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.”