III
If the conditions of John’s life are to be understood, Gunroom Evolutions must be once described. The detail of this part of his and his companions’ training need not be referred to a second time.
The Evolution evening of which an account is to be given was not an isolated or exceptional incident in the junior midshipmen’s lives. It was part of a persistent treatment to which they were subjected, with fluctuating vigour, so long as they remained in the King Arthur. It was not applied every night. Sometimes there was an interval of over a week between two successive applications, and, indeed, towards the end of their service in the King Arthur there were intervals even greater than this. The length of the intervals depended upon the leisure and the inclination of the senior midshipmen. But the treatment, though not regular, was never definitely suspended. It was seldom possible to say with certainty on any afternoon, “There will be no Evolutions to-night.” They were always likely to occur, and when they did there was no way of escape. The junior midshipmen grew to expect them, to remember suddenly in the happiest moment of an afternoon leave what the evening might have in store. The dread of these Evolutions permeated their waking life, entering their minds when on or off duty, interrupting their work in School, colouring their speech, inspiring their manner with furtiveness and bitterness, with resentment and fear. Only from the letters they wrote home were the Evolutions excluded, for they did their utmost to make their people believe that they were happy.
The King Arthur sailed for Gibraltar early in October. During the day the midshipmen carried out sea routine, keeping their watches on deck or in the Engine-room. Krame made his arrangements for the evening with so much success that, as a result of careful interchange, the midshipmen who, from eight to midnight, kept the first watch below and on the bridge were three of intermediate seniority, Norgate, Hambling, and Ollenor. Reedham, the only one remaining of the intermediate group, left the Gunroom after dinner at the same time as Winton-Black, and purposely did not return. So it happened that, when mess was over, and when the midshipmen of the Last Dog had finished their later watch-dinner, the five senior and the six junior midshipmen were left in the Gunroom together.
“Warts, fall in! Howdray, you are the mate of the ship’s biscuits. Elstone, you might look out for the water.”
“Water? What the hell do you want water for?”
Krame pointed to where the junior midshipmen stood in single rank. “These six young gentlemen,” he said “have not yet been christened. They are—what’s the word?—unregenerate. As I, being Senior Midshipman in this ’ere Gunroom, am responsible for the young gentlemen’s spiritual, bodily, and moral welfare, I propose to christen them. Therefore water, Elstone.”
“I knew all about that,” said Elstone, “but what I mean is, why not christen them in crême de menthe? It’s stickier.”
Howdray’s great voice shouted in protest. “And whose wine bill is to go down the young gentlemen’s necks?”
“Besides,” said Tintern solemnly, “it would ruin their shirts, you know.”
“Damn their shirts!” Krame answered. “They can buy new ones, can’t they? They ought to be rich enough. They don’t spend their money on anything, so far as I can see—no women, no card bill, no extra extras, no wine bill to speak of.... But I’m with you, Howdray. We won’t waste crême de menthe on them.”
“It might go down to themselves,” Banford-Smith kindly suggested.
“Lot of good that would be,” Howdray grumbled, “seeing that we have their wine bills.”
“Water be it,” said Krame. “The jug’s on the slab, Elstone. Howdray, the biscuits are in my locker, just above your head.”
From his place in the line John watched Howdray climb on to the settee and fetch the material for the christening. Krame and Elstone sat at the end of the table, Elstone next the pantry hatch and Krame nearer the ship’s side. On Krame’s left was Howdray, now sliding back into his place and arranging the huge ship’s biscuits on the table in front of him. Further for’ard, sprawling on the settee, and engaged in a competition of blowing smoke-rings at their liqueur glasses, were Tintern and Banford-Smith, who seemed less interested than the others in the business of the evening. Elstone regarded it, perhaps thoughtlessly, as a tremendous joke; Howdray was frankly a bully of the old fashion, great in bulk but not in strength, good-humoured on occasions, happy-go-lucky, for ever at war with authority, a creature of vast appetites and weak control. Only Krame seemed to derive genuine pleasure from the proceedings. He possessed a quick, almost brilliant mind. He was handsome, popular in polite shore-going circles, an efficient officer, admired, on account of his easy manner and soft, smiling lips, by women and by men whose acquaintance with him was but superficial. He enjoyed Gunroom Evolutions. He used to tell his dance partners about them. It pleased him to play the autocrat in Oriental style, to see human beings—no matter at what cost in pain to themselves—subjected to his will. Even as John watched him, he called the junior midshipmen to attention and stood them at ease again half a dozen times in quick succession, not because by doing so he served any purpose, but because he liked to hear his own voice giving orders. He smiled complacently to see them spring to attention at his behest. He pretended that they had not moved smartly enough, and turned down the corners of his mouth in an absurd grimace of disapproval.
