The control of engineering midshipmen had passed into the hands of Aggett. He disliked all midshipmen trained under the New Scheme with the instinctive dislike of a small-minded man for those who, in their education and upbringing, have been more fortunate than he. He objected to these “young gentlemen”--the phrase sounded unusually venomous and scornful as he pronounced it--he objected to their very presence in his Engine-room. They were intruders. At heart they were executive officers. Their interest--if, indeed, this Lynwood had interest in anything but his stuffy books--was in Gunnery, Torpedo, and Seamanship. It was more than likely that, in their own Mess, they referred to engineers as “greasers.” Damned insolence! he thought. Damned insolence! He’d teach them.... To them, of course, the Engine-room was attractive only as a shelter from the fury of the Commander, a place in which they might smoke on duty. Aggett was under no delusion on that point. They thought they could loaf while they were engineers, and get ashore more often in harbour because they would have no boats to run. Not one in twenty of the New Scheme midshipmen was keen on engineering. They looked down upon it, they dared to turn up their noses at _his_ profession. Aggett had an uncomfortable feeling that they despised him--that they gave him salutes which were somehow less respectful than those they accorded to officers of his rank on the Upper Deck. Moreover, Hartington pampered the little pigs. Midshipmen ought to be flogged; flogging, sound and frequent, was the only way to break them. This, in Aggett, was not mere brutality but an article of faith. He saw in the _Pathshire’s_ midshipmen, several of whom seemed likely in any case to be strangely hindered by temperament from conforming easily to his ideal, young men handicapped by faulty training. He did not believe that a sound officer could be produced unless in his days of apprenticeship he was broken in.