He ran past the bell, and crying, "I am coming, Johnny, I am coming!" climbed on to the top of the deck load, and in a strange croaking voice, as though it proceeded from some huge sea-bird sailing overhead, he exclaimed:
"There you are at last, my Johnny! Father is coming to you!" and sprang overboard.
Julia fell upon the deck and lay lifeless in a swoon.
CHAPTER XIII. THEY MEET
It was moonlight on the sea, and the full-rigged ship York lay with her canvas aback, silently heaving upon the swell. But by the eye of a sailor a certain moisture would have been visible in the silver suffusion, and he might hardly have needed to look at the glass to guess that this calm scene of ocean night would in a few hours show a changed face. The time was shortly after ten.
The lamp in the cabin was unlighted, but the moon shone upon the skylight, and the darkness was whitened by it, and all features of the interior were visible. Hardy lay stretched upon the cabin deck, and within an arm's reach of him rested the great Newfoundland dog, secured by a chain to the leg of the table. The picture was wonderful for its human stillness: you heard no tramp of foot, no call of voice. The very sails slept against the masts, and nothing was audible but the complaint of a bulkhead or some strong fastening as the ship sluggishly took the run of the fold.
All of a sudden Hardy opened his eyes, and having opened them he kept them open, staring with just that look of bewilderment and astonishment which had been in Julia's dawning gaze. He tried to raise his head and thought it was a cannon-ball, but the dog had noticed the motion, and instantly alert with joy barked in deep-throated notes, with endless wagging of the tail.
This tremendous noise close in his ear was as galvanism to the dead frog. Hardy sat up and looked at the dog and then looked round him, and feeling all the sensations of a man drugged with liquor, believed, without being able to remember, that he had fallen down drunk. This is the sensation of the man who is fortunate enough to awake from the stupefaction of laudanum.