se. Men spread awnings from
the front of the boxes, and watered them steadily from above, so that
the horses might be as cool as possible. All of this was hard, hot
work, to which the men stuck splendidly. Mac, however, had none of it,
for, his turn in the fodder-room being over, he was sent to the bridge
as a signaller. He knew little about the work, but another signaller
was wanted, and he was sent to learn. It was the best of work, clean,
cool and interesting. He did his watches on the bridge, looking down
on everything from that exalted position, swept the fleet constantly
with his glasses, and did what was told him. He peered into the log
book, and closely examined the charts in spare moments when the officer
of the watch was not noticing. He examined everything that was to be
examined, instruments, code books and distant ships, and altogether
thoroughly approved of being a signaller. Often there was work to be
done, in daylight by semaphore arms, or international flag code; and at
night by morse lamps, carefully shaded. Mac fumbled about and fell
over himself at times before he mastered the mysteries of flag
signals--the knots, the halyards and the nautical language.

"AJP tackline J," the Skipper would roar; and two of the signallers
would fall over each other in a hurried attempt to get it all tied
together. And something usually went wrong--the tackline missed out,
two J's put on by mistake, or an M instead of a J. Once Mac failed to
make fast the two ends, and one hoist of flags went trailing out over
the beam. He let them down into the water, so that the weight might
swing them inboard, while the other signaller struggled manfully with a
hayrake to grapple them; and the Captain cursed and Mac flushed all
over, knowing that every ship in the fleet was grinning at them.

Two days out from King George's Sound the fleet was joined by two more
transports with Australian troops from Fremantle. A week later H.M.S.
_Minotaur_ passed down the lines between the ships, and soon after
disappeared over the eastern horizon. The fleet had been sailing with
carefully screened lights, and now precautions were to be doubled, no
dynamos to be run, and navigation lights to be further dulled by
several thicknesses of signal flags across the glass. Various small
happenings left the troops with a sort of impression that there might
be something in the wind. When, therefore, early one tropic morning
the three remai