of the proprietor-whom we will call Maunder-was charged with the duty of issuing them. How she pretended to remember the two and a half hundred faces that presented themselves in surging crowds round the counter at 4 P.M., is more than her present recorder can say. But even as she extended a bun to the outstretched grubby hand of a suppliant, an expression of vixen-like indignation and ounning would transform her features. Cadet (breathlessly). a bottle of barley-sugar and & "My Queen,' and four Garry biscuits, and half a pound of cherries and a bottle of lemonade, and one of gingerbeer and-that's all, I think. "You've 'ad a bun afore!" she would snap shrilly, with- Maunder (coming in a little drawing the bounty in the behind, chanting, the general niok of time. The hungry effect being that of a duet in petitioner, cheerfully acknow- cannon). One strawberry ice, ledging defeat in a game of one doughnut, one stick creambluff, would then withdraw, chocolate, one bottle barleypursued by Miss Maunder's sugar, one "My Queen," &o., invectives. &c., &c. . . . And a bag one an' thruppence 'a'penny. . . . Thank you, sir. Next, please. All the same she was not infallible, and on occasions hot protestations and even mutual recrimination rang to and fro across the counter. Appeal, ultimately carried to Mr Maunder, was treated in much the same way as it is by oroupiers at Monte Carlo. A gentleman's word is his word. But it is as well not to be the victim of too many mistakes. Maunder, who was occupied with the stern responsibility of catering for the whim of the rich, had a way of recapitulating the orders from the beginning, adding up aloud as the count went on, thus: Cadet. A strawberry ice, please, Maunder. Maunder. One strawberry ice tuppence. On occasion demigods walked among the children of men. The visits of the Channel Fleet to Torbay usually brought over one or two of a lately departed term, now midshipmen by the grace of God, and magnificent beyond conception. It was their pleasure, these immaculately-clad visitors, to enter the canteen, greet Maunder with easy familiarity, and Miss Maunder with something approaching gallantry, slap down a sovereign on the counter, and ory free stodge all round. They would even unbend further, dallying with a strawberry-ice in token of their willingness to be as other men, and finally depart Random memories such as these necessarily present individuals and incidents, not in the sequence of their importance in the cosmos as one sees it now, but as they appeared to the vision of the Naval Cadet, whose world was an amiable Chaos. Thus the Captain flickers through this kaleidoscope, an awesome bearded figure, infinitely remote from the small affairs of that teeming rabbitwarren of youth. More readily comes to mind the picture of his lady wife, white-haired, with clear eyes and gentle voice, a memory somehow entangled with geraniums in red pots about the high-moulded stern-gallery, and tea on Sunday afternoons in the spacious chintz draped after-cabin; with irksome football sprains and and brief puerile illnesses made more endurable by her visits to the cotside. The Commander, though less awesome than the Captain, approached the mortal in that he stooped at times to wrath. His was the cold eye before whieh the more hardened malefactors quailed, his the rasping voice that jerked the four terms to attention at Divisions each morning 66 Young gentlemen, 'shun!” The English public schoolboy is conscious of youth, and takes the fact of being a gentleman for granted. But to hear himself addressed by a designation that combined both qualities was a never-staling subject for inward mirth and a weird self-congratulation difficult of analysis. It conveyed a hint of coming manhood and responsibilities: it was the voice of the Navy, bending on the leading-strings, heard for the first time. But on a plane far nearer earth stood the Term Lieutenants, each one the god and hero, the Big Brother of his term. That they, their Boxer or South African medal ribbons, their tattoo-marks, County or International caps, biceps, and all the things that were theirs, were the objects of their respective term's slavish adulation, goes without saying. Bloody encounters between their self-appointed champions over an adverse criticism or doubt cast upon a forgotten word were not unknown. Two entire terms once joined battle and bled each others' noses the length and breadth of the echoing "Skipper's Woods" to clinch some far-flung argument as to the merits of their respective "Loots." There were but four of them, and they were picked from the wardrooms of the whole Navy. Small wonder some three hun dred grubby urchins fresh from school found in them admirable qualities. Ashore, on the playing-fields, or across the red plough-land at the tails of the beagles, they laboured in in olese intimate fellowship with the atoms of clay Providence thrust beneath their thumbs. But on board it seemed they faded frem ken, being rarely seen save at classes or when in pairs the term percolated through the wardroom for dessert, plastered as to the hair, patent-leather shed, to sip and cough over a glass of ambrosial port at either elbow of their Lieutenant. Seeing and unseen, knowing their terms as only men who spend their lives among men can know and understand the embryo, they were the guiding invisible wisdom behind the cadet captains, who outwardly ruled the deeks. The cadet captains were chosen from the three senior terms, set apart from their fellows by the fact that they wore "stand-up" collars and a triangular gold badge on the left cuff. Minor authority in other guises