believe—honestly believe—that it is necessary to chase snotties in order to bring them to a right frame of mind, in order to produce efficiency. Second—the reason you suggested, sir—the pressure of work, the feeling one has of living from day to day until—until something happens to break the tension—that makes us not quite ourselves. We never trouble about the effect on the snotty. A long view is impossible—there isn’t time. And so we do without thinking what we should never do if we thought.”

“And the third cause?”

“It’s rather complicated, sir.”

“Never mind.”

“And I’m afraid you may think it fantastic—not quite a practical view to take.”

“Let me have it, all the same. You seem to have thought out this matter, Hartington?”

“Yes, sir; I have. It struck me as important—even of first-rate importance. And the present state of affairs is so bad that there’s bound to be an end to it soon, one way or another. It’s better that the change should come from inside the Service than from outside.”

“You think it’s as bad as that? But no one outside knows anything about it.”

“They will, sir. It is so bad that one day someone will wake up to it. The Press may get hold of it.”

“We don’t want the Press in the Service.”

“No, sir. That’s why I think this business ought to be stopped from inside.”

“There are regulations on flogging.... However, what is your third cause? I think that is the right way to tackle the problem—see the causes, then root them out.”

“The third cause, so far as I can see, sir, is that the Service is so isolated and so specialized. Put briefly, it’s a government without opposition, with the usual result of tyranny. And in the Service we have no contact with any interests but our own—no books or pictures, no women, if you see what I mean, sir.”

“No women?”

“Only the physical.”

“Ah! you mean we lack the refining influence!” The Captain smiled.

“I shouldn’t have put it that way, sir. I mean that if men are left too long with men they are liable to become beasts.” An illustration of his point flashed across Hartington’s mind. “You know what it is, sir, after dinner in England, when the ladies are gone. It begins in talk almost at once. And, left together long enough, men become cruel.”

“That’s true.” The Captain ran his tongue across his lips. “But you spoke of books and pictures.”

“And plays and music, sir, and walks in the country, and games, and riding—but chiefly books and pictures, plays and music. They are the best products of civilization.”

“And we live among the worst—guns, torpedoes? Is that the idea? But you can have books and pictures in the Service?”

“You can have a few of your own, sir; but that’s not the same thing as meeting them at every turn, in every house. We are outside the atmosphere of——” Hartington broke off suddenly. This was a senior naval officer to whom he was speaking. Almost he had forgotten that.

“Go on,” the Captain said. “The atmosphere of——”?

“Outside the atmosphere of beauty,” Hartington said reluctantly. One does not wisely speak of the atmosphere of beauty to post-captains.

But the Captain did not smile until he said: “You put it strangely, but I think I understand you. We are brutalized, in fact?”

“No, sir, I don’t think so. If we were brutalized we should be brutes ashore and brutes consistently on board. We are neither one nor the other. It’s this—that one branch of us is starved, stunted, so that it can’t grow, and consequently the other branch develops abnormally.”

“And I can see no cure for that. We have our job to do. There is very little time for anything else. Of course,” the Captain added, his words coming slowly, “when you come to think of it, our job itself is ethically indefensible.”

They pondered that overwhelming statement in silence, each momently unconscious of the other’s presence. When at last Hartington met the Captain’s eyes he saw in them a strange expression, half guilty, half amused.

“I’m afraid that’s true. We have probably struck bed-rock,” the Captain said, with a smile. Then, suddenly serious, he added: “That goes no further, Hartington.”

“No, sir.”

