The effect was dull, unspeaking misery; eyelids that closed, and, being forced open, closed again; limbs gnawed by weariness; a weakness of control that brought hysterical tears and laughter very near. The mind strayed back to childhood and leapt out in jagged flashes towards licentiousness. Aggett could do what he liked with them. No insult could provoke now any desire to protest. They obeyed like whipped curs. “Yes, sir.... No, sir.... I’m sorry, sir.” “It’s taming ’em,” said Aggett. Nervous exhaustion, so potent to produce obsessions, urged John to the reading of books in snatches and Driss to interminable calculations of minutes. Driss analyzed his day with pitiless accuracy. He would confront John with pieces of paper on which he had written in his neat round-hand the number of minutes he spent in sleep, in watch-keeping, in standing by his gun, in drawing his sketch, in eating his meals. And John, seeing from these tables that there was no time for reading, became, for that reason, the more determined to read. He read at meals until Hartington, who, when he was present, insisted that the Gunroom should observe at least some of the conventions, told him to put his book away. “It’s the only time I can read,” John exclaimed. “You know it is the only time I have.” “I’m sorry,” Hartington answered; “but I’m not responsible for your routine. I can’t have reading at Mess.” And John, made unreasonably angry by this excellent rule, read at odd moments for five or ten minutes at a time, crouching on his sea-chest when he came off watch at midnight, wasting the precious interval before he went below again at 4 a.m. He read, too, between breakfast and Divisions, between tea and Quarters, between Sunday Divisions and Church. He turned to his book with almost fierce devotion on occasions when no one else would have thought it worth while to open covers that would so soon have to be closed again. And he wrote--wild blank verse. The scansion missed sometimes, but he did not care. He would write no lyrics now; his indignation would not pause for rhymes. Never had his mind been so full of themes demanding expression; never had words come to him like this unsummoned. Tremendous phrases woke him in the night, so that he lay in his hammock, his head a little raised, listening. He heard nothing but the engine’s throbbing and the far-away clashing of the revolution-telegraph. And he would lie down again and hide his face, wondering how, even for a moment, he had been amazed and excited by a phrase which, as he considered it, he saw to be without shape or meaning.