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.