IV JEALOUSY 249 



bit !' Naval pensioners, having what they wanted, 

 what everybody wants — something to fall back 

 upon — may possibly be happy in a jog-trot 

 fashion. Most of them don't look it. The 

 liveliest part of their life is past. They live with 

 their eyes behind them. 



Hence, perhaps, the underlying jealousy and 

 contempt of the Navy that one hears sometimes 

 in the talk of old longshoremen who have never 

 come under Its spell. 'Ah !' they will say, of a 

 bluejacket on leave. 'He'd ha' done better If he'd 

 a-stayed at home an' gone 'long steady. What is 

 it, the Navy? You'm In and you'm out, an' you 

 bain't no for'arder than you was. 'TIsn't no job 

 for a man what's got any go in him, being ordered 

 about by the likes o' they; and they knows it 

 too after they been In It a while; only they'm 

 there then. If I had a son growing up I'd see he 

 didn't join no Navy. . . .' 



But very likely the son would. 



All sorts of bad I have heard about the Navy, 

 over and over again, from men sober and men 

 drunk, men argumentative or disappointed, above 

 all from men who have done well In It. What 

 it used to be like, they were not there to see, and 

 they have not, most of them, read such books 



