The result of this, as of all self-deception and confusion of motives, was disaster. As it were a stimulant, it strengthened John for a time, but left him weaker than it had found him. Balzac, Corbett, and Mahan temporarily filled the gap which, by denying himself all but Service books, he had created. Then the Home Fleet came south to carry out combined manœuvres. The _King Arthur_ was much at sea. The pressure of Engine-room watches became so great that French and Naval History had to be abandoned. The drug was taken away. The whole deception was suddenly exposed. During the long hours in the Engine-room John stared at the pounding piston-rods, or at the greasy steel floor on which he was standing, or at the iron bars of the gratings that lay tier upon tier above his head. He listened to the talk of stokers, and to the unending tales of drink and harlots with which the artificer-engineers tried to lessen the tedium of the watch. He liked the stokers; he liked the artificer-engineers who were, he knew, doing their utmost to be pleasant and entertaining. But he grew very tired of steel and oil, and drink and harlots. He revolted against them, not in anger or contempt, or anything like a spirit of righteousness, but because they were unavoidable, because they were ever at hand, because those sights and that conversation were _all_ that, for hours at a time, life had to offer him. And in the intervals there were Gunroom Evolutions and Krame. Of all the junior midshipmen Sentley alone had settled down. He was not happy, but he looked forward to the satisfaction promotion would bring him. He lived by rules, and was tempted neither by strong emotions nor by a strong imagination to break them. They were too well suited to his placid, dogged temperament. He would never be a great naval officer, but he had no desire to be great. If very reasonable expectations were fulfilled by his becoming a captain he would not be disappointed by failure to fly his admiral’s flag. He was by nature contented, hard-working, moderate in his somewhat formal religion, moderate in his vanity, moderate in all things. His life in the Gunroom was unpleasant; but when he was flogged, it was the pain that troubled him--not the humiliation, and his resentment vanished with the pain. In speaking, even in thinking of his superiors in rank, he never used the expression “ought not.” He seldom used it at all except in a formally religious sense, and then his condemnation ended when his conscience had been stilled by a mild utterance of protest. It was not in keeping with his policy, nor was it within his power, to stand out in opposition to anything. He drifted easily with the tide.