“The Service doesn’t like being described,” said Krame.
“The Service is like no community on earth. Its members have two distinct natures, one when they are inside the naval boundary, the other when they are outside it; one when they are in contact with Service people, the other when they are in contact with Non-Service people. Very, very seldom, for all my watchfulness, have I gained any real insight into the essentials of the Navy from words addressed to me by any officer ashore or afloat.”
“But,” Krame remarked, with a smile that confirmed Mr. Alter’s declaration, “you have lived in ships?”
“As a visitor.”
“Even as a visitor you must be able to see—well, how we live, what work we do, and things of that kind.”
“But not how you think, and not how you would act if there were no spectators from the world outside. That’s what any writer has to discover about the persons of his drama—not what they do before the footlights, but what they were thinking before the curtain went up. Otherwise he can’t make them live.”
All the world loves to hear itself discussed as a mystery, and Mr. Alter’s mysteriousness produced at least a part of the result for which he had hoped. Howdray and Elstone were awake now; Krame was delighted to find a whetstone on which to sharpen his wits; and Driss—Mr. Alter felt the glow of his personality for the first time, saw him lean forward and listen intently, though, in the presence of his seniors, he hesitated to speak. Mr. Alter wanted him to speak, wanted them all to come out of their shells; but he saw that as yet they were not ready. He, by talking himself, must give them material they might afterwards care to pull to pieces.
“Have you ever noticed,” he said, “how Portsmouth and other naval ports differ from the rest of the world?”
“Lord Almighty! have we not!” Howdray exclaimed in his great voice. “Pompey, Queensferry, Gib., Sheerness—they are all the same, curse them.”
“And even Arosa Bay and Vigo?”