The ship was quiet, save for the faint chug-chug of the propeller under the stern and the occasional clang of a shovel in the fire room deep down in the innermost reaches of the ship.  The sun had vanished in a hazy cloud which portended a stiff breeze, but the wind was still gentle, and, as it swept across the decks from off the port quarter, it seemed grateful indeed to those who came from below for a breath of air.

Orders had been issued to darken the decks.  The running lights of red and green were still in the lamp room, and, except for a soft, rosy glow from the binnacle-bowl, there was a blackness of night throughout the upper part of the ship.  Cigars and pipes and cigarettes had been tabooed, and doors were opened in the deck houses only after the inside lights had been lowered to a flickering pin point.

Up on the forward bridge Captain Brownson stood talking in a low voice to the executive officer, Lieutenant Hubbard.  The lurching swing of the ship caused them to sway back and forth against the rail and a metallic sound came from a sword scabbard suspended from the captain’s belt.  The presence of this sword, betrayed by the clatter it made, told a secret to several sailors gathered under the lee of the pilot house, and one said, in an excited whisper: 

“There’s something up, Chips.  The old man is fixed for trouble.  I’m going aft and stand by.”

The speaker started off, but before he had taken ten steps the shrill blast of a bugle suddenly broke the stillness of the night.  The discordant notes rang and echoed through the ship, and, while the sound was still trembling in the air, two score of shadowy figures sprang up from different parts of the deck and scurried toward the ladders leading below.

The transformation was instant and complete.

From a ship stealthily pursuing its way through the darkness—­a part of the mist—­the “Yankee” became the theatre of a scene of the most intense activity.

There was no shouting, no great clamor of sound; nothing but the peculiar shuffling of shoes against iron, the hard panting of hurrying men, the grating of breech-blocks, low muttered orders from officer to man, and a multitude of minor noises that seemed strange and weird and uncanny in this blackness.

A belated wardroom boy, still carrying a towel across his arm, slips from the cabin and hastens forward to his station in the powder division.  The navigator, an officer of the regular navy, whose ideas of discipline are based on cast iron rules, espies the laggard and administers a sharp rebuke.  A squad of marines dash from the “barracks” below and line up at the secondary battery guns on the forecastle.  Some of the marines are hatless and coatless, and one wiry little private shambles along on one foot.  He stumbles against a hatch-coaming and kicks his shoe across the deck.

Suddenly an order comes out of the gloom near the main hatch and is carried from gun to gun.