Manœuvres, contact with the Home Fleet, and a rumour that the _King Arthur_ might not return to England to refit, depressed the spirits of the whole ship’s company. The Commander was impossible to please. The defaulters were numerous. The relations between Wardroom and Gunroom, never cordial, became more than usually strained. The Chaplain preached a bitter sermon on the virtue of contentment. The Captain, who was a kindly man, regretfully sent more prisoners to cells in a fortnight than he had condemned to that punishment in the previous two months. Gunroom Evolutions and floggings became more frequent and severe. When the men went to physical drill after Divisions, and were commanded, in accordance with custom, to double round the batteries and quarter-deck, they ran, not eagerly and good-humouredly as when paying-off time is near, but at a Service double such as discipline demanded. And the speed and spirit of this morning procession is generally a good indication of the temper of a ship’s company. The Commander wrote to his wife that the commission was stale. The men needed general leave, he said. And Tintern paused suddenly one night in his playing of the Alphabet-- “_With a Glory Allelujah in the morning, In the morning by the gaslight, See_----” “I’m not going to play any more,” he wailed, in imitation of a spoilt child. “Oh, come on, Tintern; there’s no one else to play but you. You’ll stop the whole sing-song. Why won’t you play?” “Why? Because the poor old Konk”--he was referring to the monarch after whom the ship was named--“because the poor old Konk is bloody-minded, and so am I.” It was when affairs had reached this stage that, to the junior midshipmen, relief came, sudden and unexpected. II One forenoon the Captain’s messenger came to the Gunroom to say that the Captain wished to see Mr. Sentley. After an absence of ten minutes, Sentley returned. They read in his face that he had good news. In his hand he carried a sheet from a signal pad. “We are all to return to England immediately,” he said. “We shall have about a fortnight or three weeks of leave. Then we are to join the _Colonsay_ for passage to Colombo, where we are to recommission the _Pathshire_, China Station.” “All of us?” said Howdray. “What do you mean?” “We junior snotties.” “Not the others?” “No.” “Oh, damn! You lucky, lucky little devils!” That night the Mess dined the junior midshipmen. As the Gunroom had been drawn together once before by the hope of battle, so was it now united by the prospect of parting. Wrongs were forgiven, enmities forgotten. Soon they would be saying of one another: “I was shipmates with him _once_.” If an association is to end, let it end sweetly.