"After that, it fell dark, with just a little streaky, oily light on the
sea--an' any thin' 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 that 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_.'"
"Ho! Was that the way Antonio looked at it? That shows he 'ad feelin's. To
resoom. Without anyone givin' us orders to that effect, we began to creep
about an' whisper. Things got stiller and stiller, till they was as still
as--mushrooms! Then the bugler let off the 'Dead March' from the upper
bridge.
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