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THE MATE OF THE GOOD SHIP YORK

Or, The Ship's Adventure


[Illustration: "HARDY FREQUENTLY TURNED TO LOOK AT THE _YORK_."

(_See Page 261_)]


THE MATE OF THE GOOD SHIP YORK

Or, The Ship's Adventure

by

W. CLARK RUSSELL

Author of "The Wreck of the Grosvenor,"
"Marooned," "A Marriage
at Sea," "My Danish Sweetheart," etc.

With a frontispiece by W. H. Dunton


[Illustration: Logo]






Boston: L. C. Page &
Company, Publishers

Copyright, 1900
by S. S. McCLure Company

Copyright, 1902
by L. C. Page & Company
(Incorporated)

All rights reserved

Eighth Impression, April, 1907

Colonial Press
Electrotyped and Printed by C. H. Simonds & Co.
Boston, Mass., U. S. A.




Contents

CHAPTER                             PAGE
    I. JULIA ARMSTRONG                11

   II. BAX'S FARM                     29

  III. THE EAST INDIA DOCK ROAD       48

   IV. THE "GLAMIS CASTLE"            66

    V. CAPTAIN LAYARD                 83

   VI. THE SHIP'S LOOKOUT            101

  VII. THE FRENCH MATE               119

 VIII. LOST!                         137

   IX. THE INDIAMAN'S BOAT           152

    X. THE CAPTAIN AND THE GIRL      170

   XI. THE CAPTAIN'S BIRTHDAY        187

  XII. JULIA CALLS "JOHNNY!"         206

 XIII. THEY MEET                     219

  XIV. HARD WEATHER                  239

   XV. ABOARD AGAIN                  256

  XVI. PRACTICAL SEAMANSHIP          273

 XVII. THE BOAT-FULL                 293

XVIII. HAIL, COLUMBIA!               313

  XIX. THE CAMILLA OF THE SEA        333




The Mate of the Good Ship York

Or, the Ship's Adventure




CHAPTER I.

JULIA ARMSTRONG


A house with a wall, which would be blank but for a door and two
steps, stands in a very pretty lane. The habitable aspect of the house
is on the other side, and commands a wide prospect of sloping fields
and river and green sweeps soaring into eminences thickly clothed
with trees. A brass plate upon this lonely door bears the simple
inscription, "Dr. Hardy."

The lane runs down to a bridge, and the flowing river carries the eye
along a scene of English beauty: the bending trees sip the water's
surface; the bright meadow stretches from the bank, and is tender and
gay with the tints and movement of cattle; lofty trees sentinel the
lane, and in the early summer the notes of the thrush and the blackbird
are clear and sweet.

One autumn evening, at about seven o'clock, the door bearing Doctor
Hardy's plate was pulled open, and a young fellow, with something
nautical in his lurch and dress, stepped into the road, and began to
fill his pipe. Immediately behind him appeared another figure--he was a
thin, pale, gentlemanly-looking man, and his white hair was parted down
the middle. He gazed with a great deal of kindness, not unmingled with
the shadow of sorrow, at the young fellow who was filling his pipe, and
said:

"You have a pleasant evening for your walk."

"I am sorry to leave this place," said the young man. "There is nothing
like this to be met on the open ocean." And whilst he pulled out a
matchbox his eyes went away to the green, evening-clad hills, which
showed between the trees in a sweep of sky-line pure as the rim of a
coloured lens; and now two or three of the stars which shine upon our
country, and which we all know and love, were trembling in the dark
blue of the coming shadow.

The young man lighted his pipe with several hard sucks not wanting in
emotion.

"God bless you, father," said he. "I shall be turning up and finding
all well within twelve months, I hope."

"God bless you, my dear son, and I pray that he may continue to watch
over you," said the white-haired old gentleman in a shaking voice.

The young man started to walk with his face set toward the hill. Doctor
Hardy stood in the doorway watching him until he had disappeared round
the bend. He then stepped back and closed the door upon himself.

It would not be dark for a little while, and even when the dusk came
up over the hills a piece of moon would float up with it. The water
flowing in the valley lay in short lines and sweet curves in a moist
dim rose. A clock was striking; a wagon was rumbling in a weak note of
thunder past some low-lying hedge that skirted a road. The young fellow
stepped out leisurely with his pipe hanging at his teeth; he was going
away to London and was walking to the station, and was without even
a stick. He was square, robust, a nautical type of young man, clean
shaven, of a cheerful cast of face, but with something singular in
the expression of his eyes owing to the upper lids being mere streaks
and scarcely visible, and the coloured matter black and brilliant, so
that when he stared at you his look would have been fierce but for
the qualifying expression of the rest of his face. He walked with a
slight roll of the sea in his gait, and if you had noticed him at all
you might have supposed him a sailor. Yet a man need not be a sailor
to look like one. I have met nautical-looking men who would not be
sailors for the value of the cargoes of twenty voyages. On the other
hand, I have met sailors who, had they called themselves greengrocers'
assistants or tailors' cutters, would have been believed.

This young fellow, smoking his pipe and walking along through the
fine autumn-gathering evening, was the only son of the white-haired
gentleman who had just withdrawn into his house. He had been to sea
since he was fourteen years of age, and his name was George Hardy, and
he was now chief mate of the _York_, an Australian clipper, twelve
hundred and fifty tons burthen, then lying in the East India Docks. He
was going to join her, and why he was without baggage was because he
had sent his chest aboard in advance.

Formerly the railway station stood not very far distant from Doctor
Hardy's house; but all about here was unimportant--it was more a
district than a place. Hardy's patients, for instance, were scattered
over miles, and, like the plums in a sailor's pudding, the houses were
scarcely within hail of one another. The railway company, two years
before this date, removed the station seven miles higher up the line,
to the great consternation of the unfortunate man who had purchased
the "Fox Railway Inn," then conveniently seated within a short walk
of the station. Figure his horror when one morning he saw men with
pickaxes uprooting the platform. The "Fox Inn" was left as desolate as
Noah's Ark on Mount Ararat, and it needed three men to go through the
bankruptcy court before matters began to look a little brighter for
this unfortunate tavern.

There was plenty of time, and Hardy did not walk very fast. He enjoyed
the sweets of the country, all the aromas of the darkling land which
came along in the faint, cold, evening air. When a sailor arrives from
a long voyage he makes up his mind to button the flaps of his ears
to his head, and to steer a straight course for the deepest inshore
recess. He does not do so because he usually brings up at the nearest
grog-shop on his arrival, or makes his way to the boarding-house where
he was robbed and stripped when he was last in the place, and in a
short time he is away at sea again with no clothes but what he stands
up in, and no bed but the bundle of hay or straw which he flings, with
curses deep as the sea and dark as the ship's hold, down the hatch
under which he sleeps. But it is an illustration of his hatred of salt
water that he should resolve to bury himself deep inshore when he lands.

George Hardy did not belong to the class who live in boarding-houses
and wear knives on their hips. He was the son of a gentleman, he was a
man of taste and feeling which his seafaring life had heightened and
enlarged; he had the eye of an artist and the spirit of a poet, and was
too good for a calling that does not require these qualities.

The road for about four miles was very lonely. One little cottage on
the right stood in an orchard and grounds which sloped to a hedge
almost three-quarters of a mile down. He met nobody; once or twice a
squirrel ran across the pale dust; the birds had gone to bed, there was
no song; the sun had sunk, and the evening had deepened into the first
of the night.

Suddenly, some distance ahead of him on the left, Hardy spied what was
undoubtedly a human figure. It lay in a dry, shallow ditch with the
upper part of its body a little raised, resting upon the bank under
the hedge. As he approached he saw that it was a woman, and then that
it was a girl in a straw hat with nothing near her in the shape of
bag, bundle, or dog. She must be some wearied wayfarer who had seated
herself and fallen asleep. But he did not believe this, either; on the
contrary, when he was close to the figure he imagined it to be a corpse.

He put his pipe in his pocket, and stood looking at her. There was
light enough to see by, but not very distinctly. He stooped and peered,
and then started and exclaimed:

"By Jove, it's Julia Armstrong! What's come to her?"

He looked up and down the road; not a soul was in sight. He felt her
ungloved hands--they were cold. Her straw hat was tilted on her head,
which rested not on the brim of her hat but on her hair, that was
dressed in a mass behind and pillowed her. Her eyes were not closed,
and if she was not dead she was in a swoon. He got beside her and
lifted her head, all the while wondering what she was doing--dead or
in a faint--in this ditch. He then pulled out a small flask of brandy
diluted with water, and as her pure white teeth lay a little apart he
managed to pour a dram into her mouth. He chafed her hands, and in a
sort of way caressed her by holding her to him. He also put her hat
straight, and wetting his handkerchief with a little brandy and water
he damped her brow, now taking notice that she was not dead by sundry
tokens of life of a most elusive and subtle character, whereof her
breathing was not one, for he could not detect a stir of air on the
back of his hand betwixt her lips, nor the faintest heave of her pretty
breast.

She was Julia Armstrong, and, strange to say, an old love of his--I
mean, he had lost his heart to her a little time before he went to sea,
when he was scarcely more than a schoolboy. Then he went to sea, and
when he came home she had gone somewhere on a visit, and so of the next
voyage; but when he returned from his fourth trip round the world he
met her, and found the old beautiful charm again in her; but in a week
she left to occupy some post as a governess thirty miles away, and when
they met again it was here by this roadside.

What had captivated the young fellow with this girl who lay unconscious
in the fold of his arm? She had a pleasant, interesting face, beheld
even through the death pallor that lay upon it; but she was not
beautiful or even pretty. Her hair was abundant and fair, inclining, as
you might even judge by that light, to auburn. But it was not her face
nor hair, it was her figure that had excited admiration into passion
in the young sailor. Her shape and involuntary poses were saucy and
perfect beyond expression. She always carried her hat on one side of
her head--"cock-billed," as the sailors call it; she had a trick of
planting her hands on her hips; her limbs were beautifully shaped,
and her short skirts exposed as much or little of them as her figure
required. No dancer of exquisite art could have played her legs as this
girl did, yet all her movements were involuntary and unconscious, and
therein lay the sweetness, for had a hint of study been visible in her
motions the whole maidenly and fairy-like illusion would have hardened
into acting.

Young Hardy had thought of the Vivandière, of the Fille-du-Regiment,
when he looked at her. He could not have told you why. Was it the
sauciness, that was not wanton, of the repose of her hands upon her
hips? the unconsciously crossed leg when standing? the cock-billed hat,
or tam-o'-shanter, that made you feel the need of music? the fixed gaze
that was not staring but pensive? the sudden change of attitude that
was like the cloud shadow upon a rose on which the sun had rested? What
had all this to do with the Vivandière? But Hardy had got the word and
the idea into his head, and when he thought of her at sea 'twas as
though she was walking with a regiment with a little barrel of cordial
waters upon her back.

Again he looked up the road and then down the road; he could hear
a cart in a lane that ran parallel, but nobody was visible. He was
beginning to wonder what he was to do--whether he had the physical
strength to carry this fine girl in his arms four miles, that is, to
his father's house--when she sighed, stirred like an awakening sleeper,
sighed again, and opened a pair of gray eyes full upon his face.

"Do you know me?" he asked.

"Where am I?" she answered, and with a sudden effort she raised her
form out of his arm, but in a moment fell back again in sheer weakness.

"Don't you remember your old friend George Hardy?" he said.

She looked at him with that sort of intentness which you will sometimes
see in a baby's eyes, and her lips drooped into a scarcely perceptible
smile.

"What am I doing here?" she asked, and she gazed round her, deeply
puzzled.

He gave her a little more brandy, which she certainly stood in need of,
and looking at her without speaking, he waited until more mind came
into her face; and now she made an effort to rise.

"Keep still until you have come right to," said he. "I wish some old
cart would come along to give us a lift to my father's."

"Your father's?"

"Doctor Hardy," he answered. "About an hour's walk away."

"Yes, I know," she exclaimed. "If a cart came I would not go."

"My dear Miss Armstrong, what are you doing here?" exclaimed young
Hardy. "All alone in a dead faint in a ditch! Were you returning home?"
And again he looked a little way up and down, thinking to see a handbag
or a parcel, but her hands were as empty as his.

"I'm going to London," she said. "What time is it?"

"I'm going to London, too," said he; "but neither of us will catch the
train we want. Do you mean to walk to London?"

She shook her head, and put her hand in her pocket as though seeking
her purse. What she sought was evidently there.

Now her faculties had come together, but it was clear she must sit a
little longer before attempting to rise; so they sat side by side with
their feet in the dry ditch, and their backs against the hedge.

"Why are you going to London?" he asked.

"I'm leaving home for good," she answered.

"Where's your luggage?"

"I have none," she replied.

"Are you running away from home?" he inquired, beginning to see a
little into this matter.

"I have no home, and I am leaving my father's house of my own accord,"
she replied, animated by a little faint passion. "I could endure the
life no longer--I am the wretchedest girl in the world. Oh, how his
wife has treated me! _You_ once met her."

She struggled with her heart, and some tears ran down her face.

It is true that Hardy had met this stepmother--this second Mrs.
Armstrong--and he had then gathered that the lady and Miss Julia
did not lead the lives of angels in each other's company. In short,
he had heard that Mrs. Armstrong, by her drink, by her language, and
conduct in general, had made a very hell of Captain, or Commander,
Armstrong's home for his daughter. The captain was retired, was poor,
and Mrs. Armstrong had brought him a hundred a year, which was a
godsend. He took life very easily, drank his whisky, smoked his pipe,
and was welcome at several houses in the neighbourhood, where at one
he would get billiards, at another a rubber, at a third a gossip in
which he related his China experiences; and the whisky bottle always
kept him company, though his kindest friend could never say that in all
his time he had seen him drunk once. Doctor Hardy was on good terms
with him, but spoke with strong dislike of Mrs. Armstrong, and of
her treatment of her daughter, that was driving her into seeking and
taking situations, some of a menial sort, and that threatened before
long to break her heart or to send her to the bad, as 'tis called. But
with domestic troubles of this sort people do not choose to concern
themselves, except in exaggerating them in talk by scandalous hints and
opinions.

"I must wait for something to pass that will help me to carry you to
my father's house," said Hardy, looking anxiously at the girl whom he
could not fail to see was weak and exhausted.

"I have already declined," she answered. "I will not return a single
yard in that hateful direction. I shall feel stronger presently. Is
there not another train later on?"

"Not to London."

"I must not miss this," she exclaimed, struggling to rise.

"Look here," said he, keeping her down by gentle pressure of the hand,
"I am going to London and we will go together, but we shall have to
wait until to-morrow. Will not that suit? If you are in a desperate
hurry you can leave early to-morrow. Do you know Bax's farm?"

"Of course I do," she answered, turning her face up the road.

"Bax shall give you a bedroom," said he, "since you refuse to return
with me to my father. A good supper and a good night's rest are the
doctoring you stand in need of. I find you in a dead faint in a ditch,
and so you come under my care, and I am answerable for you. We are old
friends."

She faintly smiled and looked at him.

"You will do exactly what I ask, and at Bax's farm we shall have
leisure for a little talk."

She bowed her head, and he saw that she cried again.

They spied a man at the bottom of the hill coming up. The girl started,
and said, "I am quite strong enough to stand and walk," and she stood
up, one of the most beautiful figures amongst women, with a sweet
ingenuous sauciness which was the flavouring grace of her happy hours,
distinguishable still, even in this time of misery and illness. The man
coming along was a common labourer, but she did not choose that any one
should see her sitting in a ditch.

They walked slowly up the road. She leaned upon his arm and
occasionally stopped to rest, and their talk until they arrived at
the farm was not much; indeed she said little more than that she had
been making up her mind for some weeks to leave her father's house for
ever and to sail to a colony, where she would be willing to accept the
lowest menial office so long as she was independent, and received the
respect that was due to her as a lady. She had left her home that day
in the afternoon, meaning to walk to the station and take the train
to London, whence she intended to write to her father to forward her
clothes in the box which stood ready corded in her bedroom. When she
had walked some distance--it might be five miles--a sudden faintness
seized her, and she sat down under a hedge to rest. She then must have
fainted, and knew no more until she returned to consciousness, and
found herself resting against Hardy.

This talk brought them to Bax's farm.

It was not a farm, though it was called so. Bax sold milk and garden
produce and eggs, and the countryside called his house a farm. It had
two gables and a thatched roof, small latticed windows, and a door
that opened direct into the sitting-room. In the summer the house was
enchanting with its flowers and shrubbery and the climbing green stuff
about it, and then the concert of the woods thrilled in the trees
beyond, and the air was full of sweet smells.

Bax was a man of about sixty, immensely stout behind and in front,
with a face that seemed powdered with pale, scissors-shorn whisker,
and small eyes which had drowned their lustre in beer. He stood in
the doorway in his shirt-sleeves smoking a pipe, and was not at all
surprised when the couple passed through the gate and approached the
porch. He merely pulled out his pipe, and said:

"Good evening, Mr. Hardy; good evening, Miss Armstrong. Come for a bit
of a sit down? Will y' 'ave chairs here? or the sitting-room's at your
sarvice."

"How d'ye do, Mr. Bax?" said Hardy.

"Good evening, Mr. Bax," said Miss Armstrong, in a faint voice.

"Take us into your sitting-room," said Hardy; and they entered the door
and were in the sitting-room at once--a cosy little room, hung with
portraits of Bax and his dead wife and daughter, decorated with a small
mantel-glass in fly-gauze, and hospitable with a round table on one leg
and three claws, the top beautified by a knitted cover.

Julia sank into a little armchair. Bax was beginning to gaze at her
earnestly; he knew her perfectly well, knew her father also, who
frequently looked in for a drink; also he knew Hardy perfectly well,
likewise his father, who attended him when he was attacked by gout.

"Mr. Bax," said Hardy, putting his cap down upon the table, "we have
come to occupy your house this night."

"Joost been married, have yer?" asked Bax, slipping his pipe into his
waistcoat pocket.

"No," answered Hardy, gravely; "Miss Armstrong is leaving her home for
good. If you don't guess why, I'll tell you presently."

Bax looked knowing; he looked more knowing an instant later when a fine
Persian kitten ran up his back and curled its tail upon his shoulder,
for then two pairs of eyes were fastened upon Hardy, the kitten, being
no beer drinker, gazing more steadfastly than the other.

"Have you a bedroom that you can place at Miss Armstrong's disposal?"

"Is there no later train?" asked Julia.

"We would not take it if there were," replied Hardy.

Of course Bax, having lost his wife, must consult his daughter, and
when he had opened a door and shouted a little for Mary Ann there
arrived a woman who looked old enough to be Bax's mother. Her face
seemed to be dredged by time; the _arcus senilis_ was more defined in
her than in Bax; she looked seventy years old, and was but thirty-eight.

She curtseyed to the visitors, and then, after pursing her lips and
knitting her brow, she replied to her father that Miss Armstrong could
have the spare room over the sitting-room.

"Can I have a bedroom?" said Hardy.

Bax mused, looking at his daughter, and then said, "Not unless you
sleeps along with me."

"With you?" laughed Hardy, looking at his stomach. "How much of you
lies in bed all at once? That'll do for me," said he, and he jerked his
head at a wide hair-sofa.

The father, the kitten, and the daughter looked a little strangely at
Hardy and Julia Armstrong, as though before proceeding they wanted to
see things in a clearer light. Hardy understanding this, spoke out with
the bluntness of a sailor.

"Look here, Bax," said he, "I'm going to London to join my ship. I was
bound away to-night, but on the road I fell in with this young lady,
who lay in a swoon."

"Oh, dear, poor thing!" groaned Miss Bax.

"She came to, and I brought her here after learning that she was
leaving her home for good on account of the barbarous behaviour of her
stepmother--"

"Oh, I know, I know," interrupted Miss Bax.

"She was walking to catch the train I was bound by; she is not in a fit
state to travel, Bax. _You_ can see that, ma'am; therefore she shall
sup under this comfortable old roof, and take the rest she needs in the
room you offer her. Her train leaves at ten in the morning, and we will
take it."

The kitten purred as it fretted Bax's cheek. Bax said, "It's all right,
Mr. Hardy, and you shall be made comfortable. What 'ull you 'ave for
supper?"

What would be better than some cold ham and a dish of eggs and bacon,
a dish of sausages in mashed potato, and the half of a beautiful apple
tart, along with a jug of real cream? And for drink there was some
first-class ale kept by Bax for Bax himself, for he held no license,
and his dealings were secret, and if he took money it was a gift for a
kindness.

"Will you come up-stairs and see your room, Miss Armstrong, before I
goes about and gets your supper for you?" exclaimed Miss Bax.

"Have you got no baggage?" inquired old Bax, jerking the kitten on to
the table.

"It will follow me to London," said Miss Armstrong, and she rose and
went up-stairs with Miss Bax.

Hardy sat down upon the sofa, and Bax went to work to lay the cloth.
There was plenty of room at that little table for two. Bax had been
a gardener in a great family, and had often helped the coachman, the
footman, and the butler to wait. He possessed some good old-fashioned
table apparel, and before Miss Armstrong returned the room looked
bright and hospitable with the light of an oil lamp reflected in
cutlery, glass, and cruet-stand.

Julia entered, and Bax walked out. She went and sat beside Hardy,
and the lovely Persian kitten sprang into her lap. Her hair was as
beautiful as her figure, and her gray eyes were full of heart and
meaning. You could not have called her pretty, yet you were sensible of
a charm in her face that had nothing to do with the shape of her nose
or the character of her mouth.

"Do you feel better?" said Hardy.

"Much; I never thought to find myself stopping a night here. Of course,
I have been the means of your losing your train?"

"To-morrow will do just as well," he answered. "Where did you mean to
sleep when you got to London to-night?"

"I should have found a room," she answered.

"Will they send on your luggage if you write for it?"

"Father will," she replied. "Yes, he will do that, but he will not
write to ask me to return. He does not care what becomes of me. He
never cared what I did when I left his house to fill a situation."

Her nostrils enlarged, her eyes looked angry. A little blood visited
her pale cheek. Hardy's memory pictured her father: a middle-sized man
with pale, weak eyes, a chuckling laugh like the gurgle of liquor,
much reference to his ships and to naval things in general, a large
Micawber-like indifference to his existing circumstances, and a quality
of talkativeness about outside matters, such as the queen, the trouble
at Pekin, the discovery of the North Pole, which would make you think
that he did not know what home worries were.

"Bax," said Hardy, "may covertly send along to let them know you are
here."

"What of that?" she exclaimed. "If they were to send twenty men they
would have to drag me to move me. I would not set foot in that house
again if my stepmother lay dead in the gutter opposite the door. It is
my father's fault."

She bit her lip, stroked the kitten, and said, "Oh, it is hard upon a
girl to have a bad father--a weak, selfish, foolish father."

Here Bax came again with a tumbler full of autumn flowers. He placed
them in the middle of the table and went out, looking nowhere, as if
he walked in his sleep; but whilst the door lay open they heard the
spitting of the frying-pan.

"What are you going to do when you get to London?" said Hardy.

"I mean to find a situation on board a ship," she answered.

"What situation do you expect to find?"

"I shall try to get a post as stewardess, or as an attendant upon
a sick person. I cannot pay my passage out even in the steerage,
therefore I must work."

"Now, Miss Armstrong," said Hardy, stroking the kitten's head on her
lap, "it is impossible for me to be rude to you because I want to be,
and mean to be, your friend." She looked at him swiftly, and her eyes
drooped. "Do not misjudge any questions I may put to you. How much
money have you got?"

"Seven pounds, twelve shillings, and--" she drew out a little purse,
opened it, counted some coppers, and added, "fourpence."

"What is that money going to do for you in London?" said Hardy, after a
pause of pity.

"It will support me," she answered, "until I have obtained a situation
on board a ship."

"Situations for girls on board ships are very few," said he. "What part
of the world do you want to sail for?"

"Anywhere, anywhere," she replied. "But it must be to some place where
I can get a living."

"It would not do to sail for China," he exclaimed. "India doesn't
provide much for people whose wants are yours. It must be the Great
Pacific colonies. Aren't there agents and institutions which help young
girls to get away across the sea? This we will inquire into when we
arrive in London."

She looked at him gratefully, and was about to speak, but was
interrupted by Miss Bax, who staggered in with a tray load.




CHAPTER II.

BAX'S FARM


George Hardy and Miss Julia Armstrong sat down to supper at the little
round table; Bax lurked as if he would wait; Hardy said they could
manage very well without him, and the pair fell to. The window was
open, and all the rich, decaying perfumes of the autumn evening floated
into the atmosphere, and sweetened it with the incense of the night.

Hardy looked at his companion, and felt again the delight he used to
take in the contemplation of her shape. The same old suggestion was in
her--that of the Vivandière. But why? He could not have explained, and
neither can I. Every movement was full of beauty and piquancy, and she
wore her hair parted a little on one side.

"Is your bedroom comfortable?" asked Hardy.

"A sweet, old-fashioned little room," she said, "and the bed's a
four-poster. It has curtain rings, and if I tremble in bed they will
rattle, and I shall think it the death-tick, which I hate to hear. Will
that sofa make a comfortable bed for you?"

"You are asking a sailor that question," he answered. "I would be glad
to carry it to sea with me, and sleep all around the world in it. Have
you written a farewell letter to your father?"

"No; I have left him as a spirit might, in utter silence. His wife
will not let him trouble himself. When the time comes for locking up
the bolt will be shot, and he will fill his pipe and fill his glass,
and say to his wife that he is afraid there is some truth in the
story that Mr. Gubbins was telling him about Miss Cornflower and the
Congregational minister. That is the sort of interest he will take in
my not turning up."

She frowned, and put down her knife and fork, and seemed as if she did
not mean to go on eating. Hardy poured out a glass of frothing ale. It
was a fine sparkling ale, better than champagne, and looked an elegant
drink, fit for red lips in the thin glass it brimmed with foam. She
took it and drank.

"It is hard for any girl to be in want," said Hardy; "but there is no
distress to equal that of the lady who is in poverty. What, in God's
name, can she do? She is not wanted in the kitchen, and if I were she I
would rather sell matches than be a governess."

"It is the well-to-do lady who makes it hard for the poor lady,"
exclaimed the girl. "Two years ago I got a situation as nurse to attend
an aged sick woman--she was eighty. She lived with a lady. You would
think this person would have known how to treat the daughter of an
officer in the navy, who was too poor to maintain her as a lady. Mr.
Hardy, she used to call me Armstrong, as though I was her housemaid.
I had my meals separate. When they went away for a change I was not
good enough to sit in the carriage; they made me sit on the box, and
the coachman, in the genial manner of the mews, asked me if I was the
new maid, and if my name was Jemima. When we arrived the lady told
me I must not sit with them if company came, as my presence might be
objected to. I went to my bedroom, and kept in it till I was called
out, and then returned to it."

"It is time you cleared out," said Hardy. "The soft hearts seem to be
found at sea nowadays; at all events, they are not so scarce there as
fresh eggs," said he, helping himself. "Your intentions are to get
abroad and seek a berth abroad. I should like to read the map of them.
You have saved seven pounds odd, and you arrive in London at night, and
you don't know where to go. Next day you ask your way--where? To the
docks; but what docks? London, Millwall, East India, West India, and so
on. You enter a forest without a compass. Now what are you going to do?"

"I meant to go on board ship after ship," she answered, with spirit,
"and ask anybody I saw if there was a berth for me on board."

"Did you ever see a large full-rigged ship in all your life?" he
inquired, smiling.

"Never," she replied, emphatically.

"Go to the docks, and you'll see hundreds, and there won't be one that
wants you."

"What is the name of your ship?" she asked.

"The _York_."

"Where is she going to?"

"She is bound to Australia."

"Is there no place for me in that ship?" she said. She looked at him
piteously, though her natural grace of coquetry broke through all the
same, with the planting of her hands upon her hips, and the way she
side-dropped her head at him.

"We carry no stewardess, no females, no passengers," he answered. "The
captain is a stranger to me. No, my ship is of no use to you," he
continued, after a pause. "You must call with me upon some shipping
people. There may be a vacancy for a stewardess. But suppose the ship
is sailing for India?"

She gazed at him a little vacantly.

"We shall find some means of getting abroad," he went on, running a
note of cheerfulness into his voice, for he thought by the look in the
girl's eyes that she was beginning to bend on signals of distress,
which would be hoisted in a pearly downpour presently. "At all events,
you can't be worse off than you are, and somebody says that when you
are at the bottom of the wheel the next revolution must hoist you."

They talked in this strain until they had supped, then Hardy, not
seeing a bell, opened the door and shouted to Miss Bax to clear away.
When the door was opened they could hear voices in the back room
beyond, and a gush of Cavendish tobacco smoke came in. Some friends
of Bax had called in a casual way by the back entrance, across the
fields, which meant several drinks, clouds of tobacco, and all the
gossip of the social sphere which Bax and his friends adorned. When
Miss Bax had cleared the table she placed a bottle of whisky upon it at
the request of Hardy, also cold water and glasses. She then said there
was no hurry to go to bed. Father did not go to bed until eleven, and
she left them with a smile as though they were a young married couple
spending their honeymoon in Bax's farm, instead of one of them being an
honest, generous-hearted young sailor intent on doing his dead best
to rescue a young English lady from bitter privation, and perhaps from
miserable disgrace; and the other of them being a broken-hearted girl
hurrying from a home of tyranny and drink, a home of one base nature,
and of one spiritless one (which is likewise a baseness), with a future
as dark as the night that lay outside, in whose funeral tapestries her
imagination alone could have beheld the stirrings of the life that was
to give her content and liberty, in whose impenetrable depths she found
no more than a minute gleam of light from Hardy's strange and chanceful
encounter with her while she lay in a swoon deep as death.

With her consent the sailor lighted a pipe. The girl sat in a chair
opposite to him, her head a little on one side, hands on her hips, all
in the old, fascinating, coquettish, incommunicable way. Outside the
night lay in a thin gloom, and they saw the stars shining above the
trees. The hush of the sleeping land was in the air. You heard nothing
but the silver tinkling of a natural fall of water that ran down the
hillside, and fell purely in a stone bowl for men, horses, and dogs to
drink.

"You are a plucky girl," said Hardy; "but I think you are attempting
more than you understand. You talk, for instance, of going to the
workhouse. You are the last girl in the world to go to the workhouse.
Think of dying in a workhouse," he continued, whilst she watched him
without smiling. "Creatures bend over your bed, and say, 'Isn't she
gone yet?' That's the sympathy of the workhouse."

"I want to get out of England, abroad, and be independent," said Julia.

He looked at an old clock upon the mantelpiece. The hour was about
eight. He asked her if she would have some whisky and water, and on
her declining, he mixed a draught for himself, then went to the door
and called to Bax, leaving the girl to wonder what he meant to do. The
farmer arrived.

"Bax," said the sailor, "you have given us a capital supper."

"I'm much obliged to you, sir," answered Bax.

"This is an excellent whisky," continued Hardy, "and I drink your
health"--here he sipped--"and the health of your worthy daughter"--here
he sipped again--"in your very hospitable gift."

Bax grinned, and said, "We make no charge. You're my guests, and you're
welcome."

"Bax," said Hardy, "haven't you a spring cart?"

"Yes," answered Bax.

"Got a horse?"

"Got a pretty little mare."

"Will you drive me over to Captain Armstrong's as soon as possible to
fetch this young lady's luggage?"

Julia started in her chair, and said, "Don't trouble, Mr. Hardy. My
father will send the box on to me when he gets my address in London."

"How d'ye know he will?" inquired Hardy.

"Ah!" murmured Bax.

"Suppose the stepmother declines to let the box go?" said Hardy. "Now
you'll want all the clothes you've got and can get, Miss Armstrong, if
you mean to colonise. Bax, bear a hand, my lad; clap your mare to the
cart, and report when you're ready."

He spoke as if he was on the quarter-deck of a ship and making the
sailors jump for their lives, and Bax went out, saying, "I'll not be
ten minutes."

"How good you are to me!" exclaimed Julia, gathering the side of her
pocket-handkerchief unconsciously, and looking at him with eyes that
seemed to tremble with emotion. "What should I have done had you not
found me? I might have died under that hedge."

"Let me see," said Hardy; "how far off from here does your father live?"

She reflected and answered, "Quite six miles."

"Well, we shall be back with your box before ten. Don't sit up; you
want all the rest you can get. To-morrow will be full of business."

"Oh!" cried Julia, "I hope there will be no trouble. Father may--He
won't like you to know that I have run away. He may insist upon
returning with you, or coming here."

"If he is at home he may, and we'll give him a lift with pleasure."

"I should refuse to meet him," cried the girl, standing up in a sudden
passion of indignation. "He has seen me suffer and has looked on. If he
comes here it is not for me, but for _that_," and she pointed to the
bottle of whisky.

"You shall have your box of clothes, anyhow," said Hardy, smoking
coolly and looking at the girl; and three minutes after he had said
this Miss Bax came in, and reported that "father and the cart was at
the gate."

"Don't let Miss Armstrong sit up," said Hardy. "Do those chaps back
talk very loud?"

"When they arguefy," answered Miss Bax. "They're wrangling over the
age of the queen now."

"Well, when Miss Armstrong goes to bed silence them," said Hardy, "for
I want the lady to sleep well. We shall meet at breakfast," said he,
turning to Julia and taking her hand.

"I shall wait up for you. How could I sleep?" she replied.

He smiled, but answered nothing, filled and relighted his pipe, and
walked out.

The drive was pleasant, down-hill. The road stretched before them like
satin with the dust of it, and many spacious groups of trees lifted
their motionless shapes against the sky-line of the tall land and the
stars twinkling above it. Specks of light in houses reposed like glow
worms in the deep shades of the valley and up the acclivities, but the
river streamed in blackness, and the lamps of a small town past the
railway station were lost behind the bend.

Hardy stared at his father's house as they drove past, always in
darkness on this side, but he knew there would be lights in the windows
which overlooked the grounds that sank toward the river.

The house Captain Armstrong lived in was two miles further on round
the corner, and made one of about a dozen little villas and cottages,
including a church and a public-house. It was a very small cottage,
thatched; but its sun-bright windows, its handsome door and brass
knocker--the taste, in short of the man who had built it in years gone
by--made it very fit for the occupation of a gentleman. It was sunk
deep in a broad piece of garden land, and the apple-trees, whose boughs
were laden, scented the still night air refreshingly.

"Here we be," said Bax, drawing up, and the sailor sprang off the cart,
and walked down the path to the door with the brass knocker.

He hammered briskly, and tugged at a metal knob which shivered a little
bell into ecstasies of alarm. A small dog barked shrilly with terror
and hate, and in a minute the door was opened by a servant, past whom
the small dog fled, and tried to marry his teeth in Hardy's right boot.
A kick rushed the little beast back into the passage, and Hardy said to
the servant, "I have called for Miss Armstrong's trunk."

"Oh, indeed," she said, looking behind her.

"Yes, indeed," he exclaimed. "I'm in a hurry. I've six miles to go. Is
Captain Armstrong in?"

"No," was the answer, and as the servant spoke a door on the right of
the passage was thrown open, and the figure of a stout woman stood
between Hardy and the flame of the oil-float which illuminated the
passage at the extremity.

"Who is it? and what does he want?" said the stout figure, approaching
by two or three paces.

"I am Mr. Hardy, son of your husband's doctor," was the reply, "and I
have called for Miss Armstrong's trunk. It stands ready corded in her
bedroom, and I am in a hurry."

"Where is Miss Armstrong going?" said the stout figure, who was indeed
Mrs. Armstrong.

"To the ends of the earth to escape _you_," he answered. "Bax," he
roared, "fling your reins over the gate-post, and come and lend me a
hand to ship the box in your cart."

"The box shall not leave this house without Captain Armstrong's
permission," said Mrs. Armstrong, who, poor as the light was, you
could see carried a great deal of colour in her face of a streaky or
venous nature; her eyes were small, and gazed with rapid winks as
though they snapped at you as you snap the hammer of a revolver; her
bust was immense; her black hair was smoothed like streaks of paint
down her cheeks and round her ears, and she wore a cap with something
in it that nodded, giving more significance to her words than they
needed.

"Where is Captain Armstrong?" said the sailor.

"Out," was the reply.

"He'll not care whether I take it or leave it." He could not bring
himself to speak even civilly to her. "Whilst you fetch him we'll
tranship it, and the captain can get in and argue the point whilst
we drive away. Come along, Bax. Sally, show us the road to the young
lady's bedroom."

"Maria," exclaimed Mrs. Armstrong, cold and bitter, "go and knock on
Constable Rogers's door, and tell him to come here at once."

"Shall I fetch the master also?" said Maria, quivering in her figure in
the hot anticipation of rushing out.

"No, the walk is too long. I want you back, and the constable."

The girl shot up the walk.

"Bax," said Hardy, "come along. We'll easily find the room."

Bax hung in the wind.

"What's the constable a-going to say?" he muttered. "Won't it be
breaking in if we enters without the missis's leave?"

Hardy looked at him, and then stepped to the foot of the staircase.

"You dare not go up-stairs, sir!" said Mrs. Armstrong, in a voice that
trembled.

Hardy mounted.

"The constable shall lock you up," shrieked the enraged woman.

"Coom down, coom down, Mr. Hardy," sang out Bax. "The constable'll make
it right."

Hardy pulled out a box of wax matches and struck one. The landing was
in darkness, and he wanted to see. He guessed the girl's bedroom by
intuition, opened the door, and saw the trunk--a small one--seized the
handle, and dragged it to the head of the staircase. It was lighter
than a sea chest, and with a heave he settled it on his shoulder, and
went creaking down-stairs.

"I defy you to take that box out of my house without my leave," yelled
Mrs. Armstrong.

Hardy seemed cool, but his spirits were in a blaze. He regarded the
sending for a constable as an atrocious act of insolence, and he walked
past the woman, not in the smallest degree caring whether he plunged
the corner of the box into her head or not. She took care, however, to
give him a wide berth, and he passed through the house door, whilst
the little dog barked furiously at a safe distance at the end of the
passage.

"Give me a hand with this," said he to Bax. "This is no business of the
constable. The box belongs to a young lady who wants it, and I intend
that she shall have it."

"Mr. Hardy," answered Bax, "I'd rather not meddle with the box till the
constable cooms; he'll be 'ere in a minute. He allus smokes his pipe by
his fireside at this hour. If it should be the wrong box--"

"It's the right box," exclaimed Hardy, standing with the trunk on his
shoulder.

"I'd rather wait for Rogers to make it all right," said Bax.

Hardy sent a sea blessing at his head, and without another word walked
rapidly to the cart, threw the box in, took the reins off the gate,
sprang on to the seat, and drove off.

"Stop, sir; stop, for God's sake!" shouted Bax, beginning to run. But
he was too fat to run. He was blowing hard when he gained the road, and
stood staring after his cart. Hardy whipped the mare into a gallop, and
gained the farm in half the time that Bax would have taken to measure
the ground. He drew up at the gate, secured the horse by the reins,
and, shouldering the trunk, marched to the door, and was admitted by
Miss Bax.

"Where's father?" was her first cry.

"I left him enjoying a yarn with Mrs. Armstrong," answered Hardy,
thrusting with the trunk into the room, where Julia was still sitting
just as he had left her. "There are your clothes, Miss Armstrong," said
the sailor, lowering the box on to the floor.

"Father's come to no 'urt, I hope?" said Miss Bax, addressing Miss
Armstrong.

Hardy related exactly the story of his repulse by the insolent
stepmother, his bringing the box down-stairs alone, Bax's fear of the
law, and so forth.

"And now," said he, "as you've not gone to bed, Miss Armstrong, I'll
sit down and keep you company, and smoke one more pipe, and wait for
the constable."

"Well, if father's all right," said Miss Bax, "he'll be here with the
constable, and soon, I hope; but it's all up-hill, and his wind don't
favour him. I've got help at the back, and will put the mare up," and
thus speaking she passed out, and left the young couple alone.

"So she actually sent for a constable!" exclaimed Julia, whilst Hardy
filled his pipe, and looked at the grog bottle on the table. "Could you
imagine a more horrible woman?"

"Here are the goods anyhow," said Hardy, striking a match. "It's your
box, of course--I mean, I've made no mistake, I hope."

"Certainly it is my box," she exclaimed, slightly flushing and poising
her hands on her hips, and dropping her head at him in a posture that
brightened his eyes with delight, "and all I possess in this wide world
is in it."

"I would not like to be the constable if he touches it or is even
insolent over it," said Hardy, stretching backwards his broad
shoulders, with a glance at himself in the little fly-protected mirror.
He then poured out some whisky and water, and sat down near Julia.

"She did not express any astonishment at my leaving home?" said the
girl.

"The dog did most of the talk," he answered, "and made for my choicest
corn," and he looked at his boot, which exhibited the indent of the
beast's teeth. "How your father could have--"

"Was she drunk?" asked Julia.

"I dare say she was. Some people get drunk without showing it. Miss
Armstrong, I am no longer surprised that you should run away."

She smiled, but with mingled sadness and bitterness, and said, "If my
father comes in with Bax and the constable, I shall walk out, and I beg
you to give me your protection, Mr. Hardy, and to save me from seeing
him."

Hardy bowed, but made no answer. He was a man of careless thoughts and
many heedless views in all sorts of directions, a sailor, in short,
whose horizon was salt and limited, yet he could not help feeling
shocked at the extravagance of fear and dislike which the half-pay
captain had by bitter neglect and a Christless marriage excited in
the breast of a girl who seemed a true-hearted, heroic young woman,
beautiful of figure, and with a face of romantic interest.

"Can the constable do anything if he comes?" she asked.

"Oh, yes," answered the sailor, "he can walk out. In what law book is
it written that a man may not possess his own? That is yours," said he,
pointing to the trunk, "and if Constable Rogers touches it we'll have
him before the magistrates, of whom, by the way, my father is one."

He looked at her very thoughtfully, and she looked at him till her gray
eyes drooped to her lap. The Persian kitten had left the room, and she
had nothing to toy with but her handkerchief. Now, by the expression of
Hardy's face, you could have said that he fastened his eyes upon her,
not out of feeling, nor out of the sense of being alone with her, nor
of the enjoyment of the spectacle of her matchless figure, but because
he was maturing thoughts concerning her well-being. He had certainly a
most honest face, and you tasted the manliness of his nature in each
utterance and in every smile.

"I want to talk to you," said he, "about our arrival in London. I
must get you close to the docks. I'll put you in the way of making a
few inquiries whilst I am busy on board my ship; meanwhile I shall be
asking questions."

"Oh, Mr. Hardy, what should I have done had I not met you?" she cried,
in an irrepressible outburst of gratitude, and again he saw tears in
her eyes, for she had lived hard and had fared hard for some years now,
and kindness easily broke her down, as one long divorced from home will
melt on her return to the sound of the music that her mother loved and
sang to her.

"Do you know London?" said the sailor.

"I was never in London," she answered.

"Have you ever seen a ship?"

"I came home in a ship from India," she replied, "but I was too young
to remember the vessel."

"You will not like the East End of London," said Hardy. "I don't know
why sailors should make the places they live in dirty, yet it is true
that after leaving Whitechapel the closer you draw to the docks, the
grimier life looks. Jack has spent his money, you see, and is going
away tipsy and ragged, and what he leaves behind him is anything but
sweet, and they serve him as though he were a Yahoo. Look at his
lodging-house and his boarding-house, at the dens in which he revolves
to the ghastly notes of a black fiddler, with objects fit only to be
lectured upon, or for the show of a Barnum. Take his line of railway,
the Blackwall line; the farmers wouldn't send their swine to market in
the carriages, and so the sailor travels in them."

"How long have you been at sea, Mr. Hardy?"

"I went to sea when I was fourteen years old, and I am now twenty-six."

"In twelve years you have become a mate?"

"Chief mate," he said.

"Oh," she exclaimed, "what would I give if you carried a stewardess,
and your captain would consent to take me!"

"I wish it could be contrived," said he, in his plain, straight way,
"but owners never ship people they don't want. Even if I had influence,
an objection would be raised that you were the only woman on board."

"But I have read," she exclaimed, "that a captain takes his wife to
sea, and she may be the only woman in the ship."

"Ay, but she's the captain's wife," he answered, with a smile, "and if
she were a shipload of females she couldn't be more."

They then began to talk of London and the East End, of a convenient
part to take a lodging in, how it was certain that she must obtain
a berth somewhere or somehow before Hardy sailed; and whilst they
conversed the door opened, and Bax entered, purple with exercise and
beer.

"Well," said he, breathing comfortably, as though he had refreshed
himself before entering with rest and ale, "that was a fine trick of
yourn, Mr. Hardy."

"Never mind about that, Bax," exclaimed the young sailor, cutting him
short in his peremptory quarter-deck way. "Where's the constable?"

"He bain't cooming," answered Bax. "He knows the difference between
climbing up a hill and climbing into bed."

"Sit down, Bax, and take some whisky," said Hardy, both he and Julia
laughing; and after waiting for the farmer to mingle some whisky and
water and pull a chair, he said, "Tell us what passed, Bax."

"Well," began Bax, "it was just after you'd trotted out of sight,
with me hallering, being afraid of the law I was, when oop cooms the
maid 'long with Constable Rogers. 'Oh, Mr. Rogers,' sings out Mrs.
Armstrong, who was standin' in her door, 'the doctor's son's been 'ere
in Farmer Bax's cart, and busted into this house, and gone off with my
stepdarter's troonk agin my commands.' 'Where's your stepdarter?' said
the constable, not speaking overcivil--blamed if I thinks he likes the
woman, and he didn't love her the better for routing of him out. 'I
don't know,' answered Mrs. Armstrong. 'Yes, you do,' says I. 'She's
opp stopping in my house along with the gent as fetched her luggage.'
'What do you want me to do?' says Rogers. 'Your duty,' answers Mrs.
Armstrong, 'twixt a snap of her teeth that was like cocking a goon at
him. 'What do constables usually do when they're called in to houses
which have been busted into and goods taken, otherwise stolen, agin
orders?' Here Bax laughed slowly, as though recollecting something
in this passage of words which he could not communicate, but which,
nevertheless, he could enjoy. 'But there was no busting in here
that I can see,' says Rogers, looking at me; 'you knocked and rung,
didn't you?' 'Why, yes, of course we did,' says I, 'and the gent
spoke the lady as civil as though she had been a maid of hanner or
the queen herself.' 'Oh, what a liar, what a beast you must be!' says
Mrs. Armstrong, screaming like. 'He forces his way oop-stairs, Mr.
Constable, and brings down the box on his shoulder, me standing at the
foot of the steps, and telling him not to touch it.' 'Was he sent by
the party as the box belongs to?' asks the constable. 'Certainly he
was, Mr. Rogers,' says I. 'They're going away to-morrow by the early
train, and she naturally wanted her box to take with her.' 'There's
nothing for me 'ere to interfere with that I can see,' says Rogers,
drawing himself up, and puttin' on the face of a judge delivering a
vardick. 'The lady has a right to her own. Your door was knocked on
civilly, and the gent she asked to bring it away did so, and there's
northen for me to meddle with;' and with that, without saying good
night, he turns his back, and walks into the road, me at his side, and
she hallering arter him that he didn't do his duty, and she'd lodge a
complaint agin him, and 'ave the place cleared of a stoopid old fool.
'She's like my cat when he begins to talk to Springett's cat over the
wall,' says Mr. Rogers. 'I wish the young lady well out of it, I do.
Good-night, Mr. Bax.' So I sets off 'ome, and that's just what all
'appened."

Julia, though she had laughed and often smiled, now sat looking subdued
with grief and disgrace. It was horrible to the feelings of a lady to
possess such a stepmother as the wretch who owned the little dog that
bit, and horrible also to hear her represented and dramatised in the
language of Bax in the presence of the man who, as God had willed it,
seemed the only friend she possessed in this wide world. Nevertheless,
they continued talking until eleven o'clock, by which hour Bax had
grown too maudlin for human companionship.

Julia went to bed, and Bax rolled through the door to the back premises
to send his daughter to the young sailor. All that he requested was a
rug, a blanket, and a pillow, and then when the house was locked up,
and Miss Bax had bid him goodnight, he turned down the lamp, snugged
himself on the sofa, and lay listening to Miss Julia's restless pacing
overhead. There was sleeplessness in her walk; but the delicate
tramp of her tireless feet ceased at last. He thought of her in her
loneliness, and pity moved his heart, and he vowed that he would see
her in safety, buoyed by a full promise of independence in the future,
before he left England.

The window stood open a little way, and all night-sounds were clear.
The stream babbled in the road, and its voice was like the syllabling
of the perfumes stealing darkling down into the valley. He heard the
distant hooting of owls like the crying of idiot boys, one seeking the
other, and the thin thunder of the distant railway was a night-sound,
together with the shuddering of the dry autumn leaves upon the boughs
as though the trees shivered to the chill of the passing moan of air.
And then Hardy fell asleep.




CHAPTER III.

THE EAST INDIA DOCK ROAD


At about two o'clock on the following day a cab of the old type, with
rattling windows, straw as though fresh from the tramp of swine, a
wheezing cabman, encumbered with capes, shawls, and rugs, with nothing
but a drunken nose glowing under the sallow brim of a rain-bronzed
hat--this old cab, with a corded trunk hopping on top of it betwixt the
iron fencing, drew up at a house in the East India Dock Road.

Mr. Hardy, the gentleman whom we left asleep on the sofa in Bax's farm,
got out, leaving Miss Julia Armstrong sitting in a cab, and knocked on
the door, which was opened in a few moments by a little woman in the
clothes of a widow, clean and neat in person, with a wistful eye which
softened her face into a look of kindness.

"Glad to see you, Mr. Hardy," she immediately said. "I got your letter,
sir. Your room's quite ready."

"Well, I can't say I'm glad to see _you_, Mrs. Brierley, because you
know what seeing you means to me. Did your husband love the stowing
job, and the hauling out through the gates, with a crowd of drunken
Dagos on the fok'sle, and the dockmaster bursting blood-vessels in
expostulations to the mud pilot?"

She seemed to smile, but her attention was elsewhere. She had caught
sight of Julia in the cab, and was dodging Mr. Hardy, who stood right
in the way, to get a better sight of her.

"I want a lodging for that young lady you are trying to see," said
Hardy. "Now say at once that you have a very comfortable bedroom for
her in this house."

"You don't tell me that you are married, sir?" exclaimed Mrs. Brierley,
putting this question just as she might put her eye to a keyhole before
answering.

"No, nor keeping company with her, as you people call it," he replied.
"It is a romantic story, and you shall hear the whole of it, provided
that you can accommodate her with a bedroom, otherwise--mum!"

"Mr. Hardy," said the widow, with some earnestness, "you've long used
this house. You knew my poor husband. My struggle has been to keep it
a thoroughly respectable home for them who patronise me, and you'll
not take it amiss, sir, I'm sure, if I ask you, is she a lady you can
recommend on your honour as a sailor man?"

"I swear, Mrs. Brierley," exclaimed Hardy, with great feeling, "that
she is a pure, charming, heart-broken lady, the daughter of a naval
officer, whose sword was once at the service of his country."

"Then, sir, I have a very comfortable bedroom," answered the widow.
"How long will she be wanting it for?"

"She shall engage it by the week," he answered, and walked to the door
of the cab. "Tumble down, my lad, off that perch of yours," he shouted
to the cabman, who seemed to have fallen asleep, "and carry that trunk
into the house."

Both pavements were filled with people, walking the everlasting walk
of the London streets. Numbers had the appearance of seamen, some of
them lurched in liquor; there were numerous black and chocolate faces,
here and there a turban; grimy women flitted past in old shawls and
rakishly-perched bonnets; roistering young wenches flaunted past with
feathers in their hats, with cheeks deeply coloured, with yellow brows
adorned with jet-like love-locks; and chill as it was, children went by
with naked feet, and the shuddering flesh of their backs showed through
their rags, filthy-eyed, hatless, and all the glory they had trailed
from their God had died out in the atmosphere of fog, which added bulk
to the thunderous omnibus, and made the fleet hansom a shadow down the
road.

"The landlady," said Hardy, putting his head into the cab, "has a
comfortable bedroom at your disposal. We cannot do better. She is
a thoroughly respectable woman, the widow of a master-mariner, who
commanded brigs, and so on."

He opened the door, and Julia jumped out, and they went together into
the narrow passage with the cabman and the trunk following them.

The landlady, curtseying her greeting to Julia, admitted them into her
own private room, which was, in short, the front parlour. The cabman
was paid, and went away looking at the shillings in the palm of his
hand. In a very short time it was settled that Julia was to have the
use of this parlour for her meals, and there would be no extra charge.
The only other lodgers in the house were a sea captain and his wife.

The parlour was worth a pause and a look round. No apartment was
ever more nautically equipped. The very clock was a dial fitted into
the mainsail of a brass ship; the candlesticks on the mantelpiece
represented mermaids; the walls were embellished with pictures of ships
and those carvings which sailors delight in: ships on a wind, half
their ghastly white canvas showing against the board, and the water
very sloppy and fearfully blue; there were models of ships, and an old
galleon in ivory stood under glass on a table in the window. A boy's
heart would have beat high in this room. It was full of curiosities;
artful carvings by whalemen, out of the bone or teeth of the mammoth of
the sea; queer findings along shore under the Southern Cross, weapons
of cannibals, heathenish jars, earthen vessels which had been the
sepulchres of the remains of broiled whites.

After a little talk Mrs. Brierley took Julia up-stairs to her bedroom.
Hardy, who had often before viewed the curiosities, wandered again
round the room, but his mind was musing over other things, and soon
he came to a stand at the window. The lookout was gloomy and grimy;
opposite were a tobacconist, a house in which a stevedore lived, two
lodging-houses, a pastry-cook, and a public-house. There was a great
deal of mud in the road, the sky hung down sallow and dingy, and so
close that the crooked black smoke, working out of a hundred shapes of
chimney-pots, seemed to pierce it and vanish. A change indeed from the
autumn glories of the country which the couple were newly from, where
the hillsides, still thick with the leaves of the summer, were gashed
with the red fires of the coming ruining winter; where the clear pale
blue sky sank with its faint splendour of sunshine to the sharp, dark,
terrace-like heights, which in their red breaks and scars of autumn
overlooked the valley and the sheltered houses, and the quiet breast of
river floating under the arch of the reflected bridge.

