"Does she answer well, Jefferson?" asked the captain.
"As well as ever, sir," answered the man at the wheel.
By this time every man aboard knew what had happened, and the means which had been taken to meet the emergency.
The captain had slung the lantern on a belaying-pin on the weather side, abreast the companion. He unslung the lantern, and once more went aft and turned the bull's eye full on the rudder head.
He could notice no alteration. The iron looked taut, the wedges looked unchanged, the helmsman found the wheel worked as well as ever. And yet all this time there was creeping up at an infinitesimal rate, from the inner side of the rudder-iron, that which would be sufficient to dash all Captain Drew's hopes to the ground.
As he gazed at the rudder he thought:
"If the Duke does give her to me when we get into the bay, I'll let her swing there at anchor until I get a new rudder into her. She shall have the best rudder they can make for her at Izleworth. It will cost fifteen--ay, maybe twenty--pounds. It ought not to cost more than twenty pounds. But cost what it may, she shall have the best. Whatever the ship-carpenter asks he shall have. I will not cheapen him a penny. If he says five-and-twenty pounds, he shall have five-and-twenty pounds. You must not look a gift horse in the mouth, and I won't haggle over a few pounds to make the craft I sailed so long, and that now is going to bring me a fortune, shipshape and seaworthy. She doesn't want anything else. We never knew anything she wanted that she didn't get. Not likely, with such an owner as the Duke, God bless him!
"Ay, it's a fortune, and a large fortune, too, for a man like me. The most I ever had any reason to hope for was a few hundreds in the will of the Duke; and here now it has come to thousands all at once, and with the Duke alive and friendly to me yet, and promising me a new ship, and giving me the old one."
He bent forward and felt round the rudder-head carefully, tenderly, as though it were sensitive. Then he rose, hung up the lantern on the belaying-pin, and resumed his walk. His thoughts went on:
"I will run no risk with her. A plank or beam or stanchion may get dozed any time. It is likely everything else in the Seabird is as sound as a bell. But this matter of the rudder-head is a warning. I'll never take her to sea again at my own risk. I'll sell her in the bay, and will take good care I have the money in my pocket before she goes to sea again. How do I know but that the mainmast may be gone, or the sternpost? No, no. It won't do to throw away a chance like this. Not twice in a lifetime does a man in my position meet with a chance like this. It will not do to throw away a chance like this."