At the last stroke of six bells in the Forenoon Watch the Marine bugler drew himself up stiffly, as one on whom great issues hung, and raising his bugle sent the imperious summons echoing along the upper deck. Clattering forward along the battery he halted at the break of the forecastle and repeated the blast; then, shaking the moisture from the instrument, he wiped his mouth on the back of his hand and strutted aft. He had sounded "Captain’s Defaulters." An Able Seaman burnishing a search-light on the boat-deck heard the strident bugle-call and winced. Hurriedly he replaced his cleaning rags, and with a moistened forefinger and thumb adjusted a dank curl that peeped beneath his cap. He shared the belief, not uncommon among sailor-men, that the Captain’s judgment at the defaulter-table is duly swayed by the personal appearance of the delinquent. Eyeing his inverted reflection in the big concave mirror, he screwed his face into an expression of piteous appeal, and, cap in hand, repeated several times in varying notes of regretful surprise: "I ’adn’t ’ad no more’n a drop, sir, w’en I come over all dizzy." The rehearsal concluded, he flung himself pell-mell down the ladder. On the way he met a messmate ascending, who remonstrated in the brusque parlance of the tar. "In the bloomin’ rattle, I am," explained the disturber of traffic. "Wha’s up, then?" The other made a little upward gesture with his elbow and gave a laugh of pleasant retrospection. "’Strewth!" he supplemented. "Wasn’t ’arf blind, neither," implying that when last ashore he had looked upon the cup when it was very ruddy indeed. At the screen door to the quarter-deck he overtook a companion in misfortune _en route_ to "toe pitch." This was a frightened Second-class Stoker, harried aft by one of the Ship’s Police at the shambling gait officially recognised as the "steady double." Together they saluted and stepped on to the quarter-deck, where, already standing between his escort, a sullen-eyed deserter, captured the previous day, scowled into vacancy. The new-comers took their places in the melancholy line, stood easy, and commenced to preen themselves furtively, after the manner of sailors about to come under the direct eye of authority. Then the Captain’s Clerk arrived with a bundle of papers in his hand. "All ready, Master-at-Arms?"