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.
"Cast loose and provide!" The hitherto motionless figures waiting at the battery spring into activity.