Over the table the electric lights beneath their yellow shades swung with the slow motion of the ship. The air was swirling and blue with tobacco smoke that clung in long wreaths to the nap of the red and black tablecloth. The temperature was high, and the atmosphere foul with the odour of food, for a threatening sea had caused the scuttles to be shut, and no one had troubled to open them again.
Krame left his place and seated himself regally on a chair between the table and the door. On his right stood Elstone with a jug of water, on his left Howdray, clutching an armful of ship’s biscuits.
“Now, first Wart forward. At the run!”
Sentley, who was on the right of the line, hurried from his place and stood at attention before Krame.
“On the knee!... ’Shun!... On the knee!” The spectators roared to see Sentley clambering from one position to the other. Howdray picked up a thick cane from the sideboard and hit Sentley as he knelt.
“Come on,” he said, “get a move on. ’Shun! Now, at the order ‘Kneeling position—place,’ you’ll drop on your knees—understand?—drop, not let yourself down like an old woman.... Kneeling position—place!”
Sentley went down. His knees brought up hard against the deck. He kept his body and head erect, his hands to his sides. Banford-Smith and Tintern climbed out of their places on the settee; one perched himself on the edge of the table behind Howdray, the other found a convenient seat by the piano.
“The child,” said Krame, after the manner of a gunnery instructor, “will incline the ’ead forward in a reverent attitood and assoom a mournful aspect. ’E will now repeat the Warts’ Creed.”
Sentley repeated that parody of the Apostles’ Creed which had been given to each junior midshipman earlier in the day. “I believe in the Sub Almighty, master of every Wart, and in Peter Krame, ’is noble ’elp, our Lord ...” and so on to the end. No senior midshipman protested against this Creed, no junior midshipman refused to repeat it.
When he was silent, a ship’s biscuit, thick and tough, was beaten and beaten on Sentley’s head until the biscuit broke. Howdray was about to pour water from the jug when Banford-Smith restrained him. “Cut out the water,” he said, “it will make such a damned mess on the deck.”
Each junior midshipman came forward in turn, dropped on his knees, was struck with Howdray’s stick if he dropped not fast enough, bowed his head, repeated the Creed, and had a biscuit broken upon him. John, because he stood on the left of the line, came last. When the ceremony was over, Krame glanced behind him.
“Now let’s have a hymn,” he said to Tintern.
“What hymn?”
“Any old hymn—something to celebrate the young gentlemen’s regeneration. Lynwood will lead the singing. All Warts will support him.”
Tintern emptied a glass of port, squared himself to the piano, and beat out the first chords of No. 165. Not only the Warts sang it; the senior midshipmen, tired of the many repetitions of the christening ceremony, were glad of a chance to make a noise.
“O Gawd, our ’elp in ages pa-ha-hast.” This prolongation was in response to Tintern’s improvised chords and runs. “Our ’ope for years to come.” The voices swelled to a roar, and paused for breath. In the momentary silence the ship rolled deeply; the sea came surging over a scuttle and receded, leaving wisps of luminous foam. “Our shelter from the stormy bla-ha-hast, And our eternal——”
Tintern was beating the keyboard with his doubled fists as a kind of desperate finale. The wild discords screamed under the steel bars overhead. A locker flew open, and by a lurch of the ship all it contained was shot across the Gunroom. A Manual of Seamanship, a “Child’s Guide,” a writing-case, a Gunnery Drill-Book, and a box of instruments, lay scattered on the table amid a pile of crumpled letters. An Oxford Bible was open and face downwards on the deck. Near it a bottle of ink, streaming its contents, rolled to and fro. Finally, there fell from the locker a photograph of Driss’s mother. He started forward to gather up his possessions.