A man, thought Hardy, accepts a large obligation when he undertakes to
look after a girl. But what a beautiful figure she has, and her face
appeals to me. I cannot meet her eyes without feeling that I am in
love with her. Shall I be able to get her a berth before I sail? If I
cannot, ought I to leave her alone in London with about seven pounds
ten in her pocket?

His brow contracted, and he hissed a tune through his teeth whilst he
pondered. That thoughtless devil, her father, he mused, never came near
Bax's farm. What is it to him that his daughter has bolted from her
brutal home, and gone away with a young fellow who, for all the beggar
cares, may leave her behind him in London in shame and destitution?
'Tis rather a tight corner, though. And he would have gone on
meditating but for being interrupted by the entrance of Julia, followed
in a respectful way by the widow.

"It is a very nice bedroom," said Julia. "I shall be very comfortable
whilst I am here."

"I suppose you have told Mrs. Brierley all about it," exclaimed Hardy,
whilst Julia seated herself, posturing her head with her unconscious,
inimitable grace, as she glanced round the sights of the room, and
resting her hands on her hips and crossing her feet, to the undoubted
admiration of the widow, who had on her entrance admired her beautiful
figure.

"Yes, sir, yes," said the widow; "and I'm truly sorry for the young
lady, but don't doubt she'll find a berth, and do well where she's
going."

"Miss Armstrong," said Hardy, "I'm not due at the docks until
to-morrow, and then I shall put in for an afternoon off. This afternoon
we shall spend without troubling ourselves about anything. We are
human, and must eat, just as every night we must put ourselves away in
a frame of iron or wooden pillars, covered with blankets and sheets,
and sleep, or else we go mad and die. There is a decent eating-house
not far from here; we will go there and dine. You'll have tea ready for
us, Mrs. Brierley, by six; and if the evening hangs, which it will, we
will look in at a music-hall and purchase a shilling's-worth of pure
vulgarity, which to me, when perfectly unaffected, is more humourous
and more artistically refined than much of the genteel comedy of the
West End theatres."

Julia laughed, and looked at the widow, who said, "I don't visit the
halls myself. They've got one good singer at Whitechapel, I hear. He
comes in dressed as a coster, and brings a donkey with him which he
sings about, and they say it's so affecting that even strong sailors
cry."

"If he sang of the donkey's breakfast Jack would cry more," said Hardy,
and saying he would return in a minute, went to his bedroom for a wash
down and a brush up, leaving the widow explaining to Julia that the
term _donkey's breakfast_ signified the bundle of straw which sailors
who are reckless of their money ashore carry on board ship with them as
a bed.

Whilst he was going up-stairs a man dressed in blue serge, smoking
a curly meerschaum pipe, came out of a bedroom and passed into an
apartment that had been converted into a sitting-room. They glanced at
each other, and Hardy went up another flight to his bedroom. Here he
stayed a few minutes. His carpet-bag had arrived before him, and in it
were a change of apparel, two or three shirts, brush and comb, and the
like. The rest of his duds were in his sea-chest, which had been sent
to the docks. He smartened himself up and looked a manly young fellow.
The light of the sea was in his eye, and the freshness of its breath
was in his cheery expression, and the colour of his cheek was warm with
the sun-glow.

"Are you ready?" said he to Julia; and they went out, attended to
the door by the widow, who appeared to have taken a liking to Miss
Armstrong; but no one with a woman's heart in her could have heard the
girl's story without being moved.

Hardy paused on the doorstep to say to Mrs. Brierley, "Is the man in
blue serge, who smokes a meerschaum, the captain who's lodging with
you?"

"Yes, sir."

"What ship does he command?"

"The _Glamis Castle_."

"I know her," exclaimed Hardy; "a fine Indiaman. What the deuce does a
swell like him do in these lodgings? He should put up at a hotel."

"His home's at Penge," answered the widow, "and two or three weeks
before he sails he always comes and stops with me, and brings his wife.
Aren't my lodgings good enough for the captain of an Indiaman?"

"They are good enough for the owner of an Indiaman. They are good
enough for a German prince," said Hardy, in his pleasantest manner.
"Should I bring this lady here if they were not of the highest?" And
nodding to her he stepped on to the pavement, and Julia walked by his
side.

He was free in his comments upon the nastiness of the East End of
London, and by his abuse of the mud and the shops, and the quality of
the passing folks, he implied an apology for introducing Miss Armstrong
into such a neighbourhood.

"It's sweeter to me than Bodley," she said, referring to the place
she came from. "What is the good of fine houses and broad streets and
handsome carriages to a girl who has no money, who has but one friend,
from whom she must be shortly separated for ever, perhaps, and whose
most ambitious dream _dare_ not go beyond finding a cabin as emigrant
or stewardess aboard a ship, and the berth of a servant, or, which is
worse, a nursery governess when she arrives?"

They walked for awhile in silence; but the silence was in their mouths,
not in the street. One of the music-murdering organs of those days
was playing at the street corner they were approaching. Huge wagons
were grinding thunder into the solid earth. There was a fight over the
way--two Italians were going for each other. A crowd of dirty women
were dancing round them, encouraging them by the stimulating plaudits
of the stews. An optician, with a row of chronometers in his window,
stood upon his doorstep howling, "Police!" They turned the corner,
and the notes of the organ died away behind them, and after a little
walking they arrived at an eating-house with big windows, and a sheet
of paper stuck upon the glass with red wafers, telling what was to be
eaten inside.

Hardy and Julia walked in. It was a long room with tables, separated
one from another by brass rails and baize curtains, and nettings for
receiving headgear. About a dozen people were in it--some of them
neighbouring tradesmen, some of them obviously captains and mates. With
a few of the men were women, who were evidently wives or sweethearts;
in fact, the prices charged kept the place sweet.

Hardy and Miss Armstrong sat down side by side at an empty table. A
waiter arrived, looking hard at the lady, and the sailor gave his
orders. He guessed the girl was hungry; he knew that _he_ was, and
if he could not have spent a sovereign when ten shillings would have
handsomely sufficed, he would have been no true salt. It is worth
saying here that all the money our friend had was about two hundred
pounds, and he had come to London with twenty sovereigns in his pocket,
and a chequebook. As he was an only child he would inherit his father's
leavings; but what would they amount to? A country practitioner who
dispensed his own physic, and was glad to get three-and-sixpence a
visit! A country practitioner with thirteen hundred pounds in bad debts
on his books, and a horse, gig, and boy to keep! Still, whatever the
doctor left would be George Hardy's, who did not value the prospect
beyond the worth of the furniture, and had begun to save a little on
his own account, with some light dream of amassing enough to enable him
to purchase shares in a ship, which he would command.

He ordered a good dinner from the bill of fare, and asked the waiter
if the champagne of the establishment was real wine or chemicals. The
waiter named a good brand, and swore there was nothing in the market to
equal it. It was nine shillings a bottle.

"I never drink champagne," said Julia.

"But I do," exclaimed Hardy. "Bear a hand, waiter. We've been fasting
since eight this morning."

The waiter sidled away.

"Champagne is the best of all drinks for young ladies," said Hardy;
"and it helps the spirits of chief mates who are bound away on long
voyages. What shall we do when we've dined?"

"I should like to see the docks," said the girl.

"Not to-day," exclaimed Hardy, pursing his mouth into an expression of
disgust. "Let us hug the land as long as we can; besides, it will be
drawing on to four o'clock before we've dined, and the docks and the
ships in it will be invisible."

As he spoke these words the man whom he had caught a sight of in his
lodgings smoking a meerschaum pipe came into the dining-rooms with a
lady, whom you at once guessed was his wife. They looked right and
left, and took a table exactly opposite that occupied by Hardy and
Miss Armstrong. The man who had been represented by Mrs. Brierley as
the commander of an East Indiaman, named the _Glamis Castle_, was
short and square, with a strong, red beard, and shorn upper lip; his
eyebrows were reddish and habitually knitted, as though from long years
of steadfast staring into the eyes of the wind. His eyes were dark and
sharp in their glances; his brow was square as his form, and delicately
browned by the sun. The lady was a homely-looking woman, in a bonnet
and velvet mantle. She began to pull off her gloves, and her companion,
after bawling "Waiter," in a quarter-deck roar, gazed fixedly at Hardy,
who gazed back.

All the time the man was giving his orders to the waiter, with
occasional references to the lady, he kept his eyes bent on Hardy, who
muttered to Julia, "I believe I know that man." The moment he had done
with the waiter he rose, and stepped over to Hardy.

"Is your name George Hardy?" said he, with a slight glance at the girl.

"Yes," answered Hardy, "and now that I've got the bearings of you, I
don't need to ask if your name is James Smedley."

They clasped hands.

"Let me introduce you," said Hardy, "to Miss Julia Armstrong, daughter
of Commander Armstrong, late of the Royal Navy. Captain Smedley, of the
_Glamis Castle_, Miss Armstrong."

"How did you know that?" asked Smedley, exchanging a bow with the girl,
whose peculiar grace of form, whose charm of movement, whose face,
romantic and pleading, with the gifts of nature and the passions of her
heart, his swift eye was observing with pleasure and curiosity.

"I am stopping in the house you're lodging in," answered Hardy, "and
Mrs. Brierley told me who you were. Are you going to dine here?"

"Yes."

"Is that your wife?"

"Yes."

"Bring her across, Smedley, and we'll make a dinner party."

Mrs. Smedley had been bobbing to catch a view of Miss Armstrong, and
the bugles in her bonnet twinkled like fireflies as she swayed her head.

"Miss Armstrong's story," continued Hardy, "is so moving that Mrs.
Smedley will be grieved to the depths of her kindly heart when she
hears it."

Julia looked down, and Captain Smedley studied her for a few moments,
then wheeled abruptly, and stepped over to his wife. After a brief
confab they both came to Hardy's table, and Mrs. Smedley was introduced
to Miss Armstrong and her companion.

"Do you sail with your husband?" asked Julia.

"No," answered Mrs. Smedley, who seemed struck by the girl. "The owners
won't let the captains carry their wives with them."

"A ship," said Julia, "should never be so safe as when a captain's wife
is on board, because of course _her_ presence would make the commander
doubly vigilant and anxious."

"Haw, haw!" laughed Smedley.

The fish which had been ordered was now placed upon the table, and
on both sides they began to eat. The waiter uncorked the champagne,
and Hardy told him to fill the glasses opposite. This was resisted by
Mrs. Smedley, a homely woman, who declared that for her part she loved
nothing better than bitter beer. Again her husband "Haw-haw'd," and
said they would see Hardy's champagne through, and then he would order
another bottle. He believed it was not usual in polite society to drink
champagne with fish; but it was all one to him. Champagne went down the
same way, whether its messmate was fish or flesh.

"Are you leaving England?" inquired Mrs. Smedley, addressing Julia, at
whom she continued to look hard, though not in the least rudely, as if
she found a good deal in the girl that was infinitely beyond the range
of her speculations.

"I am endeavouring to leave it," answered Julia, looking at her with
her head a little on one side.

"May I tell them your story?" said Hardy, "for we shall want our
friend's influence," he added, with a nod at his old shipmate.

"Oh, yes, tell them," exclaimed Julia, a little passionately; "it will
account for my being in the East India Dock Road," and her face relaxed
as she looked at Mrs. Smedley, who smiled upon her in a motherly way.

Hardy in his blunt, sailorly fashion began. He did not spare Captain
Armstrong, neither did he spare Julia's stepmother. He warmed up, and
put the girl's case in forcible terms. Asked what a young English lady
was to do who was, to all intents and purposes, expelled from her
father's roof by the brutality of a drunken stepmother, he related some
of her experiences in nursing and in seeking independence in other
ways, just as she had related them to him. He spoke of his finding her
unconscious by the wayside, and how he was determined to take this
poor, friendless young lady by the hand, and help her to the utmost
stretch of his ability to find a home, a refuge across the seas.

"Don't cry, my dear," said Mrs. Smedley. "I have known more cases than
yours. It is very hard--and to be motherless--but you cannot allow your
heart to be broken by a bad woman; and I think you are acting wisely in
resolving to go abroad."

Julia put her handkerchief into her lap, and closed her knife and fork.
Hardy poured some champagne into her glass, and bade her drink.

"What's the lady's idea of going abroad?" said Captain Smedley, whose
face exhibited no more signs of feeling than had it been a rump steak.

"She has no money, and wants to work her passage out as a stewardess,"
replied Hardy.

"And when she arrives?" said Captain Smedley.

"She is bound to find something to do," answered Hardy. "The colonies
are yearning for young English ladies."

"Young English domestics, you mean," said Captain Smedley. "What is the
good of ladies? What is the good of gentlemen in lands where labour,
and labour only, is wanted?"

"Why would not you go out as an emigrant, Miss Armstrong?" said Mrs.
Smedley. "Of course," she added, "I presume you have Australia in your
mind?"

"I would go out as anything as long as I could get out," answered Julia.

"Take my advice and don't talk of emigration," said Captain Smedley.
"You will be miserably fed and miserably berthed. You will have a
matron and a surgeon over you, and the discipline will make you wish
yourself overboard. Your associates will be mean and dirty wretches,
who would have qualified for transportation could they have made
sure of the sentence. Your ship will be ill-found. They talk of the
emigrants marrying on their arrival. Yes, but what is a young lady like
you going to say to such suitors as offer? You wouldn't like to marry a
convict? You wouldn't like to settle down with a hairdresser in a back
street? Don't you go out in an emigrant ship, Miss Armstrong."

"It is all very fine talking about _don't_," said Hardy, "but what we
want is _do_. Miss Armstrong wishes to leave England for good. She
pockets her pride, and is willing to work. She has no money, and I must
secure her a berth somehow before I sail, because I am not going to
leave her alone in London, where she's friendless; and friendlessness
in London where all is opulence and misery, like the front and the
back of the moon--one shining, one ice-cold as death, and black--is
heart-breaking, and for many, Smedley, the invitation of the dark
waters of the Thames has been welcome."

"My God! you're just the same--always sky high," said Smedley; and he
drank some champagne out of the bottle he had ordered. "When you were a
midshipman under me you were talking like that, and you're talking it
still."

"Surely a man can put his hand in the tar-bucket without blacking his
whole body," said Hardy, looking at Mrs. Smedley, whose face was in
sympathy with his speech. "When I'm ashore I talk like a gentleman. One
can't be always cussing and swearing; and oh! says you"--and his fine,
dark keen eyes showed there was laughter in him--"Give me Jack Muck,
nothing short of Jack Muck. Hitch up, turn your quid, pull your greasy
forelock, mind that you're boozed. Oh, Lord! Smedley, ha'n't you had
enough of it?"

"Miss Armstrong," said Smedley, rolling his eyes slowly from Hardy to
the girl, "why do you want to go to Australia? Why don't you go to
India?"

"India," muttered Hardy, "what's she going to do in India?"

"No, but I tell you what," said Smedley, with emphasis, "such a young
lady as that may do before she gets out there."

Julia gazed at him inquiringly, and Mrs. Smedley turned her head to
watch his face.

"Don't you know, Miss Armstrong," continued Smedley, "that there is no
marriage market in the world to equal an East Indiaman?"

Julia flushed a little, but did not speak.

"She takes out young people," went on the commander of the _Glamis
Castle_, "called Griffins. They are young men with a glass in their
eye and susceptible hearts behind their waistcoats. They also take out
planters, merchants, gentlemen going to join houses--"

"And ladies," interrupted Hardy. "Ladies in plenty."

"You know nothing about it," said Captain Smedley. "A few ladies,
most of them married. Now," he continued, "such a young lady as Miss
Armstrong, no matter what position she fills on board, stands a
first-rate chance of finding a husband before her arrival in India.
Your emigrant ship is not going to provide any chance of the sort."

"I do not think of marriage," said Julia, who after colouring had
turned rather paler than usual, but she spoke calmly and even with
sweetness, as though grateful for the interest these strangers were
taking in her.

"Oh," cried Captain Smedley, with warmth, "but you _must_ think of
marriage. It is a condition of every woman's life. It is thought of
from about the age of twelve until it happens, and nothing else is
thought of. All the milliners and dressmakers contribute to the dream.
It is the one idea in the darlings' heads, and of course it is a wrong
one."

"What will Miss Armstrong think of such stuff and nonsense?" said Mrs.
Smedley.

"What's a girl to do when she gets to India if she isn't married?"
asked Hardy.

"They want governesses and nursemaids, I dare say," replied the
captain. "Let her call upon the missionary. I took out the Bishop of
Calcutta last voyage. He's a dear old chap, and many a yarn we spun
together. I'll venture to say that a letter of introduction to him from
me will ensure this young lady a berth."

Hardy, putting his elbow on the table, rested his cheek in the palm of
his hand, and looked at Miss Armstrong musingly. Nobody spoke until
Hardy started, and turning to Smedley, said, "Can you give her a berth
on board your ship?"

"I am thinking of it," was the answer.

Julia looked almost startled, and exclaimed to Hardy, "We should be
going different ways."

Smedley and his wife exchanged glances.

"I must see you safe on board bound to somewhere," answered Hardy,
softly. "I am bound to Melbourne; afterward to a New Zealand port. Your
ship will be bound to Calcutta. These places are different ways, and
India is the same thing."

She looked down upon the table in silence. The other three saw how it
was with her, poor girl, and how impossible it was, and Hardy then felt
_this_ with a sort of yearning of the heart that was as bad as sorrow.




CHAPTER IV.

THE "GLAMIS CASTLE"


It was nearly half-past four when Hardy and the others rose from the
dinner-table. Not that they had been eating all this time. They had
prolonged their sitting over coffee and in talk, and there was no
obligation to go so as to make way for others, because the hour was
neither lunch nor dinner time, and scarce more than two or three tables
were occupied.

Nothing had been settled when they stood up and the ladies began to put
on their gloves. It was dark: the dining-rooms were lighted up, and in
the street the fog, though not dense, was wet as rain; the lamplighters
were running along the curbstones, and in a chemist's shop a little way
down the green and red waters in the big glass vases dully glimmered
like the side-lights of a ship, heading a straight course for the
dining-rooms.

"This is just the sort of evening," said Smedley, "in which to visit a
friend's grave at some churchyard hereabouts. On evenings of this sort
drunken men fall into holes full of water near the docks. The spirit of
the Isle of Dogs stalks abroad this evening; you can see him in the sky
and taste him in the wind. What shall we do?"

"I told Mrs. Brierley to get some tea ready by six," said Hardy. "This
is not an evening to walk about in, and now I vote, Miss Armstrong,
that we do not go to a music-hall to-night. I am for lying snug in
harbour; are you?"

"I did not care about the idea of the music-hall when you suggested
it," she said.

"They are vulgar places, unfit for ladies, particularly in these
parts," exclaimed Mrs. Smedley.

"The cleverest performances I've ever seen I've witnessed in
music-halls," remarked the captain, "and I never want to hear better
singing than I've heard at them. Sometimes a cad, who has no respect
for his own sex, who has no respect for himself as a man, and not
the faintest sense in the world of what is due to women, comes on
in evening dress, a white shirt blazing with studs, and a tall hat,
which he is perpetually shifting upon his head: and this fiend sings
a song full of _double entendres_, and he sings in greasy notes with
a lickerish eye; and, strangely enough, I have never yet seen any man
rise from amongst the audience, climb over the orchestra, and kick the
animal round and round the stage into the development of a fresh sort
of music and another kind of words. Otherwise, if you want talent, go
to the music-halls."

"Shall we go to our lodgings and spend the evening there?" said Mrs.
Smedley.

"Yes, and drink tea with us," exclaimed Hardy; "and before bedtime,
Smedley, we shall have settled the business of Miss Julia Armstrong."

Captain Smedley gave his arm to his wife, and Hardy gave his arm
to Miss Armstrong, and out they went, walking briskly so as not
to get damp, and in a short time they arrived at Mrs. Brierley's
lodging-house.

The widow had not expected them home so soon, but she speedily lighted
the gas in the romantically equipped parlour, which she had placed at
the disposal of Hardy and Julia. The ladies went to their rooms to
remove their outdoor clothes, and presently they were all seated in the
widow's parlour of curiosities.

"Where did old Brierley get all these things from?" said Captain
Smedley, looking round him. "Did he reckon to start a museum before the
notion of a lodging-house entered his head? Man and boy, I've followed
the sea thirty years, and the only curiosity I've got in all that time
was my wife."

"I feel the compliment," exclaimed Mrs. Smedley.

"A curiosity," continued the captain, "because she is all goodness,
loyalty, and affection."

And he got up and kissed her, and sitting again continued his eulogy,
which was a sign that he had dined well and felt comfortable. The
ladies did not object to tobacco, and the two sailors filled their
pipes, Smedley observing that he smoked so many cigars at sea that he
didn't give a curse even for a prime Havana, though at the high cost of
seven for sixpence, when he was ashore.

"Don't you think, Miss Armstrong," said he, "that I've put the case
for the East Indies strongly enough to justify you in listening to my
advice not to go out to the colonies as an emigrant?"

"I am sure," observed Mrs. Smedley, "you stand a better chance of
marrying in your own sphere. There are plenty of officers in India in
want of wives, and I need not say--" She interrupted herself, but
acted the compliment she intended by glancing significantly at the
girl's charming figure, and letting her eye repose for a moment or two
on her face and fine hair. "It will be quickly known that you are the
daughter of a naval officer."

"I do not think of marriage," said Julia, clasping her hands.

"I like your idea, Smedley, of a letter to the Bishop of Calcutta,"
exclaimed Hardy. "But how is Miss Armstrong to get out? Could you find
her a berth aboard of you or in one of your ships?"

"Well, it's like this with us," answered Smedley; "we have six ships,
and every ship carries a stewardess. Three are away, and the others, I
know, are provided with stewardesses. The practice is for a person who
wants the position to call at the offices, and if her qualifications
are all right her name is put down, and she awaits her chance. Miss
Armstrong might have to wait a long time, and she doesn't want to do
so."

Julia shook her head slowly, and Mrs. Smedley said:

"How can she wait, Jim? She has no money, and no friend when Mr. Hardy
sails."

"Are you anything of a nurse?" inquired the captain.

"I have nursed old ladies, but not children," answered Julia. "But I
have had some experience in the sick-room."

There was a pause. Smedley filled his pipe thoughtfully.

"Have _you_ a stewardess?" asked Hardy.

"Yes," replied Smedley, "she has been in the ship four voyages."

"What's the pay?" asked Hardy.

"Four pounds a month."

"Does she sign the ship's articles?"

"All the same as if she were an A.B.," replied Smedley.

There was another pause, during which the captain lighted his pipe.

"I can promise nothing," said he, looking at his wife as though he
was trying to gratify her instead of helping the girl; "but I'll see
to-morrow if some berth as second or assistant stewardess can be
contrived. I shall see Mrs. Lambert--that is the stewardess's name,
and I don't doubt that I can get the office to recognise the need of
assistance, as I understand we shall be a full ship with a good many
children."

"You are a real friend," exclaimed Hardy. "It is more than I dared
expect from you," and he turned to witness the effect of the kindly
captain's words upon the girl; but her expression was as one who
gazes at a cheerless prospect. Observing that Hardy watched her, she
exclaimed, in a low voice, "I can but thank you, Captain Smedley," and
she bowed her head, leaving it bowed.

There was not much more to be said upon the subject after this; indeed
it was easily seen that the girl's heart was with Hardy, and as he was
sailing for Australia she wanted to go there too, which perhaps was
not idle in her, because it was impossible for her to realise that
he could not marry her, even if he loved her, which she had no right
to imagine, as he could not support her ashore, nor as a mate, nor
even perhaps as a captain, take her to sea with him. But things are
felt and understood which may not be expressed, and a little before
Mrs. Brierley and the maid came in with the tea-tray and the cakes
it was arranged that Hardy should accompany Miss Armstrong on board
the _Glamis Castle_, which lay not far from the _York_, when Captain
Smedley hoped to be able to tell her that he had managed to find a
berth for her aboard his ship.

"It will save a vast deal of anxiety and of time, and it will rescue
you from the horrors of the emigrant ship," said Hardy to Julia, who
smiled faintly and looked as though the least expression of sympathy
would compel her into a passion of tears.

Mrs. Brierley spread a liberal tea upon the table, but not much
appetite attended it. The subject of the assistant stewardess was
dropped, and Mrs. Smedley listened with attention, and Julia with
fictitious interest, to the conversation that was almost entirely
carried on by Hardy and his friend. They had been shipmates, as we have
heard--Hardy as midshipman, Smedley as third mate, both occupying the
midshipmen's quarters in days when Blackwall Liners used to sail with
twelve or fourteen reefers in buttons and badges, who had sole charge
of the mizzen-mast, the poop or quarter-deck, the quarter-boats and the
gig. John Company's flag was then flying, but they had not served in
that employ. They afterward came together, Smedley as chief mate and
Hardy as third, in a vessel called the _Asia_, a ship with long skysail
poles, a stem nearly as up and down as a cutter's, black as night, half
the length of her aft sparkling with round ports. They talked of this
ship and of her wonderful passages; how her captain would carry fore,
main, and topgallant stu'nsails, and pass by ships which thought they
were cracking on with a topgallantsail set over a single reefed topsail.

Sailors who have been shipmates love this sort of memories, and it
is like watching the coil of the sea--one blue ridge dissolving in
the base of another, with the laughter and the thunder of heaving and
racing brine--to hear them.

Thus they passed the evening, with the help of a little whisky and
plenty of tobacco, and Julia, sitting beside Mrs. Smedley, told her
story over again, but fully, and Mrs. Smedley talked of her son, who
was a young curate of whom she was very proud, not only because of his
social importance, but because of his eloquence: she declared that
he preached a better sermon, young as he was, than any minister of
the gospel in the whole diocese, and the interest Julia took in this
matter, though the poor girl was thinking all the time of Hardy and the
East Indiaman, charmed Mrs. Smedley.

The East India docks are among the oldest on the Thames. They embody
many chapters of the maritime history of this country. They are of
extraordinary interest to any one who knows the story of the ocean,
and of the might and majesty of England as the Queen of the Sea. Their
soup-coloured waters have reflected many different forms and types of
ships, from the emblazoned, glazed, and castellated stern of the East
Indiaman to the long, black, yellow-funnelled, three-masted steamer
whose straight stem shears through it from Gravesend to New York in
less time than it took the Indiaman to beat down Channel. The produce
of many lands litters the quays and fills the sheds. The steam winch
rattles, the giant arm of crane swings its tons, the stevedore shouts
in the depths, and the mate yells at the hatchway. The tall masts rise
into the air, lifting their topmost yards into the yellow obscurity
up there; figures dangle on the foot ropes, or jockey the yard-arms.
The house bunting of a score of firms makes a festival to the eye, and
alongside is the barge, whose slender company do not pay the dues, and
whose language is beyond the dreams of Houndsditch.

It was Wednesday afternoon, about three o'clock, and the docks were
full of the animation of the coming and going, and the loading and
the discharging ships. The air trembled with hoarse voices, with the
passage of locomotives and wagons, with the rattle of steam machinery,
with the hissing of escaping vapour. It was the Isle of Dogs, and the
afternoon was somewhat foggy. In one basin lay a number of fine ships,
nearly all sailing ships, for there were very few funnels to be seen
in those days, and along the edge of the wall of this basin two people
were walking--Hardy and Julia Armstrong. They were two of a great many
other persons, who were labourers, sailors, and so forth; and as they
walked slowly, for the road was obstructed by goods and machinery as
well as by toilers, lumpers, and loafers, Hardy, pointing to a ship
lying on the other side of the basin, exclaimed:

"That's the _York_."

Julia stopped to look at her. She was not in trim to be seen to
advantage; her sails were not bent, her running gear was not rove, but
all saving her royal yards were aloft, and her model, though light
and showing the green sheathing, was visible in such perfection of
run, in such elegance of elliptic stern, in such swelling beauty and
fining grace of schooner cut-water and flaring bow, as could be matched
only by those lovely creations of the ship-builders' art, the Aberdeen
clippers.

"She is a beautiful vessel," exclaimed Julia. "I wish you commanded
her."

"So do I," answered Hardy, running a critical eye over the ship.

"Do you like the captain?"

"I know his name," answered Hardy, "but I've not yet met him. He
replaced a gray-haired man who was a philanthropist, and held notions
and opinions which are not appreciated by ship-owners. He was kind to
his men, and owners cannot die worth millions if kindness to crews
is tolerated. A sailor to his mind was a man and not a dog, which
astonished the ship-owners, whose views are otherwise. If the food was
bad he went on broaching till he came to something sweet, and this was
an enormity. He would go into the fok'sle and attend upon a sick man,
and help him so far as kindness and the medicine-chest could. His crew
would have gone on sailing round the world with him for ever. Such men
are not fit to command merchant sailors," he added, sarcastically, "and
so he is discharged, and probably will not find another ship, and God
knows what he will do, for at his age what _can_ he do?"

They continued their walk until they arrived at the corner of the dock.
A large full-rigged ship lay there. Her house flag was cream-white with
a black cross in it; a delicate space of bunting that trembled under
the golden ball of truck, for this vessel had short royal-mastheads,
and when the yards were hoisted they sat like a frigate's under the
eyes of the rigging.

Hardy caused Julia to stop, whilst they yet commanded a view of the
ship's stern and the whole length of the decks from the poop to the
topgallant forecastle. She was undoubtedly a very beautiful ship,
probably the handsomest at that time of them all in the London Docks.
Her stern's embellishment would have done justice to the imagination of
the Dutch shipwrights of the seventeenth century. Dull as the day was,
this _Glamis Castle_, without sunlight to reflect, without the sparkle
of water to kindle stars and to flash prisms, was lustrous as though
self-luminous with window and gilt and gorgeous quarter-galleries, and
upon the sloping ebony of her counter, before it glowed into the yellow
metal of her brand-new sheathing, were the long white letters of her
name and her port, and these letters you could read in the water that
floated stagnant about her rudder and run. Her main-deck and waist
were full of business; her quarter-deck winch rattled its pawls with
the noise of a hearse trotted by tipsy men from the graveyard gate;
the crane was sinking costly burdens into the wide, black yawn of the
main-hatch; riggers were aloft; preparations for the long voyage round
the Cape to Calcutta were being pushed forward, as the newspapers
would say; but, saving the mate, with one foot upon the coaming of the
main-hatch, watching the slow descent of cargo into the depths, and
saving the figure of Captain Smedley, sitting on the fore-skylight of
the poop with an end of cigar in his month, there was then no man upon
that ship who would have a hand in the navigation of her, from the
wide breast of river flowing beyond, to that other distant breast of
river revolting with black corpses and their ships' companies of plumed
scavengers.

"There's Smedley!" exclaimed Hardy, and Julia looked at the captain
sitting on the skylight. "If he ships you," he continued, "you will be
sailing away in a noble craft," and he began to talk to himself: "What
a hoist of maintopsail! How splendidly stayed her spars are! She'll
show cloths enough to get knots from the waft of a sea-mew's wing!"

They walked on till they came abreast of Smedley, and then Hardy hailed
him.

"Come aboard, I'm waiting for you," sang out Smedley, with a flourish
of his fingers at the peak of his cap. Hardy took the girl's hand, and
they crossed a short platform of planks stretched between the edge of
the wall and the ship's bulwarks, and descending two or three steps
gained the main-deck, whence they made their way to the poop by the
port ladder. Before they ascended this ladder Hardy stopped Julia to
look at and admire the cuddy front. It was a true Dutch picture of
its kind. It resembled the front of a house with its door and three
brass-protected, red-curtained windows of a side, and a projecting wing
of cabin on either hand, so that the front was a pleasant recess with
its roof of poop-deck over it. But the romance of this fancy of cuddy
front--perished for ever to this and all future generations--lay in the
carving that lavishly embellished it: a fantastic mixture of anchors
and flags with masts in full sail peering between, and human figures
with wings blowing horns. There was uniformity in all this variety,
and the complicate picture in the dark colours of teak was fraught with
meaning to the interpreting eye.

The sailor and the girl went on to the poop, a fine stretch of plank,
but not quite so white as it would be presently, when it had been
tickled by the holystone, and when the ivory spaces of it would take
the sun-shed impression of the rigging like rulings in indigo, clear of
the velvet-violet shadow of the awning.

"Well, here we are," exclaimed Captain Smedley, rising from the
skylight and speaking with that bluntness which many admired in his
speech, thinking it sailorly, just as people will inhale doubtful
odours from an inner harbour and relish them as "ozone." "What do you
think of the ship, Hardy?"

But though he spoke to Hardy, he kept his eye on Miss Armstrong,
and was undoubtedly admiring her, particularly her figure, and the
fascinating cock of her head with its tilted hat.

"She's the finest ship I ever saw," answered Hardy, with real
enthusiasm. "What a marvellous stern! what a delightful cuddy front!"

"Meant to astonish the natives," said Smedley. "They have settled the
choice of more than one coloured nob, and left the other passenger
ships nowhere."

"Well, and what news, Smedley?" said Hardy.

"Oh, I think it may be managed," answered Captain Smedley, sending his
fragment of cigar overboard with a jerk of his arm. "My wife is below:
let's go down to her."

They descended into what was then called the cuddy by way of the
companion steps, and this interior was worthy its wonderful front.
Narrow slips of looking-glass upon the walls of it, and between each
slip was a picture representing some Indian scene. The effect was
brilliant and novel; determination to delight the Oriental eye was
visible in the grotesque figuration of the three lamps hanging over the
table. A Japanese artist, delirious with opium, might have imagined the
extraordinary shapes which supported the globes. All was luxury and
originality. Aft on either hand and athwart-ships were cabins, but the
main accommodation was to be sought in the steerage, which was gained
by a wide staircase, conducting through a hatchway in the fore end of
the cuddy.

Whilst Julia and Hardy were gazing about them Mrs. Smedley came out of
the starboard cabin under the wheel.

"I am trying to make my husband's cabin comfortable for him," said she,
with her homely, motherly smile, after greetings had been exchanged.
"I hope he will soon make his last voyage. Captain Franklin, a friend
of ours, was seventeen years at sea in command, and in all that time
he and his wife calculated that they had only spent one year and three
months in each other's company. It is worse than being widowed."

"Much worse," said Captain Smedley, "because you can't get married
again. The beggar's always coming home."

"Let us sit down," said Mrs. Smedley. "Miss Armstrong, come and sit
beside me here. I am afraid we sha'n't be able to offer you any
refreshments, but Jim when he came along said something about dining at
the Brunswick Hotel."

"Captain Smedley's full of original ideas," exclaimed Hardy as they
seated themselves at the table. "What a different scene, Mrs. Smedley,
this interior will submit a few weeks hence," he continued. "I see the
gallant captain yonder at the head there, a row of ladies and gentlemen
ranged down the table from either hand of him. The table smokes with
good cheer, elaborately served; through a window yonder you see an ayah
cuddling a baby and swaying to the heave of the ship. How the sails
swell to the heavens through that skylight!" and here he cast his eyes
aloft, and then looking at Miss Julia, he said, "And where will you be?"

"Well, you may take it as good as settled," said Captain Smedley, "and
let my wife get all the thanks," he added, not particularly referring
to Julia in his speech.

"You are very good," said Hardy, glancing at Julia, who was certainly
not smiling. "How shall we consider it as good as settled?"

"You've got to thank my wife, she's taken a great interest in the young
lady," said Smedley.

Julia meeting Mrs. Smedley's eyes gave her a grave bow, full of the
unconscious coquetry of her natural postures.

"It's settled in this way," continued Smedley. "I saw Mrs. Lambert this
morning, and it is arranged that Miss Armstrong sails as her assistant.
Old Perkins, one of the chiefs, who was at the office, said that he
couldn't see the need; freights were low, and the ship was sailed
without regard to expense." Here the captain winked at Hardy. "I told
him the lady was a good nurse and accustomed to children, and that the
stewardess needed help. So, Miss Armstrong, you will sign on, and you
will have me for a captain. Do you like the idea?"

"I thank you a thousand times for your kindness," answered Julia. "This
is a beautiful ship, and I am sure you will see that I am not unhappy.
But--but shall I find employment in Calcutta? Am I not almost sure of
finding employment in Australia?" and she looked with a wistfulness
that was almost love at Hardy.

"You certainly will find employment in Australia, and most certainly
a husband," said Smedley, who took the girl's hesitation very
good-humouredly. "But I fear your employment will be menial, and the
washing-tub, and the cooking range don't suit the likes of you."

"It is very true," said Mrs. Smedley.

Hardy listened with his eyes fixed on the deck. His heart had noted the
girl's wistful look, and it was beating a little fast in some confusion
of thought to his interpretation of her eyes.

"A husband," continued Smedley, "will certainly be forthcoming, but
like the range and the tub, he won't suit the likes of you, though
stress of circumstances make you his wife. Now it's all tip-top
gentility in India, with a real chance of a first-class sort, aboard my
ship, this side of Calcutta."

"Oh! it's marriage you are always thinking of, Captain Smedley," cried
Julia, clasping her hands, and looking at him in her fascinating way.

The captain glanced at his wife as if the conversation was growing
personal.

"Pray remember this, Miss Armstrong," said Mrs. Smedley, "if you are on
the ship's articles you belong to the ship, and if you cannot obtain
employment in the months during which the vessel will be lying in the
Calcutta River, you can return in her, by which time Mr. Hardy may have
arrived, and then you can try Australia."

"That's a new idea, and a splendid one," said Hardy.

Julia's face brightened. "_Will_ you let me return in her, captain?"
she asked.

"Certainly, if you don't run away, as is customary with many who sign
the ship's articles," he answered. "But you don't go out to come back;
a major-general may fall in love with you on your arrival, and then
you'll be coming on board to ask for my blessing." He added with a
little movement of impatience, "Is it settled?"

"Yes, and we thank you again and again," exclaimed Hardy.

"You'll sleep in the stewardess's cabin," said Captain Smedley. "Let's
go below and have a look at it. By the way," he added, "I may as well
say at once that your pay will be thirty shillings a month."

Miss Armstrong blushed, and bowed, and smiled.

"Not enough, when it's all taken up, for a new gown, Jim," said Mrs.
Smedley. "Where's the cabin, lovey?"

They all went down the broad steps, conducting to what was then called
the steerage, in which the first-class cabin passengers were berthed,
though in these days the word steerage is wholly associated with
third-class people and German Jews, who quarrel over packs of greasy
cards. The ship had plenty of beam, and the steerage was spacious
for a vessel of her burden. The cabins ran well forward, and there
was plenty of them. The central deck would be carpeted when the ship
was ready for sea. Handsome bunks, washstands, chest of drawers, and
other furniture, made every cabin resemble a snug little bedroom, and
the port-holes were large, with plenty of room for the passage of the
thrilling and soothing gush of blue breeze, when the flying-fish should
be starting from the metalled fore-foot in flights of pearly light,
and when the sun should hang in a roasting eye over the foretopgallant
yard-arm. The stewardess's berth was small but cosy: two fore-and-aft
bunks, the same conveniences as in the other cabins--and this was to be
Julia's bedroom.

She lingered a little looking around her, and the others paused to
humour her.

Then said Captain Smedley, "I am hungry. Let us go and get something to
eat at the Brunswick Hotel."




CHAPTER V.

CAPTAIN LAYARD


A little later than three weeks from the date on which our friends
had dined together at the Brunswick Hotel, in the East India Docks, a
fine, full-rigged ship was sailing slowly in rhythmic lifts and falls,
as full of sweet grace as the cadence and movement of lovely music,
through the dark blue evening waters of the Atlantic, about two hundred
miles to the southward of the Chops, and the autumn glory of the fast
westering sun clothed her.

She was the well-known clipper ship _York_, bound to Melbourne and to
another port, and she had followed, after four days, another beautiful
vessel which we have inspected--I mean the _Glamis Castle_, bound, as
the _York_ was bound, for the Cape parallels, where their liquid paths
would diverge, one going away east for Cape Leeuwin, and the other
shifting her helm for the Indian Ocean.

The _York_ had made a noble passage down the Channel, driven by a
black, salt, shrieking, easterly breeze that grew into half a gale,
with soft, dark clouds smouldering as they flew. The Channel sea had
the look of flint, and to each foaming _scend_ the ship drove in a
curtsey of fury, as though to the thrust of some mighty hand. She
stormed along under two topgallantsails and single reefs and swelling
fore-course, and a swinging wing or two of jib and staysail until she
was out of soundings in a passage that had the swiftness of steam,
as steam then was; and then the strong breeze fined down, the wind
shifted into the northwest, and behold this clipper of spacious pinions
breaking the dark blue heave at her bows into scintillant lines like
the meteor's thread of light, with every curve of cloth at the leaches,
from head-earing to clew, of a faint pink with the light in the west.

The officer of the watch stood on the weather-side of the quarter-deck
with his eyes fixed upon a distant sail, close hauled and reaching
westwards; but it was evident by the expression of his eyes that his
attention was not with _her_. A single figure at the wheel grasped
the spokes with an occasional movement, and sometimes a glance at the
card of the compass, and sometimes a look at the canvas aloft, which,
swelling out and sinking in, breathed like the breasts of human beings.
The flush deck ran with a fair, white sweep into the "eyes," and you
guessed by the neatness everywhere visible that the vessel owned a
smart chief mate.

The anchors had been stowed. It was the first dog-watch, and a few
of the crew were idling on the forecastle. Presently up through the
companionway, whose steps led into the cabin where the captain and the
two mates lived, rose a little boy of about eight years of age, dressed
as a navy sailor, and his bright gold curls shone to the setting sun
past the round cap which was perched on the back of his head. He was a
beautiful little boy of the purest English type; no arch Irish eye was
ever of a darker blue than his. A drum--not a child's toy, but a real
drum, though a small one--was slung by a lanyard round his neck, and he
clutched the two sticks, whilst he looked at the officer of the watch
with a smile of his red lips, disclosing a row of little milk-white
teeth, and said:

"Mr. Hardy, may I play my drum?"

"Why, yes, Johnny, of course you may," answered Hardy, "and if you'll
beat a smart tattoo the breeze will freshen, for we are wanting legs,
Johnny."

"May I go on the forecastle and beat it?" said Johnny. "The man who has
the whistle will play it whilst I beat."

"Hurrah for 'The Girl I Left Behind Me,'" said Hardy. "Go forward,
little sonny, and beat the music out of the sails, and mind how you go."

Just when the little boy was about to run along the decks an immense,
magnificent Newfoundland dog sprang through the companion-hatch as
though it had missed the little fellow below. The dog instantly saw
the boy, and they sped forward together, the beautiful animal often
bounding to the height of the boy's head in its delight in his company.
The men on the forecastle all looked at them as they came, and those
who walked stood still to watch them coming. The instant the dog was
forward it swept its sagacious, beaming eyes, fuller of intelligence
than many which look out of human faces, round the ocean line, and
when it saw the sail to windward it set up a deep baying bark, a very
organ note, grand in tone as the solemn stroke of a great bell, which,
translated, as clearly signified, "Sail ho!" as the setting of the sun
denotes the coming of night.

"Where away, Sailor?" shouted Hardy from the quarter-deck, and the
seamen laughed out, whilst the dog, after one glance aft, pointed his
noble head in the direction of the ship, and lifting up his nose to
heaven barked deeply twice, which was his English for _starboard_. The
seamen laughed loudly again.

Johnny beat a roll on the drum, and the sailors gathered round him, and
others came springing up through the forescuttle, which is the name of
the little hatch through which you drop into the forecastle or living
room of the crew. The boy beat that drum marvellously well; he made it
rattle as though a regiment marched behind him, and the sails on high
rattled in echo as though several phantom drummers were stationed in
various parts of the rigging.

The dog lay down and watched the boy, and a few of the seamen, one
after another, went up to it and stroked its head.

"Where's the man that's got the whistle?" said Johnny, ceasing to beat.

"Where's Dicky Andrews?" shouted a man, and another, going to the
scuttle, cried down, "Below there! tumble up, Dicky, and bring your
whistle with you; you're wanted on deck."

In a few moments a young ordinary seaman rose through the hatch: he was
slightly curved in the back without being humped, and carried the face
of the hunchback, the corners of his mouth being puckered into a dry
aspect of advanced years, such as may often be observed in people who
are afflicted with spinal complaints. He was red-haired, and his little
eyes were full of humour and as lively as laughter itself, and he wore
the togs of the merchant Jack--dungaree for breeches, an old striped
shirt, a dirty flannel jacket, and a cap without a peak.

"All right, Master Johnny," said he, pulling a fife out of his pocket.
"What shall it be, sir?"

"What shall it be, my lads?" asked Johnny, looking round with his
sweet, delightful smile and arch-blue eyes at the weather-stained faces
of the men, one of whom was a negro, another a Dane, brown as coffee,
two others Dagos, with frizzled hair and silver hoops in their ears;
and these this boy of eight had called "My lads."

"Give us 'The British Grenadiers,'" said a seaman.

"A dog before a soldier," exclaimed the voice of an Irishman. "Give us
'St. Patrick's Day in the Morning,' me dear."

"Hurrah for 'St. Patrick's Day'!" shouted several voices; and Dicky,
putting his fife to his lips, started the most inspiriting air that
ever mortal genius composed. The drum rattled, the sticks throbbed in
the little fists; Dicky began to caper as he played; nearly all the
ship's company were assembled on the forecastle, and many began to
leap about and spring with delight to the music; the dog rose, and in
a stately way ran or waltzed amongst the caper-cutters. That fore-deck
then was a wonderfully animated picture. The arch of the fore-course,
sleepily swelling and sinking, yielded a good sight of the scene to the
quarter-deck. The setting sun painted it into a canvas almost gorgeous
with the streaks of purple fire in the tarry shrouds and backstays, and
in the climbing lines of the well-greased masts; and in the flush on
the breasts of the sails, and in the red stars it kindled in all that
mirrored it.

The fife and drum kept company superbly, and the fine Irish air seemed
to thrill through the ship, and to echo up aloft like some new spring
or spirit of life. The cocks in the coops abaft the galley chimed in
with a constant defying crowing, about as melodious as the noise of a
broken-winded barrel organ. The pigs under the long-boat grunted in
sympathy with sounds which reminded them of the trough and the haystack
and the near village.

Whilst all this harmless sailors' pleasure was going forward on the
ship's forecastle the captain of the vessel came out of the cabin, and
when he stepped upon the deck he stood a moment with his hand resting
upon the companion-hood, looking forward, and listening to the music.

He was a man of about forty-five to fifty years of age, and his name
was William Layard. He scarcely wore the appearance of a sailor. The
lower portion of his face was hidden in hair, which was of a dark
brown, streaked with gray, and his hair was long. His nose was a fine,
well-bred aquiline, his brow square, his eyebrows shaggy, and his dark
eyes burnt with brightness in the shadow cast by their eaves. He wore
a soft black hat, which sat securely upon his head, and was clothed in
a monkey-jacket and blue cloth trousers. No discerning eye but would
have dwelt a little upon him in speculation. His face showed marks of
breeding, but there was something else in him, too, that would have
detained the gaze--a faint, an almost elusive, expression of triumph,
of an inward exaltation, which was almost dissembled, and subtly
revealed in the mouth that so delicately diffused it that only a keen
eye would have witnessed it.

Hardy was making the voyage with him for the first time, and though
they had been together for some days, whilst they had frequently
conversed in the docks, he did not understand him, he had not got in
any way near to him. But, as a gentleman himself, he felt the presence
of the gentleman in Captain Layard, and had picked up from his own
lips that he had been educated at one of the great public schools,
had begun the sea life in the Royal Navy as midshipman, but, for some
reason, left unexplained, had quitted the white for the red flag, and
had been in command five years, after serving, of course, as second
and third mate, always trading to the Australian and New Zealand
ports in ships like the _York_, which did not carry passengers. Hardy
had also gathered that he was a widower, who had married a woman of
good birth, the Honourable Miss ----, no need to name her, by whom
he had the little boy Johnny, who was the darling of his heart, and
who had regularly gone with him to sea, since his wife's death, in
the last four voyages to the Pacific. Our friend Hardy had also made
another discovery: that the captain, even before the start, showed a
disposition to treat him as a companion rather than as a mate. This
was so unusual in sea captains--it is still unusual--that Hardy's
speculations as to Captain Layard's character were considerably
sharpened by it.

The drum and fife ceased on a sudden. The sailors stood about, hot and
amused, and the dog with its tongue out looked eagerly from one face
to another. The ship was still: there was no slopping fall of water
alongside to disturb the calm respirations of the canvas; the captain,
with his hand upon the companion-hood, continued to gaze forward,
and Hardy, standing at the mizzen-rigging, watched him askant. Then,
through the serenity of the breathing, sun-flushed air, all the way
from forward, nearly the whole length of the ship, came the clear high
note of little Johnny's voice:

"Dicky, play 'Sally come up,'" and Dicky, rendered zealous by the
captain's presence on deck, instantly put his fife to his lips. The
drum rattled, the sails reëchoed the jolly air, the feet of the men
began to shake, the dog raced and waltzed in stately measures as
before, the whole forecastle was again in motion, and the ship, with
her taut rigging vibrant with the shrilling of the fife and the roll
of the drum, floated onwards over the long, languid undulations of the
deep, which were scarlet westwards with the splendour of the dying day
that was crumbling toward the sea line in masses of burning light.

Captain Layard stepped across the deck to Mr. Hardy.

"That boy plays the drum with a professional hand," said he. "He got
the art himself, for nobody taught him. It is a good drum--good enough
for soldiers to march to."

"I never heard better drumming, sir," answered Hardy.

"Where did Sailor learn to waltz?" said the captain, and he watched the
dog. "How quickly Johnny has made friends with the crew."

"Any crew of Englishmen would cherish and pet him, and perish for such
a beautiful, manly little fellow," exclaimed Hardy, with enthusiasm and
admiration in his voice.

"He's always kept my crews contented," said Captain Layard, smiling.
"Several men have sailed with me every voyage ever since I took Johnny
to sea, learning that he was coming again."

He looked at the sail to windward that leaned like a black feather in
the crimson air, then glanced over the ship's side to judge her pace,
and stood for some time near Hardy listening to the music and watching
the men dancing. He said, with an abruptness that again surprised Hardy
as it had before even startled him during the run down Channel:

"Have you ever studied the nervous system?"

"No, sir," answered Hardy.

"A man is formed of two sides," continued the captain, "and each side
has a nervous system of its own. They are independent, and strange
things happen in consequence. I remember when I was chief mate of a
ship called the _Tartar_ that I stood aft close to the man at the
wheel, who exclaimed on a sudden, 'I don't know what's wrong with
me, but there's two meanings a-going on in my head.' 'What's that?'
I asked. 'This here side,' said he, lifting his right hand from the
spoke, and putting it to his forehead, 'is a-talking one sense, which
ain't sense, because t'other side's talking in a different way,' and
here he touched his left brow, 'and all's confusion,' and then he began
to mutter to himself. I thought he was ill, and calling another man
to the relief, sent him forward and followed with some brandy, which
put his head to rights. I spoke of this matter to a doctor when I got
ashore, and he explained the dual system of nerves, and told me that
overworked brains would occasionally chatter inconsequentially in each
lobe."

"How shall a man act when his brain comes to a misunderstanding in
that fashion?" asked Hardy, gazing with critical interest at the
captain's refined but singular face.

"_I_ take brandy," replied Captain Layard, sending a glance aloft, then
at the distant sail, then at his little son, who continued to beat in
accompaniment to "Sally come up," whilst the sailors sprang about in
glowing glee, and the scarlet in the west deepened into a rusty red.

"Do you suffer from attacks of the kind, sir?" inquired Hardy.

"To tell you the truth," responded the captain, with a peculiar smile,
keeping his gaze fastened on the forecastle, "I had one just now.
The left side grew importunate in nonsense; the right side was all
right, and quite understood that things were wrong. The trouble was
preceded by a curious beating of the heart in the ear. It sounded as
though a wooden leg was hollowly tramping round the galleries of the
brain--thump, thump, thump! It was like the noise of a wooden leg
coming into a theatre when some actress of genius has stilled the house
into breathlessness by her witchery."

"This man is mad," thought Hardy. "He would never converse with me in
this fashion if his head wasn't in two."

The drum and fife ceased. Johnny, seeing his father, came running
aft, and the Newfoundland trotted by his side. It was four bells,
and the sun vanished as the metal chimes trembled away to sea; the
breeze slightly freshened on a sudden, a sound of foam arose like the
song of a full champagne glass held to the ear; delicate streaks of
white flashed about the ocean breast in the twilight like some milky
wings of sea birds; the ship strained a little aloft and hardened her
breasts, and stars of the east shone upon the dark brow of the soaring
night.

The breeze blew with a little edge, but it was still the dog-watches,
and the sailors, though abruptly deprived of the drum in which they
delighted, started on another dance to Dicky's merry and excellent
whistling.

"Father, Sailor likes dancing," said Johnny.

"All sailors like it," answered the captain, stooping to press his lips
to the child's forehead. "Cut below now, my darling, you and the drum,
and put it away and wait for me. I sha'n't be long, and then we'll go
to supper."

The boy, with the obedience of a man-of-war's man, saluted Hardy
with a flourish of his little fist to his golden curls, ran to the
companionway, and vanished, and the noble Newfoundland vanished with
him.

"There is no weather in the glass," said the captain. "If this breeze
freshens we shall make up for lost time. You'll not spare her, Mr.
Hardy."

"No, sir."

"Those are my orders to the second mate. I want to maintain the
reputation of this ship; the freighters love her. I have no fancy for
steam, but you can _time_ it, and so tacks and sheets are bound to go;
but I'll make a bold fight for old tradition," he cried in a curious
tone of enthusiasm, "and what we can't carry we'll drag."

The second mate had come on deck at four bells, and was pacing to
leeward in the deeper shade that dyed the atmosphere there when
the freshening of the breeze heeled the ship. There was nothing
particularly noticeable in this man, of whom a fair sight could be
caught as he passed through the area of light diffused by the cabin
lamp, which was burning in brilliance under the skylight. He was
pale-faced and fat of cheek, very light eyes, lashes like white silk,
yellow hair, and great ears which stood out in eager bearing as though
they sought to catch everything which was said. He was dressed in blue
serge and a cap, and this was his first voyage in the ship. So the
captain and the two mates were sailing the _York_ for the first time in
their lives.

