He had other boat-trips that night, but he remembered nothing of them afterwards except a vague irritation because he could not shout at the shrill, silly women in his cabin to keep silence in the boat. When he returned finally to the _Pathshire_ he was conscious of that odd despair and misery that sometimes attacked him with irresistible force if he awoke in his hammock in the dark of the early morning. He seemed to have no reserve of will with which to combat it. The Gunroom was closed, and he went into the Smoking Casemate, where he sat down on an upright wooden chair. The room was dirty with the litter of the day. Cards and newspapers lay on the deck and on the chairs. Cigarette-ends exuded their juice among the dregs at the bottom of wine-glasses. From the half-deck, where the midshipmen’s hammocks were slung, came the sound of regular breathing, and once the cry--almost the cry of a child, John fancied--of one who dreamed unhappily. He sat staring at the six-inch gun that gleamed beneath the yellow beam of an imperfect police-light. What, in God’s name, was this leading to? From the cruelty and degradation of the _King Arthur_ he seemed now to be degraded through his own fault. No need to sink into slackness of mind and body; no need to drink rot-gut liqueurs in the forenoon; no need to gamble for stakes he could not afford, or to let his thought and speech be filled with beastliness. His own fault, he supposed; his own fault, he tried to confess in his eagerness to avoid the finding of excuses for himself. And yet--he glanced through the half-curtained door beyond which the others were sleeping--were not they similarly affected? In other ships were the same Gunroom conditions. There must be a reason for it, outside and beyond them all; a force greater than their wills, bearing them down, stifling and slowly destroying the instincts for cleanness and energy which had once been lively within them. And suddenly John perceived that his stream of life had become stagnant and foul because it was dammed, having no outlet in hope. His care for Margaret, his desire for poetry, his longing for progressive intellectual work which had been allowed to develop at the training colleges, were checked now. In his present life, and, so far as he could see, in the future life the Service promised him, there could be no spiritual or intellectual expansion. Day after day routine would repeat itself. The end towards which all effort was directed was war. War--and what then? He could not face the questions that were crying unanswered through the passages of his mind. He began to reckon his gains and losses at cards, and frowned because the card-book, into which he would have liked to look, was inaccessible within the locked Gunroom. And presently he began to ask himself what offence of his had caused Margaret wilfully to disregard him that night.