"Askin' permission to proceed," said some one. The gang-planks rattled on to the jetty, and a knot of workmen began casting off wires from the bollards.
"Stand clear!" shouted a warning voice. The ropes slid across the tarred planking and fell with a sullen splash. Beneath the stern the water began to churn and boil. The ship was under way at last, gliding farther every minute from the watching crowd. The jetty was a sea of faces and waving handkerchiefs: the band on board struck up a popular tune.
In a few minutes she was too far off to distinguish faces. On the fore bridge the Captain raised his cap by the peak and waved it. Somewhere near the turf-scarped fort ashore an answering gleam of white appeared and fluttered for a moment. The lines of men along the upper deck, the guard paraded aft, the cluster of officers on the bridge, slowly faded into an indistinct blur as the mist closed round them. For a while longer the band was still audible, very far off and faint.
After a while the watchers turned and straggled slowly towards the Dockyard Gates.
XVIII.
THE SEVENTH DAY.
The Sub-Lieutenant clanked into the Gunroom and surveyed the apartment critically. The Junior Midshipmen stationed at each scuttle fell to burnishing the brass butterfly nuts with sudden and anxious renewal of energy.
"Stinks of beer a bit," observed the Sub., "but otherwise it's all right. Hide that 'Pink 'Un' under the table-cloth, one of you." As he spoke the notes of a bugle drifted down the hatchway. "There you are! Officers' Call! Clear out of it, sharp!" Hastily they tucked away the possible cause of offence to their Captain, bundled their cleaning-rags into a cupboard, snatched their dirks off the rack, and hurried on deck.
On the quarter-deck the remainder of the Officers were assembling in answer to the summons of the bugle. Frock-coated figures clanked to and fro, struggling with refractory white gloves. Under the supervision of a bearded Petty Officer the Quarter-deck men were hurriedly putting the finishing touches to neatly coiled boats' falls and already gleaming metal-work. It was 9 A.M. on a Sunday forenoon, and the ship was without stain or blemish from her gilded truck to her freshly painted water-line. All the working hours of the previous day—what time the citizen ashore donned "pearlies" or broadcloth and shut up shop—the blue-jacket had been burnishing and scrubbing,—a lick of paint here, there a scrap of gold-leaf or a pound of elbow-grease. And pervading the ship was the comfortless atmosphere of an organisation, normally in a high state of adjustment, strained yet a point higher.
The Commander came suddenly out of the Captain's cabin and nodded to the Officer of the Watch.