It was Hardy's watch below; he crossed to the second mate, gave him
the course and so forth, and descended into the cabin. Little Johnny
without his drum was sitting on a locker talking to Sailor, who was
looking lovingly up into his face, and often the bright-haired little
chap glanced at the cabin servant, who was preparing the table for
supper. The _York_ had been built to carry cargo; she was not a
passenger ship, though at a pinch accommodation might have been found
for three or four persons, friends of the owners, say, or people
to whom the next ship sailing with immediate despatch might be a
supreme need. In this age they would probably equip such a vessel
with a deck-house for the master and mates. Her cabin was small
and comfortable, very plain, with a seawardly look that suggested
sturdiness, a very different cabin from the luxurious interior of the
_Glamis Castle_! A few berths stood aft, and these were occupied by the
master and mates, and one was a pantry.

Hardy stopped to speak to Johnny.

"You play your drum splendidly," said he. "But what's the good of a
drum if you're going to be a sailor, sonny?"

"I'll play the drum when the bo'sun plays his whistle," answered
Johnny, manfully. "And it will make the sailors quicker in running up
aloft."

"So it will," answered Hardy, laughing heartily, for the image
submitted by the boy's words tickled his fancy--a bo'sun piping "All
hands!" down the forescuttle, and the captain at the break of the poop
beating thunder out of a drum to hurry the men to the reef-tackles!

He lingered a little to talk to the boy, for it charmed him to look
into the sweet handsome face with its arch eyes; 'twas as gladdening to
his heart as the song of a bird or the scent of a nosegay, and somehow
the child always put tender thoughts of Julia Armstrong into his head
by the sheer charm of his smile. He caressed the Newfoundland whilst
he talked to the little lad, and then went to his cabin to change his
coat and brush his hair for supper, musing over much, but particularly
over his last talk with the captain, who never before in the Channel
or after had spoken so oddly or looked so strangely. "If the man _is_
off his head," he thought, "my responsibilities will be enormous," for
he perfectly understood the position that command confers upon the
shipmaster; he was God Almighty aboard; mad or not mad, his orders must
be obeyed; he could steer the ship to the devil and clap the mates in
irons for interfering, and unless the crew mutinied--which few crews
durst do, knowing how heavily the law presses upon seamen, even though
they are able to justify their actions--they must go on obeying the
master's commands, though the fires of hell should be visible right
ahead past the horizon.

Thus Hardy mused whilst he changed his coat and brushed his hair, and
he also thought of Julia Armstrong, and wondered how she was faring,
and what progress her ship had made.

The _Glamis Castle_ had hauled out of dock five days before the _York_
sailed. She had slept upon the silent stream of the Thames one night,
and early next morning was taken in tow by a tug, which released her
off Dungeness; then with the stateliness of a frigate she broke into
a sunshine of canvas, and, if the wind had prospered her, she should
be some five hundred miles ahead of the _York_. But it was sail, not
steam, and short of the report of a passing ship, no man could have
safely conjectured her situation. But one trick of seamanship Smedley
possessed: he never admitted the existence of a foul wind; he never
sweated his yards fore and aft; he was no lover of the bowline, nor of
the shivering leach. It was always "full and bye" with him, though he
was points off, and thus he made a fair breeze of every head-wind, for
his slants to leeward of his course gave him two feet of sailing to
the one he would have got out of a taut, shuddering luff, and he never
looked over the quarter for leeway.

At half-past six Hardy stepped out of his berth and found supper ready,
and the captain sitting at the head of the table with little Johnny on
his right. You will consider it early for supper, but at sea the last
meal is always called supper, and after this they eat no more in the
cabin. There was plenty, and it was good of its kind: ham, cold fowl,
cold sausage, salt beef, biscuit, cheese, and salt butter. A decanter
of rum glowed deep and rich within reach of the captain's arm. A large
globe lamp sparkled brightly overhead, and the scene was a sea-picture
of hospitality and comfort, sweetened into a tender human character
by the presence of the boy who sat on the right hand of his father.
Sailor, the great dog, lay beside the captain on the deck. He was too
dignified to beg; too well trained to expect. He knew his time would
come, and lay patient in the nobility of his shape.

Hardy sat at the foot of the table. It was the custom in this ship for
the captain and mate to eat together, and when the mate was done he
relieved the deck till the second officer had finished. The captain
gave the little boy a slice of cold chicken and a white biscuit, and
filled his glass with water. The swing trays swayed softly as pendulums
to the delicate heave of the evening waters, the bulkheads creaked,
the rudder jarred as the swell rolled, and you could hear faintly the
jump of the wheel chains to the sharp but swiftly arrested shear of the
tiller.

The captain with his cap off disclosed a lofty but receding brow,
rounding with something of the curve of the egg-shell at the temples,
and his long hair and the growth about his cheeks and chin made him
look more like a poet than a salted skipper. Hardy had taken notice
that he stared at the man he talked to, which is contrary to the notion
that the insane have a wandering eye. But that Captain Layard was not
absolutely right in his mind the young sailor was convinced, as he sat
at the foot of the table cutting himself a plate of beef and ham.

"Captain Pearson made poor passages on the whole, I've understood,"
said Captain Layard, referring to the commander he had replaced. "He
was a very cautious man, furled his royals every second dog-watch, and
would snug his ship down to the first hint in the glass to save calling
all hands."

"I was told he was loved by his crew, sir," answered Hardy. "And he
seems to have been the most humane commander that ever sailed out of
the port of London."

"Well, it is right that sailors should be treated as men," said Layard,
staring at Hardy; "but most of them are fools, they are children, they
don't or can't understand things." He put down his knife and fork,
drew out a handkerchief and wiped the palms of his hands, then poured
a wine-glass of rum into a tumbler, and filling the glass with water
swallowed the ruddy draught.

"Some more biscuit, father," said the child.

An expression of tenderness, even like that which might spring from a
mother's heart, softened the captain's singular and striking face as
he looked at the boy whilst he gave him a biscuit. He stared again at
Hardy.

"Sailors," said he, "don't see things from a right point of view. There
was a seaman who wanted a Blackwall cap to wear at the wheel. To make
it he cut up his go-ashore breeches, and to trim and bind the edges he
cut up a new Dungaree jumper. The cap cost him a pound, but he believed
he had got it for nothing because he had made it himself."

Whilst Hardy was laughing, for the captain told this story in a dry
manner, and with a twinkle of eye that certainly did not hint at
insanity, a voice was heard in the companionway:

"There's a heavy fog rolled down upon us, sir, and it's as thick as
cheese to the ship's sides."

It was the voice of Mr. Candy, the second mate, and a moment after his
step could be heard in the plank overhead as he walked to the bulwark
rail.

The captain sprang up and went on deck; Hardy continued to eat his
supper, and talked to the little boy. It was his watch below, and
he was too old a shell to quit the meal until all hands should be
summoned, which a quiet fog, however dense, topped by a reassuring
barometer, was not very likely to occasion.

The fog, nevertheless, had rolled down quickly through the gloom of
the early night on the gust of the black breeze, still nor'west. Black
it was. Nothing was visible of the ship but a few spokes of light,
like the arrested darting of meteoric fibres spiking from the glass on
the skylight in a fiery arch. When the darkness of the night dyes the
darkness of fog then the universal blackness is so deep that you might
think the solid globe had vanished, and that you hung in the centre of
space, death-dark and silent, moonless and starless, chaotic with dumb
masses of the deep electric dye.

This night the fancy would have been easily inspired by the hush upon
the sea, for the sails floated stirless; there was not wind enough to
brush the salt curve into the expiring hiss of foam, and the invisible
swell so lightly swayed the eclipsed fabric that only now and again
did you catch the sad note of the sea, sobbing along the bends, and
hiddenly passing away into the short wake in sighs and tones of weeping.

"Mr. Candy!" called the captain.

"Sir!" came the answer out of the soft invisibility in which the
bulwarks abreast were buried.

They came together in the spokes of radiance about the skylight.

"Clew up all three royals and furl them. Let go all three topgallant
halliards; the sails may hang. Haul up the mainsail; brail in the
mizzen, and down flying and outer jibs, topmast and topgallant
staysails, but leave the sails unfurled. See that your side-lights
are burning brightly, and bend your sharpest ear over the water for a
noise. Was anything in sight before this smother rolled down?"

"I saw nothing, sir. It was a bit thick before the fog came along, and
then it came in a wall."

The captain went to the side to look over and mark the ship's pace,
and the second mate began to sing out. One watch sufficed. There was
little to do but let go with the drag of the downhauls; and the clews
of the great mainsail rose to the slings to the sound of a few ocean
yelps and a "_Chiliman_" chorus. The men were not to be seen until they
ran up against you. They felt for the ropes, and their footfalls were
like the pattering of dead leaves on a pavement to a sudden air of
wind, strangely threading with the shore-going sound the squeak of the
sheave, the rasp of rope, and the soft scraping of parrel descending
the greased topgallant heights. The side-lights were reported as
burning bravely.

The ship now had little more than steerage way, and the captain, after
looking into the compass, and after repeating his instructions to the
second mate to keep his best ear seawards and on either bow, said he
would send the dog on deck, and returned to the cabin.




CHAPTER VI.

THE SHIP'S LOOKOUT


Captain Layard entered the cabin and called to the dog, which instantly
sprang up.

"Sailor, go on deck and keep a lookout," said he, and in a breath the
Newfoundland rushed up the companion-steps and vanished.

"He hasn't had his supper yet, father," exclaimed the little boy.

"I will send it forward to him," answered the captain, seating himself
in the chair he had vacated, and helping himself to a piece of chicken.

Hardy had risen when Layard entered, but seeing the captain sit he
resumed his place. His watch would come round at eight o'clock. There
would be little time for sleep if he withdrew to his berth. He had
supped well, had drunk a glass of grog, had enjoyed his chat with the
little boy, whose charming face and sweet, ingenuous, yet manly prattle
delighted him; he was comfortable, and the captain inspired no feeling
of restraint nor sense of intrusion, so he sat on.

"The fog is as thick as mud in a wine-glass," exclaimed Captain Layard.
"Some go fast and some go slow through these smothers. The fast man
holds that a ship is under more immediate control when travelling; I
am a slow man when I can't see. In fact," he continued, with a look of
exaltation, with a smile of profound self-complacency, "I claim to know
my business. There is no man afloat who is going to teach me what to do
when a thing is to be done, and done properly."

"If all ships would heave to," said Hardy, witnessing the captain's
mind in the expression which subtly interpreted it, "then it would be
the right thing in a fog to stop your engines, or back your topsail.
But it's the other fellow you can't see that makes the fear." He
immediately added, "Your dog is extraordinarily sagacious, sir."

"It amused me to train him," replied the captain, smoothing Johnny's
little hand as it lay upon the table. "There is no fog-horn which
equals the screams of an irritated sow. A sow once saved me from a
collision by causing a dog, in an invisible ship close aboard on the
starboard bow, to bark. That put the idea into my head. Sailor has the
voice of a trombone, and he didn't need much training either; he is now
perched between the knight-heads with more searching eyes and clearer
ears than the whole ship's company could put together if they made
their heads into one."

Hardy laughed.

"Don't forget Sailor's supper, father," said Johnny.

"I'll not forget," answered the captain.

As he spoke the words the man who waited on the cabin came down the
steps.

"Is it still very thick?" asked the captain.

"Blinding, sir," was the answer.

"Get the dog's supper, and take it to him on the fok'sle," said
Captain Layard. "See that he has water; it may be an all-night job for
him. Pearson was a very humane man," he went on, addressing Hardy. "I
might guess that by the medicine-chest he's left me. I overhauled it
before we sailed, and wondered at the quantity of sleeping and death
stuffs it contained. I found out that in one of his passages home from
Calcutta several men died of cholera, and he was at his wits' ends
for drugs. Ships bound to India should always carry a surgeon; they
would--they must, if there are passengers. But glauber salts are good
things for Jack: 'tis an all-round physic, as good for smallpox as for
indigestion." He laughed somewhat heartily, and continued, "Pearson's
men might have died to a man, for his medicine-chest showed badly
like the end of a long voyage. Fortunately half of them took it into
their heads to live, and they got the ship home. After this Pearson
never went to sea without plenty of drink for cholera. He's left some
doctor's handbook on the diseases of sailors, and there's a volume on
poisons full of pencil marks. His humanity was unwearying, but he got
the sack all the same. Johnny, my darling, it's time for bed. Come
along, my lamb."

He took the boy by the hand, and they went into the captain's cabin,
the child crying as his father opened the door, "Good night, Mr. Hardy."

It was half-past seven; Hardy went into his berth to smoke a pipe
before relieving the deck. The captain's cabin glowed with the soft
illumination of an oil lamp screwed to a bulkhead, and swinging in its
bracket to the heave. It was a fine large cabin, equipped with a table
covered with green baize on which were writing materials, nautical
instruments, and such things; a fore-and-aft bunk for the captain, and
a brass cot at the foot of the bunk, safely secured to the deck, for
Johnny. It was comfortable with a carpet, chairs, a short sofa, a chest
of drawers, and washstand. Close beside Johnny's cot on the deck was
the boy's drum.

The captain began to undress the little fellow, who talked to him of
Mr. Hardy; he said he wished Mr. Hardy could sleep with them. No mother
ever used a tenderer hand in putting her child to bed than did this
strange sea-captain, mad or not mad. His eyes were tender, twice he
kissed the boy's fair brow; he seemed reluctant to make an end of this
undressing, as though he loved to have his hands upon the child, to
have his face close to him.

"Now your prayers, Johnny," said he. And the boy knelt by his cot, and
in words he had learnt from his father, prayed that his mother would
look down and watch over them both, and that God would bless his father
and himself.

The captain stood by in devout posture, and whispered the words which
the child uttered, then hoisted the little fellow into bed, covered him
up, and kissed him.

"Mayn't Mr. Hardy come and see me in bed?" said the child.

"Ay," answered the captain, and he stepped to the door, and called the
chief officer by name.

Hardy instantly came out, leaving his pipe behind him.

"Come and see my boy in bed," said the captain.

Hardy, not knowing that this was due to the child and not to the
father, was secretly astonished, for though he had always lived on very
good terms with the captains he had sailed with, he had never met
any commander who treated him just as though they occupied the same
platform.

He followed him into his cabin, and the boy with his bright hair on the
pillow smiled a greeting.

"It is a beautiful bed, Johnny," said the mate, stepping close to the
cot, and looking at him with the affection which such a child as this
will excite in a sailor's heart at sea, moved by thoughts of home and
of the fair land he has left, of his own childhood perhaps, and visited
by that mute sense of solitude, peril, and the holy and brooding
presence of the Great Spirit, which is the impulse of the deep, and
understood by those to whom the ocean, eternal and boundless in the
constant recession of its horizon, is an interpretable face. He turned
to the captain and exclaimed:

"If your boy ever dreams, sir, it is of the angels who guard his bed."

He kissed the little chap, and was going.

"A moment, Mr. Hardy," exclaimed the captain, who did not seem to
have caught or noticed what the mate said. "This is an example of old
Pearson's forethought and humanity."

He stepped, followed by Hardy, to a corner of the cabin, in which
stood a small mahogany chest, and lifted the lid. This lid was
furnished with scissors, syringes, and the like, and the contents of
the chest consisted of a number of stoppered green bottles, as well as
sticking-plaster, lint, and surgical instruments. The captain, pointing
to the bottles as he spoke, said:

"This is laudanum; this is labelled morphia; this is atropine for the
ulcerated eye; this is chlorodyne. Here are drugs enough to start a
man as a chemist. This is a book," said he, half lifting a thin volume
from a pocket and letting it slip back, "that tells you how to make use
of all this stuff; ay, even the right dose of Glauber's salt is given."

"I hope there's no chance of Master Johnny handling those bottles,
sir?" said the mate, who, though he gazed with curiosity at this
revelation of the open lid, was not inattentive to the expression of
the commander's face, which was one of superiority, as though he had
appropriated and was triumphing in the merits of the kind foresight
which were certainly not his but Pearson's.

"You will never look into this chest, Johnny?" said Hardy.

"His mother was the very soul of honour," exclaimed Captain Layard,
"and that child cannot but be the spirit of truth and honesty itself."

He shut the lid and added, "Where, I wonder, does the human soul come
from? The father cannot give his, or a portion of his, to the child,
nor can the mother, for that might involve the forfeiture of their
title to immortality. The great poet must be right; the soul which
informs a child, which spiritualises it in the womb and at its birth,
must come from God, who is its Home. What a wonderful thought! What a
revelation it has been to me! What an assurance and promise!"

He stood gazing steadfastly at Hardy, who, saying, a little uneasily,
"These are matters quite beyond me, sir," again made for the door,
through which he passed in silence, the captain standing motionless,
his hands clasped before him, and his eyes seeming to see something
beyond the bulkhead, upon which he had fastened them.

At eight o'clock Hardy's watch came round. He went on deck in a very
thoughtful state, and the deep dye of that tremendous void of black
vapour was very well qualified to darken his mood into the hue of the
crow--a bird deemed portentous in ancient seafaring. He stood in the
spokes of lamp-sheen about the skylight and called to Mr. Candy, who
came upon him suddenly out of some part of the deck like a man walking
through a glass in a dark room. He exchanged a few sentences with this
second mate, but they wholly concerned the business of the ship. Candy
was not a person to take into one's confidence; his silver-white lash
shaded a pale eye that marked one of those souls which, as you cannot
make up your mind about them, you resolve to distrust; otherwise Hardy,
in defiance of all law of discipline, and even of sea-breeding, would,
in the humour of anxiety that then possessed him, have been glad to
hear Mr. Candy's opinion of the commander.

The second mate went below to bed after reporting that he had visited
the forecastle, and found the Newfoundland awake and vigilant, also
that two hands paced the forward-deck as lookouts.

The air of wind was still northwest; it breathed with just weight
enough to steady the topsails and the foresail. As the ship leaned
with the languid heave of the sea, the sails hanging from the yards on
the caps, and the festooned clews of the invisible mainsail, flapped
in strokes of the pinions of mammoth birds winging betwixt the masts.
The lap of the brine against the bows, which were slowly breaking
the hidden waters, saddened the blindness of the night with a note
of supernatural pain and grief. The ship was moving slowly, and, as
before, nothing of her was distinguishable but the dim lustre smoking
in hurrying streams and wreaths of vapour about the skylight and about
the binnacle-stand.

It was damp, depressing, heart-subduing. The philosophy of the mariner,
which is one of endurance, and of that species of submission which is
attended with sea blessings and the profanities of the ocean-parlour,
breaks down in the fog. Here is the helplessness, here is the sealed
eye, the spiriting of groping anxiety, which is a sort of anguish. It
is not his ship or himself that he fears; the emotions bred by fog are
ahead or abeam, and it need not be steam, for a dirty little brig or
schooner, with her half-dozen of a crew shouting their consternation
under the foretopmast stay, has been known to smite and sink an ocean
palace full of light, of superb machinery, of saloon tables glowing
with fruit and plate, and populous with diners.

The deck was not to be comfortably measured in a quarter-deck walk, in
blackness so dense that if you swerved by so much as two degrees of
angle of foot you thumped your breast against the bulwarks. Hardy laid
hold of the wet weather vang on the quarter and fell into reflection,
for loneliness breeds thought, and no man is more lonely than the
officer of the watch on board a merchantman. His mind went again to
Julia Armstrong, but it had found an unsettling fascination in Captain
Layard, and it quickly returned to him. He could not doubt that he
was a little mad; his ideas were strange, yet his speculations showed
thought and culture. He was insane to one to whom he talked freely, but
to his crew, to whom he would not and did not talk, he must be the
commonplace "old man" of the quarter-deck, and in this way Hardy feared
he might prove dangerous even to tragedy.

The ship's bell was hung in the wake of the galley, and a little clock,
illuminated by a bull's-eye lamp, was hung up under a penthouse on a
timber erection just before it. A lookout man would walk to the clock
to see the time, and at ten he struck "four bells," at which hour it
was as black and thick as ever after its first coming; the light breeze
blew, and the ship swayed softly through the void.

Hardy made his way forward to see to the dog. He struck between two men
who were walking the deck, and one muttered, "What cheer?"

"By God, my lads," said Hardy, "you'll not find out what a wolf's had
for dinner by squinting down his throat!"

There was a faint haze about the forescuttle: it came up into the inky
thickness from the forecastle lamp. It was a slight relief, and even a
rest for the eye, but the shadow forward was deeper than it was aft,
for up there in the void was the raven thundercloud of foresail and
foretopsail, and further forward yet, like ebon waterspouts soaring
from sea to topmast head, were the midnight dyes of the jib and
staysail.

Hardy found the night-lights burning brightly, and going toward the
heel of the bowsprit he touched the Newfoundland lookout with his foot.
He patted the invisible, shaggy head, and passed his arm around its
neck, and pressed the creature's long wet jaw to his breast, a token of
love and encouragement which the dog acknowledged by a grunt or two of
happiness.

"Keep a bright lookout, Sailor," said Hardy, patting the shaggy,
invisible head again, and knowing there were two human lookouts
somewhere about, he called, and they answered out of the black
blankness to leeward. Well, he could not tell them to keep their eyes
skinned, for the sight of man and even of dog lay dead upon that
forecastle, but he directed them to listen with all their might, to go
often to the head-rail and strain their ears, and they answered, "Ay,
ay, sir."

Very plainly on this forecastle did you hear the sulky sob of the sea
like something large and timid, gasping to the rude shock of the stem.
The ocean hissed a little here and there, but the light wind could not
give life enough to the glance of the curl of sea to strike through it
to the eye, even though one looked straight down over the rail.

Hardy slowly made his way aft, and on approaching the binnacle
discerned the captain standing in the faint sheen close to the helmsman.

"I never remember a thicker fog," said the captain, and he asked
questions about the lookout, the dog, and the side-lights. Then walking
out of the binnacle haze he struck the bulwarks almost abreast, and
Hardy followed and stood alongside.

"Whenever I am in this sort of thing," said Captain Layard, "I think of
the blind. It is terrible to wake of a bright morning to the eternal
darkness of one's life. I should fear the presence of visions in that
everlasting gloom. It would be haunted with phantoms, and as thick-set
with wild, grotesque, horrible, brassy faces as the human eye when
morphia closes the lid."

"My father is, as you know, sir, a doctor," said Hardy, "and I've
heard him speak of the blind. He declares they are less to be pitied
than the stone deaf." The captain pshaw'd. "He would say," continued
Hardy, "contrast the faces of the two afflictions. They both force the
mind's eye more deeply inwards, but in the one there is the pain of
attention ever strained and a baffled, helpless look, whilst the other
is mild and restful as though it had found peace in its communes with
God."

"Your father may be a very clever man," said Captain Layard, "but I
have no faith in doctors. I have never met a doctor who did me any
good, and I have been ill in my time, believe me. They let my wife die."

He paused as if in some passage of deep emotion. In this interval
Hardy thought to himself what an extraordinary conversation for the
quarter-deck of a ship, close upon midnight, in a dense fog!

Some hanging fold of canvas flapped aloft. In a voice as changed as
though he was acting, the captain exclaimed:

"That's the speech of a sail that asks to be furled. The glass is high,
and there's no foul weather anywhere. If the breeze freshens by ever so
little, or if this light air draws ahead, call me, sir."

There was positive refreshment in this plain speech of the sea to
Hardy, who on replying to the captain found that he had gone, and in
the steaming faintness hovering in the companion just caught a sight of
his head disappearing.

Eleven bells had been struck, and Hardy was beginning to think that
it would be eight bells soon, which must signify shelter, freedom
from the dwarfish drench of the vapour, as fine but as penetrating
as rain in Lilliput, a warm blanket, half a pipe, and then oblivion
for an off-shore spell of nearly four hours, when on a sudden the dog
barked. The tones were deep and constant, and to the first roll of
those organ notes the loose wet canvas beat the masts aloft in a sudden
heave of the whole fabric, and an element of alarm and even of fearful
expectation entered the black void and thickened it, and seemed to
close it round about till the smoking colour of light on forecastle and
quarter-deck dimmed into the preternatural faintness of the salt sea
glow when it shudders a fathom deep under some smooth tropic surface.

The dog continued to bark, and there was an importunate vehemence in
his notes, a bounding pulse of urgency as though the noble creature
with instincts superior to man's knew that a matter of life or death
was concerned in his sentinel bugling. Voices sounded forward, you
heard a hurry of feet; again the ship leaned, and the sails smote
the masts with an alarum sound of metal; and to the accompaniment of
this midnight concert, made ghastly by blackness, by the overwhelming
blindness of fog and by the presence of danger, Hardy rushed forward,
taking his chance of what might be in the road.

"Jump for a port-fire, one of you," he shouted, sending his cry slap
into a very web of seamen's growling voices, the owners of which were
no more to be seen than the ship's keel. "What is it, Sailor?"

And now he was alongside the dog, and with his hand on its head felt
in the direction of the creature's muzzle, and found that it was
delivering its notes straight away over the head-rail, about two points
on the weather bow.

"Wheel, there!" he roared. "Starboard your helm. Let her go off five
points."

"Starboard it is, sir," came back the answer.

"See that sheen out to starboard there, sir?" rang out a voice which
sounded clear through the barking of the dog.

"Hush! Sailor. Down, sir. Hush, my beauty," cried Hardy, and the dog
was instantly silent. "Hark! now."

A sort of oozing of light, dimly scarlet, wild and weak and wet as some
ghostly star of death hovering over a grave, was visible to windward,
a trifle forward of the fore-rigging. "Hark!" cried Hardy, and sure
enough amid the greasy slopping of water, falling lazily from the
thrust of the ship's bow, they could hear a distant noise of shouting,
of cries reëchoed as from one part of a deck to the other, with a
deeper threading of some throat hoarse in a speaking-trumpet.

"Is the mate forward?" sang out the voice of the ship's carpenter.

"Fire one right away off," shouted Hardy, knowing what the fellow had
got and meant.

In a few heart-beats a stream of sun-bright fire was pouring like
water from a hose over the bow, but its lightning illumination
touched but a narrow stretch of the dark water. The foresail turned
of a sickly yellow, and the staysail soared wan as the wing of the
albatross in dying moonlight. All above and abaft, and then forward
to the flying-jib boom end, yards and sailcloth lay steeped in the
impenetrable smother, and within the area of the light the fog drove
slowly in a very Milky Way of silver crystals. But the men could see
one another, and helped by the light Hardy sped aft to be near the
wheel, and there he found Captain Layard.

"There's a ship off the starboard bow, sir," he exclaimed.

"They'll never see that port fire," answered the commander. "They're
burning flares, or we shouldn't see _her_. A foreigner, by the row.
How's she heading?"

That question was answered even as he asked it by the revelation of a
ship. It had the suddenness of a magic-lantern picture flung swiftly.
They saw at the range of a pistol a lurid shape, which they easily
distinguished as a barque with painted ports, a tall poop, and a tall
topgallant forecastle. She was burning flares upon her main-deck and
waist, and the red flames, winding tongues of fire into feathers of
soot-black smoke, jewelled the whole apparition with red-hot stars.
They pierced through the fog like sunlit rubies from glass and brass,
from wet plank and mast, and the grease of spars. She was so close that
she shone out clearly, and made light enough for the people of the
_York_ to see by. Her helm was hard up and she was slowly paying off,
but her flying-jib boom must catch the mizzen-rigging of the Australian
clipper. You heard the splintering of wood aloft, the crash of nearer
timber, broken off carrot-like betwixt a lazy roll of both ships.

The barque's decks were a sight for the gods. Figures of men could be
seen rushing frantically here and there. They were all shouting; men on
the poop were screeching orders, and nothing but the helm gave heed;
men on the forecastle were roaring and flourishing their fists. The
flames duplicated the shadows of the running figures; painted lines
of the rigging upon the planks writhed between the water-ways, like
serpents snaking their attenuated lengths overboard. Never did any sea
light flash up a more startling, a wilder, a more ghastly tapestry.
'Twas like a painting in flames and ruddy stars upon the black canvas
of the fog, and the hull, with its lines of ports like the keys of
a piano, reeled slowly off on the lift of the brine, yard-arm to
yard-arm, the beating canvas of each red as the powder flag, and dying
out up aloft like the reflection of a burning ship upon a cloud.

It was all too breathless for action aboard the _York_. Before a brace
could be let go, before an order could be yelled, the stranger's
flying-jib boom was crackling and gone, and her topgallantmast,
with its canvas, was plastering the topsail; and then it was almost
channel to channel, and the barque's poop was abreast of the _York's_
quarter-deck.

"Great God!" cried Hardy.

A figure standing near the stranger's mizzen-rigging fell, and another
figure fled aft, but at that instant some back draught of breeze
thickened the crystals of the fog smoking close to the stranger's
taffrail with a dense feathering of the black stench from the flares;
the burning picture vanished out astern, as though to the fall of a
curtain of midnight hue, the sounds of shouting sank, and in the hush
that fell upon the _York's_ deck, nothing was to be heard but the
dreary lamentations of broken water under the bows, and the weeping
noise of eddies under the counter.

"A close shave!" said Captain Layard, fetching a deep breath. "She has
not hurt us, I think."

"I saw a man fall as if stabbed," said Hardy.

"Back the topsail! I'll keep the ship hove to till we can see,"
exclaimed the captain, whose attention, concentrated by the sudden
blackness into which the ship had floated, was wholly in the
manoeuvre he had commanded.

The order was sung out, the sailors came groping their way aft to the
main-braces, the yards were swung, and the ship was brought to a stand,
lightly rolling her masts with a slap of hidden pinion, which made you
think of some gigantic navy signal-man waving flags.

"My noble dog has saved my ship," exclaimed the captain. "I am a
remarkable man!" And, to use a Paddyism, Hardy could _hear_ in the
skipper's speech the expression of exaltation which his face did
undoubtedly wear. The skipper whistled, and in a few moments felt the
snout of the fine black creature pressing lovingly against his thigh.

"Come along below," said he, passing his hand caressingly along the
invisible feathers of the dog's back, "till I dry you and see how you
look, and we'll take a peep at Johnny." And he and the dog vanished.

Just at that moment eight bells were struck. It was midnight, and the
starboard watch must tend the ship till four. Whilst the last chimes
were trembling into the damp, depressing, flapping sounds which clothed
the obscured heights, the chief mate was hailed by a man whose voice
proceeded from abreast of the gangway. Hardy stepped to the companion
where the sheen lay, and exclaimed, "I am here." At the same moment
Mr. Candy came out of the companion and joined him. Before one could
address the other, three figures entered the space of faint saturated
light.

"Here's a man," said one of them, "that's jumped aboard us off the
barque. He come up to me and asked to see the capt'n."

"Which is the man?" said Hardy, straining his sight.

One of them said, "I am, mister. I am French." And then in French he
asked if Hardy spoke that tongue.

"No," answered Hardy. "Come below into the cabin to the captain."

And after a few words with Mr. Candy, who heard now for the first time
that they had nearly been run into by a tall French barque, he went
down the cabin steps, followed by the Frenchman.

In this interior plenty of light was shining, and it was as noontide
after the midnight of the deck. The captain was near the table drying
the dog with a cloth, and talking to him, and praising him as though he
were a man, and the creature's mild and benevolent eyes looked up into
his face, and you read gratitude and affection in the noble brute.

"Who's that?" said the captain, throwing the cloth down, and looking
with a knitted brow at the Frenchman.

"He will explain, sir," Hardy answered.

"Softly," exclaimed the captain, "an angel lies asleep in that cabin,"
and with a melodramatic flourish of his arm, he pointed to the door of
his berth.

The Frenchman looked at Hardy. He was a man of middle height, in a
drill or thin canvas blouse, over which was buttoned at the throat a
rough, old jacket, the sleeves hanging loose. He wore blue trousers
patched with black, stuffed into half-boots bronzed by wear and brine.
His black hair curled upon his shoulders, and he held a cap fashioned
out of some sort of skin. His face was a ghastly yellow; his lips a
vivid red; his nose long, lean, and humped, and the black pupils of his
eyes sparkled in the flashes of the swinging lamp amid their whites,
which, by the way, were crimson with drink or gout, or both. It was a
face to peer at you, malevolently, from a time-darkened canvas, very
picturesque, very romantic, but something that you would not like to
think was treading behind you on a lonely road.

"Who are you?" said the captain, putting his hand upon the head of the
dog, in whose body a sort of rolling noise might have been heard, not
quite a growl, but a note as of suspicion grumbling deep down below the
throat.

"You speak French, I hope, sar?" said the man.

"And you speak English!" responded the captain, with a side look and
a grin at Hardy. "It's no business of yours whether I speak French or
not. Start your yarn."

And the man, clearly understanding what was said, began.




CHAPTER VII.

THE FRENCH MATE


I have said that the man, clearly understanding the captain's meaning,
began; but it was not a beginning, nor a middle, nor an end, that could
be set down in black and white in that Frenchman's speech. It was most
barbarous English, yet intelligible when helped along by the captain's
and Hardy's questions. It must be given in plain words to be readable,
and thus spoke that sinister-looking man:

"My name is Pierre Renaud. I am chief mate of the barque that was just
now nearly running into you. We are from Cape Town to Bordeaux. That
dog threatens my throat."

The man flashed the poniards of his eyes at the Newfoundland, who was
like an organ with one key going, trembling in its shaggy and splendid
bulk with a low, sulky, dangerous growling.

"Down!" said the captain, and the animal stretched its fore legs. "What
brings you aboard us?"

"Fear," replied the man, with a slight shrug and a look of arching
eyebrow at his questioner, and a roll of the eye over him, as though he
saw something singular in his face and manner. "A man loves his life
and will jump to save it. I thought we should crush our bows in and
founder."

"You did not stay to help your captain and encourage the men to
preserve your ship," said Captain Layard, dabbing the dog's head to
keep him quiet.

"The captain fell dead in a fright," responded the Frenchman, with
another shrug, "and I chose to save myself."

"I saw a man fall," exclaimed Hardy. "Was that you that rushed along
the poop?"

"How can I answer you?" replied the Frenchman. "We were all rushing."

"The captain fell dead!" said Captain Layard, in a musing way. "It's
evident that French sea-captains die easily. When did you strike this
fog?"

"I cannot say precisely. Some hours since," was the reply. "When we
heard the barking of a dog we knew that a ship was near, and we judged
by the barking that she was approaching. We lighted fires upon the
decks, and when the glare gave us a sight of you the sailors lost their
senses, and ran about shouting and screeching. They were too mad to
obey orders. The captain fell as I ran past him, his hands clasped upon
his heart, and as he had all along complained of the weakness of that
organ, I am certain he died of disease."

"Your countrymen are not good sailors," said Captain Layard.

The Frenchman grinned ghastly, and Sailor rumbled afresh with a
stiffening of his level fore legs as though he must rise.

"If I had been your captain," continued Layard, "I should have saved
my flying-jib boom and topgallantmast, and my sailors would not have
rushed about and torn their throats open with the shrieks of fear--that
womanly spirit!"

His smile was lofty, his self-complacency inexpressible, you guessed if
there had been a mirror at hand he would have admired himself in it.

His talk, but not his face, was past the Frenchman's comprehension.
He rolled his eyes upon Hardy, then upon a decanter half-full of rum,
standing upon a swinging tray, timing the pulse of the sea.

"He asks for a drink, sir," said Hardy.

"Give him a tot," replied Captain Layard, "then let the second mate
tell the bo'sun to find him a hole to lie down in. I don't like his
looks."

He walked abruptly to his berth, followed by the dog, but before he
entered he turned to the animal and exclaimed, "On deck, Sailor, and
keep a lookout till the smother thins," and the Newfoundland sprang up
the steps.

The Frenchman, with a smile at Hardy, touched his brow. The mate,
without noticing the fellow's gesture, took the decanter of rum from
the swing tray and gave him a glass of grog. As he handed the tumbler
to the man, he said:

"Was your captain the man who stood near the mizzen-rigging?"

The Frenchman took a long pull at the glass before answering, and then
said, "Yes."

"Do you think he fell dead, or was he struck down?" said Hardy, looking
critically at the wild and dangerous face, whose eyes stared into the
Englishman's vision with the fixity of a buried bayonet.

"He fell dead," was the answer, and down went the remainder of the grog.

"I believe I saw a man rush from him aft when he fell," said Hardy.

An expression of anger deepened the ugly devil's look of malevolence,
but he held his peace.

"Your captain is dead and you are here," said Hardy. "Your second mate
will take charge of the barque, I suppose?"

"Our second mate was drowned a week after we left the Cape," answered
the Frenchman.

"What will the crew do?"

"They will go to hell!"

"Follow me," said Hardy, and they climbed the companion-steps.

The wind was sleeping. It was now a dead calm, and the fog steeped in
night was lifting into the sight--conquering blackness off an ocean
that seemed to be boiling upon some furnace of earth miles deep. Damp
draughts of air blew with the rolling of the ship, and the canvas beat
out hollow notes like the blasts of guns heard underground. The chief
mate called the name of Mr. Candy, who stepped out of the impenetrable
profound of the quarter.

"This man," said Hardy, talking in the skylight sheen, "is mate of the
barque we were foul of just now. Take him forward to the bo'sun and
find him a bed anywhere, and food if he needs it."

"I don't need it," said the Frenchman.

"Come along," said Mr. Candy, and they disappeared.

Hardy paused to listen and peer. There was nothing to see, but he
might have heard a sound of weeping all about, as though old ocean
was mourning over its blindness. He then went to bed, but not to
sleep right away. The Frenchman's insolent touching of his brow had
accentuated his own deep suspicion of the captain's sanity, and very
grave, though perplexed, reflection attended his thoughts of Layard,
and the tragically perilous situation of the ship in charge of a
lunatic so subtly mad that no one but his chief officer might have
understanding enough to see how it was with him.

At eight bells in the middle watch he was aroused by Mr. Candy, and
was on deck in a minute or two, for he was a smart man all around; the
first at the yard-arm in reefing when his duties had carried him there,
the first to spring to the cry, no matter the command, swift in relief,
and for ever on the alert whilst the responsibility of life, cargo,
and fabric was his. The fog was still very thick, but a thin wind had
sprung up out of the east, and the streaming of the waters was like the
shaling of a summer tide upon shingle. The braces had been manned when
this weak air came, and the yards swung to hold the maintopsail aback;
the ship rolled gently under the arrest of her canvas, and there was
nothing to see and nothing to do but let the fog soak into the spirits.

"A spare bunk in the forecastle has been found for the French mate,"
Candy had said. The fellow had grumbled, muttered that he had been
an officer on board his own vessel, and deserved better usage. Candy
said he was lucky to save his life, and to find a bed in a British
forecastle. The Frenchman growled that he considered himself important
enough to sleep in the cabin.

"What did you say to that?" Hardy had asked.

"I said, 'You be damned!'" Candy replied.

Not until five bells, half-past six, in Hardy's watch did the fog show
signs of breaking up. It thinned in places, and presently through the
stretching ceiling of it the cold, pale dawn looked down upon the
sea, and made it piebald with granite-coloured spaces. The breeze
then freshened and the fog began to fly. Columns of it moved away
stately like pillars of sand on the desert; it swept in Titan cobwebs
between the masts; it sped like silken veils streaming from viewless
fleeting spirits over the trucks. Wide vistas opened to windward;
large blue eyes, soft with the moistness of their light, floated upon
the trembling eastern brine. The sun darted a pale yellow lance, and
as the captain put his head through the companion-hatch the scene of
deep, saving a blankness in the west, opened around, and it was a
shining morning with a bright sun and a blue sea and an azure sky and a
pleasant breeze of wind.

Scarcely had the captain's head shown when Hardy, looking seawards over
the quarter, exclaimed:

"There's the barque that fouled us last night, sir. She's got a wift at
her mizzen-peak."

She could be no other vessel than the barque; the morning light was
strong and she lay within a mile, and you could see that she had lost
her foretopgallantmast and jib-booms. Her maintopsail was aback; she
had clearly hove to after losing her mate and splintering clear of the
ship and the smother. Her backed topsail curved inwards like carved
ivory, her ruddy sheathing flashed its wet length to the sun as the
heave rolled her light, tall shape, with its slanting stare of black
ports, upon the wide white line that girdled her.

"Why is she flying that gamp?" said the captain, taking a telescope out
of the companionway; but before he levelled it at the ship he sent a
glance full of scrutiny aloft to gather if his vessel had been hurt in
the night, which was distinctly professional and sane, and quite enough
to have convinced the Jacks that the "old man" knew the time of day,
even if they suspected that the compass of his mind was wrong by points.

The gamp, as he termed the wift, consisted of the French flag stopped
in the middle, that is, bound by a rope yarn into the appearance of a
gamp umbrella. It tumbled at its block, and was a syllable of sea talk
signifying "help!" The skipper whistled to his dog, which had kept a
brave lookout throughout the night without relief, and which, seated on
the heel of the starboard cathead, seemed to be listening with a grave
countenance to the remarks of an ordinary seaman who was addressing
him. The beautiful and dutiful creature came bounding aft and pawed his
master to the shirt-front, rising nearly his height.

"You had better lower a boat and go and see what that fellow wants,"
said the captain, and he motioned the dog into the cabin and told it to
wait there for breakfast.

"They're lowering a boat, and mean to come aboard of us," exclaimed
Hardy, whose eyes were on the barque.

A boat dropped awkwardly from the vessel's tall side, and in a minute
or two the gold of brandished oars sparkled upon the delicate
feathering of the water. The men were washing down aboard the _York_.
In those days they carried a head pump which they rigged, and the
bright water was passed in buckets and sluiced over the planks, the
boatswain standing by and giving the scrubbers heart by his inspiriting
cries, roars, and oaths. It was a common scene of shipboard life, full
of colour, movement, and business.

Hardy looked along the decks for the French mate, but did not see him.

The captain exclaimed, "We'll send the fellow aboard in his boat. A
good riddance. How some faces damn the souls which animate them! You
seldom err in judging of a man by his looks. The expression is formed
by the character. But affliction may deceive you, I allow; a harelip,
for example, or a cock-eye."

"Shall I pass the word for the Frenchman, sir?" said Hardy.

"Oh, yes! oh, yes, rout him out of it!" answered the captain, smiling
with that air of superiority which would have convicted him in the eyes
of a keeper.

The word was passed, and the Frenchman, with the aspect of a pirate
in a boy's book, rose through the scuttle as the boat came alongside.
The man who had steered her scrambled into the mizzen-chains and
sprang on to the quarter-deck with a salute of French courtesy. He was
close-shaven and dark, habited in loose blue breeches and a jumper,
and looked a good sailor spite his nationality, that was as marked in
gesture and bearing as though branded on his brow.

"Can I speak to the captain?" said he, looking from Hardy to the
skipper. His broken English was good.

"Glad you speak my tongue," said the captain. "What do you want?"

"I have served in American ships and can speak English," answered
the man. "I am brother of the captain of that barque. He was stabbed
last night and is dead. Our second mate, too, is dead. The first mate
is missing. I'll swear he killed my poor brother, and then drowned
himself. We are without a navigator. What are we to do?"

"You shall have a navigator," exclaimed Captain Layard, and he looked
toward the forecastle, but the Frenchman had disappeared.

The man bowed and said, "It was a cold-blooded assassination. They had
been quarrelling all the voyage. The villain chose the right moment,
and the sea is easier than the guillotine."

"I saw your captain fall," said Hardy, "and the man that killed him is
aboard us."

The fellow started, and so did his eyeballs in their sockets as he
flashed them eagerly and fiercely along the decks where the sailors
were scrubbing, and the boatswain encouraging them with the pleasant
promptings of the British forecastle: "Scrub it out of 'em, my lads.
D'ye want to drown the ship, you sojer? Slap it along the lee-coaming
and be damned to you, Dick! Ain't it as thick as yer eyebrows there?
Hurry up, hurry up with them buckets. Are we a hexcavator with the
steam turned off?"

"A hand fetch that Frenchman out of the fok'sle and bring him aft,"
shouted Hardy.

"What do you mean to do with him?" asked the captain.

"I will call the crew together and consider," answered the man with a
hideously significant glance at the main yard-arm.

"If you hang him," said the captain, "who'll navigate you?"

The fellow folded his arms tightly upon his breast and sank his head,
sending a level look of patient hate through his eyelashes toward the
forecastle.

"What's your rating aboard your ship?" inquired the captain.

"Boatswain, sir," was the answer, and the man did not turn his head to
say it.

The dog at this moment came out of the cabin and stood with his fore
feet on the plank at the coaming, staring at his master. He seemed
to plead. The human spirit could not be more eloquent in the gaze;
but the captain did not heed him, for just then the man who had been
sent to fetch the Frenchman was coming aft, shoulder to shoulder with
the Frenchman himself. The men forgot to scrub; the head pump ceased
to gush; the boatswain left off conjuring and damning. All eyes were
turned aft. The silence of a moment fell upon the ship, and nothing
broke it but the low growling of the Newfoundland.

The Frenchman, fresh from the forecastle, was ghastly pale; his walk
was defiant; when abreast of the main-hatchway he came more quickly
than his companion, who stopped. He walked up close to the boatswain of
the barque and said, in his native tongue:

"Well!"

The other dropped his arms; his hands were clenched, his eyes charged
with that deadly cold light of hate which is more dangerous and fearful
than the flame of fury. He spoke slowly in French, and what he said was
this:

"You did not drown yourself, I see, after assassinating my brother."

"You lie in your throat! I sprang to save my life. Your brother is a
live man for me."

"Liar, and villain, and execrable coward!"

He stepped to the rail and said to the men, in French of course--but
you shall be told what he said:

"The assassin is in this ship. He pretends that he sprang for his life;
he killed my brother, our navigator, and would have consigned us,
helpless, to the desolation of the sea."

He returned, and was followed by a howl of passion from the boat
alongside.

All in a minute, and just as the man was posting himself again in
dramatic attitude close to the murderer, the huge Newfoundland, with
an indescribable roar of rage, sprang with the whole weight of his
body upon the French mate, and bore him to the deck with a thump of
lead, like the fall of a twelve-pounder ball, and they thought that the
brute's teeth had met in the wretch's throat. Hardy and the captain
made a rush and dragged the animal off the fallen man, and the captain,
grasping the creature by the coat of his neck, hauled him, growling
fiercely, to the companion, and drove him below.

The man rose; his nose was bleeding, and after he had run the length of
his sleeve along it his face looked like a decapitated head placed on
the upright body it had been struck from.

"I want to swing my yards," said Captain Layard. "I've been hove to
all night through you. Take that man away; I don't parley-vous myself,
and don't follow your talk. He'll navigate you home; he looks a good
navigator." And he smiled with some sense of superiority of meaning,
which made his face fitter for comedy than for the tragedy of this
passage.

The French boatswain swept his hand with an infuriate motion toward the
rail.

"If I go with this man he will kill me," said the blood-stained French
mate.

"Not he. The ship wants a navigator," replied Captain Layard, with a
cheerfulness supremely inconsequential.

"If you do not come," said the French boatswain, in his native speech,
"I will call the men up, and they will throw you into the boat."

"Why can't you speak in English?" said Captain Layard. "He'll
understand you, and we can follow your meaning."

The French mate turned on his heel and was beginning to walk slowly
forward. As a cat springs when started by a dog, so sprang the barque's
boatswain upon his brother's murderer. With the strength of the fiends
before they were cast out he rushed the bleeding scoundrel to the rail
and yelled to his men. The French mate grasped the mizzen-shrouds and
struggled and kicked in awful silence; but in less than a minute three
stout sailors, out of the four who manned the boat's oars, swarmed up.
Eight enraged hands then tore the French mate from the mizzen-rigging
as the sweep of the hurricane uproots a tree. All in a heap,
struggling, wrestling, groaning, they got him past the after-swifter,
and to an order, shrieked through his teeth by the French boatswain,
they hoisted him lengthwise to the rail, and dropped him into the boat.
The French boatswain then made a sort of salaam bow to the captain and
Hardy, and the whole four disappeared in the twinkling of an eye over
the side amid shouts of laughter from the seamen who had been washing
down the decks.

"Get all sail upon her, Mr. Hardy," said Captain Layard; "but I shall
keep my topsail to the mast for awhile until I see what they mean to do
with that barque."

The sailors dropped their buckets and scrubbing-brushes, and fell to
howling at the halliards. Topgallant and royal-yards rose, the mainsail
was left to swing with its clews aloft, and the _York_ was now a
full-rigged ship, hove to, but clothed to her trucks, leaning with the
swell as though by swaying she was knitting her frame together for the
start.

A ship when under sail on the ocean is alive; watch her closely and
you will discover that she has human intelligence in her methods of
helping, and at the same time influencing, the reason that governs
the helm and incarnate walks the quarter-deck or bridge. It was about
a quarter-past seven; the sailors resumed the business of washing
down; the decks sparkled as the brine flashed along the planks, and
the boatswain stimulated this sweetening process by the inspiriting
language of the land of the slush-lamp. The captain stood right aft
watching the receding figure of the barque's fat boat. The placid
heave of the deep was crisped by the delicate crumbling foam curling
from low, blue brows to the gentle gushing of the pleasant breeze,
like some scene of swelling land enamelled with white flowers; the
blankness to leeward had melted into azure, and it was all blueness and
brightness, and you heard a song that was sweet with its summer note
upon the harp-strings of the lofty spars.

"What will they do with him?" said the captain, going to the companion
and resting his hand upon it as though in a moment he would descend.

"I am wondering, sir," answered Hardy, who stood near. "I should not
like to be in the power of that bo'sun after I had killed his brother."

"Death drugs revenge; I would not kill my enemy," said the captain,
putting on one of those incommunicable looks which always alarmed Hardy
with thoughts of the ship's safety. "I would keep my brother's murderer
alive--at sea. There is the middle-watch and the ghastly face of the
moon! Whispers aloft and God's eye in every star! The ghostly figure
should walk the quarter-deck with the assassin, should enter his berth
with him, and sit beside his bunk and watch him. That is the revenge
that kills the soul--the very thought makes me sweat."

His face changed into an expression of agitation, and with a sudden
hurry he disappeared down the companion-steps.

Hardy watched the French boat draw alongside the barque. He wondered
that the captain should have left the deck at such a time; it was
another illustration of his insanity, no doubt. "He has gone to see to
little Johnny, perhaps," the mate thought, what had happened having
faded in the chaotic muddle of his reason. Here was Captain Layard, who
was determined to make a swift passage, keeping his ship hove to and
going below to talk to his bright-haired boy, to help him dress maybe,
and to muse in lopsided moralising over the medicine chest.

He took the glass, and levelled it at the barque, and saw the boat
slowly ascending in spasmodic jerks to the davits. A few men dragged
at the falls, and upon the port quarter of the poop the rest of the
ship's company apparently had assembled, and were clearly discussing
the recapture of the mate with the heat and passion of the French when
excited. They gesticulated, they surged and reeled, and Hardy again
saw one or another of them fling his hand in the direction of the fore
yard-arm.

He could not see if the mate stood amongst them, and all forward was
vacant deck, pulsating with the shadow of swinging sail. There was
nothing else in sight all away round the girdle of the deep, though
this was a frequented sea; and the two vessels, to a distant eye, might
have seemed abandoned, so aimless was the look they got from the white
cloths incurving to the masts.

About ten minutes after the boat had been hoisted, Hardy, who continued
to watch the barque through the glass, saw several men go forward, and
shortly after a man got into the fore-rigging, and crawled aloft and
gained the fore-yard. The powerful lenses brought the barque close, and
Hardy easily saw, as he followed the man sliding to the yard-arm, that
he carried a tail-block in his hand. He made this block fast to the
extremity of the yard, and whilst he was doing this another man got
into the fore-rigging holding a line, the end of which he gave to the
fellow on the yard, who rove it through the block, and then came into
the fore-rigging grasping the line, and both men descended to the deck.

Hardy rushed to the companionway and shouted down the hatch, taking his
chance of the skipper hearing him, "They are going to hang that mate
who killed the captain!"

A moment or two later up came Captain Layard.

"What's that you sang out?" he cried. "What's wrong? I'm with Johnny."

"Look for yourself, sir," answered Hardy, and he gave the glass to
him. The captain pointed it. Mad or not mad, he knew what a yard-arm
whip was, and what in this case it signified. He saw a crowd of men on
the forecastle; he distinguished the figure of the mate, with his arms
pinioned behind him, standing within a fathom of the rail rounding to
the forecastle break. As he gazed he saw a man bandage the wretch's
eyes with a red handkerchief. The same man next secured the end of the
line to the man's neck, and the captain, with the telescope at his eye,
began to mutter, and Hardy saw that his face had turned a greenish
yellow, but he could not understand what he said, nor clearly perceive,
as did the captain, all that was happening aboard that tragic barque,
with its wift at the gaff-end beating the air like a human arm in agony.

In the captain's glass the bulk of the forecastle crowd melted and
could not be seen on the main-deck. One who was left--and the muttering
captain thought that he was the boatswain--held a book and seemed to
be reading from it. The two men kept the barque's victim pinned to
the rail; the man who was reading closed his book and raised his arm
straight up, looking toward the main-deck. The two men sprang back from
the murderer, whose figure soared aloft, a ghastly shape of man flying
wingless to the yard-arm.

"O my God!" cried Hardy, who saw it, and the crew of the _York_,
watching that picture of short shrift and flying form, groaned and
cursed with British hatred of the sudden execution, made dastardly by
numbers.

They could see the man rushed to the nape of his neck to the yard-arm
block, then fall, bringing up with a sudden belaying of that
gallows-rope, and the hanging man began to swing like a pendulum of
death midway betwixt the yard-arm and the feathering surface of the sea.

"Suppose he didn't do it?" said Captain Layard, letting the telescope
sink and turning his face slowly to Hardy, who thought, even in that
moment of horror and astonishment, that the captain had spoken nothing
saner since the voyage began. "Fill on your topsail," continued the
captain, in a trembling voice, his face distorted by passions and
fancies beyond the penetration of reason. "I wouldn't have Johnny
see that sight; they'll keep him swinging till he has ticked out the
minutes his soul has taken to arrive in hell. Fill on your topsail,
sir. And what'll the beggars do? They'll wait for help to come along."

The mate was walking a little way forward, and the captain, with his
back upon the barque, stood muttering to himself. It was a pleasant
breeze, and the ship took the weight of the sunlit gush of blue wind
with a buoyant heel, and then she broke the waters at the bow. In two
hours the barque was glimmering like the crest of a sea in the liquid
ether far and far astern. Her topsail was still aback, and doubtless,
as Captain Layard had said, she was waiting for the help that must soon
come along.




