“‘Which is the precise landfall I wish ’im to make,’ says Number One.’ It’ll take all ’ands and the Captain of the Head to clean up after ’im.’ “‘They won’t grudge it,’ says the old man. ‘Just as soon as it’s dusk we’ll overhaul our tramp friend an’ waft him over.’ “Then a sno—midshipman—Moorshed was is name—come up an’ says somethin’ in a low voice. It fetches the old man. “‘You’ll oblige me,’ ’e says, ‘by takin’ the wardroom poultry for _that_. I’ve ear-marked every fowl we’ve shipped at Madeira, so there can’t be any possible mistake. M’rover,’ ’e says, ‘tell ’em if they spill one drop of blood on the deck,’ he says, ‘they’ll not be extenuated, but hung.’ “Mr. Moorshed goes forward, lookin’ unusual ’appy, even for him. The Marines was enjoyin’ a committee-meetin’ in their own flat. “After that, it fell dark, with just a little streaky, oily light on the sea—an’ anythin’ more chronic than the _Archimandrite_ I’d trouble you to behold. She looked like a fancy bazaar and a auction-room—yes, she almost looked like a passenger-steamer. We’d picked up our tramp, an’ was about four mile be’ind ’er. I noticed the wardroom as a class, you might say, was manoeuvrin’ _en masse_, an’ then come the order to cockbill the yards. We hadn’t any yards except a couple o’ signallin’ sticks, but we cock-billed ’em. I hadn’t seen that sight, not since thirteen years in the West Indies, when a post-captain died o’ yellow jack. It means a sign o’ mourning the yards bein’ canted opposite ways, to look drunk an’ disorderly. They do. “‘An’ what might our last giddy-go-round signify?’ I asks of ’Op. “‘Good ’Evins!’ ’e says, ‘Are you in the habit o’ permittin’ leathernecks to assassinate lootenants every morning at drill without immejitly ’avin’ ’em shot on the foc’sle in the horrid crawly-crawly twilight?’” “‘Yes,’ I murmured over my dear book, ‘_the infinitely lugubrious crepuscule. A spectacle of barbarity unparalleled—hideous—cold-blooded, and yet touched with appalling grandeur_.’”