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Stewards were going about nervously begging shore-going persons to be gone. Steve put out his hand.

He was rigged out in best shore-going clothes tarpaulin hat, blue coat and waistcoat, and duck trousers, with a broad waist-belt of leather.

In the afternoon, the boys somewhat reluctantly got into what they referred to as "shore-going clothes." These consisted of slacks, sport shirts, light casual jackets, and loafers. Steve had a bag packed. They got into his car, a late-model convertible, and headed for Cambridge. The plane, a small twin-engine craft, was late coming from Norfolk.

It was not in order to impress such people as must undoubtedly live behind those faded red curtains that he had unpacked from the state-room locker his shore-going hat, high, and of fair, round shape, such as is only to be bought in the shadow of Limehouse steeple. The house was uninviting. It had a furtive, dishonest look about it. Captain Cable saw this.

Then by this time you probably know a little something of the ways that shore-going departments invent to worry us poor fellows to sea, He held up the hose-pipe thing. 'You've seen this before, Willoughby? "'Oh yes, sir, says Willoughby."

His hat was carefully brushed and of hard, black felt. It had perhaps been the height of fashion in Sunderland five years earlier. He wore no gloves Captain Cable drew the line there. As for the rest, he had put on that which he called his shore-going rig. "And yourself?" he answered, mechanically.

A tolerable spell of bad weather then came on, which in one sense was of essential service, by contributing greatly to assist the first lieutenant's arrangements, though it discomfited most grievously the apple-pie order of those disturbers of his peace, the shore-going, long-coated gentry, our passengers, whom the sailors, in their coarse but graphic vocabulary, call "dog robbers," from their intercepting the broken meat on its way to the kennel from their master's table.

As for Captain Bunting and Bill Jones, they stuck to each other to the last, like two limpets, and both of them stuck to the sea like fish. No shore-going felicities could tempt these hardy sons of Neptune to forsake their native element again.

Most shore-going people, after a look at a fleet of our destroyers, would not mark them high up for safe ships. They are too long and slim and floppety-like. But no one can tell their officers and crews anything like that. They have tried them out and know.

As our boat slipped silently forward up this leafy lane, a thin white "feather" in her mouth alone breaking the steely surface of the stream, the men rested from their work and began, as sailors will, to put on their shore-going clothes, the while they chatted in low tones over the profits of the voyage.