“Fall in, damn you!” Krame shouted. “Who told you to fall out?”
Driss went on.
Krame stood up. “Come here, Driss. Did you hear me tell you to fall in?”
“Yes.”
“Well?”
“I am going to pick up my things before they are spoilt.”
“Why don’t you keep your locker properly shut? Look at the ink on the deck. I’ve a damned good mind—by God, you shall lick it up!”
Driss’s face was pale, his Irish eyes dangerous. Tintern leaned sideways in his seat and took Krame by the arm.
“Dry up, you fool!” he said in an undertone, and turned back to the piano. He had tact, moreover.
“O Gawd, our ’elp in ages pa-ha-hast....” Before the chorus was ended Driss had secured his locker and quietly fallen in again.
The next Evolution was known alternatively by two names—one, “The Angostura Hunt”; the other, which was sometimes attached in other Gunrooms to an Evolution slightly different, “Creeping for Jesus.” John was the first taken. Thrust on his knees near the serving slab, he was blindfolded with two handkerchiefs. He could hear the senior midshipmen’s voices. “Lay it here.... No, not under the table. We can’t get at him under the table.... There, that will do. Replace the bitters, Elstone.”
“Can you see?” asked Krame.
“No.”
“Can you smell?”
“Yes.”
“Can you feel?”
“Yes.”
“Well, that’s what is wanted—a good scent, and probably a bit of feeling before you’re through with it.” He cleared his throat. “Now, Lynwood, somewhere in the Gunroom is a piece of bread on the deck. Between you and the bread is a trail of Angostura bitters—pungent, so as to make it easy. You’ve got to find the bread by scent and pick it up with your mouth. No feeling with your hands, mind you. Put his nose on the trail, someone.”
Hands seized John’s head and thrust it downwards. “Got it? Smell it?”
“Not yet.”
“Give him a sniff at the bottle.... Got it now?”
“Yes.”
“Right. Wait for the order to commence.... Stand by. Go!”
John began to crawl along the floor. They were shouting at him to go faster. “Get a move on. Good dog. Good dog. —— ——! the beggar isn’t trying. Let him have it, Howdray.”
A cane sang through the air and fell upon John’s legs, sang and fell again. The blood ran to his head. The smell of corticine and dust sickened him. The blows were falling rapidly now. Someone other than Howdray seized a stick and sent the pain shooting through John’s body. He saw now the reason for this creeping position—the excellence of the target it provided. If he could but regain the scent and get to the end of it! But the scent was gone, and he could not steady himself. The weight of his body on his hands was making his wrists ache. The noise was deafening. On his palms the dust seemed inches thick. When he tried to rise, they thrust him down again....
Behind the bandage on his eyes was scarlet blindness, and he was visited by a sense of the desperate impotence of the blind. The words of those shouting above him conveyed no clear meaning to him now. They were giving him guidance, he thought. There was a medley of cries: “Port! Starboard!... He doesn’t know his port from his starboard hand.” A stick fell again.
“Give him a chance, Howdray. Still a moment; I’ll put him on the trail.” This was Tintern’s voice.
But help was unavailing. Perhaps some foot had extinguished the trail; at any rate, even with Tintern’s guidance, John could not detect the scent. He groped forward to no purpose. Banford-Smith, sliding from the table, stood unintentionally on his fingers, causing him so much pain that, though he was now too bitter to cry out, he reeled from his track. A moment later his hand touched something wet—perhaps the blood from beneath his crushed finger-nail, perhaps no more than Driss’s ink. He neither knew nor cared. In his head, which he dared not raise from the ground, it seemed that fire was burning. His temples and his eyes were throbbing as if they would burst. He paused bewildered, and instantly sticks fell on him again.... It would never, never end. Perhaps he was going to faint. He wished he might. That might end it for the evening at least. That might end it all.
Shouts, forcing themselves upon his consciousness, suggested that he was near the bread he was seeking. He groped in the dust with his teeth and tongue, hoping he might end his quest. The grit was about his lips and in his nostrils.
