Somers rose and followed him. The house was already lit up. The sea was bluey. They went down the steps cut in the earth of the bank top, and between the bushes to the sand. The tide was full, and swishing against a flat ledge of rocks. Jack went to the edge of this ledge, looking in at the surging water, white, hissing, heavy. Somers followed again. Jack turned his face to him.
"Funny thing it should go on doing this all the time, for no purpose," said Jack, amid all the noise.
"Yes."
Again they watched the heavy waves unfurl and fling the white challenge of foam on the shore.
"I say," Jack turned his face. "I shan't be making a mistake if I tell you a few things in confidence, shall I?"
"I hope not. But judge for yourself."
"Well, it's like this," shouted Jack—they had to shout at one another in unnaturally lifted voices, because of the huge noise of the sea. "There's a good many of us chaps as has been in France, you know—and been through it all—in the army—we jolly well know you can't keep a country going on the vote-catching system—as you said the other day. We know it can't be done."
"It can't," said Somers, with a shout, "for ever."
"If you've got to command, you don't have to ask your men first if it's right, before you give the command."
"Of course not," yelled Somers.
But Jack was musing for the moment.
"What?" he shouted, as he woke up.
"No," yelled Somers.
A further muse, amid the roar of the waves.
"Do the men know better than the officers, or do the officers know better than the men?" he barked.
"Of course," said Somers.
"These damned politicians—they invent a cry—and they wait to see if the public will take it up. And if it won't, they drop it. And if it will, they make a mountain of it, if it's only an old flower-pot."
"They do," yelled Somers.
They stood close side by side, like two mariners in a storm, amid the breathing spume of the foreshore, while darkness slowly sank. Right at the tip of the flat, low rocks they stood, like pilots.
