“You R.N. snotties,” a merchant service officer had told John, “have the filthiest minds I know.” That night on which leave was given Hartington dined with the Captain. “Well,” he said, “what of your snotties now? I suppose they are off with the women. One can’t blame them. There’s nothing to be done out here. They can’t be given home leave.... But the devil of it is, Hartington, that even in home waters they don’t get leave worth speaking of.... The fact of their having women doesn’t worry me. The trouble is that snotties’ minds, their whole manner of life, their outlook--it’s like a gradual debasing of a currency.... They are strange people, the Powers-that-Be. Give them an invention or a strategical idea and they’ll work on it untiringly, develop it with amazing ingenuity and care. Give them boys, as fine human material as is to be found in the world, and for four and a half years they educate them magnificently. Then, before they are eighteen, when their minds are in a most impressionable stage, these boys are sent to sea. They are subjected to persecution; they are flogged continually for no specific wrong-doing; they are deprived of all opportunity for solitude or thought; they are put in a crowded mess where they are cut off from intimate association with men older than themselves, from women of their own kind, from art and culture, from trees and hills, from all legitimate amusement. And the Powers know it. They have absolute authority in the Service, but the evil continues. Wine bills are limited on board, and there is a free issue of prophylactics, but the evil continues. I know the difficulties--the inevitable conditions of sea-service, the need there is that snotties should be taught discipline by a short method. But it’s an odd thing, Hartington, that men with ability and power, who have the interests of the Service at heart, should be unable to find any means of preventing that waste and wrong.” CHAPTER XXII MARGARET IN THE NET I In the early days of the New Year, when the _Pathshire_, after her voyage to Woo-Sung, had proceeded to Hong Kong to refit, Margaret found herself singularly alone at Wei-hai. Her mother and father were with her, but their presence accentuated rather than lessened her sense of isolation. She could never shake off her consciousness of the opposition of their wishes to her own. They did not argue with her or seek to persuade her. They gave her no opportunity to state her case. Instead, by their kindness, by their consideration of all her inessential interests, they made her understand that if she would repent and make reparation they were ready to forgive and forget.