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 manœuvres. 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.