The Captain laughed—nervously, Hartington thought. “And since we can’t abolish the Service, Hartington, or the forces behind that make it necessary, let us return to practical politics. Taking your causes in reverse order: We can but nibble at the third. You recommend that the Gunroom should be made tolerable. That’s something. A decent place to live in, so far as its size permits—some of the amenities of life preserved—not utterly a bear-garden. Further, I propose to help, if I can, by having the snotties to dine in here, and talking books, or games, or travel, or the theory of cruiser screens—anything, in short, but everyday shop and everyday women, the Gunroom topics. A clean napkin, a smooth shirt-front, and bright glass and silver have an extraordinarily civilizing effect. Besides, to a snotty’s mind, these quarters of mine seem spacious, and room to move is room to think. And your job consists in making your own personality felt; stop them talking and thinking filth eternally. But you are up against it, Hartington; the China Station, the naval officer’s Mecca, because on the surface it seems slack and pleasant, is a test—but more of that later on. Your second cause—the pressure of work, the sense of war, and a break-up of all our lives being so close that the ‘long view’ is unattainable. Eat, drink, and be merry, for to-morrow we die; be cruel, brutal, at any rate, unheeding, for to-morrow—God knows what may happen! That’s the attitude. Frankly, I don’t know how to change it. Religion, any kind of religion, any quick sense of worlds outside our own and of time beyond our time, might change it. But that’s hopeless in a Gunroom. There can be no God where there’s no privacy. Do you realize that there is no place in this ship where midshipmen can pray? By their chests, in a public passage, with marines in hammocks blaspheming above their heads? Or they could pray on their backs in their own hammocks if they remembered. But they are tired and sleepy, and they forget—so the fact stands. I dare say they could do without formal prayers. But no one can do without occasional seclusion. They are for ever rubbing shoulders with their own sordidness, until at last they come to think they are all sordid, and care to be nothing else. That’s the root of the snotty’s tragedy, Hartington. I’m sure of it. He’s never alone—never, from the moment he comes on board to the moment he gets ashore. His mind hasn’t a chance to expand—to stray out into the vague purposelessness from which, if you can trace them back far enough, all right purposes spring.”

“I’ve given two of them—Lynwood and Fane-Herbert—leave to use my cabin whenever I’m not there. There isn’t room for more, sir.”

“No, there isn’t room for more,” the Captain said. “I dare say some of the Wardroom would do likewise if I dropped a hint, but, though it is some gain, there’s no real seclusion in another man’s cabin. That problem’s insoluble, Hartington, while ships are built as they are, and so they must be built if they are to be efficient fighting units. It brings us back again to the essential immorality of our calling, and—and to the forces behind that make our calling inevitable. Doesn’t it?”

He broke off, smiling.

“There’s the solution of leave, sir,” Hartington said boldly.

“I know,” the Captain answered. “I’ve thought of that. And I agree: the snotties must have all the leave we can manage to give them. But there are two difficulties. First, officers often stop snotties’ leave—it’s the recognized Service punishment, and the alternative is flogging. Second——You’ve never been on the China Station before, Hartington?”

“No, sir.”

“I have; and I’m not sure that short leave is much better than no leave at all. I can give them four or five days now and then, but you know what happens—Hong-Kong, Shanghai, they are Hell. Japan’s better; but even there unless by chance they go into the country, there’s Yokohama and Number Nine, or Tokio and the Yoshiwara. The East’s a bad atmosphere through which to see life for the first time. Let loose from the ship’s confinement into a strange land with an unknown language—not even a comprehensible theatre—what is there but bars and women? What’s needed is long leave among their own people, their own women—sisters, mothers. In the Home Fleet where distance makes that possible the drive of work makes it impossible. What do they get—an average of fourteen days a year, or a bit more if they are lucky. And out here, England, Home, and Beauty are thousands of miles away.”

The Captain stood up. “But, as for your first cause,” he said, “as for the Service tradition and the chasing of midshipmen to produce efficiency, I can do something about that in my own ship. Fortunately all our snotties are of the same seniority, so that there can be no seniors trampling on juniors ‘to get a bit of their own back.’ And so far as you yourself are concerned—well, I know your somewhat unusual views. But other Subs may join us later on, or even the Wardroom may demand that the snotties be shaken. And I want you to understand that, no matter what may come—even if you get orders from the Commander himself, you are to stand out against anything that follows the principle of ‘the young gentlemen must be broken.’ The fact that these things were done in Nelson’s day doesn’t weigh with me. I will have none of it in my ship. Is that understood?”

“Quite, sir.”

“I shall hold you personally responsible.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And, apart from any order of mine considered as an order, I want your promise. You know as well as I do that the order is one I can’t enforce from day to day. The Service etiquette keeps the Captain well aft. I can’t see what goes on.”

“I’m as strongly against the system as you are, sir.”

“That settles the matter, then, for one ship among hundreds. Good-night.”

“Good-night, sir.”

Hartington walked towards the door. Because a question in his mind remained unanswered he hesitated visibly.

“What is it?” the Captain asked. “Another ‘cause’ to baffle us?”

“There was a question, sir.”

“Yes?”

“You spoke—twice—of the forces behind the Service. I was wondering, sir——”

The Captain shook his head. “No, Hartington; we haven’t time to try to unravel that mesh. Besides, it savours of politics, which are not for naval officers. I have said enough already this evening—perhaps too much unless you are discreet. Good-night, again.”

“Good-night, sir.”