DINNER IN A GUN-ROOM
'Well, now you've done that,' said Twenty-One, 'suppose you come and dine in a Gun-room.' (We have none on the cruiser, being all ward-room, with a cabin apiece.) 'I'll chaperon you to the best disciplined Gun-room in the Fleet. We'll show you.'
So we went, Twenty-One and me, to another huge battleship, precisely like the Admiral's; but this time Captains, Commanders, and Lieutenants were invisible, or showed only as superior luminaries far along the decks. We dealt with nothing above the rank of Sub-Lieutenant, and the greetings of that grade are cordial and warm. Down below—it was twice the size of our ward-room—we found their Gun-room, which differs in appointments and fittings from everything Marryat conceived, but I think the old unquenchable spirit persists. Of the twenty odd inhabitants, a dozen at least were Midshipmen, and therefore, as Twenty-One explained, 'didn't count.' They talked among themselves in subdued eager whispers, dropping in to the meal as they came off duty. The senior Sub-Lieutenant (quite nineteen years old) was responsible for the justly vaunted discipline; and it is no small thing to reduce to silence boys of sixteen to eighteen, all full of natural and acquired deviltry. But it was done according to the custom of the Navy and the etiquette of the Gun-room, whose laws change not.
