noon
Then the crew were divided into three gangs ; and while one party busied itself , under Macintyre , in sorting out , bolting together , and fixing in position those portions which were to effect a transformation in the appearance of the yacht 's bows , another party , under Milsom , was similarly employed in altering the appearance of the vessel 's handsome stern , and the third party , under Perkins , was clothing the brightly varnished masts in tight-fitting canvas coats , painted in the all-pervading grey which was to be the colour of the vessel when the work of disguising her should be complete ; fixing a bogus fighting top on the ship 's foremast ; enclosing the chart-house in a casing which should give it the semblance of a conning tower ; getting a couple of light signalling yards aloft ; and painting the several boats grey . When the men knocked off work at sunset , a great deal had been done ; but it was not until six bells in the forenoon watch next day that the work of transformation was finally completed to Milsom 's satisfaction , and then the _ Thetis _ -- temporarily re-christened the _ Libertad _ -- so strongly resembled a modern two - funnelled torpedo gunboat that she might easily have deceived even a professional eye at a distance of half a mile ; and when , further , a long pennant flaunted itself from the main truck , and the flag of Cuba Libre waved from the ensign staff , the gallant skipper , critically surveying his transmogrified ship from the dinghy , confidently announced that he would defy anybody to trace the most remote resemblance between the vessel upon which his eyes rested and the trim English yacht which had steamed out of Havana harbour on the previous day . On the following Monday morning at daylight the furnace fires were lighted on board the disguised yacht , and at the same time a man with sharp eyes was sent aloft to the fore-masthead to watch the offing over the tops of the low mangrove trees , and give notice of the passage of the _ Maranon _ , should she happen to heave in sight ; but hour after hour passed with no sign of her , unless one of the eastward-going trails of smoke that showed on the horizon during the forenoon happened to emanate from her . They waited patiently until noon , and then , nothing having been seen of the convict ship , Jack and Milsom agreed that it was quite useless to wait any longer ; and half an hour later the fishermen outside the Boca de Maravillas were astonished to see a craft , which some of them described as a cruiser , while the others spoke of her as a gunboat , sweep through the passage and head away north-east , as though to clear the eastern extremity of Cay Sal Bank on her way northward through the Santaren Channel . The vessel showed no colours , but was flying a pennant , and the general opinion was that she was an American man-o ' - war ; though what she had been doing in Sagua la Grande harbour , or how she had got there , nobody seemed able to guess . But although , to the unsophisticated fishermen of Sagua la Grande , the mysterious warship appeared to be bound north , she was really bound south-east through the Nicholas and Old Bahama channels : and when the yacht had made an offing of some fifteen miles -- by which time she was of course out of sight of the fishermen 's boats , Milsom ordered the helm to be ported and the engines sent full speed ahead , she having by that time run on to a line which the ex-Navy man had pencilled on his chart as the probable course of the convict steamer ; and if that craft had left Havana at the hour arranged , and were steaming at the rate which the harbour-master had anticipated would be her pace , she must now be nearly sixty miles ahead . That was a fairly long lead , certainly ; but there is a big difference between a speed of eight knots and that of twenty-four , and Milsom calculated that , if the _ Maranon _ were really ahead of them , they ought to overtake her in something like three hours .