CHAPTER VIII.

LOST!


And now for another week of this ship's adventure. There is little to
record. As she drove to the south and west the breeze freshened by
strokes, and the foam, white as daylight, seethed with a leeward roll
to the channels, whose plates flashed jewelled fountains from her side.

It was noble sailing with a buckling stu'nsail boom, and every taut
weather-shroud and backstay spirited the sea-whitening keel with
sweet, clear songs of rejoicing. All the crew loved little Johnny, and
the great Newfoundland, placid, stately, and benign, was ever at his
side, courting the boy, with looks of love, to play. Always in this
fine weather the sunny-haired lad, in the miniature clothes of the
bluejacket, would of a dog-watch take his drum upon the forecastle, and
roll out a good rattling accompaniment to the cheerful piping of the
whistle. Then the sailors would dance whilst the ship's stem rent the
water into sweat, and the bow-sea rolled away in glory, and the western
heavens grew majestical with sunset.

And all this time no man spoke a hint as to the captain's state of
mind, because, as I have said, the sailor has no eyes for the human
nature of the quarter-deck until it should become as visible and
demonstrative as a windmill in a wind.

This Captain Layard was _not_; his moods and motions were of too subtle
a sort to be interpretable by the forecastle gaze, and all the strange
unconscious discoveries of himself he limited to Hardy, scarcely ever
speaking to the second mate unless to give him an order. But even when
he talked to Hardy, no man could have sworn that he was madder than
most dreamers are. It was only, as Hardy thought, that his talk was so
cursedly inconsequential. He reminded him of a diver who if you look to
port comes up to starboard, whose spot of emergence is always somewhere
else.

One day, at the end of the time just spoken of, the ship was stretching
her length along a wide blue sea enriched with running knolls, shadowed
by themselves into deepest violet, aflash with sudden meltings of foam
which whitened the windward picture, and ran with smooth curves from
the leeward yeast that rushed into the water from the side.

The captain was below. It was about ten o'clock in the morning. There
was now a sting in the light of the sun, as he floated upwards in an
almost tropic glory, undimmed by the flight of little clouds which
hinted at the Trade. Our friend the chief mate, Hardy, was walking up
and down the weather-side of the quarter-deck. A sailor stood at the
wheel trim for his trick; he was a British seaman, his easy floating
figure and swift look to windward, aloft, and into the compass bowl put
thoughts into one's head of the time when men like him wore pigtails
down their backs and fired the fury of hell, as the Spaniard said to
Nelson, into the gunports and sides of the audacious enemy.

There was music on that quarter-deck, for Johnny, who was admiral of
that ship, the captain being very much under him, had sent for the
whistle, and the sailor had come at once, bringing his music with him.
He was seated upon the skylight, and was piping that cheerful song, "A
Wet Sheet and a Flowing Sea," all over the ship to the delight of the
watch on deck, who worked the nimbler for it; and Johnny made martial
music of that sea-song with his drum.

The ship rushed along with festive lifts and falls and triumphant
choruses in her weather-rigging as the swing of the sea brought her
masts to windward, and all was beauty and sunlight, and white phantoms
of little sailing clouds, and swelling canvas yearning to the azure
recess at which the ship, like some goddess of the sea, was pointing
with her spear of jibboom.

Presently the boy grew tired; the piper went forward, and as the
captain's servant came along Johnny gave him his drum and sticks to
carry below. The great Newfoundland was lying at its length beside the
skylight, and Johnny sat upon him, and lifting his ear talked into
it, and the dog grunted in affectionate reply. But little boys soon
tire of anything save sweets, and Johnny joined Hardy, and they walked
together. The lad had a very inquisitive mind, and was constantly
wanting to know. He began to question Hardy about the ship. What is the
good of that little sail right on top up there? Why didn't they give
each mast one great sail? Wouldn't that save trouble? Couldn't they let
it down, and tie it up, as they did that middle sail there, when the
weather grew nasty? Wouldn't Hardy be glad to get home? How old was
he? Was he glad to be so old? Wouldn't he rather be eight? After much
interrogative conversation of this sort he felt tired, and strayed from
Hardy's side and walked about the quarter-deck, looking around him as
though he wished to pick up something which he could throw at the sea.

Going right aft, abaft the man at the wheel, his arch, sweet, wondering
eyes were taken by the sight of some Mother Carey's chickens; also the
splendid, dazzling stream of wake that was rushing off in snake-like
undulations attracted him. A stretch of ash-white grating protected the
wheel-chains and the relieving gear. It stood a little way under the
taffrail and was not very high above the deck, and the tiller worked
under it.

Unnoticed by Hardy, Johnny got upon this grating to watch the
sea-birds, also to obtain a view of the place where that giddy,
boiling, meteoric river of foam began. A sea-bird is a thing of beauty,
which is a joy to a little boy upon whom the shades of the prison-house
have not yet begun to close; and the dazzle of spinning foam hurling
seawards is also a beauty and a wonder and a miracle, as are many other
things in this pleasant world of flowers and valleys and streams;
for I have seen a little child pick a daisy and view it with greater
transport than could even be felt by a beautiful young woman bending
with beaming eyes over the bracelet of diamonds with which her lover
has just clasped her wrist.

Johnny fell upon his knees and crawled upon the grating to the
taffrail, the flat surface of which he kneeled upon, peering over and
down betwixt the gig and the taffrail to see the place where the white
water began under the counter. The poor little fellow overbalanced
himself, and Hardy, whose eye was upon him in that instant, saw him
vanish.

"O my God!" he shrieked. "Man overboard!" he shouted. "Hard down! hard
down!"

And whilst the wheel went grinding up to windward, and whilst the sails
aloft were beginning to thunder to the weather sweep of the rushing
bows, Hardy, tearing off his coat and waistcoat and shoes, leaped from
the quarter into the boiling yeast and struck out.

Scarcely had he shot overboard when the great dog Sailor, springing
up with a swift movement of his head around, leapt like a darting
flame on to the rail from which Hardy had plunged, and jumped. There
was plenty of foam in the sea, and it was almost blinding Hardy, who
swam strongly; but it did not blind the dog, who saw the mate but not
the child, and made for him. A sea swept Hardy to its summit, and he
perceived the child some three or four cables' length distant; a head
of foam rolled over that sun-bright speck and it disappeared, and as
Hardy sank into the trough the dog, that stemmed the brine like some
swiftly-urged boat, caught him by the collar and forced him round in
the direction of the ship, whose main-yards were now aback and one of
whose lee quarter boats was rapidly descending, with the captain on the
grating, waving his arms in frantic and heart-subduing pantomime.

"Sailor!" roared Hardy, struggling with his whole force to round the
noble creature's head in the direction where he had seen the bright
point vanish. "O God! doggie, dear doggie! Johnny is overboard, and
drowning! Go for him, Sailor! go for him, Sailor!"

And buoyed by the magnificent swimmer whose teeth were in his collar,
he stiffened his breast and pointed. But the Newfoundland, who had
not seen Johnny fall, had leapt to save the life of Hardy, and with
bitter, blighting despair in his heart the gallant young fellow felt
the beautiful animal at his side urging him irresistibly up one slope
and down another in the direction of the ship, with its dreadful figure
of human anguish gesticulating and shouting on the grating.

The hearts that bent the blades rowed with love of the boy and a
maddening passion to save him. They came to Hardy first and dragged him
and the dog over the gunwale, and a man standing up in the stern-sheets
steered the boat for the place where the little fellow had last been
seen from the deck of the ship. But they rowed in vain. Sodden with
brine, and half blinded by the tears of a manly sailor's heart, the
mate strained his vision over the running seas, and knew, O God! and
knew that Johnny had sunk for ever.

"Oh, what a pity!" said one of the men.

"The dog could have saved him," exclaimed another.

"No, he was gone before the dog could have reached the place," said
Hardy, and he sank upon a thwart and covered his face.

The Newfoundland laid his massive jaws upon his knee in caress and in
encouragement, knowing he was saved, and loving him as those majestic
creatures love the life they have torn from the grasp of death. The
men, with the lifted blades of their oars sparkling in the sun, gazed
silently around, but Johnny was gone. The tall seas seethed, and the
boat fell away with their melting heads and rose buoyant to the height
of the next slant, but Johnny was gone, and after they had lingered
half an hour the men, to the command of Hardy, turned the boat's head
toward the ship, and rowed away from that sun-lighted scene of ocean
grave which already the hand of viewless love had strewn with flowers
and garlands of foam.

Captain Layard was standing with tightly folded arms beside the
skylight when Hardy arrived on board, and approached him, shuddering
with grief and with the exhaustion that attends even a brief spell
of battling with the rolling seas of the ocean. The unhappy father's
face was utterly unintelligible in expression. And still a critical
eye, with good capacity for subtle penetration, would in this time of
sudden and awful bereavement have witnessed in that poor man's face the
dangerous condition of his soul.

The men who were hoisting the boat pulled with askant looks full of
respect and rough sympathy, and the boat rose in silence, so touched
were the sailors' hearts by this sudden loss of the bright-haired
little darling of the ship. The Newfoundland, shaking a shower from his
coat, came to the captain, seemed to know that grief was in him, and
looked up at him.

"Where is my little Johnny?" said the captain to Hardy, in a firm,
sharp tone.

Hardy could not answer him.

"There is no good in telling me that he's not on board this ship," said
the captain, letting fall his arms and swaying in a strange way with
the leeward and weather rolls of the arrested vessel. "Where is he
hidden?"

He stepped to the companion and shouted down, "Johnny, Johnny, my
darling! Come up with your drum! The men want music! Come up with your
drum, my Johnny!"

The sailors belayed the falls of the boat and secured her, and slowly
walked forward, never a one of them speaking. The captain went
below, calling "Johnny." Mr. Candy came up to Hardy. Both he and the
watch below had rushed on deck to that dreadful cry at sea of "Man
overboard!" and to that sudden change you feel in a ship when the yards
of the main are swung aback. All the concern that a man with white
eyelashes and pale hair and a skin like a cut of roasted veal can look
was in Candy's face as he said:

"This blow has turned the captain's head, sir."

"I cannot speak to you," Hardy answered.

"Let me fetch you some brandy, sir," said the second mate. Hardy raised
his arm. Candy walked to the quarter and stood staring at the sea where
the child had sunk. The Newfoundland dog was growing uneasy. You saw by
the creature's motion of head and by other signs that he knew something
was wrong. Twice he growled low and walked round the skylight smelling
the planks, then coming to the companionway he listened and sprang down
the steps.

Hardy stood waiting for the captain. It was not for him to order the
topsail-yard to be swung until the captain spoke. All the seamen were
forward standing in groups waiting for the command, and the boatswain,
in the face of the general grief, could find nothing for them to do
until the quarter-deck started them.

It filled Hardy with anguish, though he was only a mate in the British
Merchant Service, the one unrecognised condition of our national life,
spite of the pleading of its heroic traditions and the claims of its
English seamen of to-day, upon the admiration of their country, to
think of the poor, desolate, brain-afflicted father below, seeking in
his madness his beloved little boy. He knew that this man had tenderly
loved the mother of that child and mourned her loss with a sailor's
heart, and that the bright and spirited lad, whom God had summoned,
had been his constant companion since his wife's death, the light of
his life, the flower whose fragrance had sweetened the loneliness of
command.

He stood waiting, soaked to the flesh. Suddenly the captain appeared.

"Johnny is not below," he said. "He's somewhere in the ship. When did
you see him last, Mr. Hardy?"

And still Hardy could not answer him. The Newfoundland had followed his
master, and the whole frame and benign eyes of the noble creature, to
whom and to whose like man denies a soul, yielded preternatural token
of loss and disquiet that was human in eloquence.

The captain did not seem to heed Hardy's silence and manner. He looked
with great eagerness and a certain wildness along the decks, and
then putting his hand to the side of his mouth, with his face turned
forward, where the men stood watching him, he shouted in an imperious
voice as though he would frighten an answer from the concealed child:

"Johnny!--It is strange," said he, in a low voice, turning and looking
at Hardy, "Is he aloft?" And he turned his eyes up and scrutinised the
rigging, the tops, the crosstrees, the yards, stepping to the rail so
as to obtain a view past the leaches of the canvas.

"Shall I order those yards to be swung, sir, and way got upon the
ship?" said Hardy, speaking with difficulty.

"I want Johnny," was the captain's answer, and he walked slowly
forward, looking to right and left of him, as though the little lad
must be in hiding somewhere, flat beside a forward coaming or behind a
hencoop, or under the long-boat, for his figure had been small, and he
could have concealed himself within the flakes of the halliards coiled
down upon a pin.

The men drew back, scattered in a kind of dissolving way, gazed with
sheepish looks of sympathy, one rugged man with damp eyes, for he too
had lost a son beloved with the rough love of a heart unhardened by
salt and toil.

"Has any man among you," said the captain, bringing his head out of the
galley door--for the child had been a frequent guest of the cooks of
the ships he had sailed in: they would make him jam tarts and little
cakes, and his prattle to the fellows was as cheering to them as the
song of a canary--"has any man among you," he said, "seen my little
boy?"

"I don't think you'll find him forward, sir," answered the boatswain.
"Jim, jump below and see if he's in the fok'sle."

The sailors exchanged looks which seemed to suggest that they thought
it kind and wise in the boatswain to humour the captain, whose mind, to
them, appeared a little shaken and made uncertain by the shock of his
loss.

"No, I'll trust no man's eyes but mine," exclaimed the captain, with
a lofty expression of face, and, going to the scuttle, which is the
little hatch through which the seamen drop into their parlour, he put
his legs over and descended.

One man only was in this forecastle. He was the young seaman who had
played the whistle whilst Johnny beat the drum. He started up at the
sight of the captain, amazed by a visit that was unparalleled in his
experience or recollection of forecastle story. His face showed marks
of unaffected distress, and indeed this rude but sympathetic heart had
been seated for some minutes prior to the captain's entrance, with
bowed head resting in his wart-toughened palms, thinking of the child
and his sudden death.

It was a strange, gloomy interior. The swing of the lamp kept the
shadows on the wing, and oilskins and coats swayed upon the ship's wall
to the solemn plunge of the bows, and you heard the roar of the smitten
and recoiling surge in a low thunder, like the sound of a railway
train striking through the soil into a vault. Some bunks went curving
into the gloom past the light which fell through the hatch, and a few
hammocks stretched their pale, bale-like lengths under the upper deck.
Here, too, were sea-chests--a few only--and odds and ends of sea-boots,
and the raffle of the sailor's ocean home.

"Where's my son? Is he down here?" exclaimed the captain, haggard, and
with something dreadful in his looks in that light, uttering the words
as peremptorily as ever he delivered an order on the quarter-deck.

The young fellow gazed aghast at him in silence.

The captain, who did not seem to heed whether he was answered or not,
went to the bunks and examined them one by one, knelt and looked under
them, felt the sagged canvas of the hammocks. Oh, it was pitiful!

"He's not here," he exclaimed, turning to the young sailor. "Have you
got your whistle handy? Pull it out and pipe. The music will bring him
with his drum."

The young man went to his bunk and took the whistle from the head of
it. His face was full of awe and wonder; it was a bit of psychology, a
trick or two above all _his_ art of seamanship.

"What shall I play, sir?" he asked, in a shaking voice, with a glance
up through the scuttle at the men gathered near and listening.

"What's his favourite tune?" said the captain.

The young fellow reflected, and answered, "'Sally come up,' sir. It
runs well with the drum."

"Play it," said the captain.

The young fellow put the whistle to his lips and blew. The contrast
between the merry air, shrilling in the forecastle and out through the
hatch into the bright wind, and the captain's half-triumphant face of
expectancy would have melted a heart of steel. The poor man stepped
under the little hatch and shouted up, "On deck there!"

"Sir," answered the boatswain, showing himself.

"Can this whistle be heard aft?"

"Yes, sir."

"Watch a bit, and report if he's coming."

The young seaman, who was nearly heartbroken with his obligation of
playing, continued to pipe, and you beheld a vision of dancing sailors,
and swelling canvas reverberating the rattle of the drum.

The captain waited under the hatch, his poor face charged with ardent
expectation. He might have overheard a gruff voice say, "It oughtn't to
be allowed to go on. He'd get all right if he'd go to his cabin, where
it 'ud come to him." But he paid no heed.

Suddenly the whistling ceased, and the young fellow, flinging his
whistle into his bunk, cried, "It's choking me, sir."

The captain looked at him, and saying, "Where is Johnny?" climbed
through the hatch and, without a word to the sailors, walked slowly aft.

The whole ship seemed to tremble throughout her frame with every lift
and fall, as though like something alive she was now startled by this
strange delay, and the foretopmast studdingsail curved with the weight
of the wind from its boom, and no doubt, in the language of sailcloth,
cursed the maintopsail for stopping its eager drag.

Hardy stood beside the second mate, to leeward, on the quarter-deck,
and watched the captain coming aft. The great dog in a leap gained his
master's side and marched with him, looking with beautiful sagacity up
into the poor man's face. The captain walked with his eyes fixed upon
the sky, just over the sea-line astern, but if speculation were in his
gaze it was not interpretable; he saw, or seemed to see, something
beyond the blue haze of distance, and thus he watched it, without
speaking to the two mates, or turning his eyes upon them, until he
came to the companion-hatch, down whose steps he went, followed by the
dog.

Noon was near and an observation must be taken. Hardy, whose clothes
were plastered by water upon him, said to Candy:

"We must get an observation and swing the yards. This blow has thrown
his mind off its balance, and he might not thank us later if we should
go on as though he were responsible."

"I agree with you, sir," said Candy.

Hardy called to the boatswain, who came quickly.

"You know the law of the sea as well as I do," said the mate, "and I
don't want you and the men to believe that I have taken charge of the
ship even for five minutes because I mean to get way upon her."

"She wants it," said the boatswain, looking forward along the ship as
though she were a horse.

"I must get an observation," continued Hardy, "and you and the men will
judge that the captain would wish me to do what he himself would do if
his terrible loss had left him capable of doing anything."

"It don't need reasoning about, sir," said the boatswain.

"Hands lay aft and swing the maintopsail-yard!" shouted Hardy. "Lee
mainbrace! Mr. Candy, will you step below for your sextant? Kindly
bring mine."

Candy went below. The men came running aft. But the shadow of death
was upon the ship, bright, boundless, and streaming with the life of
the wind as were heaven and ocean, and the sailors dragged the great
yards round in silence. The ship heeled over a little more to the full
swell of her canvas, and as Hardy took his sextant from Candy she was
bursting the blue surge into white glory, and the leeward foam was
passing fast and faster.




CHAPTER IX.

THE INDIAMAN'S BOAT


The seas were breaking fast and fierce from the bows, and the wake
flashed into the windy distance in a fan-shaped splendour as of
sunshine, and hands were aloft furling the fore and mizzen royals, and
some fore-and-aft canvas was rattling hanks and lacing on their stays
to the drag of down-hauls; the ship was sonorous with the music of the
sea, and by looking over the weather side you could have seen the green
sheathing sweating with foam, storming through the dazzling smother
like a wounded dolphin whose blood is sweet to dolphins; yet this was
but a fragment of the magnificent picture of foaming seas and flying
cloud, with the lofty swelling ship shearing through the heart of the
day in a thunder-storm of prisms and of spray, lovely as the heights of
heaven when some stars are green and some shine like the rose.

Hardy came on deck. He stood and looked about him, refreshed by a
shift of clothes and by a nip of grog. He had worked out his sights,
and before mounting the steps had stood a minute at the captain's door
listening; he heard the poor man's voice, and judged by its solemn
imploring note that he was praying, but the noise of the sailors above
made him hurry, and though it was his watch below he felt that he was
in command, and that the safety of the ship was in his hands.

Any seaman will understand this mate's critical and difficult
situation. A captain is not to be lightly deposed; drunken captains
and--unless they grow frantic--mad captains must be obeyed or endured
or it is mutiny, with heavy penalties awaiting the arrival of the ship;
and the mate of a merchantman may, though by conscientious act, lose
power of earning bread for himself and his home unless as a foremast
hand, for the law is hard, and the shipowner harder still.

"You had better take the mainsail off her, Mr. Candy, and furl the
main-royal," said Hardy. "She has more than she wants."

The stu'nsail was in and so was the boom, and Hardy gave other
directions, but they need not be repeated because minuteness is
tedious, and the language of the sea cryptic to millions. When Sheridan
was asked how the poetaster described the phoenix, he answered, "Just
as a poulterer would!" The poulterer is not good in art, and the beak,
talons, and all are merits when left out.

It was about a quarter to one, and the cabin dinner would be coming aft
soon. The cook was busy in his galley, and black smoke was smothering
the bulwarks abreast from the chimney. Hardy paced the deck watching
the seamen at work, Candy superintended the business. There was plenty
for the mate to think of. The grief planted in his kind heart, by
recollection of his hopeless effort to rescue the poor drowned child,
was overwhelmed by thoughts of the captain, his undoubted madness, the
state of the ship; and then his mind on a sudden went away to Julia
Armstrong; he wondered what would be her fortune, if luck would attend
her in India, if her love for him--he would not pretend aught else to
himself--would hold her unwilling to remain, that she might return in
the vessel and meet him once more. "In which case," he declared to
himself, "I will marry her and chance it."

The ship was rushing onward like a shooting star, and the wind clothed
the sails with the thunder of its power; but she was comfortable and
dry. The bright bursts were flung clear of her by the rush of the
breeze, and she took the seas with that perfect grace of leap and
curtsey which sails alone do give.

As Hardy walked, the cabin servant came up to him and reported dinner
on the table.

"Have you told the captain?"

"Yes, sir."

"Is he at table?"

"Yes, sir."

Hardy went below. The captain was in his accustomed place cutting at a
big meat pie; his brow was knitted, and with the whole strength of his
soul he seemed intent upon this job of cutting the pie. His long hair
and the hair upon his cheeks and chin accentuated the expression of his
pale face, which was one of wildness and of grief so subtle that it
might scarcely be known as grief by the heart that ached with it; but
when he raised his eyes, Hardy saw a darkness upon his vision as though
the shadow of death was on his eyelids.

"Will you have some of this pie?" said he, quite sanely.

"Thank you, sir," answered Hardy.

"We'll shift for ourselves," said the captain, turning to the
attendant. "Bring whatever else there is in a quarter of an hour."

The man left the cabin. The captain, with knife and fork poised,
without serving Hardy viewed him intently during a short passage of
silence, and then said:

"Johnny has strayed away from this ship and he's left his drum
behind him, but," he added, smiling with his heart-moving smile of
superiority, "I shall find him."

He loaded a plate and thrust it at the length of his arm toward Hardy,
who took it.

"Are not you eating, sir?" said Hardy.

"How's the ship?" was the answer.

Hardy reported the sail she was under. The question, the all-important
question, whether sights had been taken, was not asked. The captain
took a piece of meat out of the pie and gave it to the Newfoundland,
who sat beside him on the deck.

"I don't like rich clergymen," he said, abruptly. "The man who steers
his ship to the glowing gates of heaven should be rich in heart and
love. The precious freight is that; let him despise the devil's cargo.
I once said to a wealthy parson, 'Take up your cross and follow me.
D'ye remember it, sir? but you and the like of you give your cross to
the coachman and get inside.'"

He spoke this in a voice of thunder, and his face was grotesque. Hardy
was eating with difficulty. The chatter of the afflicted brain is a
pain to the hearer, for the sane strokes make the inconsequential talk
as ghastly as the lifelike motions of the electrified corpse.

From time to time the dog got up and moved about the cabin sniffing. He
was missing Johnny. He would come to Hardy's side and turn his gentle,
affectionate eyes up at the mate's face in such dumb inquiry as would
be holy if it were human; then he would go to the captain and do the
like. The poor man played with some meat out of the pie, but did not
eat. He had been educated at a great public school and his speech and
voice had the culture of breeding, and the lapses and diversions of
the talk that he addressed to Hardy made his language more pitiful
than shocking. He as often spoke wisely as insanely, but Hardy saw,
even whilst he sat, that the loss of his boy had confirmed in him his
lamentable prepossession. He was mad, but in such fashion that unless
he acted visibly the madman's part the crew would fail to see it.

The attendant came down with more food for the cabin, and this
the captain did not touch. Presently he abruptly rose and entered
his berth, reappeared with his cap on, and slowly stepped up the
companion-ladder.

It was Hardy's hope that the poor fellow might give such orders as
would induce the men to suspect him mad, although he felt they would
believe he was only temporarily deranged by the bitter loss which had
left him heart-broken; and yet some heedless or absurd order, some
unintelligible shifting of the course, for example, some needless
setting or reduction of canvas, must act like a surgical operation and
quicken their scent, which would help him to come to a decision as to
the right thing to be done; and whilst he went on munching his dinner
he found himself repeatedly glancing at the telltale compass and
listening for the captain's voice. But the ship sped steadily straight
forward, and the captain remained silent though his tread was audible.

A little while before the mate had finished his dinner Mr. Candy came
below. This was unusual: in the ordinary movement of discipline he
should have waited to be relieved by Hardy.

"The captain told me to go and get my dinner, sir," said the second
mate.

"All right," said Hardy.

Mr. Candy sat down and began to help himself. Hardy had no particular
fondness for this man: he was the son of a pilot, and one of those
people who add nothing to the dignity of a service which in its day, in
point of breeding, in all art of seamanship, in structure of vessel,
was as good as the Royal Navy. Witness, for example, the men and ships
of John Company; for if no line-of-battle ships flew the flag of that
company, and the flags of the owners of fleets of stately craft, ships
of commerce had been and were still then afloat as lordly in build, as
gracious and commanding in star-searching heights, as the finest of the
frigates of Britannia. But Candy was second mate of the ship, and to
that degree was important.

"Captain Layard is very down," said Hardy. "It's a cruel bad job. I
loved the little boy, and the dog that loved him too wouldn't let me
save his life."

"It was plucky of you, sir, to jump overboard," said the second mate.
"All the time the captain walks he looks to port and starboard, hunting
like with his eyes over the sea for the little drummer. Strange he
can't satisfy himself that the younker is drowned, dead and gone."

He was feeding heartily, and spoke in the intervals of chewing.

"This shock," said Hardy, who saw that the man was not to be talked to
confidentially, "may have a little weakened the poor father's mind for
a time. We'll assume it so for the common preservation; therefore, in
your watch on deck should he give orders which might prove him thinking
more of Johnny than the ship, call me at once."

"Ay, ay, sir!"

This said, Hardy went to his berth to smoke a pipe and get some rest,
for he could not know what lay before him, and sleep is precious at sea.

At four o'clock Candy aroused him. The captain, he learnt, had been
below an hour. Nothing worth reporting had happened during Candy's
watch. Hardy went on deck, and did not see the captain throughout
the first dog-watch. The breeze was slightly scanting; the main-tack
was boarded and the main-royal loosed and set. Hardy, like a good
many other chief mates, was always for carrying on whenever he was in
charge, and the breeze blew and the girls of the port he was bound
to always hauled with a will at his tow-rope. Besides, there was the
night's detention to be made good, and the clipper was making it good
as she sheared through the coils of the sea, boiling in dim rose to the
westering light. It was like a field of hurdles to a favourite, and she
swept them with a bounding keel, slinging rainbows as she went, and the
surge sang in thunder to the melodies of the rigging.

Hardy's whole thoughts concerned the captain. He quite remembered
that in the cabin of the stricken father stood a medicine-chest full
of deadly poisons. Would he take his life? Full often the demon of
madness goes on beckoning to the ghastly Feature till it springs. But
what could the mate do? It was not within his right to remove the
chest. If he durst act in any way he would lock up the captain at once,
but he had the talk and opinions of a crew of seamen to consider,
and if the captain should be revisited by the same degree of sanity
that had enabled him to navigate the vessel to this point, how would
Hardy stand, supposing--and supposition here involved a very possible
contingency--that the captain, to preserve his own position, should
charge him with the ugliest breach of discipline a merchant officer
could be guilty of?

He did not meet the captain again till the supper hour. The ship was
then under all plain sail. The west was glowing like a furnace, and
the ocean was calming to the softening of the breeze. The captain came
from his berth into the cabin as Hardy stood beside the table. The meal
was ready, and they sat down. There was a curious look of satisfaction
in the captain's face. The acute eye of Hardy easily saw that some
soothing delusion was in possession of the man. He asked two or three
questions about the ship, and quite sanely said:

"What did you make the latitude and longitude to be at noon?"

Hardy answered the question.

The captain began to eat hungrily, and all the time his face gave token
of an inward content, lifting indeed into the pleasure of assured
expectation; but somehow there were visible in this lunatic web of
emotion threads of cunning clearly perceptible to Hardy, who, perhaps,
as the son of a doctor whose professional experiences he had often
listened to, was able to see a little deeper than the vision of a plain
seaman could penetrate.

"There is no doubt, Mr. Hardy," suddenly said the captain, "that I
shall be able to find Johnny."

"I hope so, sir," answered Hardy, gravely.

"I have no doubt," exclaimed the captain with a sparkle of triumphant
cunning lighting up his eyes. "I must be patient and wait, for I've got
to hear where he is."

Hardy was silent.

"It may come to me in a dream," continued the poor man, "or it may
be revealed to me in a whisper. I believe with Milton that the air
is thronged with millions of spiritual beings. I have in my watches,
when a mate, heard whispers in the dark! I believe in God the Father
Almighty"--and he recited the Apostles' Creed whilst he stroked the
head of his dog, who sat at his side. "It is a glorious confession,
Mr. Hardy. What should make a man more religious than the sea life?
They think us a breed of blasphemers, but to whom is the glory and the
majesty and the power of the Supreme unfolded if not to the sailor? We
behold the birth of the day, and witness the sublimity of the Spirit
in the glittering temples of the east, from which the sun springs, to
reveal the marvel of the ocean and the heavens to the sight of man; and
we witness the death of the day, gorgeous and kingly in its departure,
over which the angels spread a funeral pall sparkling with the diamonds
of the night."

He pressed his hands to his brow and sighed with that long tremor in
which the broken heart often vents itself.

The night passed quietly. The breeze yet slackened and was blowing a
gentle wind at midnight. There was a moon somewhere in the sky, and
her light fell upon the dark waters, and the sight of the small seas,
curling in frosted silver through the radiance, was as beautiful as
the picture of the ship stemming softly, her canvas stirless as carven
shields of marble.

The captain came and went throughout the night, and no man aboard
saving Hardy would have dreamt of holding him mad and irresponsible.
Candy, when his watch was up, had nothing to report but this: that the
skipper would walk the deck fast, abruptly halting at the weather-rail
to stare at the ocean in pauses running into minutes, then crossing to
the lee-rail to stare again in passages of dumb scrutiny. What more
conceivable than that the afflicted man should be full of the memory of
his lost child, and that he should break off in his walk to meditate
upon the mighty grave in whose heart his little one was sleeping?

Candy thought thus, and so did the helmsman, who would find the men he
talked to about it of his own mind when he was relieved at the wheel
and went forward.

And so the night passed into the sad light of dawn, which brightened
into the glory of a morning full of sunshine. The breeze had shifted
three points, and the ship was sailing slowly with the yards square and
the weather-clew of the mainsail up.

Now was to happen the strangest incident in this ship's adventure.
It was Nelson who said that nothing is impossible or improbable in
sea-affairs. There is no invention of man that can top the grim, the
grotesque, the beautiful, the sublime, or the touching facts which the
great mystery of liquid surface yields to human experience.

A seaman, who was sitting astride of the starboard foretopsail
yard-arm, busy with marline-spike on some job that the lift needed,
hailed the deck.

"Where away?" shouted Hardy from the quarter-deck.

"Right ahead, sir," answered the man, who looked a toy sailor, his
white breeches trembling, and the round of his back sharp-lined against
the blue.

Hardy fetched the glass, and going to the mizzen-rigging pointed it. He
caught it instantly. It was a boat, how far off it was impossible to
say, for distance, when a small object grows visible, is very difficult
to measure with the eye at sea, but she was plain to the naked sight
of the man on the yard-arm; the telescope brought her close, and Hardy
counted five figures in her, one of whom was standing on the foremost
thwart waving something,--a shirt or a piece of canvas. Her mast was
stepped, but the sail was down, and she lay waiting, vanishing and
reappearing as the shallow hollows ran sucking under her.

When Hardy dropped the glass he found the captain by his side.

"What is in sight?" he exclaimed, speaking with something of
breathlessness, as though his heart was tightened.

"A ship's boat, sir, with five people in her," answered Hardy.

"I shall find him," exclaimed the captain, and the old look of
superiority to all human intelligence, and the pathetic sparkle of
cunning with which the diseased brain will often illuminate the eye,
were perceptible to Hardy. "Give me the glass, sir."

The captain levelled it and was a long time in looking, and all the
time he looked he breathed slow and deep like a man in heavy slumber.

"Stand by to back the foretopsail," he exclaimed. "Let a hand be ready
with a line and others to help them aboard, for twice I have fallen in
with people so weakened by distress and famine and thirst--O God, that
awful part of it--that we have lifted them like babies over the side."

Presently the boat was close under the bow; the foretopsail was aback,
and the ship, heaving slowly without way, was alongside the little
fabric.

Her people were four men and a woman. The men were seamen, apparelled
in such clothes as the merchant sailor went clad in. They staggered a
little as they stood up, and one in the bow reeled as he caught the
end of the line. The woman was sitting in the stern-sheets. She wore a
straw hat, the shadow of whose brim darkened her face as a veil might.
She was clothed in a black jacket, and the material of her dress was
dark. Her head was a little sunk, as though she was too weary to hold
it erect.

The captain, overlaying the rail, stared with bright devouring eyes
into the boat. He did not seem to heed the people in her; he was
looking for something else.

"Are you able to help the lady aboard?" shouted Hardy.

"No, sir," answered the man who had caught the line; "we've been adrift
two days."

His weak voice proclaimed the truth of his words. At the sound of
Hardy's cry the woman in the stern-sheets lifted her head, and the
shadow of the brim of her hat slipped off her face. Hardy instantly
recognised her.

"Great God!" he exclaimed.

He was struck motionless by astonishment, but his faculties rallied in
a breath; in a minute he had sprung into the main chains, and a jump
carried him into the boat.

"O Mr. Hardy!" shrieked the girl, and she tried to rise to clasp him,
but her exhaustion was too great and she could only sob.

"On deck there!" shouted Hardy, who was usurping all the privileges
of the captain in that moment of tumultuous sensations. "Send down a
chair and bear a hand." And whilst this well-understood order was being
executed--it meant simply a tail-block at the main yard-arm and a line
rove through the block with a cabin-chair secured to the end of it--and
whilst the four nearly spent sailors of the boat were being helped by
the men in the ship, Hardy was talking to Julia.

"What a meeting! What has happened to your ship?"

Her lips were pale and a little cracked, her eyes were languid, and dim
with tears, a shadow as of hollowness lay upon each cheek. She spoke
with difficulty.

"The _Glamis Castle_ was burnt two days ago in the night. We have been
drifting about since then without food or water. Oh, thank God for
this! thank God for this--and to meet _you_!"

"Bear a hand, my lads, bear a hand," shouted Hardy, whilst the captain
with his head showing above the rail stood staring into the boat. The
mate would not tax her with speech; she might be dying! Some alert
seamen were in that clipper, and to the instincts and humanity of a
British sailor no form of distress appeals more vehemently than the
open boat in which they see no breaker, than the open boat in which men
and women may be dying of thirst. Swiftly, as though the crew of the
_York_ were the disciplined and gallant hearts of the battle-ship, a
chair, well secured, sank from the yard-arm and was seized by Hardy. He
lifted the girl on to it, took a turn round her with a piece of line
which had come down with it, and she soared from his nimble, skilful
hands, and vanished from his sight behind the bulwarks. He gained the
deck in a few instants, and was at the girl's side before the sailors
could liberate her from the chair.

"She is a dear friend of mine," said he, loudly, that the men might
understand that more was in this thrilling passage than humanity only.
And passing his arm round her waist to support her he helped her to
walk aft.

The captain's face looked dark with disappointment, and as Hardy drew
close to him he heard him mutter, "They have not brought him, they have
not brought him!"

"I will take this lady below, sir," said Hardy, speaking rapidly. "Her
ship has been burnt. They have been without food and water for two or
three days," and he passed on with the girl to the companion-hatch,
whilst the captain stood dumbly following them with his eyes, with the
noble Newfoundland standing beside him.

In silence the two descended the cabin ladder, and with the tenderness
of a lover, which in such men as Hardy has the sweetness of a woman's
love, he placed her upon a locker and poured out a little water. She
drank with the passion of thirst, and asked for more with her eyes, but
Hardy knew better and gave her a biscuit, which would lightly soothe
the craving of the hunger that is often felt after thirst is assuaged.
She bit a little piece of biscuit, and said:

"Won't you give me a little more water?"

"Very soon. Eat that biscuit."

He stepped to the pantry where some brandy was kept, and poured a
tablespoonful in a wine-glass, and this filled up with water he gave
her after she had eaten the biscuit. The stimulant helped her, and even
as he stood watching her with his heart beating fast with this wonder,
this miracle, of almost unparalleled meeting, he witnessed symptoms of
a reviving spirit, of a reanimated body in her face.

At this moment Captain Layard came down the companion-steps
and approached them with an eager, strained expression. His
eyes, alight with mania--for madness has its expectations and
disappointments--rested with a searching gaze upon the girl.

"Have you seen him?" he asked.

"No, sir," answered Hardy, quickly trying to catch Julia's eye, but she
was staring with alarm at the captain, as you would, or I, under such
conditions of inexplicable confrontment. "She is a dear friend of mine
and is ill with the sufferings of an open boat, but her presence in
this ship may mean more than we can dream of now."

The captain's face changed, his eyes took a fresh illumination with his
smile.

"See to her, Mr. Hardy, see to her, and I'll start the ship afresh."

He left the cabin.

"May I have another biscuit?" said Julia.

Hardy handed one and smiled, for he saw again the sweet unconscious
cock of her head, not the less fascinating to him because her eyes were
dim, her cheeks a little hollow, her lips pale.

"Was that the captain?" she asked.

"Yes," he answered.

"What was he asking? Is he right in his mind?"

"His only son, a little boy, a beautiful bright-haired little boy, fell
overboard and was drowned, and--But we will talk about the captain and
your adventures when you are stronger."

He mused a moment or two, and then added, "You will take the rest you
need in my cabin, and a berth shall be made ready for you. A good long
sleep will restore you. So come."

He put his arm through hers and caused her to rise, and indeed she
still needed the support he gave her. He took her to his cabin, and
as she walked she looked about her with growing animation, which is a
cheering sign, and once she exclaimed, "Thank God, I am safe! Thank
God, I have met you! But how wonderful--oh, how wonderful!"

She sat on his sea-chest whilst he smoothed and prepared the bunk. It
was a little cabin; the bunk was under a port-hole, and plenty of light
came flashing in off the trembling, feathering sea. You might hear the
tramp of feet overhead, and the thump of coils of rope flung off their
pins. There were none of the garnishings which often make pathetic
such interiors as this; when a young officer hangs up the picture of
his wife with their first baby on her knee, neither of them to be
kissed and clasped for months and months, even if God be merciful to
the poor fellow and his ship; no rack full of pipes, no odds and ends
of curios--in short, nothing ornamented the wall of Hardy's sea-bedroom
but a long chart of the English Channel, which it was his custom to
study when he lay in his bunk smoking, to get absolutely by heart the
lights which gem the coast of our island, and the verdure-crowned
terraces over the way.

When the bunk was prepared he removed her hat and gave her a
hair-brush, and took down a little square of mirror and held it up
before her. He greatly admired the beauty and the abundance of her
hair, which was parted on one side.

"Nothing so refreshes one as to brush one's hair," said he.

"How ill I look," she exclaimed. "How could you have recognised me so
instantly?" and she lifted her eyes, full of caress, to his face.

"Will you be strong enough to get into that bunk unhelped?" he asked.

It was a low-seated bunk, and she looked at it and answered, "Yes."

"Then I will leave you," said he, and he walked out hurriedly, and shut
the door behind him.

He went on deck to see how the captain was dealing with his ship and
found the vessel sailing along, with her yards properly swung and
everything right. The boat from which the people had been received
was visible at the tail of the ship's wake. The captain had sent her
adrift, which was sane or not in him, just as you think proper. The
sailors were coiling down and otherwise busy; the four men had been
taken into the forecastle, where they were eating and drinking and
yarning to a few of the watch below about the burning of the Indiaman
_Glamis Castle_. The moment Captain Layard saw Hardy he called him.

"Who is the lady?" he asked.

"Miss Julia Armstrong, the daughter of a retired commander in the Royal
Navy," was the reply.

"Where have you lodged her?"

"In my cabin for the present, sir, till I receive your orders to get
another one ready for her."

"Oh, yes, have that done--have that done," the captain said in a
smooth, perfectly sane voice. "Do you know what she was aboard the
ship?"

Now Hardy was like the squire in Dickens's exquisite sketch--"he
would not tell a lie for no man!" At the same time he did not wish
Captain Layard should know that Miss Armstrong had shipped as a second
stewardess, so he replied she was going to Calcutta with a letter of
introduction to the bishop of that place. Her father was poor, and the
girl wanted to find something to do in India.

But the captain was dreaming. One with eyes for such faces as his
could easily see that he was thinking of something else, or did not
understand. He continued to look in silence for a little while at
Hardy, and then the baleful sparkle suddenly brightened his stare, he
folded his arms and said, with an expression of triumphant hope and
conviction:

"She is fresh from the sea and knows where Johnny is, and she shall
help me to find him!"




CHAPTER X.

THE CAPTAIN AND THE GIRL


It was six o'clock on the same day in which Julia Armstrong had
been delivered from that horrible sea tragedy, the open boat, by
the miraculous apparition of the _York_, of all the ships which the
horizons of the deep were then girdling! The chief mate knocked upon
the door of his cabin where the girl lay, and believing he heard her
say "Come in," entered, and found her asleep.

The reddening sunshine was away to starboard, but the heavens southeast
were glowing, and the girl slept, visible to the eye as the circle of
blue port-hole up which and down which you saw the clear-cut line of
the horizon sliding like a piece of clockwork. He stood looking at
her, for there was love for this girl in the man's heart, and this
encounter was so wonderful that he witnessed the hand of God in it, and
a sentiment of religion sanctified his emotion; otherwise, with the
sailor's respect for the repose of those who sleep--for the seamen's
best blessing upon you is, _Lord grant you a good night's rest,
sir!_--he would have softly stepped out and left her.

And this he would have soon done, but as he looked she all at once
opened her gray eyes full upon him, stared a few moments till
intelligence came to her, then started, smiled, and sat up in the bunk.

"I've awaked you, I'm afraid," said Hardy.

"I'm glad you have. I have slept sweetly and I feel well," she
answered. "Strange that I have not dreamt at all, for I have passed
through a nightmare since the burning of the ship. How marvellous to
see you standing there!"

"Could you eat a piece of cold fowl and drink some wine?"

"Yes."

"You shall sup here, for I want to hear your story. If you are in the
cabin, and the captain comes--"

He put his head out of the door and hailed the cabin servant, who was
polishing glasses in the pantry. He told him what to get and bring,
and he then caused the girl to get out of her bunk, and cushioned his
sea-chest with his bunk pillow as a seat for her. He smiled as he saw
her fall into the incomparable posture (as he thought it): the head a
little on one side, the hands on the hips, the feet crossed, the whole
figure beautiful now that her jacket was removed, though her dark blue
blouse imperfectly suggested the faultless grace of her breast. Sleep
had faintly tinged her cheek whereon the shadow of suffering had lain;
her eyes had brightened, her lips had reddened, and all the romance
of her face, which was not beautiful nor even pretty, but alluring,
nevertheless, was expressed once more in the flattering evening light,
which suffused with a liquid softness the atmosphere of that little
cabin.

Until the man knocked at the door with the tray of food and wine, they
talked chiefly of home, of the dry ditch and Bax's farm, of the East
India Dock road and of Captain Smedley, whose escape and probable
safety the girl had mentioned early in this talk. And then whilst she
supped--an early supper, but on the ocean it is the last meal--she told
him the story of a memorable fire at sea.

There had been many such fires, and they nearly all read like one. It
begins by some rascally sailor broaching a rum cask; or it is a naked
candle in the hand of a fool looking for a brand in the lazarette; or
it is a pipeful of glowing tobacco amongst wool; the capsizal of a
lamp; or it is caused by something which the ocean sucks down to her
ooze and buries there, one secret more. But however it be, the end is
nearly always the same. It was so in this case; the fire took such a
hold there was no dealing with it; a score may have perished. The girl
saw the bowsprit and jib-booms black with figures of men who had been
cut off by the amidship furnace. Numbers--for she was a full ship with
many children, and besides passengers she was carrying hard upon a
hundred soldiers in her 'tween-decks--numbers, I say, got away in the
boats, and amongst them, the last to leave, was the captain; she did
not doubt that. She fell overboard in her terror, and in her recoil
right aft from the smoke and its burning stars, and afterwards found
herself in a boat in the company of five men, one of whom, groaning
heavily with internal injury, died in the night and was dropped over
the boat's side.

She had more to tell him about this shipwreck, but that fire concerns
my story only in so far as it brings this girl again on to the stage by
one of those dramatic and startling methods adopted by the ocean, whose
moods are many.

"If your captain is a madman," she said, "what is to happen to this
ship?"

He put his finger to his lips in a gesture of caution and reticence.

"We may whisper it to each other," said he, in a low voice, "but the
crew have no knowledge of it, or they may attribute any strangeness in
his manner to the loss of his child, and think it passing. They all
loved the poor little fellow, and so did I."

And he told her how the boy used to beat his drum in accompaniment to
the sailor's whistle, and related the story of his falling overboard
and the efforts to save him, and the captain's frantic dumb-show and
sudden exhibition of insanity, so that he believed his child was merely
missing, and that something would happen to tell him where he might be
found.

"How sad!" said the girl. "It would have broken my heart to see it. And
does he still think that he will find his little boy?"

"I'm afraid it's his conviction, the subtle delusion of the diseased
brain," Hardy answered; "but in other matters with him it's like
writing on sand; next tide all's gone. Do not tell him you were a
stewardess. Converse with him as though he were perfectly sane. He is a
gentleman and an educated man. Humour his sorrowful fancy, for it can
hurt no one, and it keeps the poor fellow's heart up."

"I suppose you are really in charge of the ship?" she said.

"I am watching her navigation," he answered, "but I tell you I am at a
dead loss because he is the supreme law-giver of the vessel, and what
he orders must be done or it is mutiny. His orders may be dangerous to
my judgment, but not to the men's, who take the course as it's given;
and I dare not go amongst them and speak the truth. He might get better
and hear of it, and it would be in his power to ruin me."

She sank her head thoughtfully, understanding him. The door was rapped.

"Hullo," cried Hardy.

It was the cabin servant who had come to tell Hardy that the captain
wished to see the lady.

"Where is he?" inquired the mate.

"On deck, sir. He'll come below when I report her ready to receive him."

"Report her ready," said Hardy, and he and the girl went into the cabin.

She seated herself on a cushioned locker, and he stood beside her.

"That's your berth," said he, pointing to a door.

Gratitude and love were in the smile she gave him. The red western
blaze was on the skylight, and reposed on her hair like gold-dust.
It was Hardy's watch below--he was therefore at liberty to be in the
cabin. He caught sight of Candy staring through the skylight, but the
pale-eyed man walked off in a minute, and then the captain came down.

He bowed with the courtesy of breeding to the girl. Tradition has
scored so heavily against the merchant shipmaster by virtue of
romantic invention, which largely consists of lies, that I dare say
it is impossible for a landsman to believe that the commander of a
merchant-ship could be anything but a rough, grog-seamed, hoarse-voiced
salt, without grammar for his log-book. The lie stands as everlasting
as the pyramids, and for my part it may go on standing, but it is a
lie all the same, and it is my pleasure to paint the truth.

As the girl returned the bow she saw the great Newfoundland in the
captain's wake, and cried out with a sudden passion of admiration,
"Oh, what a magnificent creature!" The dog made friends with her in an
instant, and by twenty canine tokens expressed delight in the caress of
her hand. No doubt the beautiful and faithful creature appreciated the
sweetening and civilising influence of the lady in that cabin.

The captain began by putting several sane questions, and she
remembered that she was not to tell him that she had shipped as an
under-stewardess in the _Glamis Castle_. He knew the vessel, and
listened with a degree of attention, that excited Hardy's surprise,
to her narrative of the fire. He seemed to take a fancy to her, to be
pleased by her presence, and said he hoped she would be comfortable
on board his ship. In the midst of his rational talk he slapped his
forehead and kept his hand pressed to it, and his face changed; a look
of grief that made him almost haggard was visible when he dropped his
hand and gazed at the girl.

"I miss my son--my little son," he exclaimed, "and I am waiting for
something"--he added, in a broken voice--"to tell me where I can find
him. His drum is by his bed--come and look at it."

Awed by the sudden confrontment of hopeless human grief, the girl rose
and followed him, with a glance at Hardy as for courage. The heave of
the deck was gentle; she was stronger, and stepped without difficulty.
The captain entered his cabin and closed the door upon them both,
which frightened her, for she easily now saw how it was with his poor
brain, and no one in the company of a madman can ever dare swear that
in the next minute he will continue harmless.

"That is his drum," said the captain. "That is the little bed he slept
in."

Hardy outside stood close at the door, listening and prepared.

"He is my only child," continued the captain, compelling by his own
gaze the girl's attention to a little coat and a little cap, and other
garments of the boy which were hanging upon the bulkhead. "His mother
is dead, and she was my first and my only love. I miss him of a night,
and want him. He has been my constant companion in several voyages, and
the life of the captain of a ship at sea is lonely, and I miss him.
It was my delight to dress him and to listen to his talk. Oh, he is
a clever boy! He can ask questions which the greatest mind could not
answer."

He sat down on a chair by the table on which were instruments of
navigation, a few books, pen and ink, and the like, and folding his
arms and bowing his head he sobbed dryly without concealment of
features, and the piteous face, bearded, the half-closed eyes, the long
hair under the cap which he had not removed, made the girl feel sick
and faint, as though to some oppressive stroke of personal grief.

She rallied, for she was a young woman of great spirit, as I have a
right to hold, and remembering what Hardy had said, she exclaimed,
softly:

"You will find him, Captain Layard."

At this he looked up at her, started to his feet, and his face was
eager and impassioned with emotion not communicable, for who can
expound the workings of the diseased mind?

"Tell me," he cried, and she saw what Hardy had also seen--the baleful
sparkle of mania in his eyes, "you're fresh from the sea, and God may
have sent you to me. Tell me!"

She could not speak. Her consolatory phrase had exhausted imagination,
and her heart refused its sanction to the mate's humane idea, that it
was good to keep up the poor fellow's spirits.

"Tell me!" he repeated, and he advanced a step and his eyes devoured
her face.

"God will comfort you and help you," she replied, not knowing what to
say.

He sighed, and turning his head fastened his eyes upon the little bed,
then looked at her again, this time with his painful expression of
superiority, the air of a man whose soul is exalted by contemplation
of something of heavenly importance divulged to him and to him only,
and wearing this face, he opened the door and she passed out, which was
lucky for Hardy, because had the captain gone first he would have found
the mate standing close and listening.

The captain remained in his cabin. The others stood by the table, and
the western light, rich and red as a deep-bosomed rose, flowed down
upon them through the open skylight.

"Poor man! Poor man!" the girl exclaimed. "I fear that what I've said
will create a delusion; he will think I know where his child is."

"His moods are like the dog-vane," said Hardy. "I could not hear what
passed."

She told him. He frowned with the puzzle of his mind.

"You can judge now for yourself," said he. "Is it right that a man like
this should command a ship whose safety became doubly precious to me
this morning?"

She smiled gently, but gravity quickly returned; she could not but
reflect his face of worry and uncertainty. The great dog was lying at
his master's door, and all was silent in the captain's cabin. This, in
the pause, made her say:

"He may commit suicide."

"Not whilst he believes his son is alive and to be found," answered
Hardy.

He walked to the door of her berth, opened it, and she saw that it was
as comfortably equipped as the ship would allow.

"You shall have a hair-brush and whatever else I possess to give you,"
said he. "But how about clothes? I can't dress you."

"I am saved," she answered, "and that is enough to think of at present."

This was a spirited answer for a girl who was talking to the man she
loved, for would not any girl, addressing the man of her heart, grow
pensive to the thought that she had but one gown to wear in the whole
world?

He felt a certain sense of independency owing to the captain's state,
and considered that he was entitled to act beyond his rights as a mate.
By which I mean that it could not much concern him if the captain came
out and found him talking to the girl, and generally acting as though
he were a passenger instead of an officer of the ship.

"Come on deck," said he, "the air will refresh you."

And they went up the companion-steps, whilst the Newfoundland continued
to sentinel the captain's door.

A glorious evening sky, in the west like a city on fire, clouds with
brows glowing into scarlet as they sailed into the splendour abeam,
the ship leaning with the breeze, and the white spume twinkling on the
eastern blue in a trembling heaven-full of the lights of foam. Two sail
were in sight, fairy gleams upon the lens-like edge on the port bow.

"Oh," cried the girl, with a swift look along the deck, "after an open
boat! and one man groaning and then lying dead in her!"

They walked slowly to and fro to leeward, leaving Mr. Candy, who ogled
them betwixt his white eyelashes, to pace the weather quarter-deck
in the loneliness of command. The sailors had immediately seen how
things stood. Nothing that happens at sea astonishes a sailor, unless
it is the expected, which is often a real surprise, so full of
disappointments, of leeway, head winds, misreckoning is the life. Here
was the chief mate who had fallen in with a girl whom he knew.

"They might have kept company ashore," says Bill to Jim. "She was bound
one way and he another. Ain't that sailor fashion?"

"Ain't she got a figure?" says Jim to Bill. "Wouldn't I like to put my
arm round her waist if Dick and the little 'un was playing. It's damned
hard on us sailor men that no female society's allowed aboard a ship."

"There's the figurehead if it's female," says Bill. "I've known a
man so 'ard up that of a dog-watch, when there was plenty o' light,
he'd slide down the dolphin-striker just to talk to the woman on the
stem-head. He'd say it was the next best thing."

