"You are a rotter, Cheese-mite. You might have told us. You knew it all the time," they said. "We thought we must come in khaki."
"I couldn't tell that you were coming like that, and it was a jolly sight too late for you to go back and shift," the Cheese-mite explained.
"My aunt!" the Orphan said to Bubbles as he read his paper; "wooden boards to be fitted inside the glass windows of cabins. Whatever's that for?"
"Splinters, I expect. When we're chock-full of Tommies, some will have to crowd below, and a bullet coming in and smashing the glass would fling the bits all round."
"They don't expect us to have a warm time—do they?"
"Not half!" Bubbles grinned.
"SCREENED LANTERNS!"
They soon stowed away their khaki and shifted into blue uniform, and for the next two days fitted out their boats with maxims, two boxes of belts, towing-spans[#] over the sterns (as on the occasion of the first landing), fitting shields round the steering-wheels of those boats which had none, making screens for hand-lanterns, testing their steam-pumps, and seeing that the thirty or forty items down on their "lists" were on board.
[#] Towing-span, a rope or wire passing all round a boat under her gunwales, with a hook secured to the bight at the stern. The painter or tow-rope of a boat to be towed is secured to this hook.