If 'White Jacket' had not served before the mast, what a picture he might have given us of the Gunroom! It is at once a Republic and a Despotism--the Extreme Left and the unswerving Centre of old tradition. Individually it is always in hot water; collectively it can and does criticise with point and freedom anything and everything on its horizon, from Fleet Manoeuvres to the fit of an Instructor's collar. Pungent, merciless, indomitable is the Gunroom, but it preserves discipline. The senior Sub-Lieutenant (one could not help thinking of O'Brien when he cured Peter of the sea-sickness) stuck a fork into the equivalent for a beam overhead. Ere it ceased vibrating the Midshipmen had gone, flitting like bats; had flung themselves backwards from their seats, and were through the door.
'That's when we think the conversation might hurt their little morals,' said my host. 'But they can move much quicker than that.'
'Make 'em do it again,' said Twenty-One--a Midshipman three years ago. 'You're getting awfully slack, _I_ think. What do you do when----?' he presented a contingency.
'Oh, then we----' The Sub-Lieutenant described the course of action with minute particularity, adding: 'Wouldn't you like to see it done?'
Set it to my account that I saved somebody's darling from being butchered to make a Gun-room holiday. But the Midshipmen have an asylum of their own in the School-room, where, I was assured, they were worked within an inch of their lives. The remnant seemed unusually healthy, for when we went out to visit a big smoking-concert on the Flagship I caught glimpses of limber youths racketting in dumb show round their hammocks.
Not being privileged to have speech with them, I asked Twenty-One what the 'protective diplomacy' of Midshipmen might be. He gave me to understand that stirring a hornets' nest with the bare toe was tame and pale beside too thoroughly irritating the junior members of the Gun-room. Had himself been concerned in such revolutions.
'We got licked, of course,' he concluded cheerfully, 'but the seniors let us alone after that. Wasn't it a beautifully disciplined Mess, though? I wish you could see 'em at sea in weather. There's a Midshipman (he used the other term) told off to every scuttle to open it between waves. If he lets in any water of course he catches it. I had about five years of that sort of thing. Well, now we'll go over to the concert.'