"Turn out! It's eight bells, and they're tacking ship," he said.
Niven was out of his bunk in a moment, and a burst of hoarse laughter greeted him, when he stood swaying, half-awake, on the deck, in the scantiest of attire, with dismay in his face.
"What's—what's all this?" he said. "Wherever have I got to?"
"Well," said the man called Stickine they had seen in the cabin, "I guess it isn't the Aldebaran. Now, hadn't you better get some of those things on to you?"
Niven struggled into the garments the man pointed to, while Appleby sat on the edge of his bunk and grinned at him, and a group of men sitting in the shadow with plates upon their knees watched them both curiously. There were five or six of them, and all had bronzed faces that had been darkened by frost and ice blink, as well as sun and wind, and there was, he fancied, a difference between these men and any he had seen on board the Aldebaran. He came to know them later—as a few gentlemen who watched affairs of State in Vladivostock, Washington, and Ottawa did—as very daring seamen and fearless free lances, who now and then came home rich with fur seal pelts from the misty seas, in spite of the edicts and gunboats of three great nations. In the meanwhile he saw they were getting a much better breakfast than that usually sent forward on board the Aldebaran, and there was an air of good-humoured comradeship about them. Appleby had by this time got into his trousers, and one of the group stood up when he dropped to the deck.
"Clear away for firing practice with the turret gun!" he said.
Niven stared at him a moment, and then guessing what was meant laughed a little. "No," he said "you've missed it this time."
"Be easy while I try him," said another man, and then slammed his hand down on the table. "Eyes front. 'Tinshun company!"
"Wrong again!" said Appleby who, remembering the warships at Port Parry, surmised that they were taken for lads who had quitted their nation's service without permission.
"Sure, an' how was I to know, when the woods is thick with them!" said the seaman glancing round at his comrades deprecatingly. "Then 'tis watch your topsail leaches and mainsail haul, again."