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Her decks were as clean as scrubbers, holystones, sand, and perspiring blue-jackets could make them, and woe betide the careless sailor who defiled their sacred whiteness with a spot of paint, or the stoker who left the imprint of a large and greasy foot on emerging into the fresh air from his labours in the engine-room or stokehold.
After all, there was not very much to be done in the way of preparation; a couple of hours' work next day by Macintyre and his crew at the portable forge down in the stokehold, and everything was ready for the work which was to commence as soon as possible after ten o'clock that night.
"Now we'll get 'em.... Lord!" in a piercing undertone as some misguided humorist in the cruiser's stokehold inconsiderately allowed a puff of black smoke to issue forth from the foremost funnel, completely to obliterate the strings of flags. The Leading Signalman, not being a thought reader as well as a conjurer, put down his telescope with a grunt until the pall cleared away.
It was nearly full moon, the night was calm, and the flowing tide rippled among the mangrove roots. Clammy vapor drifted about the ship and big drops fell from the rigging and splashed upon the deck. A plume of smoke went nearly straight up from the funnel, and now and then the clang of furnace-slice and shovel rose from the stokehold, for Mayne hoped to float the vessel next tide.
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