Perhaps it was, for some figureheads in those days were a little
gorgeous. I have seen ladies under the bowsprit with long black hair
and swelling bosoms, bright with golden stars. Their blush was deep,
their lips scarlet, their smile alluring, they were always curtseying,
and the sea in its loving humours flung snow-white nosegays at them.

But the shadow of the boy's death was still upon the ship, and so far
the captain had treated his men _as_ men, and they were sorry for
him. You may take it that a man is no sailor who ill-treats a sailor,
and despite tradition and the presence of the sea-lawyer, your ship's
company, if they are British, will serve you honestly if their food is
fit even for sailors, and if they are numerous enough to do the work
of one man and half a man added per head, as against the one-man work
which the shore exacts without expecting more.

As Hardy and the girl walked the deck, whilst the ship sailed along
stately in the beautiful light of that evening, they talked again of
home and then of the country to which they were voyaging. The sail upon
the port bow leaned like tiny jets of red flame, and no star of heaven
could have filled the liquid distance with more grace.

"It was certainly your destiny to make for Australia," said Hardy, "and
I now say what I thought from the beginning, that your chances lie
there. But we had to find you a berth."

"Captain Smedley was very kind to me," she answered. "He would
sometimes invite me into his cabin and talk to me as pleasantly as
though he had known me all his life. He gave me an introduction to the
Bishop of Calcutta, and begged him to do everything that could be done
for a girl placed as I am. I believe he talked to the passengers about
me, for some were extremely good-natured and sympathetic, and would
apologise for troubling me if I waited upon them."

"Any griffs aboard?" asked Hardy.

"Some young officers," she answered, with a half smile upon her lips,
and looking down upon the deck, "but I kept as much to myself as I
could."

"You'll find plenty of opportunities in Australia," said Hardy. "There
are rich squatters in that country, and you can be driving about
Melbourne and entertaining and doing what you pleased whilst he was a
thousand miles off counting his sheep."

"Suppose all the rich squatters kept themselves a thousand miles
distant whilst I was in Melbourne, could I return in this ship?"

She asked this question placidly, but her expression showed that she
did not appreciate this reference to the squatters.

"You want position and you'll get it."

"Could I return in this ship?"

"We'll see," he answered, smiling at her. "A dinner and champagne to
the head of the firm of agents might help us, and nature did not intend
that you should ever plead in vain."

As he said this the captain came on deck, followed by Sailor. The
Newfoundland, with the critical eye of an old salt, took a view of
the horizon, and in a minute rushed forward on to the forecastle and
reported two ships in sight on the port bow by a number of barks,
which made the men, who were lounging about the knight-heads, laugh
heartily. On seeing the captain, the mate touched his cap and walked
right aft on the lee-side, where with folded arms he seemed to watch
the sea, though he kept the captain and Julia in the corner of his eye.

The poor man approached the girl, who received him with a smile.

"Has Mr. Hardy looked after you?" he said, kindly and gently.

"Oh, yes, Captain Layard, I am very happy and comfortable, and thank
you over and over again for your goodness. I believe I should have died
by this time in that open boat, and I owe my life to you and this noble
ship."

"I am very dull and lonely," he said in a musing way, clearly
inattentive to her words. "Those ships yonder break the continuity
of this everlasting circle, but they'll vanish shortly, and the full
desolation of the night will encompass us. It is the night that I
fear--it is the night that I fear!" he continued, almost whispering,
and gazing at her as a man looks at another whose pity and help his
heart is yearning for. "I miss him! If I dream of him I shall go mad to
find it a dream. But you know where he is."

She hoped to divert his thoughts, and said: "I do not find the sea
desolate, Captain Layard. On fine nights I could stand for hours
looking at the stars; and is desolation on the sea when the sun is
shining? If I were a man I would be a sailor, for, although it has
nearly destroyed me, I have learnt to love the ocean."

She looked toward Hardy. The dog, having barked his report of two
sail in sight, came trotting aft, and stood beside his master. The
captain looked at him a little while in silence, his brow contracted in
meditation.

"Which is real?" he asked, placing his foot upon the dog's shadow,
"this or this?" and he put his hand upon the dog.

Julia, who found a necessity to humour him, answered:

"Some great thinker has written, 'Shadows we are, and shadows we
pursue.'"

"How long grows one's shadow in the dying sun!" said Captain Layard,
turning his face--filled with the yearning of grief and charged
with that subtle expression of madness for which no words are to be
found--toward the burning sky; "and soon we are nothing but shadows. Do
you believe in God?" He looked at her suddenly with an extraordinary
gaze of passionate anxiety.

"Oh, yes, Captain Layard," replied the girl. "I believe in him now if
ever I did, and I have thanked him."

His face put on its triumphant look, but he was interrupted in the
irrelevant sentiments he was about to deliver by the approach of the
boatswain.

Julia crossed the deck to Hardy, glad to escape the pain of such talk.

"What is it?" said the captain.

"The men we picked up," answered the boatswain, "have asked me to come
aft to say they're willing to serve as seamen aboard this ship."

"You are a full company," replied the captain, quickly. "I can't afford
to pay and keep more sailors."

"They're likely men, sir," said the boatswain, speaking in a softened
note of respectful compassion.

"They'll expect their wages."

The boatswain answered he thought that was likely.

"No," said the captain, "we'll transship them, and send them home."

He rounded on his heel, and sat upon the skylight, and gazed at the
dying lights in the west. What could be more sane than this man's
answers to the boatswain? Hardy had overheard them, and perplexity
was deepened in him. Who was going to convince the sailors that their
captain was mad unless he talked to them as he did to him and Julia?
And the captain sat looking at the dimming glory, and did not seem to
remember that he had been conversing with the girl, or to know that she
had left him.

It was fine weather throughout that night, and the moon shone, and
the heaven of stars swarmed in sparkling hosts toward the grave of
the sun until the pallor of the dawn, like the face of the risen
Christ, put out those fires of the dark; the ship, bathed in the
ice-white radiance, stole phantom-like over the boundless cemetery
of the drowned, the perished sailors whose tombstones were in every
breaking surge. All had been quiet aboard that stealing ship, clad to
her trucks in the raiment of her day. The captain would pass a long
time in his cabin, then appear on deck, and walk it for a little space
self-engrossed; and it seemed to Hardy when his watch came round, and
when the captain showed himself, that the man's isolation and silence
expressed, perhaps, a still dim but growing perception of the fate of
his little boy, in which case the delusion would leave him, and his
mind recover at least the strength it possessed when they made sail in
the English Channel.

When the sun rose the ocean rolled in mackerel-tinted mounds, and the
ship swayed as she floated onwards at about five knots. Stu'nsails had
been set by order of the captain when he came on deck at dawn, and,
whitening the air on high, the swelling cloths carried the sight to the
heavens, which arched in a miracle of motionless feathers of cloud,
a glorious canopy of delicate plumes, in sweet keeping with the airy
graces of the queenly fabric which proudly bowed upon its mighty throne.

A sail was in sight on the starboard bow, and in two hours she would
be abreast. The Newfoundland, coming on deck with the captain when the
light broke, instantly barked its report of her, and now, a little
after eight, Hardy was viewing her through the ship's telescope; for
the sane instructions which had reached him were, that the four men
were to be transferred to the first ship which would receive them.

The four men were on the forecastle watching the coming vessel; they
were good specimens of the English seaman of those days, sturdy and
whiskered, bronzed in face and bowed in back, with that steady air
which made you know that, like most British sailors, they were to
be trusted beyond all breeds of foreign mariners in the hour of sea
peril, when the ship was grinding out her heart upon the rocks, when
the belching hatches were blackening the air into a storm cloud, when
the blow of the stranger's bows had riven the side into a gulf, when
the yawn of the started butt was burdening the hold with tons of
ship-drowning brine.

When the ships were abreast, the stranger proved American, bound for
the River Thames. The beautiful flag of her great country shook its
barred folds at the peak, and you thought of Bishop's Berkeley's
prophetic line, "Westward the course of empire takes its way." Her
yellow sheathing flashed in artillery spoutings as she rolled from the
sun, her canvas with cotton was as white as milk, she was a wonder of
sea architecture, the creation of a people whose sires had launched
that exquisite structure, the Baltimore clipper.

Captain Layard was now on deck, and Hardy must discover that in matters
of routine he was not going to work with the diseased half of his head.
He hailed the American captain, and they exchanged the information they
asked.

"What ship is that? Where are you from, and where are you bound to?"

And the American wanted to know the Greenwich time by the chronometers
in Captain Layard's cabin.

Then was shouted across in words as sane as ever sounded from a
quarter-deck the news of the recovery of four men from an open boat,
and would the American captain carry them home? Of course he would, and
within half an hour from the beginning of this rencounter the two ships
had started on their separate courses with colours dipping in cordial
good-byes--the seaman's hand-shake. And these were cousins.




CHAPTER XI.

THE CAPTAIN'S BIRTHDAY


Now in this business of transferring the four men Hardy noticed that
the captain made no reference to Miss Armstrong. Another captain would
have asked her if she wished to go home: perhaps, indeed, would have
sent her home without asking her. Was it because Captain Layard knew
she had no home? Hardy hoped it might be that, but suspected it was
not so. This ship wanted no stewardess; the girl was one more to feed,
and owners do not love liberality in their captains. In short, the
mate came to the conclusion that the captain's benevolence in keeping
the girl and giving her a passage to Australia for nothing was due to
hallucination, and the thought was uneasiness itself both for Julia's
sake and the ship's.

It was the day following the transshipment of the men that he found an
opportunity during the captain's absence to take a turn with the girl
and talk to her. The sun was shining a little hotly, and the clouds
were sailing fast. Each round of swell, as it came under-running the
ship out of the northeast, was ridged and wrinkled with arches of foam,
and the day was alive with the music in the rigging, with the speckled
wings of sea-birds in the wake, and the smoke-like shadow of vapour
floating through the sunshine on the water.

After the couple had talked a little, Hardy said:

"How does the captain treat you?"

"Very kindly," she answered.

"I keep an eye upon him," he said, "but it will not do to seem to hang
near when he is talking to you. He might round and become fierce, for
from madness you may expect anything. What is his talk about?"

"Chiefly his lost child."

A seaman who was in the main-rigging putting a fresh seizing to a
ratline looked at the girl, and thought deep in himself, Oh, lovey,
what a figure! But what that whiskered heart admired most was the
coquettish cock of her head, the grace of one hand upon her hip, the
charm of her motions as she walked, her posture when she turned aft
or forward on the return that was like a pause in some sweet dancer's
movements. Yes, Jack can keep a bright lookout when a girl heaves in
sight, but the mighty Charles Dickens is right in holding that Jack's
Nan is often the unloveliest of the fair.

"Does he go on thinking that you know where his child is?" said Hardy.

"Yes. It is a fixed delusion, though I cannot humour it--it is too
sad--in spite of your wish."

"The oddest part to me," said Hardy, "is the reason he shows in his
professional work. He doesn't confound things; the sail he talks of is
the sail it is; he still knows the ropes. The flicker of the leach of a
topgallantsail will set him wanting a small pull on the leebrace."

"How does he manage with the navigation?" asked the girl.

"He works it out as I do. He finds the ship's position to a second.
This may be the effect of habit, but is not custom beaten into rags
by insanity, like the head of an old drum? It's not so in this case,
and the crew mayn't find him out till the pilot boards us, and guess
nothing until they hear that the doctors have locked him up."

"Then what does his madness signify?" said the girl. "He'll be as good
as the sanest if we arrive safely."

"Ah, but it's the getting there! It's the what may happen to-morrow, or
to-morrow, or to-morrow, and that is going to make my hair gray, Miss
Armstrong."

"Call me Julia," she said, looking at him with a sudden light in her
eyes.

"Why should I take that liberty?" he replied, smiling.

"Because I should love it," she answered.

"I'll not call you Julia before him," he exclaimed, with a note of
fondness which brought a charming expression into her face, as the
kisses of a shower freshen the perfume of the rose. "It must be a stiff
Miss Armstrong or I am no mate," and then they fell to talking a little
nonsense.

A day came, and it was the fifth day dating from the drowning of the
little drummer, and it was a Friday, in all tradition a black day for
the sailor; and nobody, I think, has taken notice that it was Friday
when Nelson, full of instinctive assurance that he would never return
alive, kissed his sleeping child and started to join his ship for
Trafalgar.

The captain, Miss Armstrong, and Mr. Hardy sat at breakfast. The ship
had made good way; not many parallels lay between her and the northern
verge of the tropics. The sun poured his light in fire, and the
flying-fish sparkled under the bows.

The sailors had noticed nothing in the captain to set them growling
suspicion into one another's ears with askant looks aft. If Mr. Candy,
who lived close to the skipper, had taken any sort of altitude of the
poor man's mind, he kept his observation secret; or it might be that he
believed the captain was a little upset by the loss of his child, and
he had not the penetrating sagacity of Hardy.

The wind had fallen light, and the motions of the ship were as easy as
a swimmer's. Hardy had noticed in the captain's face when they met that
morning an expression of lofty triumph, of sublimated self-complacency
such as a man deranged by conquest and acclamation might wear as he
passes slowly through the huzzaing crowds. He seemed self-crowned, and
might have reminded a better student than Hardy of one of Nat Lee's
heaven-defying stage-kings.

"To-day is Friday," said the captain, addressing Miss Armstrong, "and
what day do you think it is?"

Julia thought awhile, for she fancied he meant something in the almanac.

"I don't know, captain," she answered.

"It is my birthday," said the captain, "and Johnny is waiting somewhere
to kiss me."

Hardy was about to deliver with all the respect of a mate a sentence of
congratulation, but the closing words of the captain silenced him.

"I wish you many happy returns of the day," said Julia.

"You might like to know how old I am," said the captain, with an
indescribable look at the girl, "but every man should respect the
secret of his birth. Until we come to sixty we like to be thought much
younger, and when we come to eighty we tell lies that our friends
may think us ninety. I have good reason to congratulate myself upon
my birthday. I cannot believe that the Red Ensign ever floated over
a better seaman than I, a man who is both a gentleman and a sailor,
and it has been my privilege," he continued, talking as though he was
making an after-dinner speech, "to have dignified by my behaviour and
breeding a service that in public opinion is in want of dignity."

Hardy burst into a laugh; he could not help it, but he instantly
apologised by saying that the captain's words made him think of the
first skipper he sailed with, betwixt whose legs, as he stood, you
could have fitted an oval picture, and whose face for beauty might have
been picked out of the harness cask.

The captain with a slight frown cast his eyes upon the mate, and said,
"Johnny shall be a sailor. His mother would have desired him to serve
the queen at sea, but he shall perpetuate _me_ under the flag I serve."

This was followed by a short silence; the others found nothing to say.
It was perhaps one of the saddest illustrations of madness on record,
and it set the listeners' hearts pining to do something that was denied
to their sympathy and distress.

"The men shall have a holiday," said the captain, who was scarcely
eating. "It is my birthday, and they shall drink my health at eight
bells. You will drink my health, Mr. Hardy, and you, Miss Armstrong?"

They answered that they would drink his health with the greatest
pleasure.

"You and Mr. Candy in rum, Mr. Hardy; you'll drink with the men, for I
like the officers of my ship to be associated with the crew on festive
occasions."

"I will gladly drink with the men, sir," responded Hardy.

"Rum is not a fit drink for young ladies," continued the captain,
with a faint smile, "and you, Miss Armstrong, will drink my health in
claret--a wine which shall not hurt you, because 'tis light and old and
nourishing."

Julia bowed. Hardy was wondering what the men would think, but if
they thought this unusual deviation from sea routine odd, they would
certainly like it and hope for more. It was an exhibition of insane
generosity, of lunatic kindness, and the mate could see nothing else in
it.

In obedience to the captain's instructions he went on deck, sending
Candy below to his breakfast, and called the boatswain aft.

"It's the captain's orders," said he, "that the men shall knock off
work all day."

The boatswain stared. "All day, sir?" he said.

"It's his birthday," answered Hardy. "And all hands will drink his
health in good Jamaica rum at eight bells, served out on the capstan
head."

Innumerable wrinkles overran the boatswain's face as grin after grin
rippled about his gale-hardened skin. He looked as if he would like to
say that here was a traverse that beat all his going a-fishing. But
the immense pleasure that beamed in his expression was full assurance
of the reception the crew would give the news.

He walked slowly forward, and the men wondered at his deep and constant
grin. "One of the mate's stories, I reckon," thought Bill, and Jim also
thought that some joke of the mate had started the boatswain on that
smile. When he reached the forecastle the boatswain put his silver
whistle to his lips and blew the shrill music of "All hands!" and a
hundred little birds of the groves and woods seemed to be perched in
song upon the yards and rigging.

The fellows who were below came tumbling up, startled by that call in
fine weather. In a very little time the whole of the crew had gathered
round their forecastle leader, who, after clearing his throat and
gazing about him with his profound smile, said:

"Lads, it's the capt'n's birthday, and it's to be a holiday for you all
right away through, with liquor at noon to drink his health in."

Sailors are usually so badly treated by all variety of shipowners'
sullen deafness to their grievances, that when on rare occasions,
sometimes originating in madness, they are well treated, their
astonishment is a phenomenon of emotion. It seems unnatural, they
think. A beautiful mermaid with a gilded tail and flowing hair of
bronze, with her white revealed charms made entrancing by the soft
blue of the water, could not amaze them more than a skipper's kindness
taking the form of Layard's.

A brief spell of silence fell upon them as they looked at one another
and at the boatswain.

"Ain't yer coddin' us?" said a man.

"Fill your pipes, and go a-courting," answered the boatswain. "I'm for
taking advantage of it when it comes, which ain't ever too soon or
often."

This convinced the crew, who delivered a loud cheer, and then began to
talk and scatter, all of them feeling a bit aimless, for it wasn't like
going ashore.

Hardy, who was keeping the deck whilst Candy breakfasted, watched the
proceedings on the forecastle, and wondered if this stroke of the
captain was going to give them any idea of the truth. But why should
it? If they suspected, through this act of kindness, that the boy's
loss had shifted the "old man's" ballast, they would only hope that a
long time would pass before his mental cargo was trimmed afresh. But
in truth they did not know that their captain was insane, and even
Candy, who was below sitting at the table and listening to the skipper
conversing with Miss Armstrong, would not have kissed the Book upon it.

Presently Mr. Candy came on deck, but Hardy, whose watch below it was,
thought he would stay a little and talk to Miss Armstrong, and observe
the captain if he should appear. Very soon after Mr. Candy arrived
Julia rose lightly through the companion-hatch. She was now looking
quite well, better indeed than she looked when Hardy first met her.
Again he found himself admiring her faultless figure and the pose of
her head, enchanting through its unconsciousness.

"Where is the captain?" he asked her.

"I left him at the table," she replied. "He was not in the cabin when I
came out of my berth."

"I hope it won't end in his destroying himself," exclaimed Hardy.
"There is a great deal of goodness and humanity in the poor fellow's
heart, and it's dreadful to see a man struggling to conquer his brain's
disease. Who can tell what passes in the minds of such people? But what
am I to do? He is Prime Minister aboard this ship, and those are the
people," said he, nodding toward the crew, "who must turn him out."

"Have you told them they are to have a holiday?" she asked.

"Don't they look like it?" he replied.

"How'll they spend it?" she inquired.

"In loafing and smoking and sleeping. If the captain's liberal with his
grog-- Well, the drummer's gone out of their heads--'tis the way of the
sea: a bubble over the side, a broken pipe in a vacant bunk, and the
ship sails on. They may dance and sing songs; and I hope they will,
for God knows the captain is depressing enough, and I like to see the
hornpipe danced."

Meanwhile where was Captain Layard? He was in his cabin seated close
to the medicine-chest, which stood open, and reading a thin volume all
about poisons, and the quantities to be administered when given for
sickness. His great dog lay beside him. He read with a knitted brow,
and sometimes sank the volume to lift with his right hand some bottle
of poison out of its little square place. He would look at it and then
refer to the book.

In this singular study, fearful with the menace of the light in his
eyes, tragically portentous with the lifting look of triumph and the
insane smile, he spent about half an hour, and then closing the lid of
the medicine-chest, he stood up and looked at the drum, and softly
wrung his hands with a heart-moving expression, whose appeal lay in
the soul's perception seeking to pierce in vain the torturing and
bewildering veil of disease; for it is not the immortal soul of man
which is mad in madness, and this belief is God-sent; the soil buries
and resolves to ashes the mania that destroys, and the purified soul is
liberated to await the judgment of God--its Home.

After a few minutes he stepped into the cabin and called the attendant,
who was handling crockery and glasses in the pantry. The fellow stepped
out.

"Jump below into the lazarette," said the captain, "and draw a bucket
of rum. I want plenty. This is my birthday, and all hands will drink my
health."

The man was not at all astonished; he had got the news from the
forecastle. He was a sort of steward, and knew the ropes in the
lazarette. The little hatch was just abaft the captain's chair, and
was opened by an iron ring. The man accepted the captain's orders
literally, disappeared, and returned with a clean, big bucket.

The lazarette is an after-hold, a compartment of a ship in which in
those times all sorts of commodities used to be stowed, chiefly edible,
and for cabin use. The man lifted the hatch-cover--the hatch was no
more than a man-hole--and by help of the light, which shone down upon a
cask that was almost immediately under, pumped the bucket nearly full.

The captain went to the hatch and looked down, and exclaimed:

"Hand it up; I'll help you." He received the bucket and placed it on
the deck, and the man sprang through the hatch and replaced the cover.

"Take it into my cabin," said the captain, "and bring it on deck when I
send you for it."

And this was done, and the man went on deck whilst the captain entered
his berth and closed the door.

"I have drawed enough to swim ye," said the cabin-attendant to Bill.

"'Tain't like being in port, though," answered Bill, whilst Jim and
several others like him grinned at the news of the grog. "When I takes
a drop, I'm for dancin', and where are the gurls?"

"Ah!" echoed Jim in a sigh born of lobscouse and the livid fat of
diseased pork.

Finding that the captain did not make his appearance, Hardy kept
the deck with Julia. Again they talked of the old home, the drunken
stepmother, the withering indifference of the retired Commander R. N.
to the loneliness and helplessness of his child, and to her prospects
in life.

Hardy spoke of it with heat, and the girl's face was often hot with the
passion of memory.

"What should I have done without you?" she said once and again,
and still again. "But if I cannot find employment in Australia, I
must return in this ship," and she looked at him with the eyes of a
sweetheart.

"If anything happens to Captain Layard," said he, "no doubt I shall get
command."

Now, "If anything should happen" is the roundabout of "If he should
die," and people modestly thus speak of death as though it was
anything, as though it was not the _only_ thing that is real, to be
expected without fear of disappointment.

"I believe he will grow quite mad long before we arrive at Melbourne,"
said Julia; "but even taking him as he is, would the agents trust him?"

"You want to come home in this ship, Julia?" said Hardy.

"You are the only friend I have in the world," she answered; and thus
they cooed without billing, for Jack was in strength forward, and the
second mate walked the deck to windward, and a sailor stood at the
wheel.

About a quarter before noon, but not till then, the captain emerged
with his sextant. If he had come up with a face of madness, the sextant
he held would have clothed him with all the sanity he needed in the
sailors' opinion. But his face showed no distinctive marks of the
condition of his mind, the expression was even calm; he seemed as one
who was about to realise the consuming hope of his life; the shadow of
the coming event subdued him. The crew were on deck gathered forward
in all variety of sprawling posture, smoking and talking, with teeth
sharpened by the hard and bitter fare of the sea. Also seven bells
having been struck some time since, they knew that noon and a bumper of
old Jamaica were at hand, and every eye was directed aft.

Hardy disappeared and returned with his sextant, and Candy fetched his,
and the three men fell to screwing down the sun till its lower limb was
like a wheel upon the ocean line. The captain never spoke, and Julia
studying his face noticed the subdued look and the calmness, and felt
a little despairful, for, poor heart, she was in love, and wanted the
captain to go raving mad that Hardy might get command and marry her at
Melbourne, and bring her home. O God, what joy for a heart so long
joyless! A home, a protector, a husband, on whose breast she could lean
with her lips at his ear in softest murmurings of wifely confidence.

"Eight bells! Make it the bell eight!" and the four double chimes rang
gladly along the decks and up aloft.

"Pass the word for the cabin servant," said the captain, speaking and
looking as collectedly as the sanest of skippers might show in that
first command of tacking, "Ready about!"

The man came aft in a hurry, impelled by the thirsty yearning of the
forecastle mob, and in a couple or three minutes he was standing at
the capstan just abaft the mast with a bucket on the "head," and a
tot measure in his hand. The captain stood close to the man, and the
crew gathered around. The Newfoundland stood at his master's side. Now
was to be seen the most glowing canvas in the panorama which unfolds
this ship's adventure. The picture was alive with its crowd of faces
of seamen watching the lips of their commander, alive with the colour
and diversity of their apparel, with the silent breathing of the white
breast soaring to the height of the fiery streak of bunting, which
trembled in a dog-vane from the main-royal truck. The sea was soft in
caress and note, and Julia thought of the wayside fountain to which
_she_ as well as Hardy had listened in the night, when, in the pause,
she heard the fall of the shower under the bow.

"My lads," began the captain, and Hardy watched him with strained
attention, believing that the crew would see it, "this is my birthday,
and I am departing from the custom of the sea in making a general
holiday of it."

He grew pale and paler as he spoke, but his voice did not falter, and
no change was visible in his expression save that a light as of secret
exultation brightened his eye and accentuated his pallor.

"I have always tried to make a good master to my men, and to treat them
like men and sailors, and not as dogs which other captains seem to find
them."

This was attended by a growl of appreciation.

"So, my lads," continued the captain, "as this is my birthday, one and
all of you, the mates, and the lady last, but not least, shall drink my
health, and the health of the little boy who has left his drum behind
him."

"May God bless you and him!" said one of the men, for this proved to be
one of those touches of nature which made all those rough hearts akin.

"Now serve out--serve out, and handsomely!"

The boatswain drank first. And again and again and again the measure
was filled until all hands of the sailors, saving the man at the wheel,
had swallowed the fiery draught, many with a smack and a smile of
relish. Then the wheel was relieved, and another bumper was swallowed
with a "Many 'appy returns of the day, sir."

"Drink," said the captain to the attendant, and the man drained a full
dose.

"Sweeten the measure for the two mates," said the captain.

This was quickly done. And then Hardy drank and then Candy, for both
had the throats of the sea, which seem lined with brass when 'tis ten
per cent. above proof. "Your health, sir"--and--"your health, sir," and
the mates took it down.

"Now, Miss Armstrong, you will drink my health," said the captain, and
with the gallantry of an old beau he took her by the hand and led her
into the cabin. She glanced at Hardy with a smile before she vanished.

The men scattered as they went forward to get their dinner. The captain
took a wine-glass from a rack, and a bottle from a locker, and filled
the glass with red wine.

"Drink to me and to the boy I am seeking, and then tell me where he
is," he exclaimed as he extended the glass. She took it, and said with
forced cheerfulness to humour him:

"Your health, Captain Layard, and many happy returns of this day, and
my heart's gratitude to you for your kindness to me. And God will some
day show you where your child is."

She drank half the contents of the glass. His eyes sparkled, and his
face was grotesque with the workings of his dreadful exultation.

"Oh, you must drain it--you must drain it, Miss Armstrong, or it'll be
bad luck and no pledge."

She drank the glass empty, and put it down upon the table. He gazed at
her with extraordinary intentness as though he listened to hear her
words, then swiftly entered his cabin, closed and bolted the door, and
pulling out a loaded revolver from under the pillow in his bunk, seated
himself, and with the weapon upon his knee in his grasp sat hearkening,
with his eyes fastened upon the door.

The time slowly passed and still he continued to sit, grasping the
pistol upon his knee, with his eyes of madness fixed upon the door.
His face was now revolting with its look of burning expectation and
triumph. Suddenly a stream of sunshine moved slowly, like a spoke of a
softly revolving wheel, over the carpeted deck of the captain's cabin,
and any one might have known by the motions of the ship that she was
not under command. You heard faint, vague sounds of trampling above, a
dim noise as of a sick crowd poisoned by vapour and feebly struggling
to escape, and in the midst of it the captain's door was struck: the
blow was languid and repeated three or four times only, and no noise
attended it.

The madman sprang from his chair and stood erect with the revolver half
raised from his side, and his eyes sparkled in his face that was dark
with murderous intent. Thus he stood whilst the spoke of light through
the port-hole moved gradually round the cabin until it vanished, by
which time all was silent without. The unhappy man resumed his seat
and former posture, and thus it went for half an hour at least; then,
always grasping his murderous weapon, he walked like one in the chamber
of death, carefully opened the door, and peered out.

The first sight he witnessed was the figure of the chief mate, Hardy,
stretched at its length and on its side within a pace or two of the
threshold, and upon the locker on the port side of the table, a
cushioned locker as comfortable as a couch, lay the form of Julia
Armstrong; her right arm hung down, and she lay as apparently dead as
Hardy. The captain stepped across the body of the mate and looked with
devouring, sparkling eyes at the girl, while he seemed to listen for
sounds above. Nothing was to be heard save the inner grumbling of the
ship as she swayed helpless in arrest. Now and again the wheel chains
clanked to the blow of the sea upon the rudder.

The captain went to the girl's side and looked at her: her face was
placid, pale, ghastly, and her lips a bright red. Thus exactly did
Hardy's face show, and any one experienced in the symptoms of poisoning
by laudanum or morphia would have known that these two people had been
heavily drugged, even perhaps unto death.

It was the birthday of a madman in search of his drowned child, and
they had drunk his health and the little drummer's. His face took on an
air of hurry and bustle, and, always gripping his revolver, he stepped
nimbly to the companion-steps and mounted them. He raised his head
just above the companion-hood and looked; he saw that the man who had
stood at the wheel was lying motionless beside it. Almost abreast of
the companion was the curved form of Candy, who seemed to have been
doubled up and then reeled into lifelessness. A few prostrate forms
were to be seen forward, in the waist and about the forescuttle. They
lay lifeless in the sleep or death of the drugged draught in which they
had pledged their captain. In the forecastle lay the rest, some on the
deck, some in their bunks, and every face showed as Hardy's and the
girl's, placid, pale, and ghastly, and the lips a bright red. All the
symptoms had been expended, the first pleasurable mental excitement,
then the weariness, the headache, the intolerable weight of limb, the
spinning and sickening giddiness, the drowsiness, the stupor, and now
insensibility or death.

The captain rose in the hatch to his full height and stepped on to
the deck, followed by the dog, which went to Candy and smelt him, and
then with a low, uneasy growl went to the figure beside the wheel and
sniffed at it. With a dreadful smile of hope and rejoicing the captain
thrust the pistol into a side pocket and, going to the wheel, put the
helm hard a-starboard, and secured it by several turns of the end of
the mainbrace.

This done, always preserving his horrible expression of lofty
exaltation, he took the breaker out of the bow of the port
quarter-boat, filled it from the scuttle-butt, and replaced it. God
knows how he was directed in what he did; the instincts of habit and
knowledge must have governed him. It is certain that he made his
preparations for departure with the sanity of a healthy brain. His dog
closely followed him, and seemed afraid. He then went below into the
pantry and returned with his arms full of food, which he placed in the
stern-sheets along with a tumbler which he pulled out of his pocket. He
moved rapidly and his lips often worked, and he'd flash his gaze along
the decks at that memorable, tragical picture of ship with lifeless
figures upon the planks, with all her white canvas curving inwards,
stirless in the stream of the breeze. She seemed to have been drugged
too, and rolled with a kind of stagger upon the soft folds of the swell.

He went below again, the dog at his heels, and, entering his cabin,
took a dog-collar and chain out of a locker and secured the noble
animal to a leg of the table, which was cleated and immovable. When he
had done this he pressed his lips to the dog's head and sobbed dryly
and sighed, for the light in his eyes was too hot a fire for tears. The
dog whined and wagged its tail, and looked a hundred questions with its
gentle eyes.

"I shall bring him back, I shall bring him back, Sailor!" the captain
muttered to the Newfoundland.

And all this time Hardy lay close beside the dog as dead to the eye as
any corpse under the ground.

The captain went to the side of the girl and picked her up off the
cushioned locker with the ease of a man lifting a child. With her
motionless form in his arms he gained the deck and laid her in the
boat, passing her under the after-thwart, so that her head lay low in
the stern-sheets. He sprang for a colour in the flag-locker and placed
the bunting that was ready rolled under her head. She never sighed, she
never stirred. Not paler nor calmer could her face have shown on the
pillow of death.

Now the boat was to be lowered, and he went to work thus: he cast
adrift the gripes which had held the boat steady betwixt the davits,
and then he slackened the falls at the bow, belaying the tackle, and
then he slackened the falls at the stern, belaying the tackle; and
so by degrees the boat sank in irregular jerks to the surface of the
water. He sprang on to the bow tackle and descended with the nimbleness
of a monkey, with wonderful swiftness unhooked the blocks, and the boat
was free. Next he stepped the mast upon which the sail lay furled, then
the rudder; then shoved clear and hoisted the small square of lug, and
in a few minutes he was blowing away gently into the boundless blue
distance, looking all about him with a proud but ghastly smile for a
sight of his missing boy, whilst the girl lay like the dead in the
bottom of the boat.




CHAPTER XII.

JULIA CALLS "JOHNNY!"


It was about half-past two o'clock in the afternoon and the sun shone
hotly. The breeze was a pleasant wind for that boat, and the captain
put her dead before it and blew onwards into the boundless distance,
squarely seated at the amidship helm, with the white and placid face of
the drugged girl at his feet.

He would often look at her with a passionate eagerness, and then
direct his brilliant eyes over the sea, and his countenance was now
shocking with its expression of real madness, charged with the ghastly
illumination of his one maniacal belief, that the girl, who was fresh
from the sea when he missed his boy, knew where he was and would take
him to the child, and then they would return to the ship, and once more
the drum would rattle and the whistle awaken the birds in the rigging.

Never before in all human tradition of ocean life had fate painted
upon the bosom of the deep a picture more wonderful by virtue of its
secret and tragic meaning. There would be nothing in the mere scene of
a beautiful clipper ship under all plain sail, her canvas hollowing
inwards visibly, to all intents and purposes derelict; there would be
nothing in the spectacle of a little open boat borne onwards by the
humming heart of its swelling square of canvas, steered by a lonely
figure, the other being hidden. It might be to a distant eye the flight
of a single survivor from a floating pest-house. But it was the story
of the thing which makes it so extraordinary that I who am writing
pause with astonishment, dismayed also by the lack of the exquisite
cunning I need to submit the truth.

The girl had been drugged with morphia, but in what dose, and in what
doses the men, it is impossible to conjecture. The madman reading the
book of directions may have understood it, but insanity had rendered
memory useless when it came to his mixing the poison with the liquor
and the wine. But she was not dead; he would have found that out if he
had bared her breast and put his ear to the white softness. But would
she die in that sleep which was as death? for I believe it is the
heart's action that fails in such cases, and at any moment her soul
might return to God.

But he! poor unhappy wretch, if he understood what his mad but most
moving love for his child had impelled him to do, his perception would
not be as ours. His heart burned with desire that she should awake and
tell him in which direction he should steer, for already the ship was a
toy astern, three spires of ice-like radiance dipping to the eye on the
brows of the blue swell as the boat rose and sank, jewelling the water
with two foam-threaded lines of little yeasty bubbles.

Would she ever awaken? How long would she continue in sleep? To some
a dose of morphia professionally prescribed will yield a long night's
rest not wholly unrefreshing, though the drug is obnoxious to the
brain, which in time it murders. Therefore she might sleep into the
early hours of the night.

But these were not _his_ speculations. His mind was intent on one
object, and he held the boat straight before the wind, waiting for her
to look at him and rise, and point to the spot where his boy was.

It passed into about an hour before sunset.

From time to time the captain had laid his hand gently upon the girl's
brow, believing she would open her eyes and speak to him. He was like
a child whose grave or tragic act was beyond his mind's capacity to
understand. He was painfully haggard, and sweat drops were on his
forehead and cheeks, but the dreadful fire was always in his eyes. And
once he stared fixedly over the port bow of the boat as though his poor
brain had shaped the vision of his child: he stared as though he beheld
the phantom, and when it vanished out of the perfidious cell which had
created it he sighed and frowned.

He took no heed of sensation; thirst and hunger may have been his, but
he never left the helm to drink or eat. At the hour I have named the
westering sun was beginning to empurple the east, and he was steering
toward the point where the evening star would rise. More than half the
moon was hanging in a broken shape of dim pearl over the boat's bows.
All at once the captain's ceaseless stare at the ocean brought his eyes
to an object almost directly ahead. He was a sailor, and his afflicted
reason could not deceive him. Right ahead and within half an hour's
sail--so low seated was the gunwale of that boat--lay a small vessel,
partly dismasted and deep sunk. She was painted black. Her lower masts
were white, and both foresail and mainsail were hanging, but the
trysail was stowed.

"He will be there! he will be there!" cried the captain in a voice that
swept like a shriek from his lips, and as the words left him the girl,
with a long, strange sigh, opened her eyes full upon the wild nightmare
face that was on a line with her head, for he had sprung to his feet.

"He is there!" he shouted again.

Then looking down he saw her watching him, and had he been sane would
have witnessed the awakening reason in her darkening into horror. She
tried to sit up, but her body was heavy as lead.

"Oh, what is this? Where am I?" she asked, more in a mutter than in
clear speech.

"He is there!" he cried, pointing with a frantic gesture, "and you
have known it throughout your sleep. Look!" He stooped, put his hands
under her arms and lifted her out of the bottom of the boat into the
stern-sheets, against whose back-board she sank.

Now morphia gives you but sleep if it does not kill you, and reason
with many is immediately active when slumber is ended; but the
captain's face alone would have sufficed to stimulate the most sluggish
consciousness into clear perception, and without understanding the
reason of it she grasped her situation.

She was alone in a boat with the mad captain of the _York_, and there
was nothing in sight save the everlasting circle of the sea girdling a
small broken vessel toward which the boat was running, for the captain
had his hand upon the yoke, and the little fabric was dead before it
once again.

Despair laid the ice-cold hand of death upon the poor girl's heart.
What could she do? What would _he_ do?

As the sun slowly floated down the slope he was glorifying, the moon
brightened her broken face. Julia's lips were dry; her tongue had the
rasp of a cat's upon the roof of her mouth.

"Is there water here?" she asked.

"Oh, yes. You shall have water. Put your hand upon this. What sha'n't
you have who have helped me to find him!"

She extended her hand and held the yoke steady, and he went into the
bows with the glass and filled it from the breaker, all as sensibly as
though he was right in mind; but he stood two or three moments to look
at the vessel they were nearing and talk to her.

She drank with the thirst of fever, and then perfect realisation
possessing her, a little impulse of hope quickened the beat of her
heart, for she thought to herself, made cool by hope, "There are people
in that ship, and I shall be saved."

The vessel was a small brig, floating on a cargo of timber. She showed
a tolerable height of side, and judging from her condition she had
started a butt, and the inrush had overmastered the pump, and as her
davits were empty her people had no doubt got away in the boats. She
made a churchyard picture for forlornness, with the broken moon hanging
over her, though daylight still throbbed in folds of cloud in the deep
west.

Julia saw with a fainting heart that the brig was deserted, and she
turned her eyes up to God and asked what should she do?

The captain stood in silence, with one hand backward upon the yoke, his
head inclined forward with intent, searching stare.

"He may be in that brig," at last he said. "What moved then? No, 'twas
the swing of the forebrace. And if he is not in that vessel," he
continued, in a voice of cunning, "you who know where he is will tell
me where to steer."

She brought the whole of her wits together in her resolution to live,
and remembered that she had given some order to this man's insanity
by her system of answering his talk. She exclaimed with all the
tranquillity she could summon:

"If he is not in that vessel, Captain Layard, you will let me rest in
her for the night, because if you keep me sitting in this open boat
I shall be worn out, or I might die--I am not strong--and how, then,
could I help you to find little Johnny?"

"Right! You are right," he answered, swiftly; "you shall rest in that
brig if he is not there; but if he is there," changing his voice into a
note of triumph, he added, "we must rejoin the ship, because I want the
men to see him. And I am dying for his company at night, and for the
sound of his drum."

As he spoke these words the boat was alongside the abandoned timberman,
and with the dexterity of a sailor--for in all professional work he
was as sane as the sanest--he put the helm down, sprang to let go the
halliards of the lug, and secured the boat by passing her painter
through a channel plate.

This brig had old-fashioned channels, which were platforms secured
to the ship's side so as to give a wide spread to the shrouds and
backstays. The boat sat close beside the main-channel. With the
resolution of one who works for life the girl seized the lanyards of
the dead-eyes, and with the ease which her graceful figure would have
promised gained the platform of channel, and a minute later the deck.

With aberration disciplined by professional habit the captain went to
work, his intentions being perfectly sane, save that he discovered an
extraordinary anxiety and eagerness to get on board the brig. He knew
that he and the girl were to pass the night in the vessel, and so, with
the quick motions of madness and with the strength which madness often
confers, he got the breaker of water into the main-channel, then placed
beside it the stock of provisions he had stowed away aft, and called to
Julia:

"Do you see him?"

"Come on deck, and we will look," she answered, for now that she stood
on a solid deck her nerve had returned.

"Steady this breaker on the rail," he called.

He handed it on to the rail, and she held it. He then threw the
provisions on to the deck, leapt inboard, and placed the breaker
betwixt a couple of loose planks. The moon was shining brightly, and
its light rippled in lines of lustrous pearl. The heave of the sea was
slow and solemn, the wind was soft and weak, and the west was still
scored with streaks of crimson; but night was at hand, and some stars
were trembling in the east.

She was one of those little brigs which are among the quaintest of
the marine objects of the port or harbour. Her forward-deck from the
main-hatchway was heaped with timber cleverly stowed, with room for
a little caboose and a narrow alley to it from the hatch. Some of the
running rigging lay loose about the decks, and this gave her a look of
confusion. Otherwise, from the appearance of her deck cargo, it was
clear that she had not been hurt by weather. A deck-house nearly filled
the quarter-deck; there was just room on either hand for a man to walk.

The captain stood silent for a minute staring about him. He then
muttered:

"Nothing moves; I see nothing alive. He may be there. Come, for it will
be you to see him first."

He went to the door of the deck-house, and Julia followed. Two windows
stood on either side the door, and four windows ran down either wall.
But when they entered the moon made so faint a light through the door
and the windows that it was difficult to see. Yet distinctive features
of the interior were visible: a table, three or four chairs, and a
bulkhead abaft, which might screen from the living-room two holes for
the skipper and his mate to sleep in.

"Call him," whispered the captain, as though he stood in a dead-house.

"Johnny!" cried the girl, "come to father if you are here, Johnny!"

She had a wonderful spirit to say this. She felt the horrible mockery
of it and the recoil of its ghastly derisiveness upon her heart, but
she knew that Hardy could not be far off, and would seek her. The
passion of life was strong in her, and she judged that her only chance
lay in inspiriting the poor man's dreadful conviction that she could
help him to find his son.

"Call him again," said the captain, and again she called.

He advanced a step, and she saw him in the faint suffusion straining
in a posture of desperate gaze, of desperate hearkening, as though his
teeth were set and the sweat of blood was on his brow, and the palms of
his hands were bloody with the penetration of the finger-nails.

At that moment she heard a single stroke of a bell. She started with
a cry, with instant rejoicing, for she believed there were men in the
vessel.

"What was that?" said the captain.

"A bell!" she exclaimed.

"O God! it may be Johnny!" he shouted, and he rushed through the open
door.

She quickly followed; she was not a superstitious fool, she was a girl
at sea, and, as a girl might, she supposed that if a bell were struck
upon a ship's deck it was by a man.

A small bell was hung betwixt the foremast and the foremost end of the
galley or caboose, and immediately under it lay, bottom up, secured
to the deck, a small tub of a boat. It was easy to understand why the
bell should have tolled. It had been struck by some bight of buntline
or clewline in the sway of the brig as she heeled to the fold, and the
sharp return of the bell jerked the tongue against the metal side in a
single stroke.

But the captain was too mad to understand this, and Julia was a girl at
sea without eyes for bights of running gear. She was startled, nay, a
sudden horror of superstition visited her when following the captain.
She stood near the bell and saw no signs of human creature. She cast
looks of fear all about; one, even one, man would protect her against
the horrible yokedom of this passage. The planks had the sheen of satin
in the moonlight, and the power of the satellite sufficed to fling dark
shadows upon the decks, and these shadows moved as the brig rolled. But
she saw no man; and what ghostly hand then had struck that bell? For
the night might go before the swing of the bight of gear should, by
adjustment of the rolling of the vessel, exactly hit the bell again and
make it ring.

The captain began to call, "Johnny, Johnny, where are you? Come out of
your hiding-place, little sonny. Here's father waiting for you."

He breathed deep, listening and gazing about him; but no other reply
reached his ear than the sob of water under the bow, the moan of night
wind in the rigging, the sullen slap of canvas against the mast.

"Do you see him?" the captain asked, and the eyes of madness sparkled
in the moonshine as he turned his gaze upon the girl.

She answered, huskily, "No, I do not see him. Who struck that bell?"

"He did," said the captain. "O God! O everlasting Father! Why does he
hide himself from me?"

He clasped his hands and raised them and looked up, and in that posture
he muttered as though he prayed, and all the while Julia was staring
about her, faint with fear, and with the sight of that imploring figure
of afflicted manhood; for who had struck the bell? And did the dead
come to life again in phantoms? And was the spirit of Johnny invisibly
present?

Poor Julia!

"He may come out of his hiding-place if we go aft," said the captain in
his voice of cunning. "Stop!"

He stepped to the little caboose and entered it.

"Not here, not here," he groaned as he came out, "but we must have
patience. We will sit and wait. We'll sit and watch the deck, and at
any moment you may see his little figure coming along."

Weak with fear and superstition, and the horror of her ghastly
situation, she followed the miserable man to the deck-house. He entered
and brought out two chairs, which he placed in front of the door,
and they sat down. It was certain that the man believed the child to
be in this abandoned vessel, and this was assurance to Julia that he
would not compel her to enter the boat and sail away in search of the
boy. The thought inspired some faint hope; she knew that this was no
unfrequented tract of ocean, and that even if Hardy did not seek her,
any hour next day might bring along some ship which she could signal to
by flourishing her handkerchief. But Hardy! She began to think whilst
her dreadful companion sat beside her staring along the moonlighted
deck, and waiting for his boy to come. She fully understood that she
had been drugged; her thoughts went to the medicine-chest; had the
captain poisoned Hardy and the rest of the crew that he might steal
her from the ship? This puzzled her, for if the crew had been drugged
they might have been drugged to death by the irresponsible hand of this
madman, and Hardy would be lost to her for ever, and his ship would not
come to rescue her.

These were her thoughts "too deep for tears," but it was fortunate
that she had slept soundly and well in the boat, for now, though
wearied in bone and faint at heart, she was as sleepless as the poor,
tireless creature beside her. She could not have endured to enter the
deck-house and rest there; she needed the companionship of the moon
and the stars, and the visible surface of the deep blackening out from
either hand the wake of the luminary to its limitless recesses. The
whisper of the wind in the rigging was companionship, but the movements
of the shadows upon the whitened planks were a perpetual fear, for who
had struck the bell? and was the vessel haunted? Her throat was parched
and she asked for water.

"Certainly; oh, yes. He is long in coming, but when he comes we'll
rejoin the ship," the captain said as he rose, and quite sanely he went
to the breaker, filled the tumbler, and returned with a glassful and a
biscuit.

There was the courtesy of good breeding in the poor fellow as he handed
her the glass, for the soul that is never mad will shine through
disease, and Captain Layard, who was born a gentleman, proved a
gentleman even when insane. She drank gratefully and ate the biscuit.

He took the glass from her and filled it for himself, but did not eat.
Then he returned to his chair, and that dreadful watch on deck again
began. Often he would say:

"Do you see him? Why should he keep in hiding?"

And sometimes he would quit his seat and go to the rail, and look into
the sea over the side.

The water swarmed with fire this night; the chilly sea-glow started in
fibres, in clouds like luminous smoke, in coils like revolving eels,
and it is conceivable that the crazed eye which was bent upon these
lights should fashion them into phantasms, into grotesque shapes, into
the crowd of brassy faces which the sealed but waking vision beholds
when the brain is drugged. He would spend twenty minutes in searching
the waters, and then cross to the other side and spend a quarter of
an hour in a like hunt. Always when he returned to his chair he would
mutter to himself, "Why doesn't he come?" And once he started up with
a frantic cry which was frightful with inarticulateness; he dashed his
hand to his forehead and held it there, with his left arm stiffened out
and the fingers curled with the agony of his mind.

At that moment the bell was again struck, and now it was Julia who
shrieked. She started up and bent her head forward, thinking to see the
figure that had struck the bell. The captain broke into a wild laugh.

"I see him! I see him!" he cried. "O Johnny, I'm your father!" and
he started into a run with his arms outstretched, as if to seize the
phantom he beheld.

He ran past the bell, and crying, "I am coming, Johnny, I am coming!"
climbed on to the top of the deck load, and in a strange croaking
voice, as though it proceeded from some huge sea-bird sailing overhead,
he exclaimed:

"There you are at last, my Johnny! Father is coming to you!" and sprang
overboard.

Julia fell upon the deck and lay lifeless in a swoon.




CHAPTER XIII.

THEY MEET


It was moonlight on the sea, and the full-rigged ship _York_ lay with
her canvas aback, silently heaving upon the swell. But by the eye of
a sailor a certain moisture would have been visible in the silver
suffusion, and he might hardly have needed to look at the glass to
guess that this calm scene of ocean night would in a few hours show a
changed face. The time was shortly after ten.

The lamp in the cabin was unlighted, but the moon shone upon the
skylight, and the darkness was whitened by it, and all features of the
interior were visible. Hardy lay stretched upon the cabin deck, and
within an arm's reach of him rested the great Newfoundland dog, secured
by a chain to the leg of the table. The picture was wonderful for its
human stillness: you heard no tramp of foot, no call of voice. The
very sails slept against the masts, and nothing was audible but the
complaint of a bulkhead or some strong fastening as the ship sluggishly
took the run of the fold.

All of a sudden Hardy opened his eyes, and having opened them he
kept them open, staring with just that look of bewilderment and
astonishment which had been in Julia's dawning gaze. He tried to raise
his head and thought it was a cannon-ball, but the dog had noticed the
motion, and instantly alert with joy barked in deep-throated notes,
with endless wagging of the tail.

This tremendous noise close in his ear was as galvanism to the dead
frog. Hardy sat up and looked at the dog and then looked round him,
and feeling all the sensations of a man drugged with liquor, believed,
without being able to remember, that he had fallen down drunk. This
is the sensation of the man who is fortunate enough to awake from the
stupefaction of laudanum.

"Good God! What is this?" Hardy muttered, and he squeezed his brow with
his hands as you would wring a swab to drain the wet out of it:

Then slowly memory began to operate, whilst the dog was straining to
reach him and caress him. "My God!" he thought after a passage of
reflection, "the madman poisoned us when we drank his health!" And then
it all came to him. He rose to his feet, but his legs trembled and he
could hardly stand. "Where is Julia?" and next, "Where is the captain?"

The dog began to bark with something of fury, and Hardy with trembling
hands removed the collar from the brute's neck. The noble animal
sprang upon Hardy in affectionate caress and nearly felled him with
its weight, then dashed into the captain's cabin, the door of which
swung ajar, and Hardy followed. He could hardly see, it was so dark
here, and he felt the captain's bunk and wandered round on staggering
legs, feeling. His throat was as hot as the bowl of a lighted pipe,
and it felt the hotter when he heard the dog in the cabin lapping
at some water in the dish that was meant for its use. He went to the
swing-tray, where there was water, and drank a full draught, which
greatly helped him both in wits and body, then entered Julia's cabin
and felt the bunk and found she was not there. "What has he done?" he
thought, and with heavy limbs he made his way on deck.

The light was brilliant enough after the cabin gloom, and he could see
clearly. He stood in the hatch, holding by the companion-hood.

Abreast of him lay, in convulsed posture, the figure of the second
mate, Candy. He turned his head and saw the shape of a man lying
prostrate beside the wheel. He took note by the aid of the moon that
the wheel was lashed, then his eyes travelled to a pair of empty
davits, and he staggered to them and looked down. He could trace the
black lines of the falls, and saw the blocks as the ship swayed,
kindling fire in the dark water.

He was a sailor, and at once understood it all. A groan escaped his
lips whilst he thought, "He has gone away in the boat with Julia
to seek his son. How am I to recover her?" And the horror of her
situation--alone in an open boat with a madman--penetrated his heart,
and seemed to petrify him. He could just distinguish two or three dark
figures overhanging the forecastle rail, and a couple of sailors lay
motionless upon the deck a little way abaft the galley.

The dog had bounded up out of the cabin, and was wandering around
sniffing at one silent figure and another: no doubt he was in quest of
his master. Then it occurred to Hardy to remember that the grog had
been served out at noon. Suppose he had got away at two.

What sort of breeze was then blowing?

He reflected and remembered.

He would sail dead away and right before it, for he had no destination,
and was sure to shape the crow's course. "Grant her four miles an hour,
and this is ten o'clock," he thought, pulling out his watch and holding
it to the moon. "The boat may have covered thirty miles of sea. They
may have been fallen in with and rescued, for Julia would shriek her
story, and the captain might believe that Johnny was aboard. But how
shall I know? How shall I know? I must take it that the boat is still
afloat, and Julia must be saved."

He considered the direction of the wind, and made up his mind to the
course that must be steered; but now as to the crew. He went to Candy
and, kneeling, shook him, put his hand to his face, put his ear to his
mouth, and easily saw that he was dead. The discovery thrilled through
him like the cut of a sword on the shoulder. He walked to the figure
beside the wheel, and in a little while could not doubt that the man,
too, was dead. It was not because he was a doctor's son that he needed
to be informed of the action of a heavy dose of laudanum, or some
poisonous drug of that sort, upon the movements of a weak heart. But
there were live men forward, and with sluggish motions of his limbs he
went that way.

He stooped over the two figures abaft the galley, and detected life in
them. He then stepped on to the forecastle, and the first man he spoke
to was the boatswain, who was resting his head in his arm upon the
rail. He now saw there were three others near him, and two were sitting
on the coamings of the forescuttle.

