mild chaff
flowed to and fro in its mysteriously appointed channels.

In Naval communities, as in most others where men are segregated from
wider intercourse by a common mode of life and purpose, each one occupies
the place designed for him by Destiny for the smooth working of the
whole. These types are peculiar to no trade or profession. A gathering
of farmers or elders of the Church, or even Christy Minstrels, would, if
thrown together for a sufficient period of time, and utterly dependent on
one another for daily intercourse, fall into the places allotted to each
by temperament and heredity. Each little community would own a wit and a
butt; the sentimentalist and the cynic. The churl by nature would appear
through some veneer of manner, if only to bring into relief the finer
qualities of his fellows; lastly, and most surely, one other would jingle
a merciful cap and bells, and mingle motley with the rest.

The First Lieutenant had just come down from the upper-deck, and stood
warming his hands by the fire. Big-boned, blue-eyed, health and vitality
seemed to radiate from his kindly, forceful personality. Of all the
officers on board "Jimmy the One" was, with perhaps the exception of the
Captain, most beloved by the men. A seaman to the fingertips, slow to
wrath and clean of speech, he had the knack of getting the last ounce out
of tired men without driving or raising his voice. Working cables on the
forecastle in the cold and snowy darkness, when men's faculties grow
torpid with cold, and their safety among the grinding cables depends more
upon the alert supervision of the First Lieutenant than the mere instinct
for self-preservation, "Jimmy the One" was credited with powers allied to
those of the high Gods. "'Tween decks," where the comfort and
cleanliness of close on eleven hundred men was mainly his affair, they
abused, loved and feared him with whole-hearted affection. His large
football-damaged nose smelt out dirt as a Zulu witch-doctor smells out
magic. The majority of the vast ship's company--seamen ratings, at all
events--he knew by name. He also presided over certain of the lower-deck
amusements, and, at the bi-weekly cinema shows, studied their tastes in
the matter of Charlie Chaplin and the Wild West with the discrimination
of a lover choosing flowers for his mistress.

His own personal amusements were few. He admitted possessing three books
which he read and re-read in rotation: "Peter Simpl