f self-esteem in imposing authority upon a
frivolous world. And it must be borne in mind that to Mr. Spokesly
himself, at that moment, to fail in being a perfect officer was a
failure in life. It was part of the creed of his "cloth" that each of
them was without blemish until his license was cancelled by the
invisible omnipotence of the law. It was, if you like, his ethic, the
criterion of his integrity, the inexorable condition of carrying-on in
his career. This ideal perfection of professional service resembles the
giant fruits and immaculate fauna depicted on the labels of the canned
articles--a grandiose conception of what was within. Just as nobody
really believes that apples and salmon are like that and yet would
refuse to buy a can without some such symbol, so Mr. Spokesly would have
found his services quite unmarketable if he had discarded the polite
fiction that he was, as far as was humanly possible, incapable of
improvement. It was the aura, moreover, which distinguished him and all
other officers from the riff-raff which nowadays go to sea and ape their
betters--the parsons and surgeons, the wireless operators and engineers.
They were common clay, mere ephemeral puppets, without hope of command,
minions to take orders, necessary evils in an age of mechanism and
high-speed commerce. It was an article of Mr. Spokesly's creed that "the
cloth" should stand by each other. He was revolving this assumption in
his mind as he rubbed the towel gently to and fro, and it occurred to
him in his slow way that if he were to adopt the modern ideas of the
London School of Mnemonics, if he were to devote every fibre of his
being to forging ahead, gaining promotion, proving himself a superior
article with a brain which was the efficient instrument of an
indomitable will, then the obsolete idea of professional solidarity
would have to go overboard. And just at that moment, with the
consciousness of that petty mistake casting a shadow on his soul and the
sharp rebuke of the Old Man rankling below, Mr. Spokesly was quite
prepared to jettison anything that stood in the way of what he vaguely
formulated as "his gettin' on." Mr. Spokesly's conceptions of
advancement were of course largely but not entirely circumscribed by his
profession. His allusions in conversation with Mr. Chippenham to "soft
things" were understood to refer to shore jobs connected with shipping
and transport. At one time the fairy-tale fortune of a shipmate who ha