There was a Prince in it who was also a Flag-Captain, and he set one thinking; and there were Commanders and Lieutenants in it, and it was all very pretty and gracious; but between me and the _menu_ rose a vision of last year's play-war--a battleship cleared for action, naked and grim, like a man swimming with a knife between his teeth--a wet and streaming hull thundering through heavy, rain-hammered seas.
'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.
Here the young Nelson learns to obey, in silence and at a run. He has been broken in on the _Britannia_, but the Gun-room gives him enduring polish. The Admiral knows a Midshipman rather as the Almighty knows a blackbeetle; the Captain knows him as the Head of Harrow might know a babe in a perambulator; the First Lieutenant knows him as the Head of the Games knows a fag in the Lower Third; but the senior Sub-Lieutenant of the Gun-room knows him as a brand to be snatched from the burning; and works over him accordingly. In return, the Midshipman patronises the Admiral at a safe distance; is blandly superior to his Captain--also at a safe distance; sings time-honoured lampoons about the First Lieutenant at a very safe distance; but most strictly obeys the senior Sub-Lieutenant. For seven years, counting his time in the _Britannia_, he dresses at a chest and sleeps in a hammock, getting to know himself and his associates with that deadly stark intimacy that only flourishes in the Navy. There are no excuses in his Service. He must not answer back; and he must do what he is told--not immediately, but sooner, much sooner. These are the years that weed out those that have mistaken their calling. The incompetents go home, and curse the Navy evermore. The virtuous stay on and learn to steal brass boiler-tubes for their boats; learn to smoke secretly in the fighting-tops (they are forbidden tobacco till eighteen); fall into and out of all manner of tight places that require dexterity and a cheek of cold-drawn brass; pick up more than they learn under the Instructor from the talk of the Warrant Officers and men and the carefully-watched mistakes of their elders; and when they reach commissioned rank impart their lore to their successors with a dirk-scabbard.