"The captain was mad and has drugged us," said Hardy. "He has taken the
lady with him, and I want to give chase. Where are the rest of the men?"

"As the Lord is God," answered the boatswain, "don't my precious head
know it's been drugged. Talk o' Shanghaing! But I never knowed it from
the hand of a skipper nor worse than this."

"I want to trim sail, and make a start to rescue the lady," said Hardy.

"You'll not get the men to move if there was twenty ladies to be
rescooed," responded the boatswain, who spoke as if he was drunk.

"I ha'n't got strength to lift a sprat to my mouth if I was starving,"
said one of the men, who leaned with folded arms as though at any
moment the three of them would sink exhausted to the deck.

It drove Hardy crazy with a consuming desire to start in chase to see
their helplessness and to feel his own. But what was he to do! Here
were four men, and two sitting on the coamings of the scuttle, and two
alive, though prostrate, near the galley--eight men, and more perhaps
below in the forecastle.

So he went to the hatch and asked the two men how they felt. They
answered with curses, swearing they'd have hove the captain overboard
before he should ha' poisoned them.

"He was mad," said Hardy. "I knew it, and wondered you didn't see it
and ask me to act. He has poisoned me and stolen my sweetheart away to
her destruction, but we'll chase the beggar the moment we are able."

They growled out something and he looked down the scuttle. A sailor
had lighted the slush lamp; some man, perhaps, who was less ill than
the others on recovery, or who had the best sense then about. Hardy
descended and stood under the hatch, looking round him. I would not
like to say how many men were here, because I do not know what the
owner of the ship chose to think her complement. Hardy might have
counted eight or ten men, in bunks, hammocks, or seated on their
sea-chests. The faces he saw were ghastly, as though this ocean-parlour
were plague-stricken. He went from one to another to see if all were
alive, and they all proved so. The swing of the flame flung shadows
like contortions on the visible faces. It was hot down here, and Hardy
felt sick with the drug, whose effects were not yet expended. Some
breathed deep: the human respiration threaded the subdued moan of water.

"What's been done to us?" said a man sitting on a chest.

"We've all been drugged by a lunatic who's carried off my sweetheart,"
answered Hardy. "There's to be a shift of weather, and the ship's under
all plain sail and aback, and the helm lashed. Any of you here able to
come on deck and swing the yards and take the wheel?"

The devil a one! So Hardy climbed with leaden limbs through the square
hole and walked slowly aft, and sat down on the skylight.

The Newfoundland came out of a shadow and lay at his feet. A fair
light, with power of painting jetty strokes that slided upon the
pale planks, flowed from the moon. But the broken orb was hazy, and
the mate's eyes saw the darkness of wind gathering in vapour in the
west or thereabouts. So the breeze that had been steady all day was
to harden sooner or later out of its quarter, and the ship under all
plain sail lay aback to it. But Hardy felt too weak to move the wheel,
even if by so doing he could have helped the ship; nor, though she
could have swung to fill her breasts with canvas, which would have
been impossible, he'd have let her lie as she was because, with the
yards trimmed as they stood, he couldn't have shaped a course for the
direction which he believed the madman had taken.

He sat and thought and waited. It was miserable to see the dead figure
of Candy lying there, and miserable when he turned his head to see the
dead figure of the sailor beside the wheel. What an unparalleled act!
How deep and cunning beyond all credibility, and yet as true as the
misty radiance floating in shimmering folds upon the dark and silent
heave! His brain was every minute clearing, and he realised more
intently as the time slipped by that, if yonder shadow meant heavy
weather, the girl was lost, unless a passing ship had picked them up;
but how would Hardy know?

In about half an hour one of the figures at the forecastle rail came
slowly aft. He stopped and bent over the two forms lying abaft the
galley. Hardy heard him speak to them, and he could just catch the
murmur of their replies. They had therefore come to, and no doubt would
be sitting up and moving about shortly.

The figure that had left the forecastle rail came along, and Hardy saw
it was the boatswain. The man went to the body of Candy, and looking
round said, in a hollow voice:

"Is he dead?"

"Ay, stone dead; and so is yonder," replied Hardy.

"What took him to do it?" asked the boatswain, coming to Hardy's side.

"Why does a madman tear up his clothes?" replied Hardy. "How are those
fellows in the waist there?"

"They're reviving," answered the boatswain. "He must ha' put plenty in.
Dommed if ever I was treated like this before by the capt'n of a ship.
Tell you what, sir, there's weather comin' along," and he cast the eye
of an experienced sailor up aloft at the canvas and then at the moon,
at which he shook his head.

Yes, her broken face had taken a glutinous reddish look as though she
was a smear of pink currant jam, and her light was gone out of the
sea. There was no more wind, but it was thickening westwards, and you
might look for a slap of squall any moment, the shriek of the shot of
the storm gun sweeping betwixt shroud and mast, and the ship lay aback
under all plain sail, and there was no longer light of moonshine on her
canvas.

"Just see if we can't get men enough to brace these yards square," said
Hardy. "We can let go and clew up and wait till the men are strong
enough to stow the canvas; but if we lie like this something may come
to whip the masts out of her."

But it was a full half-hour before hands enough could be collected, and
they all seemed as though freshly awakened from the crimp's debauch;
their knees shook, their heads lolled, they lifted their arms as though
they were operated upon by slow machinery. Yet the business, in a
fashion, was contrived. They clewed up the royals and topgallantsails,
they hauled up the mainsail, they let go some jib and staysail
halliards, and they brailed the mizzen to the mast. The least dead
of the poor fellows took the helm, and the ship with her head to the
eastward, with much flap of canvas aloft, bowed slowly over the black
run of swell. Her pace was very slow because the wind was light, and
all the canvas she showed to it were two topsails and her forecourse.

This was as Hardy desired, because the moon was slowly vanishing like
a dimming stain of bloody ooze, and it promised a black night. If he
had held the ship moving under all her wings she would have passed the
boat if she had not run her down, for it was his conviction, heaven
inspired, that the madman had blown away straight before it, and how
prophetically right he was in that we all know, and yet for some hours
it remained very quiet, though black as the inside of a coal sack.
Again this was as Hardy could have prayed for, as this raven serenity
promised security to the boat, and if it lasted till daybreak she might
be in sight.

The mate and another man placed the two bodies on the quarter-deck side
by side under the bulwarks, clear of the gear, and hid them under a
tarpaulin. It would not have been proper nor decent to have buried them
out of hand, for though Hardy had no doubt that they were dead, he yet
felt that time should be given to prove it; and so the two figures lay
motionless under the tarpaulin.

The stars and moon went out and it blew very faint with a deepening
of the blackness overhead, so that you looked for lightning. About
three o'clock some of the men had come out of the forecastle, and by
Hardy's commands the galley fire was lighted and strong coffee brewed.
This wonderfully refreshed the men, and Hardy then asked them if they
thought they were strong enough to go aloft and furl the lighter
canvas, as he could not tell at what moment heavy weather might set
in. The poor fellows managed it somehow, but were long over it. Then
as many as were equal furled the mainsail, at which hour it was hard
upon daybreak. In the blackness of those small hours it was impossible
to guess the character of the sky, and in which direction the soot of
it was trending. But all of a sudden the wind freshened with a long,
melancholy wail, as though 'twas the spirit of the night that was
dying, the troubled water ran in fitful flashes, and the ship broke the
brine into white foam about her. The mate talked with the boatswain
beside the quarter-deck skylight: they were both almost recovered, and
you could hear reviving life in voices about the deck.

"I have no doubt," said Hardy, "that the captain blew away straight
from the ship's side, because you see he had no destination in his
mind."

"Not onlikely," answered the boatswain.

"Suppose I'm right," continued Hardy, "then I reckon we're not abreast
of her yet; but if I pass the boat before the light comes and it proves
thick, as I fancy you'll find it, we shall miss her for good, and I
want my sweetheart badly."

"That's quite natural," said the boatswain. "We're walkin' now and the
breeze freshens, and if you think you are right, sir, in steering as
we go, then what d'ye say to hauling up the foresail and lowering the
maintopsail-yard on the cap, and manning the reef-tackles?"

"Get it done," said Hardy.

It was easily done, for it was not a furling job. A bit of sea was
beginning to run; it smacked the ship under the counter, and flooded
the wake with light. Hardy walked up and down the deck, mad with desire
for daybreak. He was steering by a theory of a madman's action, and
he might be wrong, and if he was wrong--but even if he was right, how
would the boat fare in the sea that was now running with a madman at
the yoke, and the full sail and tearing sheet gripped by the hand of
madness?

These were considerations scarce endurable to the man, and for ever he
was sending searching glances ahead for the ghastly hue of the dawn.
The day broke at last, and it was a day of gloom and mist and a narrow
horizon; the sky was a dome of apparently motionless vapour, and each
surge ere it broke arched in an edge of flint, and the whole surface
was an olive-green decorated by lines of foam.

As yet there was no great weight in the wind, but the sailor's eyes
saw that more was to be expected. Hardy went to his cabin for a glass
of his own. He slung it over his shoulder, and regaining the deck
sprang aloft to the height of the mizzen-top, from which altitude,
with the glass set firmly against the topmast-rigging, he searched the
sea. As the lenses made the circuit there leapt into the field of the
telescope the apparition of a little brig unmistakenly derelict, with
loose canvas hollowing like a kite against the masts. He examined her
intently, and then muttering, "They may be aboard that vessel. It is
a chance. The madman may have taken refuge, or thought his son was
there," he threw the strap of the telescope over his head, and noting
the brig's bearing, descended.

He walked rapidly aft to the compass, and found that the brig was in
sight from the quarter-deck. She bore a little to the west of south.
The Newfoundland, seeing Hardy looking, spied the brig and barked his
report of a sail in sight.

"Lads!" shouted Hardy, running a little way forward, "there is a
brig on the quarter. We'll see if she can give us any news, although
abandoned. Starboard mainbrace, starboard foretopsail-brace smartly as
possible, my lads. Starboard your helm!"

And slowly, for the helm was wearily worked and the braces were dragged
by languid hands, the yards came round, and then the maintopsail
was mastheaded, and the ship with the wind right abeam crushed the
flint-like surge into froth, and forged ahead for the abandoned vessel.

It was time to make for her if she was to be visited at all, for the
horizon was narrowing and narrowing with the thickness of rain, and
soon within the distance of a mile the brig would have vanished.
Hardy's glass was full of powerful lenses--its magnifying power was
double that of the ship's telescope; when he now put it to his eye he
instantly saw a figure just this side of the brig's main-rigging waving
something white.

His heart brightened. He looked again. She was a woman, and alone! The
boatswain was coming aft as Hardy looked forward.

"There's a figure aboard that brig," he shouted. "It's a woman, and
she's waving a handkerchief."

"She'll be yourn," said the boatswain, and as surprise did not
immediately follow perception, he added, "Well, I'm damned!"

"Stand by to back the maintopsail!" roared Hardy, who was delirious
with excitement. "Let some hands lay aft and clear away the starboard
quarter-boat ready for lowering. I'd board her if twice this sea was
running. I knew I was right. I knew he'd head straight away. I knew I'd
find her by shaping the madman's course."

"Suppose it isn't her?" said the boatswain.

"To hell with your supposings!" yelled Hardy. "In any case it's a
woman, and she must be taken off."

The men came aft and got ready the boat and stood aft, prepared for the
command to back the maintopsail. Again Hardy levelled the glass. The
girl--for we know who it was--had ceased to flutter her handkerchief;
but the wind, full of wet, bewildered the eye, and the mate would make
no more of it than this: the figure was a woman.

He headed the _York_ so as to heave to to windward of the brig, and
a little while before the topsail-yard was backed Hardy had seen and
mentally kissed the poor girl's face in the lens, and frantic with joy
was waving his cap to her, whilst she, guessing who it would be that
motioned thus, tossed her handkerchief again and again.

The ship was brought to a stand, and Hardy shouted, "I am coming to
fetch you."

She waved her hand. There was an ugly bit of sea between for a boat,
choppy, with deep sucking hollows, and plenty of spiteful foam to
whiten over the low gunwales.

"Who'll volunteer?" said Hardy. "Three will do."

"Blast me," said one of them, "if I don't feel as I should be in the
road in a boat."

"_You_'re likely," said Hardy, pointing to another--"and you, and you.
Three will do, and it shall be two pound a man, which God knows I
wouldn't offer for a deed of duty, only you're lowered by the captain's
drug."

"Right y' are, sir," said Jim, who got in the boat and was followed by
Tom and Joe.

The mate sprang into the stern-sheets and shipped the rudder.

"Lower away handsomely!" he shouted, "and drop the hauling part that we
may overhaul the falls."

Unfortunately the blocks were without patent clip hooks, and the moment
the boat was water-borne the fore-bottom of her was nearly wrenched out
by her fall into the hollow ere the languid bow oar could release the
block. But it was done, and they got away.

She nearly filled three times in her passage. The drag of the oars was
not strong enough; they wanted the long and steady sweep of their old
power to rescue the boat from the arch of foam astern. Yet they managed
to get alongside, and with the swift leap of the sailor Hardy gained
the main-chains, and in a minute was standing on the main-deck, with
Julia sobbing in his arms.

"Where is the captain?" were almost the first words Hardy addressed to
her.

"He drowned himself," she answered, speaking sobbingly with tumult
of passion. "He made me sit there beside him"--she pointed to the
deck-house front--"and watch for the coming of the boy. The bell was
struck--it was strangely struck. He thought it was his child, and he
ran forward and climbed upon those pieces of timber as though his
little son was beckoning, and then he cried out he was coming and
sprang overboard, and I fainted. Oh, since I returned to consciousness
what a time it has been! And yet--and yet I felt you were near and
would come."

As she spoke the wind howled with a sudden note of raving in the
rigging, and deep as the brig was her loose canvas was inswept till
it depressed her by a couple of strakes, and you might have thought
she was settling, and with this sudden blast came on a heavy squall of
rain, which thickened the air till the ship that was on the quarter
loomed a surging and streaming phantom. At the same moment cries were
heard over the side. Hardy rushed to the rail, and what did he see?

The boat was stove and full! One man had disappeared, and the two
others were floating a fathom or two beyond her locked in each other's
embrace.

Hardy sprang to the brig's quarter, crying, "O God! O my God!" as he
ran.

He slipped some bights of running gear off a pin, and yelling "Look out
for the end of this line!" he hove.

One could not swim, and clung to the other who could, and there was
no virtue in a rope's end though flung by an angel of God to save
them. For one moment the line was close; the desperate heave of the
half-drowned fabric dragged it fathoms out of reach. The pitiless seas
broke over them, and with agony of mind, and a heart almost in halves,
Hardy saw them vanish.

The girl stood beside him with uplifted arms, frozen by horror into the
marble rigidity of a statue. It was going to blow a gale. The black
scowl of the sky had the menace of storm in its fixity. No yellow
curl of scud, no faintness here or there relieved that grim, austere,
down-look. The day might have been closing, so dusky it was with the
flying sheets of rain and the white haze torn out of the foaming brow
by the rending hand of the wind. The seas swung fast and fierce, and
serpentine pillars of white water leapt on high from the brig's side,
and fled in shrieking clouds of sparkles to leeward.

"We shall lose the ship," said Hardy, with the coolness of desperation.
"We could not launch that boat," and he pointed to the small, chubby
fabric that lay stowed near the foremast; "and if we could she would
not live a minute. What became of your boat?"

"I looked for her," she answered, "and saw her floating yonder in the
moonlight. The captain fastened her rope to something and it slipped."

"Come out of the wet," said he. "We can do no good here. They'll keep
the ship hove to, and the weather may clear by noon."

They entered the deck-house, and Hardy began to explore it, and in
the two little cabins aft he found all the information he required
about this abandoned brig. The log-book was dated down to two days
earlier, and the entries were by a hand that spelt in the speech of
Newcastle-on-Tyne. She was the _Betsy_, of Sunderland. The sea began to
flow into her on a sudden to some gape or yarn of butt-end; you can't
tell how it is until you dry-dock them. She would have gone down in
an hour, despite her pump, but for the timber on which she floated.
By the entries it was clear the crew had stuck to her for two days.
Hardy then guessed that, growing weary of waiting for a ship, they
had gone away in the boat. In one cabin he found a telescope and an
old-fashioned quadrant, some wearing apparel, and a tall hat such as an
old skipper might wear, bronzed by weather, and instantly suggesting to
an active imagination a round, purple face, streaks of white whisker, a
chocolate-coloured shawl round the throat, and a nose of the colour of
a bottle of rum in the sun.

The old fagot was beginning to tumble about, the water foamed on the
deck, and the launch of the surge at the staggering bow would strike a
whole sheet of spume over the forestay, and then it fell in cataractal
thunder. Hardy shut the deck-house door. He was something more than
uneasy. Their alarming situation drove all thought of the wonder of it
out of his head. If it came on harder and a heavy sea ran, would this
old sieve hold together? would the deck-house cling to the deck? What
would they do aboard the _York_? Candy was dead and she was without a
navigator. The boatswain was a good practical seaman, and in him lay
Hardy's hope. The boatswain was not the man to abandon the mate and the
girl if he could help it. But suppose the ship was blown away so that
when the weather cleared the brig was not in sight, what would, or
rather, what _could_, the boatswain do? He had not the navigator's art,
and might not therefore know how to pick the brig up. Their condition
was frightful; the lazarette was awash; he could not seek food in
flooded timber. He sat down beside the girl.

"I cannot realise that you are with me," she said.

Her dress was damp, and raindrops sparkled upon her face and hair. He
drew out his handkerchief, which lay dry in his pocket, and softly
passed it over her face and hair. She was loving him with her eyes.
Never did human passion make the eyes of a woman more beautiful.

"You must be starving," he said.

"No, the captain brought some food and water."

"Tell me where it is," he cried, starting to his feet.

She told him where the breaker was and the glass, and the parcel of
provisions. He rushed out. The contents of the breaker could not be
hurt by the flying brine and rain; and mercifully the provisions had
been so placed that the breaker and the planks between which the
captain had placed them kept them dry.

Hardy ran into the deck-house with the food, put the glass in his
pocket, and returned again with the breaker, from which only two or
three drinks had been drawn.

"Thank God for this!" said he, and he felt almost happy.

She had but little knowledge of the sea, and could not interpret
their condition to the full of its tragic significance. Her heart
was almost joyous because her sweetheart was at her side; though
death was hovering over that reeling fabric, its shadow was not upon
her spirit. She was rescued by the man she loved from the horrors of
loneliness on the wide sea, from imaginations which had been excited in
her by those two mysterious strokes on the bell, and by her horrible
association with a madman. The brig reeled and groaned to the sweep
of the strong wind in the canvas, which was like to stream from the
yards in hairs of cloth if the weather hardened. Again and again Hardy
left the girl's side to step on deck and see how it was. The sky was
a yellowish thickness down to within a mile, out of which the flying
comber flashed, and the scene was a giddy pantomime of racing seas.
This old bucket of brig was taking it gallantly over her bows. Hardy
went forward to see if the only boat survived, and found her sitting
secure, seized to eye-bolts, and ready for turning over and launching
by tackles when the weather permitted.

This comforted him, and he stepped into the little caboose which some
lee sea might hurl into the scuppers at any moment. Here, to his great
delight, in a drawer he found some twenty or thirty ship's biscuits,
a bottle half-full of rum, and a large piece of boiled pork on a tin
dish; he also found a black-handled knife and fork on a shelf where
stood a row of china plates, one of which he took down.

With this booty, half pocketed and half in arms, he returned to the
deck-house, at whose door the girl had stood waiting for him, and spite
of the flying brine, and the sickly reel of the half-foundered brig,
and the thunder of the wind aloft, and their own dreadful situation,
the vision of Bax's farm rose before his mind's eye as he saw her
standing in that door in the old incomparable posture, the straw hat
slightly cocked, the head a little on one side, the left hand on the
hip.




CHAPTER XIV.

HARD WEATHER


Hardy carefully put away the good things he had discovered, and then
made a pork sandwich with biscuits, and poured out a little rum which
he mingled with water, and they both made a meal.

Had she been alone she would have been dying of fear; her lover was
with her, and the sea had no terrors. They talked as they ate.

"I foresaw heavy weather," said he, "but not the loss of three men.
We shall lose the ship, I fear; there are no signs of the weather
clearing. My God! how this beast wallows! Why, you'd think the sun had
burst out!"

For just then the air was whitened by a great sheet of water.

"If the boat forward is carried away--" He checked himself, and then
continued, "If we lose the _York_ we shall be picked up by something
else. These old north-countrymen are born to live."

"I am seeing life on the ocean," said Julia, smiling at him.

"Why, it has come as thick as cockroaches," he answered. "When you get
home you shall write your story, and the critics who take shipping on
a summer day from Putney to Henley will exclaim as one man, 'What a
lie!'"

"Who rang the bell?" said Julia. "That question will worry me whilst I
live."

A sea struck the deck-house and blinded the weather-windows. The sturdy
structure quivered. Hardy waited until the water had roared away
overboard, and then said:

"A bell will strike of itself in a rolling ship. I have heard it. Or it
was hit by a rope. Do you believe in ghosts, Julia?"

"I don't want to."

"The stroke was a sudden come-to in the reel of the brig, or a rope did
it," said Hardy, and she tried to look as though she believed him.

Thus they talked whilst they sat in the deck-house, for out of it they
would have stood to be washed overboard. The seas poured in gray-green
folds, and the foam rolled about the decks like the cream of the
breaker on shelving sand. She was a stout bucket and strongly knit, and
if all had been well with her she would have sported with this breeze.
Her canvas was setting her to the eastwards broadside on, and Hardy
was glad of it, because he guessed that the _York_ would remain hove
to, and that her drift would not be much greater than the sag of this
half-drowned Geordie.

But though he looked abroad he never witnessed any signs of
improvement, or even promise of improvement, in the weather. It was not
blowing harder, however, which was a good thing, yet he guessed that
even if the weight of the wind remained as it stood, then, should it
blow all night, a fair daybreak would not reveal the _York_, in which
case they were shipwrecked, and must either wait to be taken off, or
trust to God's mercy to keep the boat in her place forward, that
they might launch her, and seek the succour that would not come. The
deck-house was often hit by the sea, but the blows were rarely hard,
and there was more terror in the thunder of the stroke than in the
possibility of the structure going.

"I see a scuttle-butt out there," said he once during the course of the
morning.

"What's that?" she asked.

"A cask for holding fresh water for the men to drink when on deck."

He stepped out, got under the rail, and crept to the scuttle-butt with
the foam about his feet. The dipper hung by a sling; he dropped it
through the hole and brought it up full, and tasting it found it fairly
sweet, sweet enough for human necessity. He added security to the cask
by further lashings, and covered the hole to protect the water from
the flying salt, then crept back through the foam to the side of his
sweetheart, first sending the sight of a falcon piercing the rain-swept
obscurity of the quarter in which he guessed the _York_ was lying hove
to. But all was the confusion of the headlong surge, raging in frequent
collision, the stormy stare of motionless vapour, the wink of the
sea-flash within the veil of haze, and the universal groaning of old
ocean when that grim Boatswain, the Gale, whitens her back with the
thongs of his cat.

About midday they made another meal off pork sandwiches, a godsend to
the poor creatures. As the time went by and the weather held as before,
the sense of shipwreck grew keener and keener in Hardy. Not so with the
girl; compared to what might have been, this wallowing lump of brig,
filled with timber, straining afloat, was paradise. But Hardy did not
much relish the notion of having to take to that boat yonder. He could
see that with the yard-arm tackle which he would find she was to be
easily got on to her keel, and hoisted out of it by the little winch
just before the mainmast.

It might prove a job, for his shipmate was a girl; yet much harder
jobs, girl or no girl, were to be got through at sea. But until the
weather calmed he could not think of the boat, and if the weather
did calm and left the brig afloat, which was very probable, and he
managed to launch the boat, then, bethinking him of Julia and himself
in that small squab fabric, his heart grew cold; because next to the
raft the open boat in mid-ocean is the greatest desperation of the
sailor. Nearly every chapter of its romance is a tragedy. One dies and
is buried, one goes mad and springs overboard to drink of the crystal
fountain which is gushing in the sweet valley just there. Another is
hollow-eyed with famine, and the gaunt cheeks work with the movement of
the jaw upon the piece of lead or the die of boot-leather, which helps
the saliva. Hardy knew it all, had tasted some of it, and he could not
think of Julia and that little open boat and the flawless horizon, more
pitiless to the wrecked mariner than the cordon of soldiers to the
famished city, without feeling his heart turn cold.

And now happened something which I fear the reader will think more
incredible than any other incident in this volume.

After talking a little while together, these two people rose from their
chairs and knelt down in prayer. Hardy believed in God and in the
mercy of God, and so did Julia, and he asked God in the simple language
of the plain English seaman's heart to protect them and be with them,
and he thanked him for the mercy he had already vouchsafed; and depend
upon it no British sailor will consider this an unnatural act on the
part of Hardy, because always the proudest heart of oak in the hour of
triumph, the most depressed heart of oak in the hour of trial, has been
accustomed to look up to God and thank or beseech him, for it is he who
shares the loneliness of the seaman on the wide, wide sea.

But let me assure the reader, also, that lovers do not make love in
shipwreck as they do under the awning of the passenger liner, or in the
bower of roses ashore. Death is too near to allow passion to expend
itself in the form made familiar by the novel. Their talk often went to
Captain Layard and the amazing cunning he had exhibited in inventing
the trap they had all fallen into.

"I believe," said Hardy, "only two are dead on board. He had a book to
give them the doses, and his brain was clearly equal to understanding
what it said. But would the rum absorb all the poison? Would not one
man get more than his whack? A few grains more would have done for us
all. The beggar took care not to drink himself, and none of us thought
of asking him to."

"How did you feel when you awoke?" she asked.

"Much as you did, I expect," he answered.

But talking was not very easy in this interior. The water, sheeting
against the deck-house, seethed through speech and confounded it. There
was the thunder of the fallen sea forward, and the incommunicable
maledictions of a sodden brig in the trough filled the gale with
bewilderment as it flew. Every fabric afloat has a voice of her own,
and like her sailors, she knows how to swear when injured.

In the course of the afternoon Hardy stepped into the after-berths, but
found nothing to reward his search. The papers of an old timberman are
uninteresting; the letters of an auld wife of Sunderland to her Geordie
are sacred, and saving three or four clay pipes and some tobacco, for
which Hardy was grateful, there was little to be seen worth mentioning.
If this gale slackened into moderate weather the girl should sleep
in one of these berths; if not, near the door in the interior on the
best sort of bed he could contrive, because, as he meant to keep
watch and watch himself throughout the night, she would be close by
to rescue if some thunderous surge should discharge the deck-house
from its obligation of sticking. He had searched for candles and had
found none; a few boxes of matches were in a sort of desk fixed to the
bulkhead near the bunk. So he came out of the captain's berth with an
old mattress, and then he brought some wearing apparel, a heavy coat
with big horn buttons, and a pair of north-country breeches, which, if
seized to a stay for fresh air, might fill up and stand out like the
half of a Dutchman in a jump.

"What's all that for?" said Julia.

He explained, and she loved him, and thought how good he was.

Yes, there are even worse conditions of life to a girl than being
shipwrecked with a sailor who is a gentleman, and if the gentleman
informs the spirit of a sailor, its impulse is never greater than when
it responds to the appeal of a girl's helplessness.

He cut up a little tobacco and smoked a pipe. It seemed to bring
him within hail of civilisation, and Julia enjoyed the smell of the
tobacco-smoke immensely, and said it made her think of her father.

"How would he relish this picture?" said he, referring to their
situation.

"He would not like to be here, that is all he would think. Will this
brig keep together, do you fancy?"

"Oh, yes, and I'll tell you what--the gale doesn't harden, which is a
good sign. There was plenty of weather in the moon last night, but in
these parts it is not often long-lived."

"Is not a tremendous sea running?" she asked.

"Yes, from the Ramsgate or Margate Sands point of view. You must go
to about fifty-eight south, right off the Horn, and get amongst the
ice to know what a tremendous sea is like. They come like the cliffs
of Dover at you, and the deck is up and down, whilst the keel sweeps
up the acclivity. It is splendid and frightful. I was hove to for a
fortnight down there; we couldn't drive clear of the ice, and we had
about four hours of daylight to see by. All the devils in hell raved in
our rigging as we sat upright a breathless instant on the amazing peak
we had climbed. No, Julia, this is not a tremendous sea, and the brig
will hang together and outweather twenty such."

The vessel, however, was acting as though she considered it a
tremendous sea. Had she been dismasted or a steamer her behaviour could
not have been worse. Her sails a little steadied her, but her rollings
and motions and plungings and heavings were sickening and insufferable,
because she was nearly full of water. She had no buoyancy and the seas
made a rock of her, and often sprang in green sheets right over her--a
wet and yelling game of leap-frog.

Late in the afternoon, when it was almost dark, one of these seas
filled the caboose and swept it to leeward, where it lay stranded. The
outcry of hurled ironmongery, of crashing china, of skipping knives and
forks, pot, kettles, and pans, along with the noise of the splintering
caboose, was enough to make Hardy think that the brig was scattering
under their feet. The girl grasped his hand when that sea came and the
galley went; she thought it was all over with them. Hardy kept his
thoughts to himself: his real anxiety was in the boat, which might be
washed overboard or dashed into staves, and in the deck-house, which
was their only shelter.

Happily the old bucket had taken up her position on her own account,
and it was chiefly the bows and amidships which got the drenches; it
was seldom that the deck-house was struck by a sea whose weight was a
menace.

"It is miserable to be without light at sea," said Hardy, "on a black
night in heavy weather. But there is no lamp here and none in the
berths, and if there was where should I find oil? We must face it
through, Julia, and you must sleep."

"I have had more sleep than I want," replied Julia. "I shall not mind
the darkness if the bell isn't struck."

"It may be struck by a rope, by nothing else. If a ghost, how could
an essence grasp substance? How could something you could walk through
lift a knife or try and pull down a lamp-post?"

"I sha'n't like it if I hear it," she replied. "Oh, how dreadful to
think of him washing about under us! Wretched man! You should have seen
the unearthly expression of his face whilst he sat staring forward,
waiting for the little drummer to appear."

"The great poet is true," said Hardy, who had fingered a few volumes in
his day, albeit he was a sailor in the Merchant Service of England.


    "'For shapes which come not at an earthly call
    Will not depart when mortal voices bid;
    Lords of the visionary eye whose lid,
    Once raised, remains aghast and will not fall.'"


"Those words are true of that poor dead man," said Julia. "Aghast! you
should have seen him when he turned up his eyes to God and prayed."

The afternoon closed into early evening, and it was as black as a
wolf's throat at the hour of sundown. Through the windows you could see
the light of the foam, sudden pallid glares, rushes of dim phosphoric
gleams which merely made the darkness visible. The brig was a drunken
vision, and the yells of her rigging might be likened to the screams of
a tipsy slut who is being thrashed by her man in a thunder-storm.

The two sweethearts ate some biscuit, and Julia held a lighted match
whilst Hardy mixed some rum and water for them both. They drank out of
the same glass, and neither of them apologised. Then Hardy felt and
wound up his watch, for he wanted time, though he couldn't see it then
except by striking a match. They sat together and I dare say he put
his arm round her waist, and possibly she supported her head upon his
shoulder after removing her hat.

It was a ticklish sitting-ground and they sometimes slided, which was a
very good reason why Hardy should hold her by the waist, and why Julia
should cling lovingly with her head. And in this posture they entered
the night and passed perhaps a couple of hours, so that when Hardy
struck a match he found the time nine.

He made for the mattress, felt and found it, and the north-country
apparel which was to form the bedclothes. He then lurched back to
Julia, who did not want to lie down, but he was her lord in resolution
and her love consented.

Always groping, for despite the sea-flash it was inside here of
a midnight blackness, he pillowed her head with a garment of
north-country measurement, and then carefully covering her to the neck
with the skipper's coat, he pressed his lips to the brow of the girl
who was to be his wife, and who was therefore sacred to him, and bade
her sleep and leave him to watch and nod and watch.

And now all that followed was sickening, sloppy, howling, reeling,
foaming hours of darkness, with nothing in them but the drunken vision
of brig, and the noisy rage of her straining heart. But at half-past
three o'clock by Hardy's watch the weather was undoubtedly moderating;
by five it was blowing a little fresh; by six it was daylight and the
wind northeast, a pleasant breeze, and the green sea rolled in foamless
swells, cutting the wake of the sun, which shone brightly out of every
blue lagoon 'twixt the clouds.

The girl was up and sitting at the table. She had slept a little, but
that little was sound and good. Hardy brought the telescope out of the
berth: it was a poor glass, but you could see more through it than with
the naked eye. The brig was rolling ponderously on the swell, whose
heave was sometimes too sudden for her, and she would stagger with a
scream of white water from her side. Her canvas was blowing out, and
the sodden old cask may have had some way on her.

Hardy stepped out and looked for the _York_. Had he looked for St.
Paul's Cathedral he could not have seen less of it. The ship was not in
sight and he fetched a deep breath, for either her crew had abandoned
him and Julia to what sailors would know might prove a terrible death,
or the ship's drift had been faster than he had allowed for.

"She's not in sight," he shouted to Julia, then sprang into the
main-shrouds, put his telescope over the rim of the top, and got into
the top.

She was not in sight from the top and he crawled as high as the
cross-trees, and she was not in sight from that elevation. Nothing was
in sight but the horizon, which wound eel-like to the flashing clasp of
the sun upon it.

He regained the deck and put the telescope down and sat beside Julia.

"What shall we do?" she said, when he had given her the news.

"We will breakfast," he answered.

And forthwith he made biscuit sandwiches of the pork, of which there
still remained a good lump, a godsend. There was nothing much to elate
him in the sight of the boat still safely lashed to the deck; he feared
the open boat in mid-ocean with few provisions, little water, and an
everlasting menace of weather, for blow it will if it does not blow
now, and what sort of a time would they have had afloat in that boat
last night?

Julia dredged her lover's face with her eyes but could not make out
what was passing in his mind, because he himself did not know what was
passing there.

"We must husband our stores," said he, "and wait for something to sight
us."

Saying which he rose and stepped up a little ladder on to the top of
the deck-house, directed by sailorly instincts to what he wanted, and
there it was securely lashed to the iron stanchions of the low rail--a
flag-locker. He opened it and took out the Red Ensign and carried it
right aft, and bent it union down to the peak signal-halliards and
hoisted it half-mast high, a signal of deep distress and death. Its
rippling noise was pleasant, but the look of it was ghastly with its
dumb appeal to a pitiless sea.

Julia stood beside him and sank her clear gaze far into the recesses of
the ocean, and saw the sea line working and nothing more.

"Let's go and see if the galley has betrayed any secrets of food," said
he.

The sluggish roll of the brig was no hindrance to feet accustomed to
the bounding deck. They found the galley murdered; it was split and
shivered, but the coppers to the stroke of the sea that slung them
had spewed out a big lump of beef and a bolster of duff--the sailors'
pudding--composed of dark flour and slush with here and there a
currant, but not always. Hardy pounced upon the food as the adjutant
lights upon the floating Hindoo.

"They left their dinner behind them," he said. "Good God! what a noble
haul. Here is enough for a week with care."

"Is it cooked?"

He answered this question by pulling out his knife and cutting off a
piece of the meat. Another half-hour would have cooked it, but it was
eatable to human necessity.

He stowed this provender away in the deck-house and filled the breaker
from the scuttle-butt, then went with Julia to look at the bell.

"You did not hear it last night," he said.

"No," she answered.

"It shall not trouble you again," said he, and he unhooked it, and
threw it down.

"But who struck it?" she asked.

"He'll not strike it again," he answered.

He peeped through the forescuttle and saw nothing but the gleam of
black water washing below.

"The rats don't like this sort of thing," said he. "Can you pull upon a
rope, Julia?"

"I am as strong as you," she answered.

He smiled with a glance at her beautiful figure, and said:

"Turn to, then, and lend me a hand to shorten sail."

Between them they manned the necessary buntlines and clewlines, and
Julia dragged as handsomely as her sweetheart.

"Give us a song, George, for time," she said, and he started
"Chillyman," which sea-air Julia had caught from hearing it on board
the _Glamis Castle_, and her voice threaded his like the notes of a
flute.


    "Randy dandy, heigh-ho!
    Chillyman!
    Pull for a shilling, heigh-ho!
    Chillyman!"[1]


In fact, you may put any words you like to these sea-tunes, and the
sailors will pull the better if you damn the eyes of the quarter-deck
in rhyme.

Hardy next thoroughly overhauled the brig, so far as perception of
her condition was possible. He could not see why she should not hold
together through twenty such gales as roared over her last night. He
stood with Julia looking at their only boat, beside which there lay,
as though placed by some angel of mercy, a watch-tackle. The sight
of that watch-tackle sank him into contemplation, and Julia gazed at
him whilst he thought. How weary were the motions of the brig upon
that sulky sweep of swell! Yet the fine figure of the girl swayed to
it with the graceful ease of a figurehead curtseying at the bow. She
was shipwrecked, she was in a dreadful situation of peril, this time
to-morrow she might be floating in the sea a corpse, and yet never
on board the Indiaman, on board the _York_, or at home had she felt
happier. She was loving him passionately and he was always with her,
and she could not but be happy.

Presently he said:

"I will tell you how it can be done when it needs to be done. She is a
small boat and not heavy, and you and I will cant her on to her bilge
with handspikes, then I'll hook that watch-tackle to a strop round the
foremost thwart and take the hauling part to the winch, and rouse her
along to abreast of the gangway. That gangway there unships, and we
sit low upon the sea, and we'll tumble the boat through the gangway
overboard, smack-fashion. If she proves too heavy we'll rig out a
spar"--here he cast his eyes round--"with the watch-tackle made fast
to her, and the winch will do the rest. Yes, that is my scheme if it
should come to it. Meanwhile let us be patient and keep a lookout for
ships."

But the imprisonment on board this abandoned hull of Mr. George Hardy
and Miss Julia Armstrong was to continue until the dawn of three days,
counting from Hardy's time of finding the girl. All this while it
was very fine weather, and of a night they would sit on top of the
deck-house whilst Hardy smoked and Julia prattled. They watched the sea
lights which glittered upon the black breast of the ocean; they watched
the flight of the meteor. They talked of the stars, which nowhere
wheel in so much splendour as over the sea, and of the great Spirit
who controls their flight. Morally they were the least shipwrecked of
people. They were happy in each other's company; if either one had been
alone it might have proved madness to him or to her, but the voice of
love, the presence of love even in the gloom of calamity, made a light
of their own which was as inspiriting as the hope that springs eternal.
It was not strange that no ships ever showed a white rag of canvas,
a coil of sooty smoke upon the horizon in any point of the compass,
because the brig sat low and her "dip" would be small, and a ship may
be within the compass of a boat-race and yet not be seen. Hardy often
went aloft and searched the waters; he did not lose heart, because
he felt sure that something must heave in sight sooner or later, and
meanwhile with great care the food they had would last them a week or
perhaps longer, and there was fresh water for a fortnight or perhaps
longer; for I am telling you what I have heard, and like the tramp in
Dickens's sketch, my squire "would not tell a lie for no man."

Hardy was also sure that the brig would hold together, and being of the
careless nature of the sailor, though provident, willing, and sober,
he would not allow his spirits to be depressed, and he had eyes enough
in his head to see that Julia regarded their perilous condition as
something in the way of an outing--to be enjoyed. She was a fine girl
and we are never weary of admiring her. I have told you that she was
not pretty, but her face, what with the cock of her head, the hand on
the hip, the speaking appeal of her eyes, carried such a character of
romance that it not only interested you at once, when she looked at you
full and fastened her eyes upon yours with her slight smile, it made
you even think her pretty, and certainly the truest beauty of a woman's
face comes into it from her mind.

Then broke the dawn of the third day, and Hardy, who had been sleeping
since three, awoke and stepped out of the deck-house, and with the
brig's telescope in hand climbed the few steps and searched the sea. It
was again a fine morning; the heavens were lofty with their freckling
of stationary small cloud; the wind was a light breeze a little to the
north of east; and the sea, which streamed in thin lifts, sparkled to
the caress of a hand that could make it roar when it thought fit.

Suddenly into the lenses of the glass there entered a full-rigged ship,
showing nothing but three single-reefed topsails and a foresail and the
trembling line of her hull a little above the horizon. "A full-rigged
ship under that sail in this weather!" thought Hardy. "By heaven, it
must be the _York_, and if so she is abandoned!"

FOOTNOTE:

[1] Sailors' word for "cheerly men."




CHAPTER XV.

ABOARD AGAIN


The sun was floating over the horizon, and the pink of his glory was
melting into the flash of silver, as the wake of the _York_ streamed
in a short white gleam upon the sea. The light breeze was still to
the north of east, and thither it had hung for hours past. Hardy and
Julia stood at the brig's rail watching the ship that was distinct and
lifting in the ocean's recess.

"Is it possible that she's the _York_?" said Julia.

He answered with the telescope at his eye:

"Don't I know her! She's under single reefs. Her spanker is furled, and
her head sails keep her off, as though she were under control. Perhaps
she is, but I don't think so. She would head directly for us if she had
anything alive on board, because I can hold the line of her rail in
this glass, and if I can see her, she can see me."

"What will you do?"

"I will wait a little longer and see if she is manned. If her crew have
deserted her, I will launch that boat, and board her before she drifts
out of sight."

"Will you be able to catch her?"

"Catch her! Can you row?"

"Try me," she answered, with the proud look a girl will put on when she
feels she is of importance.

"She is drifting at about two, and we will make that boat buzz three,
and perhaps more. But if she is manned, she will come alongside, and
our getting aboard will be easy. But she is not manned, I am sure,"
said Hardy. "Pipe to breakfast, Julia."

This time they made beef sandwiches of biscuit, and they were swallowed
without the accompanying forecastle growl. Indeed, considering it
was meant for sailors' use, the beef was not very bad, and as it was
pickled to the heart, a little cooking had gone a long way to make it
almost food for the human stomach. The bottle of rum was half full
and they drank a little of the liquor, largely diluted with water. To
refresh himself Hardy went to the head, where he knew he would find a
pump which stood clear of the deck load. He picked up a bucket, carried
it to the pump and filled it with sparkling brine, and purified his
face with the cold salt-sweetness of the water and wrung his hands in
it, and felt that his beard was growing, for shipwreck does not stop
the growth of hair, as we see when a haggard crew steps ashore out of a
life-boat.

And all the time he kept his eyes fastened on the _York_, as he knew
her to be. When he went aft he found Julia sitting on a chair on
top of the deck-house. He mounted the steps and sat beside her with
the telescope, for he had made up his mind to wait a little before
launching the boat.

"What makes you know that she's the _York_?" she asked.

"Twenty points, and you must have served two years before the mast to
understand them if I explained. She is the _York_, my love, and with
God's eye watching us we shall be aboard her and safe before sunset."

"Hurrah!" cried Julia, and she picked up his hand and kissed it.

It was a thing to be settled in about an hour, and in that hour Hardy
discovered that she was not under control by her coming to windward and
her falling off; and when she came to windward she hung so long that
Hardy thought it time to turn to. And now began a process of which the
description shall not weary you.

First he unshipped the gangway and fetched some capstan bars for
rollers; he then passed his knife through the boat's lashings, took
the watch-tackle and secured it to a fore-shroud abreast of the boat,
overhauled the tackle to hook the block on the boat's gunwale, then
he and Julia clapped on to the hauling part of the tackle and easily
roused the little wagon on to her bilge. She was not very much heavier
than a smack's boat; her oars were lashed under the thwarts, and her
rudder had been on a thwart and now lay in her. They tried to run her
along the deck, but though they started her the toil must prove too
great for the girl who would be plying an oar shortly. So he carried
the block of the watch-tackle as far forward as its length would allow
him and made a strop with a piece of gear round the thwart, to which he
hooked the other block, bent a line on to the hauling part and carried
it to the winch, giving Julia the job of hauling the slack in as he
wound.

He wound lustily, for he was fighting for life and time and he was a
very strong man, and had entirely rid himself of all the evil effects
of the drug, as the girl had. So they brought the boat abreast of the
gangway; he had muscle enough to lift her bow whilst Julia placed a
skid, in the shape of a capstan bar, under her forefoot; he made other
skids of the capstan bars, and laying hold of her gunwales on either
side, the two brave hearts, with the boat's nose pointing to the sea,
ran the fabric, secured by a painter hitched to a main shroud, clean
through the gangway, and she fell with a squash, and floated like an
empty bottle with never a drop of water in her.

This done, Hardy, who was making haste, for the _York_ was keeping a
rap-full and forging into the stream of sunshine, though always coming
for the brig, seized a line, and watching his chance sprang into the
boat, secured the line to her after-thwart, leapt aboard, and brought
the boat broadside to the gangway.

The roll of the brig was very sullen and slow, and the swell of the sea
sometimes hove the boat flush with the brig's waterway.

"You must jump into her, Julia," said Hardy, "and for God's sake don't
go overboard. To provide against that, see here."

He took an end of main-royal-halliards and hitched it round her waist,
and overhauled some slack which he grasped.

"Pull up your clothes," said he, "and free your legs and aim for the
bottom of the boat, and jump when I sing out."

The little squab structure came floating up, and Hardy brought her in
by a tug of the after-rope as she was coming.

"Jump!" he shouted.

And that girl, whose heart was of British oak, holding her clothes to
her knees, sprang, and in a few breaths was sitting on a thwart and
liberating herself from the rope, whilst she smiled up at her lover.

"Now, Julia," said he, "I am going to send you down the provisions and
water. Stand by to receive them, but keep seated."

He handed the telescope to her, then fetched the breaker, which she
received as it lay in that instant of heaving swell on the rim of the
gunwale, and she rolled it to the thwart, then to the stern-sheets,
taking the glass from Hardy at the next heave. He made one parcel of
the provisions and hove them into the boat, then casting the painter
adrift he jumped into the boat, let go the remaining line that held
her, cut loose the oars, shipped the thole-pins, leaving the rudder
unshipped, and made Julia the bow oar.

Could she row? Very well indeed; but the oars were a little heavy and
she did not attempt to feather; in fact, she rowed like a smacksman,
lifting the blade with its streaming glory of water on high, but the
dip and thrust of it was that of a stout schoolboy, and between them
they made the boat buzz, Hardy, with larger power of oar, keeping her
straight for the _York_.

"Don't tire yourself," said he; "rest when you like. She'll not outrun
us."

"What a wonderful thing to happen!" said Julia, whose face was
whitening with the ardour of her toil.

She looked at nothing but her oar, and was certainly not going to be
tired this side the _York_.

"At sea, where all is wonderful, nothing is wonderful," said Hardy.
"Any sailor would easily see how this has come about. But don't waste
your breath in talking: let us row."

It was a strange and curious picture: a man and a girl in a little
open boat, pulling away for a ship that was rounding into the wind as
though she knew they were approaching, whilst astern receded the figure
of the brig, a melancholy sight, despite the gun-flashes of sunshine
which burst from her side at every roll; her hanging canvas flapped a
mournful farewell to the rowers, who took no heed of the poor thing's
tender and, for a north-countryman, graceful salutation of good-bye.
But, then, she had been a stage of maniacal horrors, of death, of
the lonely little ghost that struck the bell, of shipwreck with its
stalking shadows of famine, thirst, and the calenture that invites you
to die.

Hardy frequently turned to look at the _York_ so as to keep a true
course, and this time saw that she was involved in the wind, and was
waiting for him to come aboard to tell her what to do. They had four
miles to measure, and as they pulled with the spirit of shipwreck in
their pulse they were within hail of her in an hour.

No man showed himself; she was abandoned. But suddenly on the
forecastle rail appeared the fore-paws and magnificent head of a great
Newfoundland dog. He barked deep and long.

"Poor Sailor," said Hardy; "I had forgotten him."

"How inhuman to leave him," said Julia, panting.

"A few more strokes, sweetheart," shouted Hardy, "and we are free. What
a noble girl you are! What a good wife you will make a sailor!"

"I will make you a good wife, never fear," she answered, joyous in
despite distress of breath.

The ship's head was slowly paying off as the boat's stem struck the
side. Hardy secured the painter and jumped into the mizzen-chains.

"Hold out your hands," he exclaimed, "and jump when the boat lifts,"
and to the lift and to his fearless, muscular haul she sprang, and was
alongside of him.

He grasped her by the arm, passed her round the rigging, and helped her
over the bulwark rail. The dog was barking in fury of joy. When they
gained the deck he sprang upon the girl in love and delight and nearly
knocked her down.

"Get him some water and biscuit whilst I look about me," said Hardy.

He had long ago known by the help of the telescope that the ship
was abandoned because two pairs of davits were empty, and with the
perception of a sailor he understood that the crew had transferred
themselves to another ship in one boat, whereas if they had abandoned
the ship on their own account, which was improbable, they would have
gone away in three companies, and the davits would have been like
gibbets, since the after-boat had been used by the captain when he
stole the girl.

The wheel was not lashed, and was constantly playing in swift
revolution to starboard and port and back again. Hardy judged that the
dog had been left by the men because the faithful creature would not
quit the ship which had been his master's home, and the men, who would
have had very little time, did not choose that their flesh should be
torn by using violence. Yet it was cruel of them to leave him, for they
would know that the noble creature would soon need water and food, and
perish as lamentably as a famine-stricken sailor on a raft.

He saw that the figures of Mr. Candy and the man at the wheel, which
had been concealed by a tarpaulin, were gone; they had of course been
buried. Julia looked after the dog, that was lapping water thankfully
as she filled a bowl from the galley with fresh water out of the
scuttle-butt. Hardy slowly went forward, carefully gazing about him.

No man lay dead on the deck; he dropped into the forecastle and found
it empty of human life, so that the captain's birthday had killed but
two men, which was surely wonderful, for he had commanded a power that
could have murdered a thousand.

Why was not this fine ship taken possession of by the people who had
received her crew? I will tell you at once, for the story came out on
the men's arrival. Her drift had been swifter, with the helping hand of
the surge, than Hardy could have imagined or allowed for, and in the
morning of the gale she was close aboard a French brig that was hove to
sitting deep in the sea. They hailed her and were answered. They stated
they were without a navigator and they didn't know what to do. The
French captain spoke English, and said he would receive them if they
came aboard in their own boat and land them at Marseilles, the port
he was bound to. The weather was then moderating, and after calling a
council the boatswain, giving the mate and the girl up as lost, swiftly
decided, with the heedlessness of seamen, to abandon the _York_, and
with great difficulty the sailors gained the deck of the brig, leaving
their clothes behind them. Very shortly afterward the French captain
braced his yards round and shaped a course for Marseilles, leaving
nothing alive on board the _York_ but the dog.

This is the true story of the ship's adventure, and whoever questions
it is no sailor.

Hardy left the forecastle and stood awhile on deck near the hatch,
gazing aloft. In this moment he was fired by a resolution which would
have inspired no other heart than that of a true British sailor. He
determined that he and the girl and the dog should save this fine
ship without help, and carry her to England, and entitle them to a
reward which should prove a living to them whilst they endured. His
face, which was as manly as Tom Bowline's, was irradiated by the glory
of this resolution as he gazed aloft, smiling. It was possible--and
being possible it was to be done. But it needed doing by two hearts
of oak and the dog as a lookout, and great anxiety would accompany
the discharge of this splendid duty, much sleeplessness and ceaseless
urging of the spirit. But the eye of God would dwell lovingly upon
their toil and peril; he felt that and raised his cap to the thought,
and he said to himself, in the language of Nelson, "When we cannot do
all we wish, we must do as well as we can!"

He walked aft and joined the girl.

"Julia," he said, "I have formed the resolution of my life, and if I
can fulfil it we shall be rich, though that will not make us happy."

"What is it?" she asked, looking a little frightened, with her head
slightly drooped to the shoulder, and her left hand, white as foam,
reposing like a coronet upon the Newfoundland's head. Indeed, what
with the mad captain, drugs, and ghosts she was in such a condition of
mind that she was easily alarmed by any divergence from the commonplace.

"This is a valuable ship," he answered. "I know her cargo, for I helped
to stow it. She has a beautiful hull, and is perfectly sound aloft.
In addition to her cargo she carries a little treasure of jewelry
consigned to Melbourne--Colonials love jewelry. I dare say it is worth
ten thousand pounds. It is in a safe in the captain's cabin. I should
say that the value of this ship and cargo is between sixty thousand and
seventy thousand pounds, perhaps more. Julia, you and I and the dog
will carry her home. We shall be richly rewarded by the owners and the
underwriters--in fact, it is a matter of salvage to be assessed if my
terms are disputed."

She grasped him by both hands, her eyes were on fire, her cheeks were
burning, the spirit of delight and resolution filled her romantic face
with the light of conquest and realisation.

"Is it to be done?" she said.

"It is done," he answered. "We don't talk of failure. But let us make
ourselves comfortable whilst the weather is fine."

"How heavenly!" she sighed. "You will teach me to steer, George."

"I will teach you everything that is proper for a young woman to know,"
he answered.

He took her to his heart and pressed his lips to hers, which was like
signing articles: that lip pressure was the seal of their agreement
to serve each other loyally, and to eat the food on board without
growling.

The first thing they did was to go below. Here was the cabin just as
they had left it; there was the chair in which Captain Layard had sat
and talked metaphysics, yonder was the locker on which the drugged
girl had slept, and they stood on the deck where Hardy had lifted his
cannon-ball of a head, whilst his bewildered soul groped slowly into
his brains. They went into the captain's cabin and saw the drum and the
drumsticks and the little bedstead.

"What a fantasy of the sea!" said Hardy. "It is beyond me. It is like
a vision, sensible to perception and unreal to it. Will our story be
credited?"

"Who cares?" answered the girl. "Is that the safe, George?"

"Yes, and I'll look for the key by and by. The jewelry's there."

The safe was small and secured on a massive timber shelf, but though
small it was large enough to contain the Koh-i-noor, and to hold buried
the wealth and jewels of a rajah.

Hardy cast a keen look around him, saw that the table held the
necessary machinery of navigation, carefully wound up the chronometers,
which had not stopped, then went into his own cabin whilst the girl
entered hers. When they presently met they sought for food and found
plenty in the pantry; here were ham and tongue, palatable stuff in
tins, white biscuits, and pots of jam.

They sat down and ate, and the Newfoundland sat beside them, triumphant
in this familiar company of man and woman, and Julia, who loved him,
saw that he made a good breakfast.