was greeted much the same as it is in all communities of boyhood. The platitudes of notice-boards no fellow with his heart in the right place could be expected to remember over well. The acknowledged sway of instructors and masters was largely a matter of knowing to a nicety how far an adventurous spirit could go (in the realms of science and freehand drawing it was a long way) before the badgered peda gogue turned and bit. Terms paid strict allegiance to their own chief petty officers. But, as has already been shown, this was an affair of the heart and the sentiments. He was theirs, and they were his: thus it had been from the beginning. There was, however, one voice that rarely repeated an order, one court from which appeal, if possible, was undreamed of-that of the cadet captain. Their rule was without vexatious tyranny, but it was an iron rule. The selection of these cadet captains was done carefully, and mistakes were few. The standard of the whole was no mean one, and for three months the Lieutenant of the First Term had been studying the raw material, working with it, playing with it, talking to it or rather listening while it talked to him. Thus cadet captains were chosen, and the queer eager loyalty with which the rest paid them allegiance was the first stirring of the quickened Naval Spirit, foreshadowing that strange fellowship to be, brotherhood of discipline and control, of austerity and a half-mocking affectionate tolerance. ... To the cadet captains, perhaps, can be attributed the passage, almost untarnished through the years, of the Britannia traditions. They were concerned, these youthful Justices of the Peace, with more than the written law. It they enforced right enough, but with a tolerance one might expect of fifteen summers ad ministering the foibles and spending subsequent golden afternoons on the paradeground, swinging a heavy barbell to the tune of "Sweet Dreamland Faces," blared out on a cornet by a bored bandsman. "" rules of fifty. On the other hand, did a "new" unbutton a single button of his monkeyjacket, a "Three" deign to swing his keys, a "Sixer" to turn up his trousers or tilt his cap on the back of his head (the prerogative of the "Niner or Fourth Term), and Nemesis descended upon him ere he slept that night. Nemesis, by virtue of its unblemished charaoter, and the favour its triangular badge found in the eyes of the gods, was allowed to turn in half an hour after the remainder. It occupied itself during this time in guzzling cocoa and biscuits smeared with strawberry jam, provided for its delectation by the authorities-though the cost was said to be defrayed by the parents of the common herd relegated to hammocks, and the contemplation of this orgy out of one drowsy though envious eye. Biscuits finished, Nemesis would draw from his pocket a knotted "togie" of hemp, and having removed traces of jam from his features, proceed to administer summary justice in the gloom where the hammocks swung. It was, of course, grossly illegal, and stigmatised by the authorities as "a pernicious system of private and unauthorised punishments." But the alternative was open to any who cared to appeal to Cæsar. Appealing to Cæsar meant So summary justice ruled, and it ruled in this wise : "Shove your knuckles outside that blanket-you needn't pretend to be asleep Chorus of snores, deafening in their realism and self-consoious rectitude, rectitude, from the wrongdoer's neighbours. "You were slack attending belly-muster 1 for the third time running "I swear- 99 "You'd better not. You'll "Don't make such a rux 1 "Belly-muster," as its name gracefully implies, was a parade of lightly-clad suspects in procession past the sick-bay while the lynx-eyed surgeon scanned each brisket for traces of incipient chicken-pox rash. my desk a bletting-pad hewed remembered from those far-off from your salt timbers; it days? may be some whimsical ghost strayed out of it to provoke these random recollections. Does it, I wonder, ever unite with other ghosts from chiselled garden-seat or carved candlestick, and there, on the moonlit waters of the Dart, refashion, rib by rib, keel and strake and stempost, a Shadow Ship? And what of the Longshoremen Billies that plied for hire between the shore and the aftergangway-Johnnie Farr (whom the Good Lawd durstn't love), Hannaford of the wooden leg, and all the rest of that shell backed fraternity? Gone to the haven of all good ships and sailormen: and only the night wind abroad beneath the stars whispers to the quiet hills the tales of sharks and pirates and the Chiny seas that once were yours and ours. But what familiar faces throng once more the old decks, and cluster round the empty ports! Is it only to fond memory that you seemed the cheeriest and noblest, or did some beam of the glory to be yours stray out of the Hereafter and paint your boyish faces thus, O best You crowd too quickly now, you whose fair names are legion, so that the splendour of your sacrifices blur and intermingle. The North Sea knows you, and the hidden Belgian mine-fields; the Aurora Borealis was the candle that lit some to bed, and the surf on the beaches of Gallipoli murmurs to others a never-ending lullaby. Ostend and Zeebrugge will not forget you, and the countless tales of your passing shall be the sword-hilt on which our children's children shall cut their teeth. From out of that Shadow Ship lying at her moorings off the old Mill Creek come the faint echoes of your boyish voices floating out across the placid tide. Could we but listen hard enough, we might catch some message of guidance and encouragement from you who have had your Day : |