At last we came on an inky-black tarn, shut in by mountains, locked and lonely and lashed into angry waves by a downward-smiting blast. There was no special point in the fishing; not even when the Sub-Lieutenant tried to drown himself; but the animal delight of that roaring day of sun and wind will live long in one memory. We had it all to ourselves—the rifted purple flank of Lackawee, the long vista of the lough darkening as the shadows fell; the smell of a new country, and the tearing wind that brought down mysterious voices of men from somewhere high above us. None but the Irish can properly explain away failure. We left with our dozen fingerlings, under the impression—Mister Cornelius Crowley gave it—that we had caught ten-pounders. CHAPTER V So home, blown through and through with fresh air; sore with hanging on to the car and laughing at nothing; to dine with two Cruiser Captains aboard one of the big fleet-rams. My hosts had been friends since their _Britannia_ days (it is this uniformity of early training that gives to the Navy its enduring solidarity), and, one reminiscence leading to another, I listened enchanted to weird yarns in which Chinese Mandarins, West Coast nigger Chiefs, Archimandrites, Turkish Pashas, Calabrian Counts, dignity balls, Chilian beachcombers, and all the queer people of the earth were mingled. ‘But it’s a lonely life—a lonely life,’ said one. ‘I’ve commanded a ship since Eighty something, and—you see.’ How could one help seeing? Between the after-cabin and the rest of the world (with very few exceptions) lies the deep broad gulf that is only overpassed by sentries, signalmen, and subordinates entering with reports. A light tap, a light foot, a doffed cap, and—‘Rounds all correct, sir.’ Then the silence and the loneliness settle down again beyond the hanging red curtain in the white steel bulkhead. Herman Melville has it all in _White Jacket_, but it is awesome to see with bodily eyes. Sometimes the talk gets serious, and the weather-bitten faces discuss how they would ‘work her in a row.’ Each delivers his opinion with side-digs at his neighbour, less heavily armoured or more lightly gunned, but the general conclusion (which I shall not give) is nearly always the same. It is a terrible power that they wield, these Captains, for, saving the Admiral, there is no one that can dictate to them in the exercise of their business. They make their ships as they make or unmake the careers of their men. Yet, mark how Providence arranges an automatic check! It is in the Navy that you hear the wildest and freest adjectives of any Service, the most blistering characterisation of superiors, the most genuinely comic versions of deeds that elsewhere might be judged heroic. A SERVICE OF HUMOURISTS