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.