Crossword-Solution: MESSMAN 7 letters, 6 clues 🏆 scrabble score: 11

One might see as much in the first flicker of the acetylene through a maze of hurrying figures, but as his eyes grew accustomed to the light, the plot would thicken: books orderly and disorderly, on bracketed shelves, cameras great and small in motley confusion, guns and a gramophone-horn, serpentine yards of gas-tubing, sewing machines, a microscope, rows of pint-mugs, until--thud! he has obstructed a wild-eyed messman staggering into the kitchen with a box of ice.

The first hint of this came from the messman and cook who commenced to make a Herculean sweep of the pint-mugs and tin plates.

Cooks of lyric inclination would enliven the company with the score of the latest gramophone opera, and the messman and company would often feel impelled to join in the choruses.

The problem was to recover one's own property and at the same time to avoid the cook scraping the porridge saucepan and the messman scrubbing the table.

The storeman, plastered with snow, reappears hot and triumphant before the cook, but this dignitary is awkwardly kneading the dough of wholemeal scones, and the messman is feeding the fire with seal-blubber to ensure a "quick" oven.