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.
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