"How does he manage with the navigation?" asked the girl.
"He works it out as I do. He finds the ship's position to a second. This may be the effect of habit, but is not custom beaten into rags by insanity, like the head of an old drum? It's not so in this case, and the crew mayn't find him out till the pilot boards us, and guess nothing until they hear that the doctors have locked him up."
"Then what does his madness signify?" said the girl. "He'll be as good as the sanest if we arrive safely."
"Ah, but it's the getting there! It's the what may happen to-morrow, or to-morrow, or to-morrow, and that is going to make my hair gray, Miss Armstrong."
"Call me Julia," she said, looking at him with a sudden light in her eyes.
"Why should I take that liberty?" he replied, smiling.
"Because I should love it," she answered.
"I'll not call you Julia before him," he exclaimed, with a note of fondness which brought a charming expression into her face, as the kisses of a shower freshen the perfume of the rose. "It must be a stiff Miss Armstrong or I am no mate," and then they fell to talking a little nonsense.
A day came, and it was the fifth day dating from the drowning of the little drummer, and it was a Friday, in all tradition a black day for the sailor; and nobody, I think, has taken notice that it was Friday when Nelson, full of instinctive assurance that he would never return alive, kissed his sleeping child and started to join his ship for Trafalgar.