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The Gun-room of the "Achates"

Having seen his picket-boat safely landed in her crutches on the booms, the Orphan dived down below to the gun-room to dry himself in front of the blazing stove there.

The gun-room was a long, untidy place on the starboard side of the main-deck, just for'ard of the after 6-inch-gun casemate. A long table, covered with a red cloth, of the usual Service pattern, and rather more than usually torn and stained with grease, occupied most of the deck space, and was now laden with plates, cups and saucers, and, down the middle, in one gorgeous line, tins of jam, loaves of bread, fat pats of butter, and slabs of splendidly indigestible cake.

Long benches, covered with leather cushions, were fixed each side of it, whilst a few chairs, in various stages of decay, were drawn up round the stove and the upset copper coal-box. The after bulkhead of this sumptuous abode was occupied by midshipmen's lockers—rows of them one above the other—and from the half-open locker doors peeped boots and books, woollen helmets, sweaters, and safety waistcoats.

Along the foremost bulkhead was a corticine-covered sideboard with drawers for knives, forks, and spoons, cupboards for bottles, and a cosy gap for a barrel of beer. Above the sideboard, at either end of it, there were two little sliding-doors in the bulkhead, for the plates and food to be passed in from the pantry beyond, and for the dirty plates to be passed out. Between these two sliding-hatches, pictures of beautiful ladies taken from the last Christmas Number of the Sketch had been gummed on to the bare expanse of dirty-white paint, and gave an air of brightness and refinement to an otherwise somewhat depressing interior.

The outer bulkhead—the outer side—the ship's side—had been white—once. Along it were five scuttles, at present closely screwed up, and the tail ends of waves occasionally swished angrily across them. In the spaces between these scuttles, war maps, most of them torn and ragged, had been pasted to the iron-work, and one or two pin-flags still managed to hold fast, though the vast array that had once fluttered across them had long since disappeared.

At each end of the inner bulkhead was a door leading out into the "half-deck", and between them were more lockers, the roaring, smoking stove, its brass chimney, and the upset coal-box. Behind the brass chimney hung a tattered green-baize notice-board on which were pinned a few dusty long-forgotten gun-room orders; whilst from hooks above it hung a cheap alarum clock and five damaged wrist-watches, each in its strap, and each labelled with an official report of the "scrap" during which it had met its honourable fate.

Newspapers and magazines littered untidily the corticine-covered deck; a gramophone box, a couple of greatcoats, and a green cricket bag lay piled in one corner near the lockers; some sextant boxes and two pairs of sea-boots filled another.

Overhead, between the deck beams, wooden battens were fixed, and above them squeezed a motley assortment of greatcoats, golf-bags, cricket pads, and oilskins. Almost anywhere in the gun-room you could put up your hand without looking, and pull down an oilskin or a greatcoat, which, of course, was most convenient, unless you pulled down half a dozen golf-clubs on your head at the same time, when naturally the convenience was not so noticeable.

When the Orphan came in, throwing his wet sou-wester and oilskin into the corner on top of the gramophone box, the only other gun-room officer there was the "China Doll"—the Assistant Clerk. Only just "caught" he was, a very youthful young gentleman of, so far, unblemished reputation, with a pink-and-white face, and a trick of opening and shutting his very big and very blue eyes so exactly like a doll that he had been christened "China Doll" directly he had joined the Honourable Mess.

He was engaged busily toasting bread in front of the stove with the long gun-room toasting-fork, and this was probably his most important duty on board—the duty of making toast for seven-bell tea; the first piece for the Sub-lieutenant, the second for the senior snotty, and the third for that very senior officer—his very senior officer—the Clerk—Uncle Podger.

He had just finished the first piece as the Orphan entered, and looked up, blinking his eyes excitedly.

"What's the news, Orphan? Did the Captain tell you what we're going to do?"

"Late again, China Doll; five minutes after seven bells, and only one piece of toast ready; you'll catch it when the others come along."

