The brass work of the binnacle and about the tiller, as well as the copper belaying-pins, were as brightly polished as if they had just come from the foundry.

The decks were pure white, and smooth.
The masts were clean-scraped and varnished, except at the cross-trees and truck, which were painted black.

The standing and running rigging was in the most perfect order, and the sails white as snow.

In short, everything, from the single narrow red stripe on her low black hull to the trucks on her tapering masts, evinced an amount of care and strict discipline that would have done credit to a ship of the Royal Navy.

There was nothing lumbering or unseemly about the vessel, excepting, perhaps, a boat, which lay on the deck with its keel up between the fore and main masts.