“So have we all,” Dyce answered.
Borne in the flagship was one Naval Instructor, who was responsible for all the midshipmen in the squadron. Perhaps he taught the flagship’s midshipmen; but his visits to the other ships were so rare that he was unexpectedly popular. Because it was impossible for him to be in two places at once, it happened that, when the flagship was in one port of the Station and the Pathshire in another, the Pathshire’s midshipmen were delightfully free from his ministrations. Outwardly they rejoiced at this emancipation, complaining only that threepence a day was deducted from the pay of each one of them in order that, in accordance with regulation, the Naval Instructor might be fittingly rewarded for being at Hong-Kong while his paying pupils were at Nagasaki. This seemed unjust.
“Our pay from a grateful Admiralty is twenty-one pence a day,” Dyce remarked, “on which, apart from what our people provide, we live like officers and gentlemen. And out of the twenty-one pence three go every day to the upkeep of this N.I., who comes near us about one morning in three months. Now, why the hell should I pay one-seventh of my total income for an education I never receive?”
“Lord Almighty!” Cunwell exclaimed; “you don’t want the damned N.I., do you?”
“No. But threepence nearly buys a glass of port.”
“Well, let’s put in a moan,” Fane-Herbert said.
“Moan!” Dyce laughed. “We shan’t get much change.”
However, after further discussion, their complaint seemed so justifiable that they laid it before the powers. The powers considered it, and decided that midshipmen in ships other than the flagship should pay the Naval Instructor only when they were in company with the Flag. This change was certainly an improvement; but still, when the squadron was at sea, John paid threepence a day for the education he did not receive from a man who sailed in a ship one-fifth of a mile away.
The apparent charm of the China Station was that there was nothing to do; its disadvantage, discovered by experience, was that the whole day was spent doing nothing. Occasionally there occurred “spasms”—periods of remarkable gunnery activity, when the midshipmen spent hour after hour on watch or at their guns, waiting for the watch to end or for the deliverance of the next meal. One of these “spasms” took place soon after the Pathshire’s arrival at Wei-hai-wei. The ship cruised all the week in the neighbourhood of Waterwitch and Four Funnel Bays, and returned to Wei-hai-wei on Friday nights. But even this activity was powerless to check the growth of the conviction which was finding a place in John’s mind that all his preparation at Dartmouth was to be wasted, and that, so far as the Service was concerned, his intellectual development had come to an end. And from this conviction proceeded a feeling that his youth and all the energies of youth were purposeless and useless. Day after day went by and he was never called upon to use his brains. There was routine to be followed—so many hours on duty, so many hours standing about, so many hours of waiting. And in the intervals there was the Gunroom, where one slept, or threw dice for sixpences, or listened to lurid tales.
As time went on the aspect of the Gunroom became more strange and more terrible. Usually John was not aware that anything was wrong. Life seemed slack and easy, and he did not complain. But there were moments when he realized suddenly that young men not yet twenty do not naturally sleep through the daylight hours. Dice for sixpences became poor sport; poker began; the stakes rose; a card-book was started in which were recorded debts a midshipman’s income could not discharge. The defaulters satisfied their creditors by keeping their watches and running their boats for them.