"Oh, yes, have that done—have that done," the captain said in a smooth, perfectly sane voice. "Do you know what she was aboard the ship?"
Now Hardy was like the squire in Dickens's exquisite sketch—"he would not tell a lie for no man!" At the same time he did not wish Captain Layard should know that Miss Armstrong had shipped as a second stewardess, so he replied she was going to Calcutta with a letter of introduction to the bishop of that place. Her father was poor, and the girl wanted to find something to do in India.
But the captain was dreaming. One with eyes for such faces as his could easily see that he was thinking of something else, or did not understand. He continued to look in silence for a little while at Hardy, and then the baleful sparkle suddenly brightened his stare, he folded his arms and said, with an expression of triumphant hope and conviction:
"She is fresh from the sea and knows where Johnny is, and she shall help me to find him!"
CHAPTER X. THE CAPTAIN AND THE GIRL
It was six o'clock on the same day in which Julia Armstrong had been delivered from that horrible sea tragedy, the open boat, by the miraculous apparition of the York, of all the ships which the horizons of the deep were then girdling! The chief mate knocked upon the door of his cabin where the girl lay, and believing he heard her say "Come in," entered, and found her asleep.
The reddening sunshine was away to starboard, but the heavens southeast were glowing, and the girl slept, visible to the eye as the circle of blue port-hole up which and down which you saw the clear-cut line of the horizon sliding like a piece of clockwork. He stood looking at her, for there was love for this girl in the man's heart, and this encounter was so wonderful that he witnessed the hand of God in it, and a sentiment of religion sanctified his emotion; otherwise, with the sailor's respect for the repose of those who sleep—for the seamen's best blessing upon you is, Lord grant you a good night's rest, sir!—he would have softly stepped out and left her.
And this he would have soon done, but as he looked she all at once opened her gray eyes full upon him, stared a few moments till intelligence came to her, then started, smiled, and sat up in the bunk.