Of all the junior midshipmen Sentley alone had settled down. He was not happy, but he looked forward to the satisfaction promotion would bring him. He lived by rules, and was tempted neither by strong emotions nor by a strong imagination to break them. They were too well suited to his placid, dogged temperament. He would never be a great naval officer, but he had no desire to be great. If very reasonable expectations were fulfilled by his becoming a captain he would not be disappointed by failure to fly his admiral’s flag. He was by nature contented, hard-working, moderate in his somewhat formal religion, moderate in his vanity, moderate in all things. His life in the Gunroom was unpleasant; but when he was flogged, it was the pain that troubled him—not the humiliation, and his resentment vanished with the pain. In speaking, even in thinking of his superiors in rank, he never used the expression “ought not.” He seldom used it at all except in a formally religious sense, and then his condemnation ended when his conscience had been stilled by a mild utterance of protest. It was not in keeping with his policy, nor was it within his power, to stand out in opposition to anything. He drifted easily with the tide.
Driss was very calm. It was impossible to pierce his reserve or to tell what course his mind had taken. Dyce was frittering away his soul, now resisting, now yielding, now seeking the easy consolations, now dragging himself away from them, knowing that very soon he must return. He laid no plans, and deliberately avoided looking into the future. His duties were performed perfunctorily, and to no one’s satisfaction, least of all to his own. Sometimes a chance remark, a flash of wit in his conversation, would display the true worth of a mind that was fast becoming dulled. He was a generous friend, a bitter but ineffectual enemy, and an amusing companion. If he had had money, and leisure, and independence he would have ended his days at the head of a country-house dinner-table, passing port to numerous and frequent guests.
The senior midshipmen had absorbed Cunwell. He did his best to please them. On Sunday mornings he produced a polishing pad, which he had bought ashore for this very purpose, and offered to give Krame’s boots “just a rub over before Divisions, as I am doing my own, you know.” Then, when he had finished rubbing and breathing from a broad mouth, he would look round apprehensively to see what the junior midshipmen had been thinking of him. As a reward for these attentions Krame spared him a little and patronized him much. Sometimes he would say at dinner, “My old friend Cunwell will have a glass of port with me?” and Cunwell, glowing in the joys of privileged familiarity, would shout back, “Thanks, old Krame, don’t mind if I do.” Krame would keep his lip from curling, but his eyes flickered his laughing contempt.
Cunwell did not like Krame, who, he said, sneered because he thought himself clever. As a model he chose Howdray, whose doings were chronicled and laughed over throughout the Fleet. But the imitation was not successful. It was as a ragtime played laboriously, for Howdray imparted to his vice a certain glitter that Cunwell could not reproduce. Cunwell, when he drank, became immediately dull and sick. He had no pleasure in risk, no spirit of adventure. His dealings with women were usually ridiculous, so that the women themselves sniggered at him behind his back. Soiled collars and a dimness of eye were the outward signs of the change in him.
Manœuvres, contact with the Home Fleet, and a rumour that the King Arthur might not return to England to refit, depressed the spirits of the whole ship’s company. The Commander was impossible to please. The defaulters were numerous. The relations between Wardroom and Gunroom, never cordial, became more than usually strained. The Chaplain preached a bitter sermon on the virtue of contentment. The Captain, who was a kindly man, regretfully sent more prisoners to cells in a fortnight than he had condemned to that punishment in the previous two months. Gunroom Evolutions and floggings became more frequent and severe. When the men went to physical drill after Divisions, and were commanded, in accordance with custom, to double round the batteries and quarter-deck, they ran, not eagerly and good-humouredly as when paying-off time is near, but at a Service double such as discipline demanded. And the speed and spirit of this morning procession is generally a good indication of the temper of a ship’s company. The Commander wrote to his wife that the commission was stale. The men needed general leave, he said. And Tintern paused suddenly one night in his playing of the Alphabet—
“With a Glory Allelujah in the morning,
In the morning by the gaslight,
See——”
“I’m not going to play any more,” he wailed, in imitation of a spoilt child.