In spite of his protests the Orphan grabbed that piece of toast, buttered it and began eating it, standing in front of the stove whilst the China Doll hurriedly began to toast another slice, between the Orphan's legs, and implored him for news of where the ship was going, and what she was to do. But the Orphan was much too busy eating to take any notice; and just as the first slice disappeared and he was licking his fingers, he heard a clattering of sea-boots down the ladder from the deck, and as four dripping snotties poured in, he seized the toasting-fork, pushed the China Doll on one side, and calmly finished toasting the second slice.

These four new-comers were the "Pink Rat", "Bubbles", the "Hun", and Rawlins. The Pink Rat was the senior snotty—a small-sized youngster whom anyone could spot as the Pink Rat, because he had a thin, sharp, ferrety-looking face, very pink complexion, beady eyes, prominent teeth, and long mouse-coloured hair brushed straight back from his forehead and plastered down with grease. Bubbles was half as big again as the Pink Rat, with a fat, red, honest face, creased with continual chuckling, and a fat, red neck which always seemed to swell over his collars. He had something wrong with his nose, and couldn't breathe through it very well, so that when he was laughing—he generally was—he used to throw his head back, open his mouth to breathe, and make the most extraordinary bubbling noises. The Hun, the third to enter, looked a very gentle snotty, very refined and quiet—quiet, that is, compared with the others. He was not big or strong; but when he once was "roused" he would always join the weaker side in a "scrap", and then became so violently excited that whatever he gripped he gripped with all his might—like a wild cat. He had nearly choked Bubbles once; and the Pink Rat never forgot how, at another time, he had nearly pulled out a handful of his hair. He always apologized afterwards. Rawlins, whose proper name was Rawlinson—the last of these four—was a brawny youth with an odd hatchet-shaped head, quite as good-natured as Bubbles, and the least talkative member of the Honourable Mess. He was always willing to look out for a pal's "watch" or boat duty, in itself enough to make anyone very popular.

The Pink Rat, Bubbles, and Rawlins, seeing no toast waiting for them, dashed at the China Doll, charged him into a corner, threw their wet oilskins over him, and fell in a heap on top.

"Toast must be ready!" they yelled as they allowed him to get up.

"I can't make it fast enough when the Orphan's here, alone; look at him—that's his second."

The Orphan had just taken a huge bite out of the new piece; with a rush they threw themselves on him; in the mêlée of feet, legs, and chairs the China Doll captured the toasting-fork, stuck another bit of bread on it, and crouched in front of the fire again.

The general scramble was terminated by the noise of the pantry hatch sliding back, and an enormous, purple-faced marine servant, in his shirt-sleeves, pushed in a big teapot.

"Come along, Barnes, cut us some more bread; open a tin of 'sharks'; where've you put my biscuits?" they called at him.

By this time the third piece of toast was done to a turn; and the Pink Rat, in the absence of the Sub, on watch, was just going to claim it, when in came Uncle Podger—the Clerk—a broad-shouldered, squat youth, with a breezy, cheery countenance, and ruffled hair, who had been promoted to the exalted rank of Clerk exactly three weeks before, and had, therefore, been just a year and three weeks in the Service.

His arrival was greeted with shouts of "Uncle Podger, your minion is slack again at the toast business. The China Doll must be beaten."

The Assistant Clerk dodged the Pink Rat and wriggled free, squealing out that this piece was for the Sub.

"He'll beat me if it isn't ready. He'll be down from the bridge in a minute," he laughed, and took shelter behind his superior officer, explaining that "he'd done one for the Sub, and the Orphan ate that; another for the Pink Rat, and the Orphan had eaten that too; the Sub must have this, mustn't he?"

"Then this is the third," Uncle Podger said with mock gravity. "You were wrong, my young subordinate, very wrong indeed, to give away those other pieces; this one is mine." He gently removed the beautifully browned bread from the prongs of the fork.

"Yes—sir," said the China Doll, dropping his eyelids and pretending to be very humble.

"By the King's Regulations and Gun-room Instructions, there can be no doubt about it, can there?"

