Every one of them had heard from home, everyone had something to talk about, and the gun-room, littered with piles of newly opened newspapers, illustrated weeklies and magazines, was like a bear-garden.
Books, boots, telescopes, school-books and midshipmen's logs, papers, uniform caps, sextant boxes, and oilskins lay in confused heaps on the deck and on the tops of the midshipmen's lockers, where they had been swept off the table during the progress of laying it for dinner.
Several rapid and vigorous passages of arms had already delighted everybody, except, of course, the seniors, who did not appreciate the damage resulting to crockery and glasses, of which they were already running short.
Glover himself, forgetting for a moment his wounded leg (it was now perfectly healed), had thrown himself with unaccustomed vigour into a mêlée at the lower end of the table—the end farthest from where Jeffreys the Sub (the reigning monarch) and the two Assistant Engineers sat—and had disappeared from view under it. Here he was passed from one to another by the gentle process of being kicked from side to side, and his only chance was to hug the first pair of feet he could get hold of and drag the owner down with him.
This he did, and there they lay and struggled as to who should gain the vacant place, whilst their chums joyously drummed on their ribs indiscriminately and laid odds on one or the other appearing first.
Eventually Glover's head did appear first, but a glass of water poured over his head by a chum who was backing the other, and a vigorous pull from below by his opponent made him disappear again, and the table-cloth went with him, dragging with it knives and forks, glasses and plates, in a mighty cataract.
This was too much for the onlookers, and with one accord they disappeared under the table and fought, while the domestics, perfectly accustomed to such a scene, jumped nimbly round, saving plates and glasses as these came to sight amidst the struggling jumble of arms and legs.
Those at the upper end of the table, which fortunately had its own separate cloth, went on with their meal undisturbed—all except Dumpling, who, seizing the mess extras-book, dealt vigorous blows on any undefended portion of anatomy which disclosed itself from beneath the table.
That was Dumpling "all over". Was there a fight or a "scrum", he was always near at hand, whacking indiscriminately, but never venturing a "rough and tumble" himself.
By this time the uproar was so great that Jeffreys, Ogston, and the other Assistant Engineer could literally not hear themselves speak, and the table, heaving once or twice as the midshipmen fought and struggled beneath it, gave ominous signs of capsizing.