Clif laughed ominously.
“I suppose they meant us,” he replied. “Well, we won’t wait until they look us up.”
While speaking he had taken his trousers from beneath the hammock mattress and was donning them.
“Call Trolley and the rest,” he added. “We will make a night of it ourselves. Methinks the old Monongahela will see some queer doings before the sun rises again.”
Toggles gave a chuckle and slipped under the hammocks to the other side of the deck. While he was away summoning reinforcements, Clif made a hurried scout in the direction of the orlop deck hatchway, an opening in the forward part of the berth deck.
The orlop on board a man-of-war of the Monongahela type is, it may be well to know, a place in the bow below the level of the berth deck. It is subdivided into small storerooms and has a narrow hallway into which the rooms open.
As it is down in the extreme lower part of the ship, away from the sleeping crew, it is an ideal place for certain ingenious ceremonies known in colleges as hazing.
When Clif reached the edge of the hatchway, Nanny was just in the act of making the vociferous objections described at the beginning of this chronicle. His subsequent quieting at Crane’s hands, and that cadet’s remarks on the subject came plainly to Clif’s ears.