The ship's company girded up its loins and awaited further orders.

The course was decided upon. It ran from the signalling station on the
south of the island straight 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