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Mama give you that for giving up smoking when we were mids together?’
    ‘That’s the one. And I’m still smoking like a chimney. More so since I got here.’
    ‘Is it that bad?’
    ‘Bodger, it’s a battlefield. You wait and see. Now what shall we rush at first? What would you like to see?’
    ‘Everything.’
    ‘Make it so. Everything it is.’
     

CHAPTER II
     
    The Bodger and Jimmy Forster-Jones stood for a moment on the parapet in the sunshine. The Bodger’s eye was caught, as it had been so many times in the past, by the view from the College, looking out over the river Dart, the town and harbour, out to the far blue sea.
    ‘Lord,’ he said, admiringly, ‘you can see just why they put the College here. It’s an absolutely marvellous place for it. Hills, fields, woods, harbour, boats, river, headland, then the sea, it makes you actually want to get out there. Must be something to do with the perspective. Everything so clear close by, so hazy and mysterious out there. When I was here before, it never failed me. Whenever I was feeling a bit down, or fed up, or getting the feeling that it wasn’t worth it, all I had to do was look out there, and I could see what it was all about, what the end result was going to be. Think of all the blokes who’ve gone out of this harbour. They served all over the world. A hell of a lot of them died. They all started here.’
    Jimmy had been listening to The Bodger with mounting consternation. ‘I say, Bodger, do watch it. There’s not a dry eye in the house. You’re going to have to be careful about this romantic touch. It doesn’t suit the young men of today, you know. They’re looking for a steady administrative job with an index-linked pension when they retire. Sea-borne bank managers, that’s what they are, and not so sea-borne, either. Anyway, all I know about this harbour is that a bloody cold wind comes whipping up it in the winter, I can tell you.’
    The College, as always, looked as though it was posing for a picture postcard photograph, but beneath that scenic serenity The Bodger found the old fevers still raging. Under the surface, Dartmouth was always in a frantic state of tension compounded by competition and contest. There was no way to stop people competing against each other at Dartmouth - indeed competition was in the air they breathed, injected into their syllabus, encouraged by words, deeds and example. Wherever two or more officers under training were gathered together, they at once divided into divisions and began to play, run, swim, jump, climb, pull or sail against each other. Their competitive spirits were stoked to ever higher degree by their own desire to do well at the College in the face of an uncertain future, and by their divisional officers’ own professional ambitions and the vicarious successes they derived from their divisions’ feats.
    Everywhere The Bodger went, he saw signs of this manic urge to compete, so that afterwards he wondered whether his tour of that day had not all been part of some frantic dream. It was not just the activity on the playing fields, and in the gymnasium and on the river. The College birds sang as though against the stop-watch. The College grasshoppers whirred as though Pounter’s eye was upon them. The College horses looked fit enough to jump out of their skins, and even the Britannia beagles, though it was summer, looked trained to the inch. The motor-mower driver on the golf course, The Bodger saw, was wearing huge leather gauntlets, goggles, and a large round bright red crash helmet. As The Bodger passed, the mower came round one comer of the fairway almost on two rollers. The driver swayed outwards as he steered his machine madly off in another direction, with a grinding clashing of gears and a rising roar from the engine.
    ‘What’s he up to?’
    The mower skidded sideways on to another green. The driver was hunched grimly over the steering handles.
    ‘He’s trying to mow the whole course in