rather listening while it talked to him.... Thus Cadet Captains were chosen, and the queer eager loyalty with which the rest paid them allegiance was the first stirring of the quickened Naval Spirit, foreshadowing that strange fellowship to be, brotherhood of discipline and control, of austerity and a half-mocking affectionate tolerance.
{43}
To the Cadet Captains perhaps can be attributed the passage, almost untarnished through the years, of the Britannia traditions. They were concerned, these youthful Justices of the Peace, with more than the written law. It they enforced right enough, but with a tolerance one might expect of fifteen summers administering the foibles and rules of fifty. On the other hand, did a “new” unbutton a single button of his monkey jacket, a “Three” deign to swing his keys, a “Sixer” to turn up his trousers or tilt his cap on the back of his head (the prerogative of the “Niner” or Fourth Term), and Nemesis descended upon him ere he slept that night.{44} Nemesis, by virtue of its unblemished character and the favour its triangular badge found in the eyes of the gods, was allowed to turn in half an hour after the remainder. It occupied itself during this time in guzzling cocoa and biscuits smeared with strawberry jam, provided for its delectation by the authorities—though the cost was said to be defrayed by the parents of the common herd relegated to hammocks and the contemplation of this orgy out of one drowsy though envious eye.
{44}
Biscuits finished, Nemesis would draw from his pocket a knotted “togie” of hemp, and, having removed traces of jam from his features, proceed to administer summary justice in the gloom where the hammocks swung.
It was of course grossly illegal and stigmatised by the authorities as “a pernicious system of private and unauthorised punishments.” But the alternative was open to any who cared to appeal to Cæsar. Appealing to Cæsar meant spending subsequent golden afternoons on the parade ground, swinging a heavy bar bell to the time of “Sweet Dreamland Faces” blared out on a cornet by a bored bandsman.
So summary justice ruled, and it ruled in this wise:{45}
{45}
“Shove your knuckles outside that blanket—you needn’t pretend to be asleep——”
Chorus of snores deafening in their realism and self-conscious rectitude from the wrong-doer’s neighbours.
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