But on a plane far nearer earth stood the Term Lieutenants, each one the god and hero, the Big Brother of his term. That they, their Boxer or South African medal ribbons, their tattoo-marks, County or International caps, biceps, and all the things that were theirs, were the objects of their respective Terms’ slavish adulation, goes without saying. Bloody encounters between their self-appointed champions over an adverse criticism or doubt cast upon a forgotten word were not unknown. Two entire terms once joined battle and bled each other’s noses the length and breadth of the echoing “Skipper Woods” to clinch some far-flung argument as to the merits of their respective “Loots.” There were but four Term Lieutenants, and they were picked from the wardrooms of the whole Navy. Small wonder some three hundred grubby urchins fresh from school found in them admirable qualities. Their example and teaching were the moulds into which, year by year, the molten metal of the Navy’s officer-personnel was poured, thence to be scattered about the seven seas, tempered by winds and stress, and, in God’s good time, tested to the uttermost. Ashore, on the playing fields or across the red ploughland at the tails of the beagles, they laboured in close intimate fellowship with these atoms of clay thrust by providence beneath their thumbs. But on board it seemed they faded from ken, being rarely seen save at classes and musters, or when in pairs the Term percolated through the wardroom for dessert, plastered as to the hair, patent leather shod, to sip and cough over a glass of ambrosial port at either elbow of their Lieutenant. Seeing and unseen, knowing their Terms as only men who spend their lives among men can know and understand the embryo, they were the guiding invisible wisdom behind the Cadet Captains, who outwardly ruled the decks. The Cadet Captains were chosen from the three senior Terms, set apart from their fellows by the fact that they wore “standup” collars and a triangular gold badge on the left cuff. Minor Authority in other guises was greeted much the same as it is in all communities of boyhood. The platitudes of notice boards no fellow with his heart in the right place could be expected to remember over well. The acknowledged sway of instructors and masters was largely a matter of knowing to a nicety how far an adventurous spirit could go (in the realms of Science and Freehand Drawing it was a long way) before the badgered pedagogue turned and bit. Terms paid strict allegiance to their own Chief Petty Officers. But, as has already been shown, this was an affair of the heart and the sentiments. He was theirs, and they were his: thus it had been from the beginning.