"No—sir; no possible doubt whatever—no possible, probable, possible doubt whatever."

The Clerk, glaring majestically at his subordinate officer's familiarity, promptly proceeded to butter and then to eat the slice; whilst the others, crowding round the stove with bits of bread on the ends of knives, tried their best to toast them.

Then the Sub did come in—a man of medium height, shoulders broader than Uncle Podger's, a complexion tanned by exposure to the wind and rain, black hair over a broad forehead, thick black eyebrows over deep-set grey eyes which had a knack of looking through and through anyone he spoke to, a thin Roman nose with a bridge that generally had a bit of the skin off (the remains of his last "scrap"), firm upper lip, a tremendous lower jaw, and a neck like a bull. He came in with his swaggering gait and aggressive shoulders, unbuttoning his dripping oilskin and roaring loudly.

"What ho! without! bring hither the toasted crumpet, the congealed juice of the cow, and we will toy with them anon! Varlets, disrobe me, for I am weary with much watching."

"Hast a savoury dish prepared for me, you pen-driving incubus, you blot on the landscape?" he roared again at the China Doll, who stood with eyes opening and shutting and mouth wide open, watching two of the snotties hauling off the Sub's oilskin.

"Where's my toast?" he roared ferociously.

"Here, sir," and the Assistant Clerk patted the Orphan's stomach, and fled for safety to the ship's office, where he knew he would be safe from instant death, because the Fleet Paymaster, though he would "scrap" with anyone, at any time, anywhere else, would not allow any skylarking there; nor would the stern Chief Writer, whose sanctum it was; and they had to keep friends with the Chief Writer, or never a pen-nib or a piece of blotting-paper would they get when they ran short of these things.

Two more snotties came into the gun-room after the China Doll had escaped.

These were the "Lamp-post" and the "Pimple", the tallest and the shortest in the Mess—the Pimple a little chap with a broad flat face, and a tiny red nose in the middle of it. He was the Navigator's "doggy", and that communicative and ingenious officer was always giving him the latest news—news which he, more often than not, invented himself. The joy of the Pimple's existence was to have some "news" to tell the others. He was a bully in a very small way, and extremely deferential to the Sub and the ward-room officers.

The Lamp-post was a tall, stooping snotty with sloping shoulders; his clothes were always too small for him, and his long thin arms and legs were always in his own way and in that of everyone else. Set him down at a piano and he was marvellous; the joy of his life was to be asked to play the ward-room piano. He could play anything he had ever heard; and inside his aristocratic head were more brains than the rest of the snotties possessed between them, the only one who did not know that being himself.

The whole of the Honourable Mess—with the exception of the escaped China Doll—being now assembled, seven-bell tea pursued its usual course—a cross between a picnic and a dog-fight—until the bugle sounded "man and arm ship", and there was a hurried scramble for oilskins and caps as all, except Uncle Podger, dashed away to their stations.

The ship had now cleared the Isle of Wight and felt the force of the gale. She began to pitch and roll heavily as the heavy seas threw themselves against her starboard bow and rushed along her side.

A minute or two after the "man and arm ship" bugle had sounded, the China Doll strolled jauntily in and started afresh with his afternoon tea.

"When you, Mr. Assistant Clerk, have served as long as I have," commenced Uncle Podger gravely, "you may perhaps learn to realize that cheeking your seniors is punishable by death, or such other punishment as is hereinafter mentioned."

"Pass us the sugar, Podgy, there's a good chap," grinned that very insubordinate officer, as a lurch of the ship threw the sugar-basin into the Clerk's lap.

"Man and arm ship" having passed off satisfactorily, the ship went to "night defence" stations, and the bugle sounded "darken ship".

Barnes, the purple-faced marine servant, still in his shirt-sleeves, came in and solemnly closed down the dead-lights, screwing the steel plates over the glass scuttles, and then proceeded to clear away the debris of seven-bell tea.

Most of the snotties now trooped down from the upper deck to warm themselves round the stove.