Every one was busy, and a good many of the dock-men were up aloft giving the finishing touches to the rigging, a great deal of which seemed to be new. But somehow, as an idler, I seemed to be in everybody’s way, and was constantly being requested to make way, or stand aside, or my leave was requested in tones rather insulting, as I thought then.
Suddenly I remembered that General Crucie had said that a draft of men was going out in the vessel, in charge of Captain Brace.
“I wonder where the men are,” I said to myself; and at last, as I had looked in vain for red or blue uniforms, I asked one of the sailors.
“Swaddies?” he said. “Oh yes. Forrard. There they are.”
He pointed toward the head of the vessel as he hurried off in answer to a shout from a red-faced man who was directing a gang of sailors hauling at something up aloft which he called a yard, and I went forward to have a look at the smart detachment of soldiers I was to help to command.
The illusion was soon swept away, for the detachment was composed of about fifty unhappy, thin-looking men in white flannel jackets, sitting about or leaning over the bulwarks, smoking and watching the dock quay where stood a group of slatternly-looking women, staring wearily at the ship; and now and then one of them would wave a hand or a handkerchief to the men in white flannel, a salute as often as not evoking no response, though sometimes a man would take off his ugly blue woollen forage-cap by the red worsted tuft at the top, give it a twist, and put it on again.
“This cannot be the detachment,” I thought, and then, thinking that the best way to know was to ask, I said to the nearest man—
“Would you mind telling me whether you belong to Captain Brace’s detachment?”
“What?”
A surly, half-insolent question in reply to mine, which I repeated.