"You need not get here till eight in the morning," Mr. Timmins said to him as he was about to leave. "The captain said you were living at Dulwich, and that it would take you an hour to get here; so as at present you are a sort of volunteer, it will be quite time enough if you are here by eight. I am glad to see that you are handy at your work; but that I expected. There is no better training for a sailor than a couple of years on board a smack. You learn to turn your hand to everything there very much better than you can on a large craft." CHAPTER VIII. ALEXANDRIA. TEN days' hard work and the _Wild Wave's_ equipment was nearly complete. The riggers were to put the finishing touch to their work that evening, and the carpenters to finish all below, and were to begin in the morning scraping and cleaning the decks, and there then remained only the painting to be done. The captain's usual hour for coming on board was eleven o'clock, but the men were just knocking off for dinner when he arrived. "Well, Mr. Timmins, when do you think we can be ready to take cargo on board?" "Well, sir, it will take them three days to get the decks planed. They are in a beastly state, you see. She must have had a dirty lot on board her on her last voyage, and she has picked up six months' dirt in the docks. Nothing short of planing will get them fit to be seen. Then the painters will take another four days, I should say, perhaps five, as the bulwarks and all the paint on deck must be done." "That makes eight days' work, Mr. Timmins. I suppose we cannot set the painters at work until the carpenters are done?" The mate shook his head. "Decidedly not, if the paint is to be worth looking at, sir. It would be throwing money and time away to begin to paint as long as the chips and dust are flying about." "If we were to get the painting on deck done directly the carpenters knock off we might do the outside while we are taking the cargo in?" "Yes, we might do that," the mate assented; "though even then if it is anything like a dusty cargo the paint wouldn't show up as smooth and clean as one would like to see it." "Well, we can't help that," the captain said. "I have just come from the office, and they have had an offer for a freight, part to Alexandria and part to Smyrna; but they wanted to begin to load at once. I said that was out of the question, but that I thought I could begin to take it on board next Monday." "Well, it will be quick work, sir. However, if you can get them to put a good strong gang of carpenters on board they might get the deck finished off by Wednesday evening. Anyhow, we might have the painters on board on Thursday morning, and if they are sharp they should finish by the time they knock off on Saturday." [Illustration: "WE ARE DESPERATE MEN AND WELL ARMED"]