The Gunroom

by Charles Morgan

“Fall in again,” Krame was saying. “Fall in!”

They stood in line, awaiting the resumption. It seemed as though more would be unendurable; but John’s glance at the clock, combined with his knowledge that the Evolutions would continue until the Mess was compulsorily closed, showed him that as yet they had but began. Hitherto they had been called upon only to act singly, and the Gunroom’s limited space had added nothing to their troubles, but now an obstacle race was being planned. Of this John had had previous experience. He knew that it meant fighting with his own friends in an attempt not to be last.

The course, as designed by Krame, was long and difficult. They were to go out of the Gunroom, aft through the Chest Flat, through a watertight door on the bulkhead, on to the half-deck, into the Smoking Casemate, round the pedestal of the gun, out of the Casemate, for’ard through the Chest Flat and into the Gunroom again by the after door. Arrived there, they were to pass between the stove and the wall, over the table from port to starboard, between the settee and the table’s edge, under the table from starboard to port, along the deck to the Gunroom’s after end, under the table from aft for’ard, over it from for’ard aft, and out of the Gunroom once more. They had then to go by way of the Chest Flat ladder on to the upper deck and to the after twelve-pounder gun in the port battery. Here they would find a signal pad, from which each was to detach a sheet. With this prize they were to run to the Gunroom, and, as Krame remarked, the Lord help the hindmost....

The six of them started together. They fought at the narrow door of the Gunroom. They sped through the dim light of the Chest Flat, doubled up and with knees bent that they might pass below the hammocks slung there by the marines. In the Casemate it was impossible for more than one at a time to pass between the pedestal and the armour beneath the gun-port. Elstone stood above them as they wriggled through the narrow space, thrusting each other aside, tearing their clothes, hitting their heads and knees and elbows against the projections of brass and steel. They reeled out of the Casemate, not now packed close, but divided by the intervals that the delay at the gun-pedestal had created. John was the second to reach the Gunroom. When, having passed behind the stove, he was about to go over the table, he heard them shouting at Fane-Herbert, who had entered last. But none dared pause. Over the table they went, and headforemost on to the deck beneath it; under and aft, under the table again, canes urging on those in rear, and falling haphazard across knuckles and arms. Already John was spent; all were spent. Their legs trembled beneath them. They coughed amid the dust. Under a hail of blows they battled at the Gunroom door, swept beyond it through the Chest Flat for the third time, and rattled up the ladder into the cool, sweet air of the upper deck. At the battery gun, during the few moments he had to wait before he could tear his sheet from the signal pad, John caught sight of the great phosphorescence of the sea. Above him the masts tapered to a dark, clear sky. Smoke drove ghost-like from the funnels. For’ard the lamps were gleaming in the charthouse windows, and near at hand, in the uncertain light of the battery, seamen stood smoking round their spitkids, gazing with an expression of amusement and contempt at their officers being licked into shape.

As John raced away with his sheet of paper he heard Fane-Herbert muttering to himself: “Oh be damned to them! I’m last, any way. I’m not going to hurry any more.”

They burst into the Gunroom, thrust their sheets of paper into Krame’s hands, and stood there trembling with exhaustion and pain. Dyce seemed to be on the verge of losing control. His face was working. They had fear that his nerves would yield, that he would break, as can even the strongest men, into ungovernable tears. The atmosphere was charged with a strange emotion—the emotion that, as it were a sudden fever, sometimes grips a mob, cutting it free from the restraints men impose upon themselves, casting it back into the primitive conditions of self-defence and self-assertion. If Dyce had given way, his collapse might well have been a signal for forgetfulness of the difference between senior and junior midshipmen, for a complete abandonment of control. Near him John could hear Driss—of all of them the youngest in appearance, the most clearly a simple-minded, high-spirited boy—saying over and over again to himself: “My God, I want to kill! I want to kill!” His fingers were twined among the tablecloth, as if thereby he held them in check. Now he was making odd, inarticulate sounds in his throat. John saw his face, and turned quickly from the flaming bitterness he read there. There were passions streaming through Driss, passions utterly foreign to his apparent nature, fierce desires, called up from God knew what animal depths, upon which it was not good to look.

Last by thirty seconds, Fane-Herbert entered without signs of haste. And they put him over the table, and pulled out his shirt, and tried to flog the pride out of him. He did not move through it all, and when it was over, with his fine mouth set, he turned away from the faces grinning above the canes.

“Fall in again!” Krame said. “Fall in, I say!”

Evolution followed Evolution: the obstacle race in reverse order; an affair called Torpedoes, that consisted essentially in hurling the junior midshipmen’s bodies along the table against the for’ard bulkhead; and half a dozen others, the product of Krame’s ingenuity. Even the flame in Driss died down. There comes a time when resistance, even mental resistance, disappears. The limbs move as they are told.