His morning hope, his evening dream,
His joy throughout the day.
With him is a second in command, an engineer, and some others. They
prove each other's souls habitually every few days, by the direct test
of peril, till they act, think, and endure as a unit, in and with the
boat. That commander is transferred to another boat. He tries to take
with him if he can, which he can't, as many of his other selves as
possible. He is pitched into a new type twice the size of the old one,
with three times as many gadgets, an unexplored temperament and
unknown leanings. After his first trip he comes back clamouring for
the head of her constructor, of his own second in command, his
engineer, his cox, and a few other ratings. They for their part wish
him dead on the beach, because, last commission with So-and-so,
nothing ever went wrong anywhere. A fortnight later you can remind the
commander of what he said, and he will deny every word of it. She's
not, he says, so very vile--things considered--barring her five-ton
torpedo-derricks, the abominations of her wireless, and the tropical
temperature of her beer-lockers. All of which signifies that the new
boat has found her soul, and her commander would not change her for
battle-cruisers. Therefore, that he may remember he is the Service and
not a branch of it, he is after certain seasons shifted to a
battle-cruiser, where he lives in a blaze of admirals and
aiguillettes, responsible for vast decks and crypt-like flats, a
student of extended above-water tactics, thinking in tens of thousands
of yards instead of his modest but deadly three to twelve hundred.
And the man who takes his place straight-way forgets that he ever
looked down on great rollers from a sixty-foot bridge under the whole
breadth of heaven, but crawls and climbs and dives through
conning-towers with those same waves wet in his neck, and when the
cruisers pass him, tearing the deep open in half a gale, thanks God he
is not as they are, and goes to bed beneath their distracted keels.
* * * * *