Then the bandage shifted, and he saw the bread. He did not dare to seize it immediately lest they should guess that he could see, but he worked slowly towards it and picked it up between his teeth. A great burst of cheering followed, vague cheering, such as he remembered having heard when, down and out in a boxing competition, he had been dragged by his seconds to his corner. Presently he found himself leaning against the table, the bandage having been pulled away. The sweat was dripping from his forehead and stinging in his eyes. His whole body ached. He stooped, brushed the dust mechanically from the knees of his trousers, and tried to smile to show that he was “taking it well.” And there was Fane-Herbert’s face, indistinct as though seen through a heat wave, wearing that proud, resentful, unforgiving look.
“Have a drink,” said Howdray, his stick still in his hand. “Dry work on the deck, eh?” He rang the bell. “You did it in pretty good time, too.”
“Pretty—good—time?” said John slowly, as if he did not understand. “Pretty good time? I thought it was ages.”
Soon he was taking a glass off the tray that the steward held out to him.
“Cheer-oh!” said Howdray.
“Cheer-oh!” John answered, and drank thirstily. He sat on the extreme edge of the table, watching, with set eyes, how the others repeated his performance. The shouts and the crashes of the canes came up to him as from a dream. Soon Cunwell was beside him, drinking too. Fane-Herbert refused to drink. Sentley came last of all.
“Fall in again,” Krame was saying. “Fall in!”
They stood in line, awaiting the resumption. It seemed as though more would be unendurable; but John’s glance at the clock, combined with his knowledge that the Evolutions would continue until the Mess was compulsorily closed, showed him that as yet they had but began. Hitherto they had been called upon only to act singly, and the Gunroom’s limited space had added nothing to their troubles, but now an obstacle race was being planned. Of this John had had previous experience. He knew that it meant fighting with his own friends in an attempt not to be last.
The course, as designed by Krame, was long and difficult. They were to go out of the Gunroom, aft through the Chest Flat, through a watertight door on the bulkhead, on to the half-deck, into the Smoking Casemate, round the pedestal of the gun, out of the Casemate, for’ard through the Chest Flat and into the Gunroom again by the after door. Arrived there, they were to pass between the stove and the wall, over the table from port to starboard, between the settee and the table’s edge, under the table from starboard to port, along the deck to the Gunroom’s after end, under the table from aft for’ard, over it from for’ard aft, and out of the Gunroom once more. They had then to go by way of the Chest Flat ladder on to the upper deck and to the after twelve-pounder gun in the port battery. Here they would find a signal pad, from which each was to detach a sheet. With this prize they were to run to the Gunroom, and, as Krame remarked, the Lord help the hindmost....
The six of them started together. They fought at the narrow door of the Gunroom. They sped through the dim light of the Chest Flat, doubled up and with knees bent that they might pass below the hammocks slung there by the marines. In the Casemate it was impossible for more than one at a time to pass between the pedestal and the armour beneath the gun-port. Elstone stood above them as they wriggled through the narrow space, thrusting each other aside, tearing their clothes, hitting their heads and knees and elbows against the projections of brass and steel. They reeled out of the Casemate, not now packed close, but divided by the intervals that the delay at the gun-pedestal had created. John was the second to reach the Gunroom. When, having passed behind the stove, he was about to go over the table, he heard them shouting at Fane-Herbert, who had entered last. But none dared pause. Over the table they went, and headforemost on to the deck beneath it; under and aft, under the table again, canes urging on those in rear, and falling haphazard across knuckles and arms. Already John was spent; all were spent. Their legs trembled beneath them. They coughed amid the dust. Under a hail of blows they battled at the Gunroom door, swept beyond it through the Chest Flat for the third time, and rattled up the ladder into the cool, sweet air of the upper deck. At the battery gun, during the few moments he had to wait before he could tear his sheet from the signal pad, John caught sight of the great phosphorescence of the sea. Above him the masts tapered to a dark, clear sky. Smoke drove ghost-like from the funnels. For’ard the lamps were gleaming in the charthouse windows, and near at hand, in the uncertain light of the battery, seamen stood smoking round their spitkids, gazing with an expression of amusement and contempt at their officers being licked into shape.