"How are we to manage it, George?" she asked.

"It will require some scheming," he answered, "but we must not accept
help, because if we do our salvage share will shrink out of all
proportion to our merits. Can you steer in the least?"

"I can steer a boat, but not a ship," Julia answered.

"I will teach you; you will get the art in a very few lessons."

"One lesson will do if I have the strength."

"Oh," he answered, with a loving glance at her, "you are one of those
English girls whose shapes of beauty are wire-rigged. Wire is stronger
than hemp, though it looks delicate. What your strength can't do I have
arms for."

"So you have," she replied; "you are the manliest sailor that ever was."

"Let us change the subject," he replied, with a little colour of
pleasure in his face, for a compliment from your sweetheart is next to
a kiss. "We are fortunate in finding the ship under very easy sail.
We'll get some more fore-and-aft canvas upon her, for it is easily
hauled down, but I shall leave the square canvas that is furled to rest
as it is. I'll bring her to her course at noon when I find out where we
are. You will light the galley fire, as we shall want a hot drink. But
we need little cooking, for if we boil a good lump of beef, that, with
the food in the pantry, will last you and me and the dog five hundred
miles of sea."

"Are we near England?"

"Not very, I think, but I shall know presently exactly how near we are."

"How shall we get rest, George? We must sleep or die, or worse, go
mad."

"Aye," he answered, thoughtfully; "you see things rightly, but we must
not make sleep a difficulty."

"The rest seems quite easy," she said, joyously; "and I shall learn to
steer in one lesson."

They left the table and went on deck, followed by the dog, who growled
softly and often in a sort of undertalk with himself. There is a great
nature in a Newfoundland, and you often wonder whilst you look into his
soft, affectionate eyes what his thoughts are.

It was a glowing scene of forenoon ocean. The ripple ran with the
laughter of the summer in its voice. The endless procession of humps
of swell, as though old ocean was perpetually shrugging his shoulders
over spiteful memories, brought the flaming banners of the sun out of
the east, and swept them westwards in knightly array of fiery plume
and foam-crested summit. Four miles off wallowed the poor little brig,
tearfully flapping her pocket-handkerchief to the naked horizon, and by
mute and pathetic gesture coaxing nothing into being to help her. Many
soft, white clouds floated westwards, and Hardy noticed that the glass
was high and those clouds meant nothing but vapour.

What a noble ship to be in charge of, to virtually be the owner of,
to rescue from the toils of the sea, to witness in security in some
harbour of England, flying high the commercial flag of the Empire
in token of British supremacy, even in the hour of peril, when the
Foreigner would consider all was lost!

"It is not yet twelve o'clock," said Hardy, "and we will light the
galley fire."

They walked forward and entered the sea kitchen. Plenty of chopped
wood lay stacked. The ship's cook had been a man of foresight, and
anticipated labour by putting an axe into the ordinary seaman's hand;
also near the wood stood two buckets of coal and a little heap on
the deck. There was plenty of coal in the fore-peak for a voyage
to Australia. Hardy had matches, which are curiosities at sea in a
forecastle, for you light your pipe at the galley fire with rope
yarns or shavings, and the slush lamp is kindled by the binnacle or
side-light. But aft there are usually matches, because the cabin is the
home of elegance, refinement, and luxury, and the captain must have
matches, for he cannot light his cigar at the sailors' fire. Hardy
first explored the coppers; they were empty. He filled them from the
scuttle-butt; why should he use salt water when there was plenty of
fresh at hand? Fresh water would cleanse the mahogany beef of something
of its brine, and perhaps soften it into complacent recognition of
human digestion.

Then the fire was lighted; he could not find the key of the harness
cask, so he fetched a weapon from the carpenter's chest, and the
staples yielded to his blow with the shriek of lacerated wood. There
was plenty of beef and pork in the cask, buried in the horrible crystal
in which lurks the demon of scurvy; he turned the pieces over, and
selecting the fattest and least ill-looking lump, dropped it into the
copper for boiling when the water should begin.

This work, easily recited, cost time. Before he touched a brace or put
the ship to her course he must find out where she was. The last entries
in the log-book were in his handwriting, and they related the story of
the captain's birthday, how he kept it, and his disappearance with a
young lady passenger named Julia Armstrong. The latitude was then--N.
and the longitude--W. But the drifting ship had measured miles, and her
captain must know where he was. This he would find out in about an hour.

The sow under the long-boat was dead. To get rid of it before the
carcass stank he stropped it and clapped the watch-tackle on it, and
together they hauled the little mountain of what might have proved
tooth-alluring crackling and white fresh fat, always sweet at sea,
through the open gangway overboard. It fell without a prayer, and the
fish that nosed it that day dined well.

Some of the poultry in the hen-coops were dead; a few lived, and craved
with fluttering red pennons for drink and grain. Of course Hardy
knew "the ropes" of this ship and could lay his hand on anything he
wanted. He filled the little troughs with fresh water, and no one but
a beholder could have figured the profound gratitude with which the
varying row of bills was lifted to heaven. He helped them to grain,
and they filled their crops with all ardency of pecking. He cleared
the hen-coop of its plumed corpses, and so they sweetened the ship
forthwith.

It was about time that Hardy fetched his sextant: the soaring sun
excited his impatience; he desired that the ship should be sending
his sweetheart and himself home, and the ceaseless waving of those
pocket-handkerchiefs just over the horizon teased him with their
impertinence, and as a token of distress when the morning was fair and
their hearts high and hopeful. His reckoning found the ship's position
within a mile or two of her place when he had left her to succour his
darling.

"I have it now," said he, "and we must trim sail for home."

"Oh, how beautiful!" cried Julia, and the dog barked in recognition of
the girl's triumphant note.

The ship was on the port tack and must be wore to the north. Hardy
put the helm hard up and secured it, then let go the fore, main, and
mizzen-braces, and the yards, as the ship obeyed her rudder, swung a
little of themselves. With the starboard-braces let go Hardy and Julia
did not find it difficult to swing the yards. The wind would be almost
abeam when the ship was homeward bound, and there were the winch and
the capstan to brace the yards well forward if the wind drew ahead.

"Sing out, George!" cried Julia. And they brought the fore and
foretopsail-yard, with fore-tack and sheet all gone, round, to their
chanty of "Chillyman."


    "Randy dandy, heigho!
    Chillyman!
    Pull for a shilling, heigho!
    Chillyman!
    Young and willing, heigho!
    Sweet and killing ole bo',
    Dandy, heigho!
    Chillyman!"


The Newfoundland looked on and grumbled because he had no hands.
They got the main and the mizzen-yards round to the same song with
some laughter, because Hardy put a few words of sweetness into his
invention as he sang, and the girl's voice was rich with appreciation
as the flute of her lips swept the carol of her delight into his manly
tones.

Then they saw to the fore-tack and sheet and to the jib-sheets, and
the ship floated away steadily round in graceful salutations to the
dejected handkerchiefs on the quarter. Hardy cast the wheel adrift and
told the girl to hold it whilst he steadied the yards by hauling as
taut as his pair of hands could the weather-braces of the fore and main
and the lee-braces of the mizzen.

This done he stood beside Julia to teach her how to steer.




CHAPTER XVI.

PRACTICAL SEAMANSHIP


He is a lucky sailor to whom is granted the opportunity of teaching a
girl with a romantic face and a beautiful figure the art of steering a
full-rigged ship. Though the sailor is often in the company of ladies
at sea, he is kept very severely forward, whilst the ladies are kept
very severely aft; and if they formed a seraglio imprisoned on soft
couches and fanned by eunuchs, behind walls ten feet thick, Jack at sea
could not know less of the ladies at sea.

Hardy's job was therefore a delightful one, and the more delightful
because the ship was now homeward bound, and the morning was fair and
the sea courteous and graceful in caress.

"Do you see that black mark on the white under the glass?"

"Yes," answered the girl.

"It is called the lubber's mark: it is the business of the helmsman
to keep a point of the compass aiming at it; that point is the ship's
course. Do you observe that the point that is levelled at the lubber's
mark is north-by-east?"

"If you call it so I shall remember it," answered the girl.

"The lubber's point," Hardy continued, "represents an imaginary line
ruled straight from the stern into the very eyes of the ship, where the
bowsprit and jib-booms point the road. If, then, I tell you to keep
that point called north-by-east pointing as steadily as the swing of
the ship's head will permit to the lubber's mark, then I am asking you
to steer the ship in the direction I wish her to go."

She frowned a little in contemplation at the compass card, and said, "I
believe I understand you."

"I will teach you to box the compass presently," Hardy went on. "You
will easily get the names, and will not be at a loss if I should say
the course is northeast or nor'-nor'east, and so on. And now see here:
the action of a ship's wheel exactly reverses the action of a boat's
tiller. Look under that grating; that is the tiller, and when you
revolve the wheel the chains which drag the tiller sweep the rudder
on one side or the other, so that when I tell you to put your helm
a-starboard you revolve your wheel to the left, which will bring the
rudder over to the left; and when I say port your helm you revolve your
wheel to the right, which carries your rudder over to the right. If you
steered by the tiller, then to the order of starboard your helm, you
would put your tiller to the right. Do you understand?"

The machinery of the compass, the wheel, the tiller, and its chains
girdling the barrel, was all before her, and she would have been a
blockhead if she had not grasped the simple matter speedily--but you,
madam, who are a lady and read this, may be puzzled; possibly you are
not, but if you are I do not wonder.

"Now," he said, "I want the ship to be off her course: mark what I do;
she shall be a little to leeward of her course."

He put the helm by a few spokes over, and the binnacle card revolved
two points from its course as the ship's head rounded away with the
wind.

"Now," said Hardy, "I bring her again to her course: observe what I do:
we call this putting the helm down."

He brought her to her course and arrested her at it, and the girl
cried, eagerly, "Yes, yes, I see. Let me hold the wheel, George."

She grasped the spokes, a swelling, beautiful, conquering figure, a
delight to the eye, a triumph of British girlhood, one of those women
who are the mothers of the gallant and glorious sons that man the
signal-halliards of our country.

"Now bring the ship to windward of her course," said Hardy.

"I do not understand you," she answered, reproachfully.

"Make that bowsprit yonder point _there_," he exclaimed, and he
indicated with outstretched hand a part of the horizon to windward of
the bow.

"Why didn't you speak more plainly? I can do it."

She revolved the wheel by three or four spokes, and hailed with eyes of
transport and conquest the response of the compass card.

"Do you understand?" said Hardy.

"My dear," she answered, "I can steer your ship perfectly."

"Not yet," he said, "but you are not far off."

Thus proceeded this pleasant tuition, and for half an hour Hardy
stood beside the wheel teaching his sweetheart how to steer. The
Newfoundland sat alongside of them and seemed to listen, for his loving
eyes were often on Hardy's face whilst he spoke. He tried the girl
again and again, and at the end of half an hour she was expressing
keen appreciation of his delightful lecture by dutiful movement of the
wheel. But, indeed, the ship did not need much steering that fine day.
Had the helm been lashed it is probable that, braced as the yards lay,
and pulling in steadfast accord as the sails were, the ship would have
made a tranquil passage of an hour with no other check to the dull
kicks of the rudder than a rope's end.

He left the girl to steer whilst he tautened here and there a brace
with the watch-tackle; then entered the galley, saw to the fire, the
coppers, and their contents. He was accepting an enormous obligation;
could he discharge it? He felt the heart of a dozen men in his pulse,
and he knew that if God did not smite her with sickness the spirit of
his heroic girl would make her the match of any man, able-bodied or
ordinary; so, though the _York_ might be undermanned, her crew of a man
and a girl, with a dog for a lookout, would carry her home.

The weather was so fine that he did not mean to make a job of
seamanship. He did not intend to keep a lookout for ships unless it
was to escape collision, because no ship that hove in sight, however
willing, should be allowed to help him. The _York_ was to be his own
and the girl's fortune, and, much as he respected the sailor, no man
afloat would be permitted to share in this estate.

He stood a minute on the forecastle to admire the beautiful fabric,
and to pity the powerlessness which held imprisoned the cloths whose
lustrous spaces would have climbed to the trucks in bright breasts
yearning for home. Afar trembled the pocket-handkerchiefs of the sodden
brig. The naked vision could no longer distinguish their appeal. She
broke the continuity of the girdle, that was all, and she hovered on
the skirts of the deep like a gibbet beheld afar. Hardy went right aft
to the wheel; it was in the afternoon, and the speed of the ship was
about four miles an hour.

"We will make ourselves happy," said he. "This is yachting, and if you
strain the imagination of your eyes you shall see close aboard the
white terraces of the Isle of Wight."

She laughed and answered, "We shall be off that island some day."

"No fear," he replied. "Don't suppose I mean to sail her up channel.
Plymouth is our port, and as we sha'n't be able to let go the anchor,
I'll seize a blue shirt to the fore-lift and that 'ull bring a
man-o'-war's boat alongside."

"Why?" she asked.

"Because it is the merchant seaman's signal that he wants to join the
white ensign, and the naval officer is always greedy for men."

But this was spoken many years ago. The signal of the blue shirt has
been hauled down and buried with many other customs under the thin
white wake of the metal battleship.

"Why do you want a naval boat; would not any other boat do?" asked
Julia.

"No; the Royal Navy claims no salvage and gets none. Any other boat
would make a claim for assistance, and I mean that our cake shall be
whole."

He brought two chairs out of the cabin, gave one to Julia and took one
himself, with his hand on a spoke. Their faithful friend the dog lay in
the westering sun beside them; and now they talked of what they should
do in the night, and came to terms about the discipline of the crew
whilst the ship kept the sea.

"I shall be on deck as much as I can," said he. "I must sleep on deck;
I do not choose to lie without shelter during my watch below. I'll
bring a hen-coop aft, thoroughly cleanse it, and put a mattress into it
after knocking away the rails. That's a good idea!"

"Excellent!" she exclaimed; "and clear out another hen-coop for me.
How romantic to sleep in a hen-coop!" and she laughed softly, looking
lovingly at him.

"If I should crow in my sleep whilst you're at the wheel you'll know
that I am being hen-pecked."

"Can't we put Sailor to some use?" she asked.

The animal lifted his head to the sound of his name, and all was
intelligence in his soft, pathetic eyes.

"You shall sleep on a mattress at the foot of the companion-steps,
where you will be sheltered. I have an idea. Are you strong enough
to bring your mattress out of your berth and place it on deck with a
pillow?"

"Chaw!" she answered, with a shrug. "I have lifted an old woman out of
bed. What do you want me to do?"

"Spread your mattress on the port side of the steps, get a pillow, and
stretch yourself upon it, and sing out when you're ready."

She instantly rose and descended; the dog was about to follow her.

"Lie down, Sailor!" and the dog obeyed.

In a few moments the clear voice sounded, "On deck there!"

"Hallo!"

"All ready, George."

"Shut your eyes and seem asleep. Sailor!" The dog immediately stood up
with an inquiring look, ears slightly lifted. "Fetch her, Sailor! fetch
her!"

The dog trembled, and looked with a sort of passion about him.

"Fetch her, Sailor! fetch her!" shouted Hardy, pointing down the hatch.

The noble creature sprang down the steps. In a moment Julia began to
scream.

"Oh!" he heard her say; "he is tearing my dress, George."

"Come up with him; it is all right," he bellowed. And up came the girl
with her skirt in the mouth of the dog, who tried to get in front of
her to drag her as though they were both in the sea and awash; but she
filled the way and the Newfoundland could not jam past her.

The dog held on till she was seated; he had not torn her dress, and the
sweethearts fell into a fit of immoderate laughter, whilst the dog by
pantomime of tail and motion exhibited every mark of satisfaction.

"What a wonderful animal!" said Julia.

"That breed is cleverer than we are," answered Hardy, "and as humane as
angels. He understood me; it was like bidding him jump overboard after
you."

"But what is your object, George?"

"I might want you, and if you are in a sound sleep and a breeze is
blowing in low thunder over the companion-way, I might yelp myself into
the disease of laryngitis without awakening you. The dog rests beside
me and is at hand to call you."

"You are very clever, George. The more I see of you the cleverer you
become. Dear old Sailor! must he lie beside you on deck unsheltered?"

"I shall lash an empty cask to the grating; there is plenty of
sailcloth forward, and he shall have a kennel. Take the wheel, Julia;
there is something to be done before the night falls. The breeze
freshens too; hurrah, see how straight the white race flies astern of
her! Under such canvas too! Keep her steady and don't be afraid."

"Afraid!" she answered with a glance at him, which made him feel as if
he was married.

He walked forward, laughing, trusting his girl as though she had been
an able seaman. A great deal of confusion followed when he caught a few
hens out of one coop and thrust them into the other. Such heartrending
screams of despair, and two cocks and five or six hens in the other
coop strained their throats in clamorous sympathy, and you could have
sworn that the whole crowd of them, cocks and all, had just laid
eggs. When the hen-coop was clear he passed his knife through the
lashings, fetched an axe, swept the bars out of their fixings to the
accompaniment of the orchestra in the other hen-coop, drew a bucket of
water, and with a scrubbing brush thoroughly cleansed the dirty thing,
which had the width of a trunk, though much longer.

He found it was heavy to drag, being a somewhat solid structure, so
he called the Newfoundland to him and harnessed him to the coop by the
watch-tackle. The dog tugged with the vigour of a man, Hardy shoved,
and the hen-coop rushed along the deck right aft, whilst Julia with
tears of laughter in her eyes kept the speeding ship to her course as
though she had done nothing but steer ever since she could stand. But
there was more yet to be done, and the sun was setting. He took the
cooked meat out of the coppers and placed the steaming mass on a dish
until it should grow cold.

Suddenly his ear was taken by a strange noise of hissing over the
side; it was something more than the sheeting of the ship through the
soft whiteness she made. It was like a continuous snarl threading the
blowing off of steam.

He looked over the rail and saw the boat they had come aboard in from
the brig rushing with comet-like velocity close alongside, like a
little child swept to her home by the enraged mother that had lost her.

He debated a minute, and then said to himself, "She is of no use,
neither she, nor the fresh water, nor the grub that is in her."

He was making his way into the channels to cast the painter adrift.

"Where are you going?" shrieked Julia at the wheel. He explained.

"If I see you in the water behind me I shall jump after you," she
cried, with a look of alarm and real anxiety.

"Can't I drop into a ship's chains without going overboard?" he
answered, and disappeared, and a short scream at the wheel attended his
going.

The boat was easily released, and to the great joy of Julia the manly
face of her sailor was once more visible. They both watched the boat as
she receded.

"She'll be fallen in with," said Hardy, "and some skipper will log
her and make a fearful mystery of her. Every tragic possibility of
shipwreck is in her. She is the issue of fire, collision, the leak, the
meteor-cloven craft--"

"What do you mean?" interrupted Julia.

"The ship's off her course," said Hardy. "That's quite right. Three
spokes did it. Now look how fair the compass course points to the
lubber's mark."

"What's a meteor-cloven ship?" she asked.

"I never heard of a big ship having been sunk by a meteor," he
answered; "but I have been told of a great stone dropping out of the
sky with the meteoric flash of a fallen star plump through the hatchway
of a schooner and down through her: the sailors took to the pumps and
then to the boats. That's what I mean."

And now he must prepare a bed for himself and the dog. He could not
find an empty barrel, but just against the windlass the cook or the
cabin servant had placed for firewood perhaps, or for other reasons, a
big empty case, which might have contained wine or commodities of some
sort. This placed on its side would do, and as it was too heavy for him
to carry, and too rough for him to shove, he harnessed the Newfoundland
to it as to the coop, and Sailor, helped by Hardy, ran the case close
against the wheel.

"The ship is sailing very fast," said Julia.

"A little over five knots, perhaps," answered Hardy. "We wants legs, my
love. Blow, blow, my sweet breeze." And he sang to himself whilst he
got the box on to its side and secured it to the grating.

"Now for your bed, Sailor, and then we'll go to supper."

He reflected, and remembered that there was straw in the fore-peak for
the use of the old sow that had been and was gone--recollect that he
had been mate of this ship, and knew exactly where to look for what he
wanted. He dropped into the fore-peak, which was like descending into
a hell of smells and the mutter of troubled water, and reappeared with
his arms full of straw, transforming Julia's wistful face into beaming
pleasure, for his briefest disappearance struck a sort of horror to her
heart.

Thus was the Newfoundland housed, and before making up his own bed in
the hen-coop the sweethearts went to supper.

The girl had been standing some time at the wheel. It was proper she
should be relieved, so Hardy grasped the spokes whilst Julia went
below, followed by the dog, to fetch something to eat. She arrived
with wine, biscuits, jam, and tinned meats. You will remember that she
had been an under-stewardess, and was used to waiting upon people. But
that was not all: she had nursed old ladies, had for a very lean wage
indeed washed, dressed, and walked out with children; in fact, she long
afterward told Hardy that, always having emigration in her mind, she
had worked at a laundry for some weeks. In point of service, therefore,
she was well equipped for life, and Hardy saw in her the helpful woman,
the wise and devoted wife, beautiful in figure and, now that she was
happy, most engaging in face.

The three of the ship's company ate their supper, and two of them
talked and watched the sunset. The further north you go the greater is
the glory of the sun's departure; yet yonder was a magnificent scene of
golden pavilions hung with tapestries of deep blue ether; the flight
of the eastern cloud was like incense pouring from the evening star,
unrisen or invisible: the vapour fled on the wings of the wind to
enrich the light in the west by duplication of scarlet splendour, and
the ship blew steadily along controlled by the hand of Hardy, who was
sometimes fed by Julia.

All about was the soft, sweet noise of creaming seas; the brig astern
had vanished into airy nothing, and the _York_ sailed a kingdom of her
own.

"Will there be a moon?" asked Julia.

"Between nine and ten," he answered. "A slice of moon. We can do
without her. There is light in starshine, and we can do without that
also. I must light the binnacle lamp and get the side-lights over. I
thank God that this wind promises steadiness. Yet it may shift, and
then I shall want the dog to awake you whilst I see what a single pair
of arms can do with the braces."

"Do you think I shall not hear you if you shout?" said she.

"I'll not chance it," he answered.

"Do you believe we shall carry this ship home?" she asked.

"I'll not hope, for hoping is bragging, but we'll try, Julia. A man
cannot add a cubit to his mother's gift of stature by standing on
stilts; but we'll try, Julia."

"Who can do more?" she asked.

"Hold this wheel while I light the lamps."

He set about this job and speedily despatched it, knowing exactly where
to lay his hands upon everything he wanted, then brought his mattress
up along with the rug and jammed it into his hen-coop, and lay down. It
was rather a tight fit with the mattress, but it gave him the length he
wanted, and if he did not start in his sleep he need not knock his head
against the ceiling. He carefully secured the hen-coop to belaying pins.

"That'll provide," said he, "against being taken aback."

He then went below and lighted the cabin lamp, and saw to Julia's bed
by readjustment of the mattress clear of the draughts circling down the
companionway. He fetched covering for her, and it was for her to make
herself comfortable when the time came.

By this hour it was dark; there was no light upon the deep save the
musket-like wink of the sea flash. But the stars swarmed in brilliant
processions betwixt the clouds over the mastheads, and their subtle
light was in the air, and you saw things dimly. The Newfoundland was
asleep in his kennel beside the wheel. Julia, who had come aboard with
nothing on but the clothes she stood in, fetched the captain's cloak
from the captain's cabin. It was a long coat with a warm cape, and I
call it a cloak because it wasn't a great-coat. It clothed her to her
little feet, and she sat as warm in it as in the embrace of eiderdown.

"How shall we manage to keep watch?" she asked.

"I shall keep the deck till twelve," he answered; "I have a watch, and
there is the binnacle light which from time to time will want trimming.
Sailor will call you at twelve--see now his use? And I'll trim the
lights, and lie close beside you there for a couple of hours, for I can
do with very little sleep, and the more sleep you can get the better,
because you will keep strong and will be able to steer in the day
whilst I take an off-shore spell in my coop."

"If I felt I could sleep, I would go and lie down at once," she
answered; "but I love to sit and talk with you. What time is it,
George?"

"Nearly half-past eight," he answered, putting his watch to the
binnacle.

"Grant me till nine, I may then be sleepy. But I feel as if that sleep
of drug was going to suffice me a year."

"Oh, my heart, am not I rejoiced that you should be with me!" he
exclaimed, in a soft and melodious note of love. "Think if that madman
had missed the brig and sailed on!"

She shuddered and answered, "I dare not think." Then after a pause she
said, "Suppose a steamer came in sight, wouldn't she tow us home?"

"I wouldn't give her the chance."

"Why?"

"She would demand salvage, and get it."

"It is shameful," she exclaimed, "that a ship should be paid for
helping a ship in distress."

"The shipowner knows no shame," answered Hardy, "and neither does his
dumb confederate, the underwriter. One builds a jerry ship to sink,
and the other pins a policy on to the villain's back that he may sleep
whether his ship goes down or not."

It was strange to look along the decks and witness no figure of man. No
shape of seaman was on the forecastle to extinguish a thousand stars as
the jib-booms rose pointing to the sky; no shadow of man stirred in the
waist or the main-deck. The mighty loneliness of the deep was in this
ship from the wheel to where the forecastle rails clasped hands above
the figure-head. But sentience was in her and she knew it, and nobly
confessed the spirit of control by the glad, direct and cleaving shear
of her stem.

Happy is the sailor who can sit beside his sweetheart on board ship on
a fine night and discourse of love and other matters without dread of
the eye of the master-mariner. This couple talked of the safe arrival
of the ship. They would buy a little cottage; they would not go to sea
any more. It is always a cottage well inshore that is the sailor's
dream. It was our glorious Nelson's for many years; witness his letters
to his wife, whom he loved before the traitress wound her brilliant
coils round the hero's heart, and numbed the loyalty of its pulse to
one who had cherished him in sickness and was his dearest one when the
shadow of his life was yet short in the sun of his glory.

The dust of the shooting star glittered on high; the steady voice
of the night wind filled the shrouds with the melodies of invisible
spirits; the white wake gleamed astern like the dusty highway which is
the road to home; the softly plunging bows awoke the minstrelsy of the
surge. It was night upon the Atlantic, and no twinkle of side-lamp was
to be seen upon the sea line.

At nine by Hardy's watch, Julia kissed her sweetheart's lips and held
him by the hand a little.

"Good night, good night," she said; "I will say a prayer before I
sleep."

"Never forget that," answered Hardy. "Be sure it is He that hath made
us and not we ourselves. Pray to him and bless him and thank him, and
his love will be with us."

Is this the common talk of the sea? Do Smollett and Marryat make their
heroes converse like this? Thrust your hands into your ribs, ye ribald
crew, and laugh with godless merriment at this presentment of a sailor
who was a gentleman, who feared God, to whom the helplessness of his
companion was no appeal to the heart that loved her, respected her, and
desired that she should be true to herself and to him.

He was alone at the wheel, and now she was gone to rest and the dog was
asleep he was alone in the ship, but he could keep a lookout as well as
the dog, and the dog would not be called upon to serve until the girl
was alone at the wheel whilst her lover slept.

Many thoughts were this fine young sailor's; he was full of hope
and courage, and often bent his mind to shrewd contemplation of
contingency--the shift of the breeze, the head wind, the gale, and
other gay humours and tragic scowls of the life. But the winch was
four men, and the watch-tackle a little company of hands, and he did
not despair. Sometimes he meditated on the port he should make; if it
came to the worst, then, when in the English Channel, he would shape a
course for Ramsgate Harbour and run her on the mud, and no man must be
suffered to board her, for the money of the safety of the ship was to
be his and hers, and that was the settled resolution of his soul.

When twelve o'clock came round he did not wish to sleep; he would have
chosen rather that Julia should have slumbered until dawn. But the
refreshment of rest was an imperious demand with which he must comply
for his own and for the sake of the girl, the safety of their noble
companion, the safety of the ship and her cargo. He thought he would
try Julia by calling, and he shouted four or five times, but, as he
had foreseen, the sweep of the wind broke his voice to pieces in the
companionway, and her ears were blocked with sleep.

The dog started up and came to his side at the outcry of the
man. "Fetch her, Sailor! fetch her!" he cried, pointing to the
companion-hatch.

The Newfoundland barked and seemed to wonder.

"Fetch her, Sailor! fetch her!" he roared again, still pointing.

This time the dog understood. He sprang to the ladder and vanished,
and a moment later Julia's cries were piercing. But it was merely the
noise of terror such as would be excited in a girl awakened from a
sound sleep by the resolute drag of a dog's teeth. She understood the
thing in a minute, patted the dog, who was dragging her by her skirt to
the ladder, snatched up her hat and the captain's cloak, and arrived
on deck with the dog, whose tail timed the wag of the stars over the
mastheads.

"Have you slept?" he asked.

"Too well," she answered. "I screamed because Sailor broke in upon a
nightmare and fitted it."

"Will you be able to hold the wheel?"

"I'll try. What is the time?"

"After midnight--nearly one bell," he answered.

She stood at the wheel, and her firm grasp was full of promise of
control.

"Is that the course?" she inquired, looking into the compass.

"Yes, and keep her to it as best you can by the starshine whilst I trim
the lamp."

"What is our pace, dear?"

"Six and a half at least," he answered.

He made haste to trim the lamp and saw to the side-lights, and his
spirits were high and his hope more exalted yet when he saw how well
the girl steered. A big ship for a girl to control! And all the sweet
archness of her incomparable posture was unconsciously expressed to
her lover as he flashed the light over her before adjusting it for the
illumination of the card.

"Now for a little supper," said he, "then I shall lie down."

He fetched some food and wine, and ate himself whilst he helped Julia
to eat; the dog was remembered; and all the while he kept his eyes
fixed in critical attention upon the girl's handling of the wheel.

"Sailor, go forward and keep a lookout, sir," he exclaimed, and this
was an order which, as you know, the dog understood, and was accustomed
to obey. He had supped and was thankful, and, faithful to his duty as
Tom Bowline, the brave Newfoundland trotted forward to the forecastle,
and took up a position of lookout betwixt the knight-heads.

"Here is my watch, Julia," said Hardy. "Call me at half-past two--but
sooner, at the instant of need, if your arm should weary or the breeze
shift and drive you off your course. I am a sailor and used to keeping
my ears open in sleep. I am close beside you there, and your first cry
will bring me out like a cork to the drag of a corkscrew."

"I will call you at half-past two," she answered. "She is as easy to
steer as a boat. Look how steady the course swings at the mark there!"

He paused and gazed round him. The white cloud was speeding swiftly
across the stars, and the ship hummed with the wind as the thrill of
its ebon lines of gear, of shroud and stay and back-stay, shook its
transport into the plank. The glass was steady--he had seen to that
when he went below for the midnight supper; and there was no sign of
worse, or changeful, or other weather within or on the verge of the
mighty liquid sweep, whose heart was the ship, carrying onwards always
the illimitable girdle on which she floated, the central figure of the
night.

Hardy got into the hen-coop--a tight fit; but in it he was well
sheltered, for the coop was under the lee of the weather-bulwark. He
drew an old coat he had brought up over him, pillowed his head on the
rolled-up flag he had thrown into the hen-coop, and in a minute was
asleep.

A sailor's sleep is sound, and sacred as the slumber of death to his
messmates and shipmates as they mutter softly round about him and
tread the upper plank with airy feet that all shall be hushed in the
forecastle--hushed unless it be the crying of the wind or the sullen
thunder of the bow-sea, or the cries of the watch on high furling or
reefing to the trumpet commands of the quarter-deck. Nothing in all
ocean romance is comparable to this picture of a full-rigged ship in
command of a girl who is alone at the wheel whilst her lover sleeps,
whilst a dog on the forecastle-head watches the ocean line with
faithful eye for the sparkle of light, for the dim sheen of canvas, for
the stream of smoke spangled with the stars of the furnace, that shall
make him bark in barks as truthful of indication as the strokes of the
tongue upon the ship's bell.

The wind held a sweet, true breeze as Hardy had foreseen, whilst that
brave little heart kept the ship's course steady to the lubber's point.
She was not tired, sleep had refreshed her; standing was no trial;
she was warmly draped, and felt a sort of glory in this occupation of
sea-throne, which enabled her to do her duty and to hold her sweetheart
in tranquil and most necessary repose. She was quick in intelligence,
and the sea was small and its weight was of the summer; and she found
a woman's delight in her power of governing, for the ship answered to
her white hand with a courtier-like grace; she felt to be queen of the
lordly fabric, and her spell at the wheel was a triumph of British
girlhood.




CHAPTER XVII.

THE BOAT-FULL


It was hard upon half-past two in the morning. The breeze had been
blowing steadily throughout, and the white pace of the ship was
more than six knots in the hour. Julia put her hand into her pocket
and pulled out Hardy's watch and saw what o'clock it was; the stars
flashed over the mastheads with each floating reel of the buoyant,
girl-controlled fabric; the silver dust of the speeding star vanishing
in a length of fainting light scored the deep midnight blue between
the clouds; the voice of the ocean rejoicing in the swinging dance of
the breeze filled the air with sounds of the cataract, the foam of the
waterfall, the wrangle of the freshet with the sea.

Suddenly, far forward past the shadowy arch of the fore-course, you
heard the deep bay of a great dog. A ship was in sight!

"O God!" cried Julia at the wheel, interpreting the deep-noted thunder
of the great creature, "What am I to do?"

But such a bark as Sailor could deliver was not to sound unheeded
in the sleeping ear of a seaman. Hardy started, rolled out of his
hen-coop, and was by Julia's side in a few pulses.

"I see her," he shouted, and seizing the wheel he put it hard a-port.

Then on the port bow loomed an ashen apparition with one red light,
like the hideous stare of a drunkard, visible in the stagger of the
bows. It was a full-rigged ship, clothed to her trucks with white
canvas, about a mile and a half distant. She was standing to the
southward and westward, and the red eye of the _York_ was upon her;
there would have been no collision, but Sailor's voice was timely.
Hardy brought the ship to her course again, and the stranger was on the
bow, sliding like a churchyard phantom over the glimmering tombstones
of the deep.

"She is an American," said Hardy.

"How do you know?" asked Julia.

"She is clothed in cotton, that is why I know. What a noble lookout is
Sailor. Didn't you see her?"

"I see her now, but not before now," she answered.

"Brave dog," cried Hardy.

He called to him and the Newfoundland came rushing aft, with many
tokens visible in the starshine of the emotion of satisfaction which
good dogs feel when they have done their duty.

"You are wearied out, Julia," said Hardy. "Do you feel as stiff with
standing as a shroud of wire-rigging?"

"It is half-past two," answered the girl. "Here is your watch, George.
Lie down, dearest, and I will stand here for another hour; I am not
tired."

"Hold the wheel whilst I trim this light," was his answer. When this
was done he said, "Now to bed, my lass."

She heard command in his voice, and answered, "I should love to lie in
your hen-coop."

"Take off your hat and get into it. 'Tis snug enough. Pull the jacket
over you, and sleep--sleep--sleep; and then you will be able to thank
Mary Queen who sent the sleep that slid into your soul. But first go
below and get a little wine and food."

She was as obedient as a good sailor, refreshed herself in the cabin
where the lamp was burning, and returned with a glass of rum and water
and a biscuit.

"And my pipe," said he. And he told her where to find the pipe and the
tobacco.

Before she got into the hen-coop he said to her:

"I wish I could teach the dog to steer; but that is impossible. But I
tell you what--when those yards need trimming I shall want some one to
hold on to the slack, and by all that's good Sailor shall do it."

"Why doesn't God enable such a creature as this to speak as we do?"
said Julia. "It has the mind--why should it lack the voice, when even
the filthiest cannibal may use his tongue?"

"Get you to bed, Julia."

She crept into the hen-coop, wrapped her clothes about her legs, pulled
the sailor's coat over her, and lay watching her lover.

Hardy stood at the wheel with a pipe in his mouth, and the dog slept
in his kennel alongside. It was not for long that Julia was allowed to
sleep. When it was a quarter before four, when the darkness that grows
deeper before the dawn dwelt like a sable vapour upon the face of the
sea, when the flash of the star was fast in its westward sweep, and the
red scar of moon looked dully down like a piece of broken glass thick
stained, through which the crimson splendour above drains and oozes,
the wind shifted suddenly three points; 'twas then almost abeam.

He called to the girl. Her awakening found her astounded by her
situation. Was she in a coffin? He called again, and the saint-like
voice of love brought her from her sepulchre of hen-coop with an eager
cry of, "I am wide awake. What is it?"

"The wind has shifted, Julia. Do you know what I mean?"

"The wind has changed."

"Yes, you are awake. Take hold of this wheel."

She grasped the spokes. The dog would be of no use then; all Hardy
could do was to slacken away the weather-braces and haul taut the
lee-braces as well as a single pair of British arms could. He clapped
on the watch-tackle here and there, and made the best job possible
under the circumstances; but he was bothered by the want of somebody
to hold on to the slack. However, by belaying the watch-tackle and
then belaying the brace he in a one-man fashion managed it, and when
he returned to the wheel the ship slipped to her course again with her
shortened canvas rap-full, and a wake like a mill-race.

"Hurrah!" cried Hardy, with a slap of his thigh; "storm along, old
Stormy! Whilst she creaks she holds! I'll teach that dog this morning
to pull a rope. He has teeth and sense and some sailors have neither,
because their teeth are worn out by chewing salt junk, and the crimp
drugs their brains till the skull is like a rotten nut, full of dust."

"It is my turn at the wheel," said Julia.

"Just you go and turn in," he answered. "Here's the skipper and
there's the bed. I shall take an off-shore spell sometime to-day. Rest
till breakfast-time, and then you shall light the galley fire, and boil
some coffee."

She crept into the hen-coop after holding the binnacle lamp to his
pipe, and the ship moved in the glimmering shadow through the hour of
darkness with slightly restless yards at every solemn plunge, for, like
the figure of a beautiful woman, she was the fairer in grace and the
easier in carriage when moulded by the fingers of art.

Sunrise is beautiful at sea on a fine morning; the sky ripples with
silver and rose, and the sea uplifts its fountain note of rejoicing
as that great imperial mystery of the heavens, the sun, floats off
the verge of the deep. The dawn found Hardy at the wheel and the girl
asleep in the hen-coop. He did not curiously seek for a ship in sight,
for he did not stand in need of help, and would reject it if offered. A
sail was twinkling like a peak of iceberg right abeam to starboard, and
Hardy looked at her, and thought of twenty other things. The breeze had
slackened slightly; it was still a pleasant summer breast of sea, and
the ship's speed was four. All plain sail might have given her seven,
and the wings of the stunsail from topgallant yard-arm to swinging-boom
end might have helped her into eight. No matter! She was homeward
bound, and there was no growler in her ship's company if it was not the
dog.

When Julia came out of her strange little bedroom she arose like
Arethusa in Shelley's poem: rosy and fire-eyed, sweet with the
refreshment of slumber, and sweeter perhaps to a man's eye because she
was unadorned. She pressed her lips to her sweetheart's cheek.

"Let me take the wheel," said she, "while you rest."

"Can you light a fire?" he answered.

She looked at him with reproachful wonder.

"What cannot I do? What has not poverty made me do?"

"Will you light the galley fire?" said he, "and fill a kettle out of
that scuttle-butt, boil some water, and give us a hot drink of coffee?
Poor old Crummie is dead and gone, but her spirit survives in tins, and
I believe there is some preserved milk in the cabin."

She did not waste much time in lighting the galley fire. Everything was
at hand. Whilst the kettle was boiling she fetched food from the cabin,
and on top of the dog's kennel made some little display of tablecloth,
cup and saucer, and knife and fork. This disturbed Sailor, who at once
beheld the distant sail and saluted it.

"You shall be even more useful than that," said Hardy to the dog. "This
morning I will look for the key of the safe and judge of the value of
the contents."

"It is pleasanter than yachting," exclaimed Julia.

"We have to cross the Bay," replied Hardy. "It may come on hard from
the east'ard and blow us to Boston."

"Is it always rough in the Bay of Biscay?" said the girl.

"I have swept up and down it often in my life," replied Hardy, "and
five times out of ten we were becalmed on it, and thankful for
catspaws. The thunder of the Bay continues to roar loud in the song,
and alarms the man in the street who talks of taking shipping south.
Let him be hove to off the Horn in fifty-eight degrees south. Suppose
you see if the kettle boils."

They made an excellent breakfast and so did the dog. Hardy ate and
held the wheel, the ship, as though in love with her people, almost
steered herself. There would come a change; the God-given mood of the
sea is sweet, it is the weather that breaks her heart. As a drunken
husband seizes his pale and pretty wife by the hair, and flogs her
into shrieks and madness, so does the weather serve the ocean. It is
good for the fish who breathe thereby, but bad for the passenger at
whose white, overhanging face the invisible eye of the fish is uplifted
languishingly.

"Now, Julia," said Hardy, "hold the wheel whilst I teach the dog a
lesson in practical seamanship."

He stepped to the mizzen-royal halliards and called to the dog, which
followed. He cast the rope off the pin, but kept one turn under the
pin, and said to the dog:

"Seize it and pull!" holding out the slack.

The dog with much wagging of tail, as though he reckoned that Hardy
meant some caper-cutting, seized the rope with his teeth. It was now
a job. He wanted the dog to pull at the rope, so that when he swigged
off at the halliards the dog by dragging would keep the slack taut as
though strained by human hands. The intelligence of the Newfoundland
is proverbial and marvellous, but it took Hardy all an hour to make
the noble creature see what it was expected to do. He then did it, and
Julia, whose laugh had been constant throughout the procedure, let go
the wheel to clap her hands, whilst Hardy with purple face swigged off
upon the halliards, and the dog, with forward slanting legs, strained
the slack. All three then rested: Hardy steered sitting, for, as I have
told you, a little movement of the spokes sufficed.

After smoking a pipe whilst Julia looked to the galley fire--not with
a view to cooking, there was plenty to eat--the sailor yielded the
wheel to his sweetheart, and went below into the captain's cabin to
explore the contents of the safe. First of all, he was to find the
key; this proved a hunt, running into ten minutes; then of course he
found the bunch of keys exactly where he looked last and should have
looked at first--in the captain's desk. The key of the safe was one of
a few on a ring. When he opened the safe he found several large metal
boxes like cash-boxes. All these boxes were to be fitted by the keys
on the ring. The first was flush with magnificent jewelry--bracelets,
earrings, rings; and the flash of the diamond was like the sparkle
of the sea under the sun. The second metal box was filled with gold
chains of all sorts of pattern, some massive, some delicate as twine,
of very beautiful workmanship. In the third box were watches and seals,
all gold, of splendid manufacture, for in those days the watch was
handsome, the mechanism exquisite as the chronometer of to-day, and the
gold case was heavy. The fourth and last box contained curiosities,
such as a Jew dealer with a yellow grin of awe would steal out of some
mysterious hiding-place and show you with something of breathlessness
and a frequent glance to right and left, and sometimes over his
shoulder.

How am I to describe these things? A discoloured Nelson tall as a
thumb, commanding the combined fleets in a cocked hat, on a large seal
on which was graved Trafalgar. A little Napoleon in dull ivory on a
massive gold seal with indistinguishable initials. Very old rings,
very old gold spoons--but this is not an auctioneer's catalogue. Hardy
locked everything up.

"Julia's and mine," said he, laughing softly; by which he meant the
value of the salvage of the precious fal-lals.

He restored the ring of keys to the desk at which he glanced with a
reverential eye, for he saw a little packet of letters in faded ink,
and he knew that there too lay in a little circular box small curls of
the hair of the dead--the wife and the little drummer. The captain had
shown them to him, and the hair was the boy's when two years old. Hardy
looked at the drum, at the little bed, at the medicine-chest, at the
little clothes hanging at the bulkhead, and stepped out with a sigh,
thinking in a sort of blind way about the mercy of God, the sufferings
of madness, and the death of little children.

"Have you found any jewels?" asked Julia, as she stood at the wheel.

"More than you could wear, my dear," he answered, "if you were as
many-limbed and many-headed as an Indian god."

"Are they worth much?"

"I am not a pawnbroker," he answered; "besides, I have been looking at
the little drum and it has drummed the jewelry out of my head."

"For whom were the jewels intended?"

"There is always a market for trash of that sort in the Colonies," he
replied.

"Why don't you lie down and get some sleep?" she exclaimed.

"I shall keep awake," he answered, "until I have shot the sun, and then
perhaps I may sleep for an hour, weather permitting."

As he spoke these words he was looking at the sea right abeam, and held
up his hand in a gesture of wonder, which arrested something that Julia
was about to say.

"Good God!" cried Hardy. "What's going on there?"

It was about a mile and a half off, and just in that place the sea was
working in a sort of convulsion, coil upon coil of dark blue brine
wound round and round like mighty sea snakes, whose sport was as deadly
as the pursuit of the harpooned dolphin. These amazing throes of brine
upon which the sun was sweetly shining, and from which and to which the
summer breast of ocean breathed in the rejoicing of the early morning,
in a minute or two grew savage with snaps and leaps of foam, with
prong-like upheavals of water, with crested shootings, and the area
whitened to the hue of a star, and the volcanic fury began. The ship
trembled. You heard no thunder of explosion; the roar of the fire under
the ooze was dumb when it penetrated the spacious hall of the sea; but
the raging torment was visible in a sudden mighty upheaval of foaming
water, smokeless but glorious with its cloud of spray.

A miracle! From up from deepest soundings had been forked the figure
of a drowned fabric, and as a ball plays poised on the feathering
of a fountain so floated the form of a small vessel with two lower
masts standing, crowning the summit of that fire-expelled, pyramidal,
and towering volume of foam. Such sights have been witnessed at sea,
for the ocean is the arena of the sublime wonder, the heart-thrilling
miracle; it is the mirror of God, and unlike the land its breast
reflects his lights. The lovers gazed, the dog gazed; the ship seemed
to dwell under her curves of canvas as though she paused to look.

"How marvellous!" cried Julia.

Hardy rushed for the glass. He caught the poised object before it
vanished. It was a little ship of old shape, high in stern, sloping
thence to curved head-boards, two masts like stone columns, richly
encrusted with marine growth, and lustrous as the inner shell of the
oyster; the hull was of a blackish green and looked black in the glass
in contrast with the white fury upon whose apex it rolled and swayed
and tumbled. Then it was gone! It vanished in a cannon volley of water.
The sea thereabouts ran boiling, but in a few minutes the curl of the
breeze-blown surge had triumphed over the milky softness, and had the
spectacle been the launch of a dead man in a sailor's shroud you could
not have seen less of it.

"Was ever such a sight beheld before?" said Julia, with tremulous
breath and enlarged nostrils.

"'Those who go down to the sea in ships,'" answered Hardy. "Has not
that observation been made once or twice before? I believe I have been
forced to read it a thousand times, for every newspaper and every book
that relates to the sea quotes this Scriptural sentence, and I am weary
of it."

"I have heard of islands being thrown up," said Julia.

"A great deal is thrown up at sea," replied Hardy. "Steady the wheel,
my heart, whilst I ogle the sun."

It will be admitted that this brace of sweethearts had not been
very fortunate. To be burnt out, open-boated, drugged, kidnapped,
shipwrecked on a derelict with a madman, are experiences of a rather
emphatic sort. Hardy's share had been the share of a man, and bar
the drug he could have gone through twenty fold worse and emerged a
sunburnt, smiling sailor.

Fate for a little while was now to mask its grim features with a
pleasant leer, and for the next two days of the ship's adventure the
weather was calm, the sea smooth enough for a little yacht, the heavens
bright with a little shading here and there of cloud, and all went well
with the crew. On the morning of the third day Hardy came out of his
coop like a snail from its shell, only a little faster. Julia was at
the wheel, and the dog on the forecastle keeping a lookout.

"We are in luck," said Hardy, gazing around him. "Fancy only requiring
to trim sail five times in two days."

"How far off is the abandoned brig, do you think?" asked the girl.

"All five hundred miles of salt water, Julia, and a salt mile is longer
than a highway mile."

They were used to the ship and the ways and methods they had adopted.
Thanks to the blessed weather, they had by alternation secured the rest
that nature demanded. There was plenty to eat and they ate heartily.
The dog was as useful as a midshipman; he understood the meaning of
the word slack, and held on to it when required as though his teeth
were in the sleeve of a drowning man. There was coal in the fore-peak,
and Hardy had made the necessary descent, and the stock in the galley
was always plentiful.

This morning they went about their work as usual. Hardy steered.
Julia lighted the galley fire, and the dog came aft to sit beside the
wheel and wait for breakfast. How did Hardy look? How did Julia look?
Very well indeed, I can assure you. When on board the abandoned brig
the sailor's beard grew, and he had returned somewhat bristling to
the _York_. But in this ship were his razor, lathering brush, and a
square of glass to make faces in. He was therefore now a clean-shaven
man, and I don't believe there is any girl living who would not have
fallen in love with him. He had choice of clothes, too, which put him
to windward of his sweetheart. But the eye of love should never be
affected by apparel, and when Julia clothed herself for warmth and the
night in the madman's cloak she was still an incomparable figure and
of romantic face. Clothes have very little to do with health; you may
sometimes peep at the goddess through a rent in the coat, and I have
met her in country lanes and crossing meadows in the picturesque garb
of the scarecrow with such cheeks of scarlet, such eyes of light, such
teeth of ivory as might prove the envy and the despair of her ladyship
travelling, like the suds of a washerwoman's tub, in carriage and pair
to a princely festival.

In fact, Julia was sparkling to the caressing hand of this new life.
The health of the sea was hers, the love of the sailor was hers,
content and hope were hers. Do not these things wait upon appetite and
help digestion? Do not they irradiate slumber with entrancing visions?
If the girl soiled her hands by lighting the galley fire, she knew
where to find the head pump and the galley clout or a towel from aft to
dry her fingers.

Whilst they were eating their breakfast this morning the dog sprang
on the grating abaft the wheel and barked its lookout to the sea to
windward, about two points before the beam.

"Hold this wheel, Julia!" exclaimed Hardy.

He sprang for the telescope and levelled it, and the light sweep of
the ship's summer lurch darted a boat with a lugsail into the lens.
He viewed her intently in silence, which Julia did not dare to break
into by heedless, girlish cries of "What is it?" like the distracting
marginal notes of the lady's pencil in the tearful, the hysteric, and
the religious novel. How far distant that boat was off I do not know,
but she lay very clean and clear in the powerful tubes which Hardy was
bringing to bear upon her. Her sail was like a square of satin; the
fabric was painted black; as she rose to the fold you saw the delicate
gush of foam at the bow. Hardy counted eight men in her, and one figure
that was in the bows continuously waved some streaming thing white in
his hands.

"My God!" cried Hardy, letting fall the glass to his side. "What a
misfortune!"

"What is it?" asked Julia.

"A boat-full of shipwrecked men," he replied, and his face grew grim as
he said it. "They may be dying of thirst and famine, and they must not
come aboard."

"Oh, George!" exclaimed Julia, grasping the thing in an instant.

"If they came aboard," he continued, speaking swiftly and even
fiercely, "they may seize the ship; in any case their salvage claim
would wreck our hopes. Put the helm up. By God, they shall not board
us!"

He sprang to the wheel, and the ship sloped away to leeward from her
course, and the bearings of the boat were then abaft the beam. Julia
picked up the glass, and with an easy hand directed it.

"She is sailing as fast as we," she exclaimed.

"No!" answered Hardy, in a rage.

"Must they be left to perish?" she cried.

It was an awful problem for fate to submit to a sailor's mind. The very
thought of thirst, of famine, of suffering incarnate in the miserable
figures of men in an open boat at sea makes faint the heart of the
seaman, and sooner would he expire than not fly to help. But how stood
this ghastly conundrum with Hardy? First, who were the men? They might
be foreigners--Greeks, Italians, Portuguese, Spaniards. They had knives
on their hips, and their hearts would redden with the spirit of murder
when, being on board, they understood that the flag was the Red Flag
of England, and that nothing stood between them and the ship and a
fair-haired English girl, of incomparable figure, but one man, whose
heart beat within the reach of their shortest blade! No! They must be
helped but not received. And how was it to be done? And meanwhile grew
this fear--if the wind slackened, if a calm fell, they would gain the
ship with their oars. Hardy was without a revolver. Captain Layard
had taken away his; how could he resist--how could one man resist the
desperate clamber of eight men infuriate with thirst, famine, and
deadlier passions yet if they were foreigners?

He pondered deeply, grasping the wheel; the dog upon the grating
watched the boat, a lustrous spot to the naked eye, and Julia gazed in
silence at her sweetheart.

"Come and hold the wheel," said he.

Still in silence witnessing distress but resolution in his face, she
seized the spokes, and he went to work to help that open boat. There
were, as you know, two boats in the davits, and a gig, called the
captain's gig, hung by davits over the stern. Rushing to the foremost
boat, Hardy seized the empty breaker out of its bows and ran with it to
the scuttle-butt, and, swiftly as he could, filled it. He then replaced
the breaker in the boat's bows. He next sped down the companion-ladder,
filled a tin basket with bottles of beer and two bottles of rum,
returned on deck with this basket, and placed it in the boat. He then
fetched some tinned food, a quantity of ship's biscuit and an uncooked
ham, which would be good eating to starving men. They were eight, and
he made calculations for a week's supply with care. He threw a pannikin
into the boat. He breathed hard and fast, and his face was coloured
with blood, and the sweat drained from his hair to his eyebrows; for he
was mad to succour and mad to escape, and all the while he worked he
never spoke a word to the girl.

It would have been an impossible task but for the steady flow of the
sea, and the gentle yielding of the ship to the caressing sway of
the fold. But it fell out as it was, and Hardy did it whilst Julia
steered, and the ship blew softly onwards, whilst the white spot abaft
the beam, watched by the dog, gleamed like a meteor whose foam would
be a little disc when near. He freed the boat of its gripes by his
knife, a sharp blade, then, just as Layard had before him, he lowered
the boat by easing away first the bow, then the after falls, until
she was water-borne, when, with a sailor's activity, he passed his
knife through the tackles, and the ropes fell into the boat. She was
liberated! and whilst he filled his lungs, distressed in breath, so
ardent and energetic had been his toil, the boat was astern, then in
the ship's wake, and Julia could see her by looking over the taffrail.

"They'll come up with it," said Hardy, going to the girl's side, "and
their overhauling her will widen our distance."

"It was the only way to feed them," Julia answered.

