CHAPTER XXVIII

Even the least of life's tragedies would be sufficient to unnerve us completely and throw us off our mental balance for the rest of our days if we could visualise it thoroughly in all its details. Fortunately, our powers of imagination are strictly limited, and the proverb "What the eye does not see the heart does not feel" has a very true application to those great sufferings we hear or read about. The only impression we get is just a dim blurred idea of horror and sadness and pain; we are mercifully spared the realisation of each throb of agony, each bitter pang of mental torment.

Even such impressions as we do succeed in getting of the disasters which happen to other people would be unendurable if we allowed ourselves to brood upon them; we should probably go mad, or if we escaped this we should at all events become so utterly distracted that our usefulness in life would be gone, and there would be no pleasure in our days.

The common sense of humanity has therefore decided that a limit must be placed to grief, and that the natural impulse to feel for others' sufferings must not be permitted to interfere unduly with the ordinary affairs of life. Though one half the world should perish, the other half must still go on. Though the breadwinner of the family is brought home by his mates at the mine or the factory crushed to death in some fearful accident, there is still the children's dinner to be cooked.

And the constant succession of disasters which comes as the evil harvest of a war makes people gradually fall into the habit of accustoming themselves to hear of fresh disasters without exhibiting any great display of feeling. The thing is too big, and we are too small, too limited. It is not that we are unsympathetic--we are full of sympathy, indeed--but, well, we just become used to these awful happenings. The noise of a gun going off somewhere close at hand is rather a severe shock to the nerves when it is heard for the first time, but when the guns are heard all day long and every day, it is not long before they cease to be noticed at all.

So, if a ship were lost in the days before the war, the whole country used to be overshadowed with deep gloom which lasted for many a sad long day; but when the evil fortunes of war brought one fine ship after another to an untimely end with all her crew--well, there was sympathy enough, especially amongst those who were very closely affected by the disaster, but even for these it became possible to smile, nevertheless, and even to crack a joke.

This was not callousness; it was merely human nature asserting itself. And a fortunate thing for ourselves and for the world in general that the tendency to cheer up and make the best of a bad job is more powerful than the opposite tendency to brood unceasingly over what cannot be helped.

Admiral Darlington, therefore, must not be accused of being lacking in the finer feelings if he has a placid look of contentment and the makings of a well-pleased smile upon his jolly face, even though he is presently to bring his mind to bear upon the tragedy of the loss of the _Marathon_, with so many of her officers and men. What is the good of pulling a long face over the matter? If he can help in any way to mitigate the sorrows caused by the disaster, depend upon it he will do so; before long, you may be sure, he will be putting his hand into his pocket on behalf of the widows and orphans. Meanwhile, he has just got outside an uncommonly good breakfast, and is enjoying the first pipe of the day, which, as all smokers will agree, is the best pipe of all. Moreover, the sun is shining in a cloudless sky, and the mail has just brought him news that his youngest boy has successfully passed into Osborne as a naval cadet, thereby getting his foot, neatly encased in the uniform boot which gives him immense pride, upon the first rung of the ladder his father has climbed before him.

So no wonder the admiral is inclined to look upon the bright side of things, and to greet Dimsdale with a cheery Good Morning when the secretary comes into his room with a bundle of letters and official papers in his hand.

The admiral begins his working-day early. Already, before breakfasting, he has been up for a couple of hours, spending one of them in certain violent physical exercises which he explains are necessary to keep him in health and vigour, though other people are apt to say unkindly that his real aim in the vain one--vain in both senses of the word--of preserving his youthful contour-line amidships, the second hour he devotes to what he calls clewing up any business left over from the day before. He insists upon doing this unaided, and it is not until breakfast is over that he calls for the assistance of his secretary.

It is a pleasant little morning room where the admiral is seated, enjoying his pipe in a comfortable arm-chair. The wide french windows look out upon one of the many indentations of the harbour, and provide a view of a little hamlet clustered in the sheltering nook of a glen that widens out at the water's edge. Over the wide heather-clad slopes on either side are scattered here and there the tiny cottages of outlying crofters, and where the land is brought under cultivation the old men and the women--the young men have all gone to the war--are working busily to win from the rough, poor soil such scanty return as Nature grudgingly gives in these high and far-off edges of the world. The hardy little oxen too, are called in to assist in the work of the fields and altogether it is a very delightful picture of a primitive honest life pursuing its daily way in spite of the horrid noise and clash of distant war, in a land bleak and barren enough to the casual eye of a stranger, but dear as life itself to those born and bred on it, and never losing its place in their heart even though they wander to the world's end.

