Then she remembered how he had watched her. She saw again, as if they were watching her now, those large dark eyes, with their lower lids slightly raised and puckered. It gave one a sense of being a specimen, of being exposed. She shivered, stood up, walked to the window and closed it. The night was hot, so she opened the window again.

“Anyhow,” she said, “he doesn’t want help from anyone.” She blew out the candle and got into bed. There were so many people who wanted help—John among them; so many, that one might as well give up trying to help them. With Ordith it would be an easy passage in a comfortable ship that he would steer.

The bedclothes were tucked into place with a little jerk. She pushed back a wisp of hair from her face as if she were angry with it. Then she shut her eyes—tight. No need to think. No need to worry yet. Sleep.

But she opened her eyes again, and stared at the little white mountain of her pillow.

CHAPTER XIV
WASTE AND WONDER

There is something in physical drill before breakfast that dissolves the fabric of dreams. This John had discovered long ago, turning out of a hammock in whose warm comfort all things had been possible, and becoming, in the twinkling of an eye, a bare-footed, sleepy midshipman, in dirty flannels; and this he realized afresh on that June morning when his meeting Margaret, his letter from Mr. Alter, and his lamp-lit talk with Hartington had become affairs of yesterday. He went into the Gunroom, drank cocoa, smoked as much of a cigarette as time allowed him, and went with the others on to the Upper Deck. Here all was hosepipes and holystone—gritty to the foot. Ordith, in new sea-boots, was walking up and down the quarter-deck sniffing the morning air. When the midshipmen began their drill, he watched them for a moment, and then turned away.

“Stoop-fallin’—place!” commanded the Instructor. “Feet placin’ forwards and backwards. One—two! One—two! One—two!” The midshipmen, on all fours, moved their legs in and out lazily, reflecting that their anatomy was remarkably unlike that of a frog. In any case—and this, perhaps, was one of the more subtle reasons which inspired the authorities to order physical drill—it was impossible while so engaged to imagine one’s self addressing the House of Commons, or falling in love, or writing a book, or, indeed, doing anything but sprawl on the deck to the accompaniment of the Instructor’s unceasing “One—two! One—two!” At Osborne and Dartmouth, of course, where physical drill had been properly done, it had not been unattractive; moreover, they were healthier in those days. But now drink, tobacco, and lack of exercise had made drill an uncomfortable process. It was useless, too, for they “sloped” through it, and none cared so long as the young gentlemen obeyed regulations by being on the quarter-deck in flannels for a stated number of minutes every morning. The fact that they “sloped” was the young gentlemen’s fault; but not theirs alone.

None cared. The senior officers had other things to do than dry-nurse the young gentlemen. If they eluded the regulations concerning wine bills, whose fault was it? Whose fault if they were so bored and had so lost interest in themselves that in their spare hours they nipped, and smoked “chains,” and talked women? At Osborne and Dartmouth they had been educated. At the age of seventeen and a half they had come to sea, and their education had ceased. The senior officers had other things to do than worry about the young gentlemen’s education. From time to time the Gunnery-Lieutenant would dictate obscure notes about guns that the midshipmen had never seen; or the Torpedo-Lieutenant would mumble over again lectures on Balance Chamber Mechanism and War Heads, of just such a kind as had been given in the training cruiser. There was no system, no syllabus, no timetable, no programme. Sometimes, to the active irritation of all concerned, there was a lecture; more often there was not. There were the yearly sights to be worked out; but these were accomplished on the communal system, and were usually worked backwards, for reasons that will be clear to seamen. Life was a haphazard business, in which the only regular intellectual process was deterioration. One day John discovered that he had forgotten how to integrate, and that all his mathematics was slipping from him. Mechanics, too, was a thing of the past; even the elementary formulæ were forgotten now. Electricity had gone; German had gone utterly; French was going; Chemistry was no more than a vague recollection of apparatus and of the red tie worn by the master who had taught him.

“I’ve forgotten everything we ever learnt at Dartmouth,” he confessed.