"Why did you break your leave?" The voice was neither harsh nor impatient. Its tone merely implied that the speaker not only wanted an answer but meant to have one. Rather a kind voice for a Captain. Queer little wrinkles he had round the corners of his mouth and eyes ... made a bloke look wise-like ... as though after all ... Lord! How his head ached.... Steady eyes those were...
"It's like this 'ere, sir——" The gates of sulky reserve opened suddenly and without warning: in a flood of words came the sorry explanation, sordid, incoherent, clothed in half-learned patois of the lower deck. But the figure in the gold-peaked cap seemed to accept it, such as it was, for presently he nodded dismissal.
"Cautioned," he said curtly.
With a click of the heels, the escort and their prisoner wheeled before the table. The Commander made a brief report, and the Captain scanned a few papers. The charge was desertion.
"Anything to say?"
"No, sir."
"Why did you desert?"
"I'm fed up with the Navy."
The Captain's eyes grew stern, and he nodded as one who comprehends. There had been moments in his own career when he too had been "fed up with the Navy." But life holds other things than obedience to inclinations.
Now this deserter represented a type that is to be met with in both Services, these days of "piping peace." Recruited from the slums of a great city, bone-lazy and vicious as a weasel, small wonder he found a life wherein men worked hard and cleanly little to his taste. The immaculate cleanliness and clock-work regularity around him were bad enough, but far worse was the discipline. It astonished him at first; then, half-awed, he hated it with all the sullen savagery of his warped nature. The so-called Socialism of black-garbed orators, idly listened to on Sunday afternoons in bygone days, had hinted at such possibilities—but here he met it face to face at every turn.