"Well, Dimsdale, and what have we got this morning? Nothing very much, I hope; anyhow, let's get through with it. We shan't have too much time, with this other business coming along presently. What's the first?"

Dimsdale picks out a letter from his pile and hands it to the admiral. A faint trace of a smile flickers at the corners of his lips as he does so.

"Eh? What's this?" ejaculates the admiral as he reads. "No--I will not become a patron of the society for supplying bedsocks to Conscientious Objectors! Tell 'em so, and be damned to 'em!"

"Very good, sir," quietly answers the secretary. "I'll tell them exactly what you say."

"You can put it a lot stronger than that if you like," says the other, with an indignant snort. "Conscien----" the danger of too violent an explosion checks him, and happily he sees the humorous side of things just in time. "What a nerve some people have!" is his very unofficial comment. "Here, let's have the next one. You can answer that any time."

"This is a private letter to you, sir," says Dimsdale, proffering a large envelope of an expensive brand marked with a crest on the flap, "but it was not marked private, and so got put in amongst my lot; but it is evidently meant for you personally."

The admiral pulls the letter out, and reads:

"DEAR ADMIRAL DARLINGTON--

"_My son Ethelred is, as you are doubtless aware, a midshipman on your boat. And now that the inclement season is approaching, I shall be so grateful if you will kindly see that he always changes his undervest if he should happen to get wet, as I am told one is quite apt to do when at sea._

"_Of course, I quite understand that your other duties may sometimes render it impossible for you to see to this matter yourself, but in that case I am sure you would not mind telling the commander or the coxswain or somebody to do it, and reminding them from time to time._

"_Ethelred has been very carefully brought up, and I am sure you must find him a great help to you. Please do not let him go out in one of those little steamboats if the weather is at all rough, as I think they are very dangerous._

"_I hope my boy does not suffer from sea-sickness, but I know, from sad experience gained in crossing the Channel a few years ago, how extremely suddenly this dire malady can attack even those who are least suspecting its onslaughts; and I am in possession of a remedy which proved very beneficial to me on that occasion, which I shall be only too pleased to send you for the use not only of Ethelred, but of any other of the men on your boat who may chance to succumb to this distressing complaint. In sending you the prescription, I shall have the satisfaction of feeling that I am doing my bit for our brave sailors and helping to mitigate at least one of the horrors of this great war._

"_With kind regards, "Yours sincerely,_ "AMY TWITTENHAM-TWITTENHAM."

"Hm! You can answer that one for me, Dimsdale," says the admiral. "Perhaps you had better say that I tuck him up in bed every night with my own hands and sing him to sleep; something of that sort! By the way, how is the young monkey getting on? Have you seen anything of him lately?"

"The last time I saw him," the secretary answers, "was about eleven o'clock three or four nights back. He was with several other snotties tobogganing down the foremost gangway inside the chaplain's suit-case and landing in the ditch. I enquired what might be the meaning and reason of this occupation, and young Twittenham informed me that they were Gadarene swine. Apparently the idea was to try and remember the padre's last Sunday's sermon by putting it into actual practice; so Twittenham explained it, at least. He also added that another little drink wouldn't do him any harm. In fact, he appeared on the whole to be doing very nicely."

The admiral chuckles merrily, remembering his own midshipman's days. "Better drop a hint to the padre to choose some less violent subject for his next discourse," he suggests, "something at any rate less wetting!"

"I shouldn't like to discourage him; his sermons might get _too_ dry altogether," says Dimsdale, laughing.

"Then," he continues bringing out another paper from his sheaf, "there's this one:

I--A return is to be made immediately of all H.M. ships or vessels fitted with soap-dishes pattern number four (noted on list as Dishes, Soap, number four pattern) and pierced with eighteen holes, circular, of one-eight of an inch in diameter.

This return to be made in triplicate, stating,

(a) How many of such articles are on charge.

(b) How many are in actual use on board.

(c) Whether it is found in practice that the residuum of soap or soap and water, occasioned by taking the piece or cake of soap from the water in which it has been used and placing it in the soap-dish, is able to escape with sufficient freedom into the receptacle provided for the same.

II--If it is found that this escape or discharge does not take place with reasonable speed and effectiveness, thereby causing a sediment of saponaceous matter with aqueous base and occasioning wastage of soap, the soap-dishes are to be returned at once to H.M. Dockyard where the holes will be enlarged from a diameter of one-eight of an inch to a diameter of three-sixteenths of an inch.

"And yet," groans the admiral, "there is a war on! Well the rest can wait. Nothing of any importance, is there? I suppose not, if that's a sample. We're due to start this court of enquiry in half an hour. But what's this yarn you were telling me about the man Sheridan?"

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