Driss was very calm. It was impossible to pierce his reserve or to tell what course his mind had taken. Dyce was frittering away his soul, now resisting, now yielding, now seeking the easy consolations, now dragging himself away from them, knowing that very soon he must return. He laid no plans, and deliberately avoided looking into the future. His duties were performed perfunctorily, and to no one’s satisfaction, least of all to his own. Sometimes a chance remark, a flash of wit in his conversation, would display the true worth of a mind that was fast becoming dulled. He was a generous friend, a bitter but ineffectual enemy, and an amusing companion. If he had had money, and leisure, and independence he would have ended his days at the head of a country-house dinner-table, passing port to numerous and frequent guests. The senior midshipmen had absorbed Cunwell. He did his best to please them. On Sunday mornings he produced a polishing pad, which he had bought ashore for this very purpose, and offered to give Krame’s boots “just a rub over before Divisions, as I am doing my own, you know.” Then, when he had finished rubbing and breathing from a broad mouth, he would look round apprehensively to see what the junior midshipmen had been thinking of him. As a reward for these attentions Krame spared him a little and patronized him much. Sometimes he would say at dinner, “My old friend Cunwell will have a glass of port with me?” and Cunwell, glowing in the joys of privileged familiarity, would shout back, “Thanks, old Krame, don’t mind if I do.” Krame would keep his lip from curling, but his eyes flickered his laughing contempt. Cunwell did not like Krame, who, he said, sneered because he thought himself clever. As a model he chose Howdray, whose doings were chronicled and laughed over throughout the Fleet. But the imitation was not successful. It was as a ragtime played laboriously, for Howdray imparted to his vice a certain glitter that Cunwell could not reproduce. Cunwell, when he drank, became immediately dull and sick. He had no pleasure in risk, no spirit of adventure. His dealings with women were usually ridiculous, so that the women themselves sniggered at him behind his back. Soiled collars and a dimness of eye were the outward signs of the change in him.