Carlin had a look at the owner of the voice. Later he hunted up Trench--Lieutenant Trench--and to him he said: "Glory to the man who can wear his uniform without tempering hot convictions or coining free speech to the bureaucratic mint! But greater glory to the man who can divest high office of its shining robes and see only the man beneath. Who's your big, rangy gunner's mate with the gray-flecked, thick black hair and what the apprentice boys call go-to-hell eyes?" "That's easy--Killorin." "And what's his history?" "When I first knew him--on the China station--he was stroke of the ship's racing crew, the best football player I ever saw, and among the men he had the name of being an all-big-gun ship in a fight. A medal-of-honor man, too. Later he went in for booze-fighting and hellraising generally and made a first-class job of that, too. I liked him--all the officers did--and when I was having my first dreams of the day when I should be commanding the latest dreadnought, it was Killorin, settled down and steady, who was to be my chief gunner. I told him as much one night on watch. "'A warrant-officer and wear a sword and be called Mister?' says Killorin. 'And will you tell me, sir, what's being a warrant-officer and wearing a sword and being called Mister to being all alive when my youth is still with me?' "I couldn't tell him; and as we grew more friendly many another question he asked me in the quiet of the night-watches I couldn't answer. He could talk the eye out of a Chinese idol himself." Carlin peered down at Killorin. "Did you ever ask him how--despite the being all alive and having his youth--he is to-day only a gunner's mate?" "And have him, in ten perfectly respectful words, put me back in my place? I did not--not that I wouldn't like to know." "I think I half know," said Carlin. That was in a tropic port. That same night Carlin found it too hot to sleep below. He rolled off his bunk, had another shower-bath, dressed lightly, and went on deck, where his friend Trench was on watch. He patrolled the deck with Trench. The men were sleeping everywhere around the top deck. The tall form of Killorin rolled out from under the overhang of a turret and sat up. Trench's walk brought him abreast of Killorin. "Pretty hot?" asked Trench. "It is hot--yes, sir." "These young lads"--Trench waved a hand toward the stretched-out shapes all around--"they don't seem to mind it." "They're young, sir." "Young? I didn't think there was a tougher man, young or old, in the navy than you." "A man's body," said Killorin, "can take comfort atop of a hot galley stove--or a cold one. A man's mind--'tis not so simply eased."