As John raced away with his sheet of paper he heard Fane-Herbert muttering to himself: “Oh be damned to them! I’m last, any way. I’m not going to hurry any more.”
They burst into the Gunroom, thrust their sheets of paper into Krame’s hands, and stood there trembling with exhaustion and pain. Dyce seemed to be on the verge of losing control. His face was working. They had fear that his nerves would yield, that he would break, as can even the strongest men, into ungovernable tears. The atmosphere was charged with a strange emotion—the emotion that, as it were a sudden fever, sometimes grips a mob, cutting it free from the restraints men impose upon themselves, casting it back into the primitive conditions of self-defence and self-assertion. If Dyce had given way, his collapse might well have been a signal for forgetfulness of the difference between senior and junior midshipmen, for a complete abandonment of control. Near him John could hear Driss—of all of them the youngest in appearance, the most clearly a simple-minded, high-spirited boy—saying over and over again to himself: “My God, I want to kill! I want to kill!” His fingers were twined among the tablecloth, as if thereby he held them in check. Now he was making odd, inarticulate sounds in his throat. John saw his face, and turned quickly from the flaming bitterness he read there. There were passions streaming through Driss, passions utterly foreign to his apparent nature, fierce desires, called up from God knew what animal depths, upon which it was not good to look.
Last by thirty seconds, Fane-Herbert entered without signs of haste. And they put him over the table, and pulled out his shirt, and tried to flog the pride out of him. He did not move through it all, and when it was over, with his fine mouth set, he turned away from the faces grinning above the canes.
“Fall in again!” Krame said. “Fall in, I say!”
Evolution followed Evolution: the obstacle race in reverse order; an affair called Torpedoes, that consisted essentially in hurling the junior midshipmen’s bodies along the table against the for’ard bulkhead; and half a dozen others, the product of Krame’s ingenuity. Even the flame in Driss died down. There comes a time when resistance, even mental resistance, disappears. The limbs move as they are told.
At ten o’clock a ship’s corporal tapped at the door and announced that it was time to close the Gunroom.
“Last drinks,” said Krame, and rang the bell. “Warts fall out!”
Somehow they opened their sea-chests, got out of their clothes, scrambled aft, and swung themselves into their hammocks. Once in his, John lay as he was, not caring even to creep between the blankets. He lay staring at the white-painted T-bar within a few inches of his face, listening to the rifles, which were stored near by, clicking to and fro in their racks with each roll of the ship. The half-deck sentry passed him now and then. Somewhere a pump groaned continually. From the open door of the Wardroom came the sound of voices and laughter and snatches of song.
John did not sleep. He lay inert, capable of no consecutive thought. He went on repeating catchwords to himself, counting the groans of the pump, counting the sentry’s footsteps, sucking his damaged finger, running his hand over the rough surface of the canvas hammock. Despite his efforts to banish so tormenting a vision, again and again he saw himself crouched in the window-seat of a sun-strewn library, now looking out to the hills, now turning the pages of a book. He saw the excellence of open print; almost he heard a clock ticking.... In less than two hours, Ollenor, who had been keeping the first watch, shook his hammock.
“Lynwood!”
“Yes, I’m awake.”
“About ten minutes to eight bells. Your middle watch.”
“All right; thanks.”
He swung out on to the deck, went to his chest, and put on watch-keeping clothes.
On the bridge Ollenor turned over to him such information as he would need for his watch. When Ollenor had gone, John glanced at the dim figure of the officer of the watch on the upper bridge. Then, passing the Quartermaster at the wheel, he stood by the semaphore and looked aft, beyond the funnels and the boat deck, at the lights of the next astern. Presently he turned his face for’ard and took off his cap, and let the wind blow among his hair. Soon he must take a sextant on to the upper bridge and help the officer of the watch keep station; but now he stood inactive, one hand on the cool steel of a searchlight. The incomparable peace of the wide sky; the throb of the main engines; the rising and dipping lights of the fleet—there was sweet, timeless monotony in these things. Far below him the cut foam was hissing against the bows. Behind him the pipe of the boatswain’s mate was shrilling and shrilling again.
And Krame was asleep, and the hand of God over the sea.