John thought for a moment.
“What was he reading?” he asked.
“I don’t know—verse, I think.”
“In a marble-covered book?”
“Yes, he had that. He said it looked more like a formal volume for the public service than the odd bits of paper.”
“Well, I’d rather he read the volume than the odd bits.... But isn’t it perfectly damnable—the Sub’s getting hold of that right at the beginning! What comments?—the usual remarks about long hair?”
“He hasn’t spoken a word.”
“Oh well,” John said, “it can’t be helped now. It was my own fault—leaving it on the table. I suppose I shall hear about it from Hartington for ever and ever, Amen. I wonder why it is regarded as an almost criminal offence to try to write verse?”
Left alone, John tried to think out smooth answers to the remarks the Sub would make when he came on deck. So far as the Sub himself was concerned, the damage was done, but it might still be possible to prevent him from sharing his intelligence with the Wardroom. Of course, the news was certain to spread sooner or later. If Hartington had not made his discovery now, he would have made it in a week’s time, and if the fact of there being a poet in the ship were not laughed over in the Wardroom to-day it would be laughed over to-morrow. But John knew it was important to gain time. If the Colonsay’s officers learned first to think of him as an ordinary midshipman who discharged his duties with reasonable efficiency, they would tolerate his writing of poetry as a superficial eccentricity. If, on the other hand, he was made known to them primarily as a poet, it would be extraordinarily difficult to rid himself of the stigma and to win back his good name.
When at last Hartington reappeared he spoke only of Service matters. John wondered what was coming. Perhaps he had not realized that his midshipman of the watch was the author of the verse he had been reading. Perhaps he thought the whole affair so unimportant that he would not trouble to refer to it. John clung to this last possibility as long as he could, but from time to time he noticed that Hartington regarded him curiously, with eyes that seemed to laugh at his apprehension and discomfiture.