But the boats would not burn; the memory of the abandoned country would not perish; the new enthusiasms, like a constitution hastily formulated, never broke the bonds that their own artificiality imposed upon them. The strength of materials and their curves of elasticity; the names and properties of lubricants; the hundred and one “little dodges” by which the Engineer Commander hoped to save a few pounds of coal--none of these things interested John. He did his utmost to interest himself in them. He even reached a point at which he could say that he liked engineering and believe that this was true. Nor was it altogether untrue. Engine-room watches were less troublous than those on deck. The Commander was out of the way. But these advantages were powerless to awaken in him the saving enthusiasm he desired. The engineer officers for the most part treated New Scheme midshipmen with good-humoured tolerance, convinced that, as they had not received the old-fashioned training, they could not be made into efficient engineers. “I don’t know what the hell’s the good of those Upper Deck snotties wasting their time down here,” they would say. “As soon as they’re beginning to learn something they are whisked away to their seamanship again.” No one except the Engineer Commander himself--and he was too busy to see much of them--took any interest in the engineering midshipmen, and their work resolved itself, partly through their own fault, into a wearisome keeping of watches, a writing-up of notebooks, an uninspired observance of rules. Sennett and Oram returned whence they came. Then John made a second attempt to sever himself from the past and to engross himself in a naval future; but this, partly because it was a compromise and partly for other reasons, failed as the first had done. He turned to Voluntary Subjects, to French and Naval History. He tried to persuade himself that he was carrying out his original intention to devote himself to Service subjects. If French and Naval History were subjects for a Service examination, surely they were within the limits he had prescribed? That they were also, by reason of the literary aspect they presented, without those limits, John would not allow himself to recognize. He shirked that issue. He quieted his conscience by telling himself that French and Naval History appeared in the official syllabus. He would not admit, what was indeed the truth, that he read Balzac, not because the reading would help him to pass the examinations for the rank of lieutenant, but because Balzac was an artist. He concealed from himself the fact that his love of Naval History centred in the noun rather than in the adjective, and he refused to acknowledge, even to himself, that he cared more for the prose than for the substance of his essay on the Dutch Wars, more for the writing of it than for the examination marks which were to be his ostensible reward.