to the town on the north. There was no
possibility of making a mistake, because you could see the semaphore
from anywhere, and you would know when you got to the town because the
road stopped there. The various divisions of the ship were to compete
against each other. If you came in first you were to be given a ticket
numbered "one"; if second, a ticket numbered "two," and so on; and the
division which had the smallest total of pips at the end would be the
winner.

At 8.15 the ship's pinnace landed the gunner on the town jetty at the
north end of the island. He had come to deal with the competitors when
they arrived at the winning-post. He had brought with him the bo'sun and
the carpenter, his own mate, the bo'sun's mate and the carpenter's
mate, four P.O.'s, the sergeant of Marines, a few leading stokers and
half-a-dozen hands; fifty fathoms of hawser-laid four-inch white rope;
six stout stakes (ash); bags, canvas, twelve (one to collect the tickets
earned by each division); and one thousand eight hundred tickets,
numbered from one to one thousand eight hundred. (There were only six
hundred and fifty runners, but it is well to be on the safe side.)

He dug his stakes into the ground in a V-shaped formation just beyond
the place where the road ended and almost opposite the first cottage.
Further north he posted his canvas bags, which he fixed at a convenient
height above the ground by depending them from the necks of his
subordinates. He then rigged his rope around the stakes in such a way
that the runners, entering the wide end of the V, would be shepherded
one by one through a narrow aperture at the bottom, thus avoiding all
suspicion of overcrowding in giving out the tickets. He explained his
plan of campaign to his party and took up his post at the foot of the V.

Scarcely had he done so when the A.P. appeared upon the scene. He had
brought with him a few friends--a couple of subs, two or three senior
snotties and the Captain's secretary, a brace of stewards with the
luncheon baskets, and the cutter's crew, who carried between them two
large trellis-work screens which the carpenter had knocked up for him.

He passed the time of day with the gunner, marched fifty yards further
down towards the starting-point and had his screens deposited in the
middle of the road, in such a way that several could enter one end of
the enclosure they formed, but only one at a time could go out at the
other; this, he explained, woul