"One way. Have they fresh water enough? Eight men! We may want that
other breaker," said he with a side nod at the remaining quarter-boat.
"They'll be fallen in with--perhaps before sundown."

He picked up the glass and again scrutinised the boat. She leapt
into the lens within a quarter of a mile. The man in the bows stood
upright, but he was no longer flourishing his wift. They were heading
almost into the ship's wake, and were certain to see the quarter-boat
and understand what she meant. Along the rail the heads of the men
were fixed like cannon-balls. Supposing they were Englishmen. What
would they think? Hardy ground his teeth and twice beat the air with a
clenched fist. But supposing they were Dagos. Supposing--he could not
have acted otherwise. Life, love, and hope were the inspiration of his
resolution, and I say he could not have acted otherwise.

It was then, happily for him and his sweetheart, that the sea to
windward darkened a little to a pleasant freshening of breeze. The
breasts aloft swelled to the larger breath, but so scantily clothed was
the _York_, it was absolutely certain that if the breeze scanted the
boat would overhaul the ship, and once those eight men got alongside
the rest might prove--Good night!

Again Hardy looked at the boat through the telescope, and he cried out
with the tubes at his eye:

"It's all right, Julia; they're heading dead for the quarter-boat.
Whether they understand or not, it's all right."

He grasped the wheel and brought the ship to her course and this
greased her heels somewhat, for the yards were trimmed for the course
he was steering and the sails drew bravely. Julia kept the glass to her
eye.

"They have lowered their sail," she cried. "They are very near the
boat."

It was all blank to the naked eye, and Hardy searched in vain for that
star whose rise might have proved the malignant star of death and
dishonour to them both. Again the lovers shifted places. Julia held
the wheel whilst Hardy directed the glass at the boat. He watched the
minute manoeuvres. It was a little field of Lilliputians, but every
figure was as clean cut in the lens as the pygmies to the downward
gazing eyes of Gulliver. The two boats came and went behind and upon
the summer swell of the sea, but not so as to baffle the marine vision.
The naked mast rolled and the men showed plain. Thirst and famine
were in their motions, and Hardy sighed and gasped as he watched.
He saw the infuriate gesture that brought the bottle to the mouth,
the impassioned posture as the cracked lips drained the pannikin. He
witnessed avidity, coloured into horror by human need in the passage of
the clenched biscuit or piece of meat to the mouth. It nearly broke his
heart to leave them. If ever a man was inspired by the compassion, the
instincts, and the loyalty of a sailor, it was Hardy. Yet he thanked
God with all his heart that they had plenty, that the weather promised
fair, that they had another and a good boat, and that in this highway
of the sailing ship human help was certain if calamitous destiny were
not first. Hardy's eyes were moist as the telescope slowly sank from
his arm; for let them be Dagos, let them be Dutchmen, call those men by
any name you will, they were shipwrecked sailors upon a lonely sea, and
their appeal to the Red Flag of England would have been irresistible
but for the helpless condition of the _York_. Julia saw emotion in
her lover's face, and caressed him with her eyes as though she would
soothe him with her love, and never did she honour him more, nor felt a
fuller flow of dumb and inward gratitude to the Father of all for this
lifelong gift of sympathy, help, and devotion.

"We shall run them out of reach of the glass," said Hardy.

"I can scarcely see them as it is," she answered.

"What is their story?" he went on. "It will be told because they will
be saved. Yonder is one of the teachings of the sea. You pass a piece
of wreck; it is encrusted with the jewelry of the ocean; it is girdled
by a silver belt of fish. To one man it is a piece of wreckage; to
another man it is a memorial, lofty, sublime, and awful as a cathedral,
of fire, of explosion, of the beam-ended fabric with lashed figures in
the shrouds, sunk to the foam, and blackening it with emergence like
the iron shape dangling at the finger of a gibbet upon a wintry moor
that foams with snow."

"Do all sailors talk in this language?" said Julia.

"Any man who can make himself understood speaks well. I do not love
irony."

Julia smiled archly.

"You do not love irony," she said. "Did you ever love another before
you loved me?"

"A man who uses the sea is shy amongst women," he answered. "We are
accustomed when we see a green eye in thick weather winking off our
port bow to sing these lines:


    "'There's not so much for you to do,
    For green to port keeps clear of you.'


I was never yet in a collision--I mean ashore."

This pleased her, and she said she would go and look to the galley fire
if Hardy would kindly hold the wheel.




CHAPTER XVIII.

HAIL, COLUMBIA!


Luck was still to attend the ship's company of the _York_--luck in
the shape of weather. The wind took two days to change its mood, then
shifted off the port bow, where Hardy's metaphoric red eye was winking.

The man, the dog, the watch-tackle, and the winch were equal to the
sudden confrontment of air, which happened at daybreak when the man and
the dog could see, and when the girl at the wheel could see.

Of course sail was not trimmed as though the _York_ had been a frigate,
as though you had fifty men for a rope, when the master-mariner
considers himself lucky if he gets twenty-five men for a full-rigged
ship. Trimming sail took time; but it was done. And the dog stuck like
glue to the slack. No need to dwell upon the discipline; it was now
as before, and likely to continue whilst health and strength endured.
The sweethearts used the hen-coop alternately, and it yielded them all
necessary refreshment of slumber; the dog kept a lookout whilst the
girl steered, and still the ship's course was a crow's flight for the
Chops, with some hurdles of parallels before her indeed; but her march
though slow was conquering, and the lovers' spirits were as high as
the dog-vane that shook its piece of bunting at the main-royal masthead.

When Hardy had trimmed sail this morning he sat beside the girl to rest
a little. The wind was to the westward of north, the sky that way was
pale, but the sun to starboard burnt bright, and lofty ridges of cloud,
very delicate, like the memory of the ripple on the sands of the coast,
moved stealthily northwest, which signified sundry currents of air of
no moment, if below all gushes the favouring breeze.

"We'll breakfast in a few minutes," said Hardy. "I feel as if I have
been swimming ten miles."

"We are in luck, George," answered Julia.

"What is the luck of the sailor?" said he. "I have heard of one
lucky sailor. He went to a sale and bought a feather-bed. Jack in a
feather-bed! He turned in and his starboard bunion was worried by
something hard. He ripped the cover and found a bag containing one
hundred and forty-two Queen Anne guineas. He started a public-house and
died worth eight thousand pounds."

"He was a sailor and deserved it," said Julia. "Why do sailors hate
soldiers?"

"The historian must answer that. There is a reason, and it is true. You
see, my dear, a sailor will spend his last half-crown upon his girl,
and a soldier will borrow the last half-crown from _his_ girl."

"Do soldiers hate sailors?" asked Julia, laughing.

"They only meet at sea," answered Hardy, "and the motion of a ship will
neutralise prejudice in the man who can't stand it."

In due course the galley fire was lighted, coffee was boiled, and the
ship's company broke their fast. The breeze hung steady, the glass
spoke hopefully, and Hardy found, after taking sights, that home was
nearer by some hundred miles than it had been yesterday. It was nine
o'clock on the evening of this day. The lights of heaven winked sparely
through an atmosphere that nevertheless was unthickened by mist. The
fresh wind of the noon had slackened much, and the sound of the fall of
the sea off the bow was sloppy, as though the cook was emptying buckets
of stuff over the side, and indeed the noise was in keeping with the
sort of smoking, greasy face of the sea, which rolled in knolls of
soft, black oil speedily out of sight, so general and closing was the
dusk.

Julia stood at the wheel, and the dog as usual was on the forecastle
head keeping a lookout. The girl could distinctly hear her lover
snoring in his hen-coop. The magic of the ear of love runs melody into
the snore of the sweetheart; to the burdened marital organ the snore is
not the voice of the heavenly chorister. Shakespeare wonders whether we
dream in our sleep of death; Julia might have wondered if we snored.
The binnacle lamp burnt brightly, so did the side-lights. The girl had
been sleeping whilst Hardy steered, and now stood fresh and firm at the
wheel, a very shadow of British girl, snug in the madman's cloak; but
the faint stars knew that her figure was beautiful.

Suddenly the dog began to bark; its deep note rolled aft in low
thunder. Julia, with her heart slightly fluttering, strained her eyes
to port and then to starboard, believing that the dog was reporting
the side-light or white masthead light of a ship or steamer. But the
dog continued to bark, and in the midst of it, before it awoke Hardy,
before she could call to Hardy, a smell, an overpowering stench, fumes
as overwhelming as any that could rise from the shallow tombs of
thousands of plague-stricken wretches--this subduing and distracting
presence was in the air.

"George! George!" shrieked the girl. But she could not again speak,
for the filth of the breeze compelled her right hand to her mouth and
nostrils, and the brave heart steadied the spoke with her left hand
only.

In a minute Hardy was beside her. "Phew!" said he, and spat. This was
his comment.

The dog continued to bark. Its note had that quality of alarm which
makes the sailors spring as for life or death to the affrighting shout
of a single man upon the forecastle.

"What in hell--" But it might have been the devil himself who stopped
Hardy's mouth then, for even as he spoke the ship struck something
soft, and slided away from it points off her course, so blubbery was
the thing, proper for the "ways" of a launch.

"It's up the spout this time," said Hardy. "Jump to the side, Julia;
report what you see. There you go, to starboard--to windward, to
windward!"

He held the wheel, and the girl shrieked, "I can't see for the smell."

"Hold your nose and skin your eyes, and tell me what you see."

"A great deal of fire, and a black mass in the midst of it lined with
foam, and oh, what a horrible smell!"

She came staggering to her lover's side in revolt of sickened senses.

"A dead whale," said Hardy, whose nose was not entirely fastidious.

"Hold the wheel, dear," and he sprang to the quarter and saw the thing;
that is, he saw the shadow, it loomed so that it might have been a
little island. The fire of the sea played about it as the reflected
lightning of the hidden storm winks and flashes in the soft indigo of
the ocean recess. The sea caressed this floating dunghill with those
same white, cruel fingers with which it casts the mutilated corpse
ashore.

"The air sweetens," said Hardy, returning to the wheel. "Go below for a
nip of brandy, and bring me one, dear."

And he brought the ship to her course. He did not greatly like the look
of the weather. For perhaps an hour and a half he had been sleeping;
this was a good "turn in" for a sailor-man who signs articles to work
for the shipowner for twenty-four hours in the day, a brutal and
inhuman tax upon suffering men, in no other walk of life to be heard
of. Anyhow he could not leave the ship in Julia's charge with those
dimly winking stars growing sparer yet, with increasing moisture on the
wing of the wind like the early breath of a wet squall.

"I don't expect the wind to shift," said he, "but it's bound to come on
harder presently. Get you into that hen-coop and rest your limbs if not
your brain. I expect I shall be wanting you before midnight."

She obeyed him as though she had been a sailor or a dog, and dissolved
into the black void of the hen-coop. You could not see the faintest
glimmer of her face, nor the dimmest outline of her shape. The
Newfoundland had come aft and berthed itself. The animal knew that
when Hardy was at the wheel it was its watch below.

Now the ship was under such small canvas that her cloths were not more
than she could stand up with if it blew half a gale from abeam or abaft
the beam. Those were the days of single topsails, and in all three
topsails a single reef had been tied by the survivors of the crew in
the heavy night before they left for the Frenchman. It would then come
perhaps to a drag upon a staysail down-haul and to letting go the outer
jib-halliards, leaving the unfurled sail to convulse itself into bulbs
and bellies of canvas upon the jibboom. Certainly Hardy single-handed
could not lay out upon the jibboom and furl a big jib: he did not mean
to try.

As he expected, the wind freshened, but without the shift of a quarter
of a point. The ship raced nobly through the gloom: she blew white
steam from the nostrils of her bows; the white water to leeward widened
with her pace and flashed with the emerald and diamond of the sea glow
into the long, the streaming, the joyous homeward-bound wake. There was
no more dead leviathan in the air; it was full of the salt sweetness of
Swinburne's rushing sea verse. But the stars were gone; there was no
light upon the sea but the light of its foam. The ship was plunging,
the seas raced her in black curls, and burst with a pallor of dawn from
her side, and onward she swept, bowing and rolling to the music of the
bagpipes in her rigging, controlled by a single hand--a fearless and a
valiant hand--the hand of a British sailor.

However, he made up his mind to "crack on" in a sort of way, and the
meaning of "cracking on" at sea is the carrying in bad weather of more
canvas than the judicious would approve. I have known an old skipper
to furl his fore and mizzen-royal and stow his flying jib every second
dog-watch in dead calm or catspaw. The ladies reckoned him a safe man,
and he made the voyage from the Thames to Sydney Bay in four months.
Hardy had the instincts of a mate, and was always for carrying on; but
he had not much confidence in staysail and jib-sheets, and at half-past
eleven, seven bells of the first watch, somewhat benumbed with his grip
of the spokes, he resolved to shorten canvas, and shouted to his girl.
She came out of the coop like a figure from a clock.

"Is it a storm?" said she in his ear.

"Let's thank God," he answered, "like the sailor in the song, that
there are no chimney-pots in the air. I wonder if I can trust you with
this wheel? It doesn't kick very much, and I sha'n't be long."

"You don't want to turn in, then?"

"Love ye, no," he answered. "Get a good hold of these spokes, and I'll
stand by."

He watched her, conceiving that if the ship was off her course now
and again it would not signify a brass farthing. The wheel-chains are
a good purchase upon the tiller, and Julia's arms were strong and
determined with the labour she had been put to, whether ashore or at
sea. Young women cannot pull ropes on board ship, or lift old ladies
out of bed on dry land, without adding strength to the muscles of their
arms and determination to the clutch of their fingers.

Hardy stood close beside Julia ready for that kick of the helm which,
whilst he had stood at the wheel, had on three or four occasions
started him out of a mood of musing. Twice came the kick--the blow of
the surge against the rudder, but the girl held on and the ship swept
on, and with every freshening of the black roar aloft the words of the
Yankee poet came into Hardy's head:


    "Then suddenly there burst a yell
    That would have shock'd and stagger'd hell."


"You'll do," said Hardy.

He called the dog and they went forward. There is no good in talking
of jiggers, down-hauls, sheets, halliards, winches, and such things
to landsmen. Enough, then, if it be said that by first letting go and
then by hauling down, Hardy, helped by the dog and the jigger--which is
another word for the watch-tackle--succeeded in easing the ship of two
or three pinions of staysails and jib. The jigger manned the down-haul
stoutly, and the dog stuck like glue to all slack he was asked to
concern himself with. The sails were left to flap and slat and thunder.
What could Hardy do? If the canvas went to pieces they must carry the
ship home without it; if it held, there were the dog, the jigger, and
the man to rehoist it. A mate's ear does not love the noise of slatting
canvas, and Hardy as he stood in the bows guessed with something of
helpless disgust that the jib-boom was buckling a bit. The foretopmast
staysail and the inner jib were roaring like a thunder-storm, and
a living gale swept out of the iron curve of the bolt-rope of the
fore-course.

It was white water often to the figure-head, the midnight magnificence
and wrath of foam, the stormy bellowing of the recoiling and shattered
sea. Heavenly Father! to think of this rushing, shadowy structure, this
clipper fabric, whose stern was out of sight in darkness from the bows,
controlled by a girl!

Hardy ran aft to take the wheel, and the dutiful dog trotted beside
him. How did that night pass? In simple alternations of coop and wheel.

It was not to be a long night; the business of the half-gale did not
begin until eight bells of the first watch, and it was nearly two
bells before Hardy had made an end with his staysails and jib. It was
not perhaps in those days so extremely necessary as it is in these
to keep a bright lookout for ships' lights, simply because the steam
vessel was comparatively few, and the sailing ship was not greatly
accustomed to interpret her presence by the red and green wink. The
flourish of the lamp hastily plucked out of the binnacle was deemed as
good a flare as an empty flaming tar-barrel, and, indeed, it sometimes
sufficed. Collision in the days of timber was not collision in the days
of steel. Colliding ships ground away each other's channels amidst
the benedictions of the forecastle and the poop, and the spluttering
expostulations of crackling spars on high. Now 'tis touch and sink,
so ingenious and preserving is the water-tight bulkhead, so grand
in assurance of the salvation of precious life is the keel-up boat,
secured beyond all release of knife or tool to the skid. Everything is
riveted, and everything goes, and it takes half a dozen gunboats to
sink a wooden wreck maliciously floating in the track of the supreme
expression of the modern shipwright's art.

The break of day found Hardy at the wheel. But he had slept since he
was last heard of, and Julia had stood her trick, kick or no kick,
whilst Sailor kept watch on the forecastle head. The wind had greatly
fallen, the sea had greatly fallen, and the complexion of fine weather
was in the dawn. With the rising of the sun the weather promised beauty
and splendour: blue seas far as the eye could reach breaking in foam,
masses of sailing cloud in the sky like vast puffs of vapour from the
funnel of a locomotive; and right astern, a film of pearl in the windy
blue, hung a sail.

It was not seen for some time by Hardy, nor by the dog that slumbered
in its kennel; but when Julia came out of her coop to the summons of
the sun, she instantly saw the sail and called and pointed; and whilst
she held the wheel the dog sprang on to the taffrail and barked, and
Hardy fetched the glass.

A cloud of canvas coming up astern hand over hand. Topsails,
topgallantsails, royals, and skysails; the wind fresh off the beam; a
topgallant-stunsail yearning from its boom end: the beautiful vision, a
leaning light with the blue sea in foam betwixt it and the _York_, and
beyond, the immeasurable heavens sloping past the working rim of the
deep.

"A Yankee," said Hardy, putting down the glass. "Skysails--why not
moonsails, and angels' footstools? D'ye know that you can sometimes
stop a ship by cracking on? I've hove the log and found her doing ten:
thought to get more out of her; set royals and topmast-stunsails: hove
the log and found her doing nine. Why? Because a ship isn't built to
sail on her side."

The galley fire was lighted; coffee was boiled; the sun shone brightly,
and the ship astern was coming up fast. Whilst Julia held the wheel,
Hardy mastheaded the red flag of our country at the gaff end, and there
it streamed, meteoric, as in the song.

"It is like being in the Docks to see it," cried Julia.

"It is like feeling that there are no bally Dutchmen in the world!"
answered Hardy.

They breakfasted in a manner afore-described, and often watched the
ship astern. She was a black spot under a white cloud.

"Undoubtedly a Yankee," said Hardy, with his mouth full of white
biscuit. "She'll wonder at us, and what will she do?"

"They must not help us," said Julia.

"Fancy her sailors sparkling with the jewels in the safe, fancy her
skipper and mates singing out orders with heavy gold chains round
their necks, and diamond earrings in their Yankee lobes! I do love the
Yankee captain; he stands at the break of the poop and watches his mate
kicking a man's brains out of his skull, and he yells out, 'Heave him
over the side whilst he's breathing.' It is all sweetness and light
aboard the Yankeeman. Some of these days the great Republic will awaken
to recognition of the claims of her merchant sailors. The immortal Dana
did his best, which was noble and lasting. But oh, the crimes, the
cruelties, the murders which make the Yankee ship of trade a bitterer
hell for men than the hell of the monk's invention!"

But a stern chase is a long chase, albeit you are under single-reef
topsails and fore-course only, whilst t'other heaps your wake with
skysails and stunsails. It was half-past nine before the ship astern
was on the _York's_ quarter; a black barque with an almost straight
stem, taking the seas under her swelling heights with the springs and
leaps of a deer chased by the hound.

Her colour, if it flew, was invisible as yet, but her nationality was
as certain as a goatee. Jonathan was at the helm and Jonathan was at
the prow, and Hardy easily guessed that the condition of the _York_
flying the flag of a rich relation was puzzling the intelligence of the
gentleman whose legs are represented as clothed with the bunting of
Stripes and Stars. Yes, Jonathan was puzzled, and like Paul Pry meant
to intrude, whilst hoping that he didn't.

On a sudden she clewed up skysails, royals, and topgallantsails,
boom-ended her studdingsails, and came surging with little more than
the speed of the _York_ on to the clipper's quarter within easy hail.
A man stood on the rail holding on by the mizzen-rigging. No flag
flew at the gaff end, but the word Yankee was writ in letters as big
as the barque herself. The figure grasped an old-fashioned weapon for
the conveyance of sound--a speaking-trumpet; he put it to his lips,
and whilst a small crowd of men on the barque's forecastle, attired
in dungaree and vary-coloured headgear, gazed at the _York_ with the
steadfast stare of sheep at a barking dog in a field, the man with the
trumpet delivered his mind thus:

"Ho, the ship ahoy! What ship are you?"

Hardy, with one hand to his mouth, Julia meanwhile steering, roared
back:

"The _York_, of London; bound to London."

This was all he said. He did not inquire the barque's name; it
was no business of his to know it. But she was forging ahead, and
the name under the counter in long white letters grew visible:
_Columbia_--Boston.

"Where's your crew?" shouted the man with the trumpet.

"On deck," was the answer.

A man standing by the figure on the rail took the speaking-trumpet and
replaced it by a telescope, which the figure levelled at Julia.

"He's admiring you," said Hardy.

"I dare say the crew on that forecastle are laughing," she exclaimed.

"Sailors are too well fed to laugh easily," replied Hardy. "Oily men,
fat men, rich men, seldom laugh."

All between the two speeding vessels was the rush of the white surge,
and the ships seemed to salute each other like acquaintances as they
bowed in stately rolls and sang the song of the shrouds one to the
other, for it is all singing at sea--singing or singing out.

Suddenly when the barque had drawn on to the weather-bow of the _York_
she was luffed up into the wind, and the weather-half of her loftier
canvas was aback.

"They mean to visit us," said Hardy.

"Not to stay, I hope," said Julia, anxiously.

In a few moments some figures broke from the barque's forecastle crowd
and ran aft, and a white boat of a whaling pattern, sharpened stem and
stern, sank from its davits with six men in her, and the man who had
given the telescope to the figure on the rail steered the boat.

Hardy put his helm down and shook the wind out of his small canvas, and
presently the boat was hooked on alongside, and an American sailor--a
chief mate--clambered over the rail on to the deck of the _York_.

It is bad taste to imitate accents, or oddities of phrase, or nasal
deliverances. This Yankee mate then shall speak as our first cousin
does.

"Do you mean to say," said he, touching his cap as he approached Hardy
and Julia, "that you and this lady"--he bowed to her--"are your ship's
company?"

"No," answered Hardy. "We have that dog: he is worth ten foreigners,
and we have a watch-tackle and a winch."

"And you are carrying this ship to London alone?"

"Ay."

The Yankee mate looked a little stupefied, glanced along the deck, then
up at the Red Ensign, then at the girl who stood beneath it.

"Where are you from?" he asked.

"See here," said Hardy; "I intend to spin my own yarn when I get
ashore, and I do not mean that it shall either be diminished or
exaggerated by report. This lady and I propose to carry this ship home
alone, and that flag flies in vain if we fail."

"Well, I am surprised," said the mate of the barque. "It must be very
uncomfortable. Your outer jib is slatting, and your staysails want
stowing. Can we help you?"

"I am very much obliged," replied Hardy, "but before you call your men
aboard this lady will kindly bring from the cabin a bottle of grog and
glasses, that we may drink to the good voyage of the _Columbia_ and to
the increasing greatness of your magnificent country."

"I am willing," answered the mate, and as Julia disappeared he
exclaimed, "Is she your wife, sir?"

"No; she is my sweetheart; she is the daughter of a retired commander
in our Royal Navy, and if God suffers us to reach home she will be my
wife."

"She is a very fine young woman," said the mate.

"She has a splendid spirit," answered Hardy, "and she is a very fine
young woman as you say."

Julia knew the ways of the under-stewardess, and was quickly on deck
again with a tray of glasses, cold water, and a bottle of brandy. She
mixed the spirits, each man saying "when," and took a little drop
herself, just enough to be sincere with in her good wishes. The Yankee
mate did not seem to greatly trouble himself that the figure on the
barque--undoubtedly the skipper--should keep the telescope bearing upon
them. With one hand on the spoke Hardy, with the other hand, held aloft
the glass of grog, and said:

"Here's to your beautiful barque, and to the noble country from which
she hails!"

He drank and so did Julia, and the mate before drinking said:

"Here's to the Red Flag of Old England, and to the fine girls who steer
ships under it!"

Julia laughed merrily, and thought the mate better looking now than she
had at first believed. He was a little sallow, a little long-faced, and
on the whole what the Americans call slab-sided; but he had the eyes
of an honest man and the looks of a good sailor, and if his name were
inscribed on the dome of St. Paul's nothing better could be said of it.

"My captain will be getting impatient," said the mate. "He'll wonder
that you don't take assistance."

"If your men will hoist that canvas for me," answered Hardy, "I shall
ask no more help."

"What a beautiful dog is that!" said the Yankee mate, hanging in the
wind, so much did he relish this novel rencounter and brief association
in mid-Atlantic with a young lady of incomparable figure. "I would be
the happiest man in America if I owned that dog."

"All America would not purchase him," answered Hardy; "his name
is Sailor, and he has the spirit of Nelson. He helps me and the
watch-tackle to brace up, keeps a lookout like a madman in search of
the philosopher's stone, never gets drunk, and always says his prayers
before he turns in. Will you have another drop of brandy?"

"No more, sir, I thank you."

Saying which the mate went to the side and hailed the boat. Hardy kept
the _York_ in the wind and the barque was already in the wind, and
neither vessel therefore had any way to speak of. The boat, well fended
off, slobbered alongside, chucked and dived, spat and hissed like a
kitten sporting with its mother. To the cry of the mate four men sprang
into the chains, and were on deck with the activity of Britons boarding
a Frenchman. Fine-looking fellows they were, three of them Englishmen
who had been forced by Great Britain's love of foreign labour to earn
their bread under the Stripes and Stars. They stared about them with
sheepish grins because a woman was hard by. Had the girl been a British
skipper their smileless faces would have grown as long as wet hammocks.

"Fill a drink for them, Julia," said Hardy.

Another glass was fetched, four glasses brimmed, and with a "Well,
here's luck, sir," down went the doses through throats to which the
aroma of cognac was as strange a bliss as heaven to a newly arrived
soul.

"Shall we make more sail for you?" said the mate.

"Not a cloth, thank ye," answered Hardy at the wheel.

So the mate and the men went forward and hoisted the outer jib and
scientifically belayed the sheet, then lay aft, and did likewise with
the staysails, hauled taut the braces, and generally made things
snugger than they had found them. The dog went with them and watched
their conduct with admiration.

"Well," said the mate, approaching Hardy with an outstretched hand, "we
have done all you wish us to do, and I am sorry you won't let us do
more. We will report you."

"I hope you won't," answered Hardy; "the owners will send out a tug in
search of us, and then it's good night to my salvage."

"I twig," responded the mate, with a grave smile. "Yes, it shall be
made apparent to the Old Man," meaning his captain, for at sea the
captain would be called Old Man by the sailors if he were a beardless
youth of twenty-two.

He shook hands with Hardy, and their grasp was cordial. He shook hands
with Julia, and admired her and praised her with a look. Then the five
tumbled over the side like rats from a sinking ship, gained the boat,
and went away with a smoking stem to the barque. Julia stepped to the
rail to watch, and when the men saw her they cheered; three times they
cheered, and the mate in the stern-sheets lifted his cap and cheered
whilst Julia flourished her hand. There is much good-fellowship at
sea, and English-speaking sailors are as brothers when they meet.

"Those men do not look as though they were starved and kicked," said
Julia, returning to Hardy.

"If every ship kicked and starved her sailors there would be no ships
afloat," replied Hardy. "All the same, there is much starvation and
kicking at sea."

"How beautiful that ship looks!" said Julia; "I never saw a vessel's
canvas shine so brightly. How delicate are the shadows at the edges! A
sailing ship owes its life to the wind, and all the spirit of the sea
is in her. Steamers are full of coals and ashes, they blacken the air
with disgusting smoke, their life is compulsion, they are driven by a
wheel or a screw. The sailing ship floats on wings like the sea-bird."

"All is compulsion," exclaimed Hardy, watching the keen-ended boat as
she foamed sweeping with a lightning flash of wet oars to the sun, to
the mother she belonged to; "compulsion hurled the universe into being,
and everything is driven by it. I do not like to be compelled to be
born or to die. I do not like to be compelled to carry a hump or to
grow bald or hideous with age. But I am compelled into these enormities
and there's no getting away from it. You must hold this wheel whilst I
dip our flag when they get their boat to the tackles."

This did not take long to happen. The sweethearts watched the white
boat rising out of the water, and when the little fabric was hanging at
its davits the American flag soared heavenward, streaming to the gaff
end.

"Hold the wheel," said Hardy, and Julia grasped the spokes.

He sprang to the signal-halliards and lowered the flag, just as you
pull off your hat when you say good-bye. The American colour sank in
graceful beauty and soared again, and again sank the Red Ensign to be
again gaff-ended, and thrice did these two vessels salute each other
and then belayed their halliards, leaving their banners flying.

A faint cheer came from the American vessel, and Hardy sprang into
the mizzen-rigging and flourished his cap. Then the Yankee fell off
and filled a rap-full; her wake throbbed in pulses of foam under her
counter, fountain-bursts of sparkling stars of brine flashed off her
bows, every stitch of canvas was mastheaded, and away she went with
yearning stunsail, a leaning vision of transcendent beauty--a spirit
now, for she hath long since departed from the waters which she walked,
and remains but a memory to the old.

Hardy went to the wheel, put his helm a little up, and the _York_
started again for home under steady curves of canvas.

For two days after this the ship's company of three had their hands
full. It came on to blow a strong breeze right ahead: they managed
to brace up, and went staggering away to the west and north. It was
impossible for so slender a company to put the ship about; neither
could Hardy wear her, for who was to square and then brace round the
yards to the hard-over helm? Every wind then must be a fair wind for
that ship; she must splutter through it as best she could, and all that
the two brave hearts could pray for was that it should never blow so
hard as to dismast them or burst the canvas into rags.

Julia was now a practised as well as a fearless helmswoman, and
Hardy was able to get the sleep he needed; she too enjoyed plenty of
intervals. In those two days it did not blow fiercer than a two-reef
breeze, and Hardy eased the ship by keeping her a little away. For it
mattered nothing to him or Julia if the passage home extended into
months so long as they got home at last.




CHAPTER XIX.

THE CAMILLA OF THE SEA


Within ten weeks of the date of the sailing of the clipper ship _York_
from the River Thames the vessel was about two hundred miles to the
westward of the coast of Portugal. It was a leaden day. The ocean was
breathing deeply after a long conflict with the gale. The swell ran in
sullen masses, lifting with the lazy sickness of oil, but the breeze
was light and scarcely creased the moving knolls, and the shadow of
cloud hung like tapestry in a darkened chamber, low down in ragged
skirts upon the winding line of the sea.

The ship looked wrecked aloft. All her spars were standing indeed, but
her mizzentopsail hung in rags, and the bolt ropes made a skeleton of
the fabric aft. The foresail was split in halves, and with each weary
roll gaped like a cut in an india-rubber ball when pressed. Rags of the
outer jib fluttered from lacing or hanks. The maintopgallantsail had
been blown loose and had gone to pieces, and was shaking from the yard
in lengths like Irish pennants in the rigging. The ship was rolling
drearily, and the channels would often slap white thunder out of the
sulky brow of the swell, and she groaned greatly throughout her length
and made some dim sound of lamentation aloft.

Hardy stood alone at the wheel. He was fresh from a long and desperate
fight with the sea, and you read the character of the struggle in his
face. His beard was a week old: in the hollows under his eyes lay a
little whiteness, the encrustation of salt; this gave him the ghastly
look of the life-boat man who steps ashore after standing two nights
and a day by a stranded ship with frozen figures in her shrouds. His
hair was a little long, and this gave a something of wildness to his
aspect. His looks were haggard, his eyes wanting in their usual lustre,
his lips were pale; he looked worn. For ten days he and Julia had been
fighting a gale of wind. In ten days they had managed to obtain but two
or three hours sleep in a day of twenty-four hours. But happily for
them it never blew so hard but that they could keep their course shaped
for the English Channel. It never blew so hard that a ship well manned
would have needed to heave to. It came in roaring weight upon the
quarter, and one midnight the mizzentopsail burst in a blast of cannon,
and shortly after the maintopgallantsail was blown into shreds out of
the gaskets, and next morning, in the screaming fury of a bleaching
squall, the outer jib flew into pennons from the stay, and the veil
of the fore-course was rent asunder. But the reefed maintopsail, the
foretopmast-staysail, and the inner jib were as faithful to their duty
as Tom Bowline in the song, and the ship rushed on in foam to the
figurehead, whitening acres of the sea abaft her, passing a brig hove
to in the haze; passed by a ship that would not stay to speak; passed
by a Fruiter schooner from the Western Islands, whose spring over the
surge was the glance of the albatross, whose envanishment in the haze
ahead, into which the _York_ was for ever rushing, was the extinction
of a meteor in a cloud.

And now the gale was gone the sea would shortly smooth its panting
breast; it was the early forenoon. Hardy called the dog, but he did not
exert the powerful voice that was familiar to Julia.

The Newfoundland came out of its kennel and looked up in affectionate
expectation at the sailor.

"Go below and bring her up!" said Hardy, pointing, and the dog
perfectly understanding disappeared down the companionway.

His hands were almost raw with grasping the spokes. His arms were
almost lifeless with their long resistance to the mulish tug of the
wheel-chains in response to the kick of the rudder. His feet ached with
standing, knots seemed to have been tied in the muscles of his legs;
but in the gauntness of his looks was visible the spirit of a noble
heart, and there was no better or more fearless sailor in the world
than that grim, unshorn figure that stood alone at the helm of that
reeling ship.

You will think it strange that a man, a woman, and a dog should have
brought a big, full-rigged ship in safety down to the present hour
through some thunderous Atlantic parallels. Yet this ship's adventure
is not so strange to me as the mysterious good fortune of the
ocean-tramp of to-day that washes through the Bay of Biscay without her
funnel, and quietly discharges her cargo without any one feeling one
penny the worse. Take, for instance, the second mate of an ocean-tramp.
He walks the bridge; there are three foreign seamen in his watch, one
of whom steers the ship, whilst the other two paint her. By secret
compulsion, well understood by the owner and the captain of the ship,
the second mate quits the bridge and helps the two sailors to paint
the ship. Who looks after the ship whilst the person in charge of her
paints? The ship herself.

Or the same second mate may be on the bridge in the first watch; the
foreign sailor at the wheel has been labouring almost continuously at
deck-work through the greater portion of the day. The second mate for
convenience has set the ship's course by a star. Suddenly he finds
the star sliding slowly abeam. He rushes to the wheel and beholds the
helmsman standing erect, and asleep. The second mate shakes the fellow
furiously, and shouts, "Hard a-starboard!" and the sleepy foreigner,
who scarcely understands the commands of the helm in English, tries to
port by every spoke until he is stopped by the second mate's boot.

Is not the voyage of our every-day ocean-tramp more wonderful in the
unrevealed conditions of the life of the staggering tank than this
story of a full-rigged ship worked by an English seaman, an English
girl, a Newfoundland dog, a watch-tackle, and a winch? I served for
eight years at sea as a sailor, and I venture to say that the tramp is
far more wonderful than this ship.

Sailor knew his business, and in a few minutes Julia arrived on deck.
She looked ill and worn. Her straw hat was beginning to show like the
end of a long voyage; her dress would have made an ill figure of her in
Piccadilly. But you saw all that was necessary of spirit and resolution
in her eyes.

"Julia," said Hardy, "the pumps suck with me. I feel worn out. I can't
stand at this wheel any longer, and there would be no good in your
attempting to hold it. I'll secure the helm, and the ship must take her
chance. It'll be a dead calm before long, and we have come to a moment
when a great deal must be left to fortune. Look yonder!"

He pointed on the quarter where streaks of fine weather were expanding
and lifting, lines and spaces of silver blue irradiating the ragged
gloom of the firmament which was moving ponderously and slowly
northwest.

"You will find it cold," continued Hardy. "Go and wrap yourself up in
the captain's cloak whilst I secure the wheel."

Before he had secured the helm the girl returned apparelled as
commanded, for to her his word was law. He then sank down in a chair
near the wheel with his chin upon his breast, and the girl went forward
to boil a kettle of water.

She remained forward until some hot coffee was ready, and when she came
aft with it she found her sweetheart sound asleep. It is not love that
disturbs the sleeping sailor. It is love that watches and shields the
repose of love, as the guardian angel the slumber of the baby. Julia
looked at Hardy. How gaunt and hollow! How grim and bristly with the
week's growth! Yet how peaceful in sleep, how manly in look, how dear
to her; oh, how dear to her by loyal devotion, by beautiful honour, by
self-respect, by his fear and his love of God!

She sat on the deck beside him and drank a little coffee, and the dog
lay at her feet. The helm was paralysed by the rope which secured the
wheel, and the ship was slowly knocked by the head into the hollow of
the swell; the topsail was aback, and the ship lay rolling quietly on
the quieting folds with streamers of canvas swaying from the yard and
from the stay.

Julia continued to sit by her sleeping lover's side for more than half
an hour, leaving him once only to see to the galley fire. When again
she arose to attend to the fire the dog stood up and shook himself
and sprang upon the taffrail to take a look around, and before Julia
had stepped ten paces the noble animal was sounding in deep tones his
report of a ship in sight.

The noise awoke Hardy, who started and stood up, and Julia stayed where
she was to look at the sea.

Nearly right abeam, in the midst of the lifting bright weather
whose suffusion of radiance was over the mastheads, was visible the
feathering of a steamer's smoke.

"It is something coming our way," said Hardy to Julia, and he took the
glass, and pointed it.

His hands trembled, and he steadied the tubes by grasping the vang of
the gaff with them. After a long look--Julia was at his side--he said:

"She rises fast. By her square yards I take her to be a man-of-war. If
she is British she will be the help I have sometimes prayed for."

He put down the glass, bent on the Red Ensign Jack down, and ran it
aloft.

"I will get you some hot coffee," said Julia. "Do you feel rested a
little?"

"I am good for an eight hours' spell," he replied, but he did not look
so.

She went forward, and he watched the approaching steamer, and the
dog watched her also. When the girl returned with a pannikin of hot
coffee Hardy had more news to give her. He first drank, then lighted a
pipe, and he told her that the ship abeam, whose paddle-wheels had by
this time slapped her hull into clear view, was undoubtedly a British
man-of-war, and to judge by her course she was either from the Cape de
Verde or direct from Rio, or some port on the eastern coast of South
America.

"How do you know she is British?" asked Julia.

"By every token of yards squared by lifts and braces, by white bunt,
and something white at the gaff end."

"Can you distinguish her flag?"

"It is a speck of light, but I know what it means."

"Will you accept help from her?" inquired Julia.

"Of course I will," he answered. "The Admiralty do not claim salvage,
or they so hedge about the claim as to make the claimant's case
prohibitory."

"How will she help us?" said the girl.

"Either by towing or sending men. But I doubt if she will tow,"
answered Hardy. "She may not have enough coal. She may be in a hurry to
get home. The sailor is always in a hurry--God help him--and often when
he gets home he finds the canary dead in the cage."

"We have no canary to greet us with its corpse," said Julia.

She picked up the glass, and inspected the approaching vessel. And so
the time was whiled away until the steamer was close on the _York's_
quarter, her paddle-wheels ceased to revolve, and now all about her
could easily be understood without the glass.

She was one of that class of naval steamers which still survive (in
aspect at least), at the date of the composition of this story, in
the Royal Yacht, familiar in the Solent. She had a square stern,
embellished with gilded mouldings and sparkling with windows. She had
yellow paddle-boxes, a tall black hull with a few square gunports of
a side. She was a barque, though they tried to make her look like a
ship by fixing square yards without canvas on her mizzenmast and fidded
topmast, which was a brigantine's mainmast with its crosstrees. For a
full-rigged ship must have fidded topmast and fidded topgallantmast and
royalmast, and if she has not these you may call her what you like but
she is not a ship.

The steamer was H.M.S. _Magicienne_, bound from Rio to Devonport,
having halted at the Cape de Verde for coal. She was full of men, as
the Navy ship usually is. Here and there she was spotted by the red
coat of a marine. She sparkled to the risen fine weather, and the sea
was now blue to both the ships, though northwest it breathed in leaden
shadow. She dipped her visible wheel in foam. The colour of her country
trembled in handkerchief-size at her gaff end, and her pennon streamed
in a line of silk. An officer stood upon the paddle-box and hailed the
_York_. Hardy thought he could answer, and tried to do so, but found
that his voice would not carry. Indeed he had been overburdened, and
every function was bowed and humped.

To make himself understood he shook his head and pointed to his mouth,
and flew the signal of "No voice" by pantomime. The trill of a whistle
could be heard. In a few moments--moments are minutes, minutes are
hours on board the ship of war with hundreds of a crew, as compared
with the moments, minutes, and hours aboard a ship of trade with
thirty of a crew--a boat-full of men with something glittering in the
stern-sheets sank to the water at the steamer's side, and, as though
but one oar was wielded at either gunwale, the boat came with flashful
iteration of feathered blade, a pulse of sparkling locomotion each side
of her, and the something that glittered astern beside the coxswain
enlarged swiftly into the proportions of a midshipman twenty years old.

He gained the deck with the scrambling bounds of a kangaroo as he
sprang from the rail saluting the ship with some convulsion of thumb
near the bottom button of his waistcoat. His freckled face was well
bred; his looks had the ardency of the youthful British sailor. You
felt that here was a young man, perhaps an honourable, perhaps a lord,
who at the call of duty would do his "bit," and do it well.

He stared hard at the girl whilst he walked slap up to Hardy.

"What's the matter with this ship?" said he, and his accost made Hardy
feel as though he were a north-country Geordie skipper with an auld
wife in the companion-hatch darning his stockings.

"I am stumpended with work," said Hardy, "and must sit, or I shall
fall." And he sat down.

"You look like the end of a long voyage," said the midshipman.

"And you look as if the roast beef of Old England smokes in the
gunroom," answered Hardy.

"So help me God, then," cried the midshipman with heat, "nothing has
fed us since Rio but salt horse. Where's your crew?" and he looked at
the girl without greatly admiring her, for Julia was very draggled and
broken about the hat, and dejected about the hair and white and worn,
and she knew she was all this with a girl's distress.

"The crew are before you," replied Hardy, languidly pointing at the dog.

"What do you want?" said the midshipman, directing his eyes aloft.

"The help of the nation represented by your ship of state," answered
Hardy.

The midshipman, who was a gentleman, perceived that the grim, unshorn,
labour-wearied man on the chair was a gentleman, whatever might be his
rating aboard a merchantman, and his manner changed.

"You are in a very odd situation," said he. "What a magnificent dog!
What is your story, that I may return and report it to the captain?"

It took Hardy ten minutes to relate the ship's adventure, and the
midshipman listened to it with parted lips, just as his face would
overhang a thrilling novel which is true with all those touches that
make the world akin.

"Well," said he when Hardy had finished, "I always thought going into
the Navy was going to sea, but that's the real flag of adventure," he
added, with a glance at the inverted ensign. "You want help and deserve
it, and I'll go to the ship, and report."

He touched his cap with a look of pitying admiration at Julia. It was
not the admiration of a man for a pretty face, but for the heart of a
lioness.

The boat left the _York_ and Hardy continued to sit, and Julia stood
beside him. It was fine weather above the fore-royal truck, and the
gloom was thinning in the northwest. Where the brightness had broken
the sea was darkening its blue; a breeze was coming up that way, and it
would prove a homeward bound breeze to the _York_, with a sparkling sun
to dry her and to cheer her.

"I do not think that midshipman greatly respects the Merchant Service,"
said Julia.

"Midshipmen occasionally condescend to us," answered Hardy, "but the
majority of naval officers have good sense, and wherever there is good
sense our flag is respected, because the naval officer has read history
and sometimes contributes to it."

The girl looked at the steamer and the boat that was foaming to her to
its dazzling line of oars.

"It is a fine service!" said Hardy, taking the steamer in from
streaming pennon to the dip of the red-tongued wheel. "I might just as
easily have been there as here. One is the butterfly rich with the wing
of the peacock tail; the other is the plain white butterfly"--he looked
afloat--"that blows like a piece of paper about the summer garden. But
deprive them of their wings and you'll find their bodies very much
alike."

"What are they going to do?" said Julia.

"We shall soon find out," answered Hardy. "British men-of-war are not
accustomed to keep people long waiting to find out."

Though the ships lay at a fair seaworthy distance from each other, men
and matters were visible to the naked eye aboard either.

Hardy saw the midshipman conversing with the commander on the bridge.
He did not choose to level a glass, it might be deemed impertinent,
but he saw the commander lift a binocular to his eyes in evident
wonder; certainly the gallant officer had never heard a stranger story
of the sea. Officialism could not neutralise curiosity, and the man,
the girl, and the dog being within easy reach of the sight helped by
the magnifying lens, the commander watched whilst the midshipman talked.

What was to happen was to be speedily understood. The pipe shrilled and
trilled, kits and hammocks were flung into the cutter, and in a few
minutes the large boat containing twenty-one men and a warrant officer
came alongside. Twelve men climbed out of her into the ship, first
throwing up to a few who had preceded them their sea wardrobes and
bedding. They were followed by the warrant officer--the man-o'-war's
boatswain. His ruddy face flamed betwixt two red whiskers; his small,
sharp blue eyes shot a bayonet glance in twenty directions in two
seconds. He and his men had come to stay, and the cutter laboured to
her sea mother to the stroke of five oars controlled by a helmsman.

"I'm the bo'sun of her Majesty's ship _Magicienne_," said the flaming
seaman, coming up to Hardy with a salute. "My orders are to help you to
carry this ship home."

"It is very good of your captain," said Hardy, deeply moved, and
smiling with an expression that accentuated the weariness of his soul,
and that also emphasised the manly nature of his character, which
instantly won the recognition of the boatswain because he was a sailor
in the presence of a sailor.

"Do I understand your discipline? I give my orders through you. Your
men would not accept my command."

"Quite right, sir," answered the boatswain, cheerfully, "and if you
will turn me to at once I will turn them men to immediately after. But
I beg you won't overtire yourself, sir. And the lady has helped you!
And that's a beautiful dog of yourn. A small ship's company, sir; and,
begging your pardon, you and the lady both look as if a good night's
rest would do you good."

"What is your name?" said Hardy.

"Harper, sir."

"Mr. Harper, will you kindly see that the men make themselves
comfortable in the forecastle? You will then bend fresh sails and make
all sail. I will show you where everything you want is to be found."

He sat as he spoke, and the boatswain, touching his cap, went amongst
his men and executed Hardy's orders.

The two lovers watched the steamer. A man-o'-war, even when she carries
paddle-boxes, is always a gracious object. Yonder ship's rails were
embellished with a snow-white line of hammocks, and snow-white lines of
furled canvas brightened the yards with a gleaming streak of sunshine.
The full philosophy of spit and polish was to be found in that steamer.
It spoke in the flash of brass; it lurked in the gleam of glass; it was
visible in many colours in paint work. Every rope was hauled taut; the
yards were unerringly square. The boat rose without a song, the wheels
revolved, the foam of a harpooned whale fell in dazzling masses from
under the sponsons, and the splendour of the yeast under the square
counter flamed like the rising day-star in the windows of the stern.

Hardy staggered to the signal halliards; his motions were seen--he
could not salute with the distress signal. With somewhat shaking hands,
therefore, he unbent and rebent the Red Ensign and hoisted it and
dipped, and the courtesy found its response in the graceful sinking and
heavenward soaring of the White Flag of our country.

Before the sailors came out of the forecastle, the queen's ship was
on a line with the _York's_ port cathead, merrily slapping her way to
England.

Mr. Harper came aft. His salute was respectful, his manner sympathetic.

"If you will tell me where the spare sails are kept, sir, I will see to
everything, that you and the lady may go below and take the rest you
stand in need of."

Hardy told him all that was necessary, thanking him also, whilst Julia
looked at the fifteen men that were gathered forward and admired their
well-fed appearance, trim attire, manly shapes, and the whiskers of
those who wore them. The discipline of a ship of state was in their
postures, different from the longshore, lounging attitude of Jack Muck
when waiting, and yet some of the best of those men had been Jack Mucks
in their day; one had even been mate of a ship, and the look he sent
aloft was charged with recognition of familiar conditions.

"Well, Mr. Harper," said Hardy, "I will leave the ship to you. There
are plenty of provisions and there is plenty of fresh water, and there
is rum for you to serve out as you think proper."

Saying this, he took Julia by the arm, conducted her to the companion,
and followed her into the cabin.

And now occurred another extraordinary incident in this ship's
adventure. It had indeed once occurred visibly before, but it will not
be credited in this age of the religious novel. When Hardy was in the
cabin he put his cap upon the table, and going to a cushioned locker
knelt beside it. Julia immediately approached him and likewise knelt,
shoulders touching. When they had thanked God--and it was meet that
they should thank him for their very merciful deliverance--they ate
some food, drank some wine, and went to their cabins.

The sleep of the wearied mariner is profound, and the sleep of the
toil-worn girl at sea is likewise profound. Hardy was the first to
awake. Through the little port-hole or scuttle in the ship's side
he witnessed the scarlet of the dying afternoon; he also observed
the creaming curl of the breaking sea streaming swiftly past. In the
plank with his feet he felt the buoyancy of sea-borne motion, the
floating lift, the floating reel of a fabric winging over the deep. He
shaved himself, and emerged a clean, a manly though a pallid sailor,
still something gaunt but with eyes brightened by sleep, and with an
expression gallant with hope and with victory.

He looked round for Julia. She was still in her cabin, and he would not
awaken her. At the foot of the companion-steps lay the Newfoundland;
Hardy knelt beside the noble creature and put his cheek to the wet
muzzle, and the dog groaned in pleasure and gratitude. Then they went
on deck together.

It was a strange, new, surprising sight to Hardy and perhaps to the
dog: a British man-of-war's man stood at the wheel of the ship; up
and down the quarter-deck stumped the stout figure of Mr. Harper in
all pomp of commanding strut. It was the first dog-watch, and some of
the sailors were walking about the forecastle smoking pipes, and some
of them, also smoking pipes, lurked about the galley door. A fresh
breeze was sweeping down upon the quarter. The ship was under full
sail from main-royal to flying jib, from mizzen-royal to spanker.
The weather-clew of the mainsail was up, and--what was that yonder,
right ahead? By heaven! the _Magicienne_ slapping along at ten and
pouring incense of soot to the very extremity of the visible universe,
and the _York_ was doing twelve and overhauling her with foam to the
figurehead, with derisive laughter aloft, with all graceful scorn of
the wind-swept structure in every leap, that brought closer yet to the
eye the laborious ploughing of the paddles.

Hardy and Mr. Harper touched their caps to each other.

"This is business, sir," said the boatswain, "and this ship is going to
point a moral to that there steamer!"

Hardy sent a critical gaze aloft. Everything was set to a hair and
rounded firm as a boiler full of steam. Everything was doing the work
of a boiler and more than the work of a boiler, as witness yonder
sky-blackening fabric, like panting Time, toiling to elude the Camilla
of the sea.

"Your captain has sent me some good men," said Hardy. "It did not take
you long, I reckon, to bend new canvas."

The boatswain smiled loftily betwixt his red whiskers.

"It isn't all New Navy yet, sir," he answered; "but it's coming."

He sighed like a risen porpoise.

"There'll be no call for sailors when it's to be nothing but that,
with pole-masts and so built"--he was pointing as he spoke to the
steamer--"that a dock-master might fitly sing out to the skipper, Which
end of you is coming in?"

He suddenly drew himself up as though on drill, and Julia stepped out
of the companion-hatch. Sleep had touched her cheeks with a delicate
bloom. She had refreshed herself with soap and water; her abundant hair
was gracefully dressed; with the cunning fingers of a woman she had
somehow, I do not know how, effaced in effect at least from her attire
the soiling and creasing influence of hard weather upon the single
robe. She had managed to warp her hat to its old bearings, and it sat
cocked in its old coquettish pride upon her head. Her gaze was full of
rapture as she looked at the ship, the straining sweep of white water
over the side, the easy, manly figure of the man at the wheel, the
_Magicienne_, which if this breeze lasted the ship must presently shift
her helm to pass.

"What do you think of this?" said Hardy to her.

"Is it a dream, Mr. Harper?" said the girl. "Shall Mr. Hardy and I
awaken to find ourselves on board an abandoned wreck?"

"Call it a dream, mum," answered the boatswain, "and when you awake it
will be England!"


This story of the ship's adventure is told. Because what you wish and
expect is bound to happen when safety and home are to be reached and
realised by a noble, well-found clipper ship in charge of two sailors
of the manliest character, and manned by fifteen splendid examples of
the man-of-war's men of the Navy of that age.

The merciful eye of God was upon this ship, for certainly the strength
of our courageous couple had been expended in a long strife with the
gale, and the dog, and the watch-tackle, and the winch without human
help would have been of no use. Hardy would have been forced to take
the first assistance that offered. It came to him in the triumphant
spirit which informs the whole of this couple's adventures. Our
sailor yearned for an estate for himself and for the girl that was to
be his wife. He richly deserved the reward he desired. Had any ship
but a man-of-war assisted him to get home the salvage claimed would
have diminished his proportion to a sum which at the present rate of
interest would not have yielded him the value of the pension of the
retired naval bluejacket. The British man-of-war demands no salvage,
and this is but just, because her very existence depends upon the
safety of the British merchantman. If you extinguish the Merchant
Service, you extinguish the need for a Navy and you extinguish the
nation herself, because we are surrounded by the ocean, we are fed by
the merchant sailor, and the bluejacket is paid to protect him whilst
he brings us the daily bread for which we pray every Sunday in church,
and sometimes more often than every Sunday.

I have never heard of a single instance in which the Admiralty have
claimed salvage for services rendered to a British merchantman.
Possibly they may have sent in a claim for the value of stores
expended in the salvage services. In the case of a successful
salvage it has sometimes happened that the owners of the ship have
by permission of the Admiralty presented a service of plate for the
officers' mess, or they have made personal gifts to the officers and
a dinner or supper ashore to the crew. Thus it will be gathered that
Hardy reaped the harvest he had sown and held in view; and having said
this no more need be asked, for the hand that has penned these lines
has no cunning as a reporter of the Marriage Service.




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|Transcriber's note:                              |
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|Obvious typographic errors have been corrected.  |
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