"Is he dead?"
"Ay, stone dead; and so is yonder," replied Hardy.
"What took him to do it?" asked the boatswain, coming to Hardy's side.
"Why does a madman tear up his clothes?" replied Hardy. "How are those fellows in the waist there?"
"They're reviving," answered the boatswain. "He must ha' put plenty in. Dommed if ever I was treated like this before by the capt'n of a ship. Tell you what, sir, there's weather comin' along," and he cast the eye of an experienced sailor up aloft at the canvas and then at the moon, at which he shook his head.
Yes, her broken face had taken a glutinous reddish look as though she was a smear of pink currant jam, and her light was gone out of the sea. There was no more wind, but it was thickening westwards, and you might look for a slap of squall any moment, the shriek of the shot of the storm gun sweeping betwixt shroud and mast, and the ship lay aback under all plain sail, and there was no longer light of moonshine on her canvas.
"Just see if we can't get men enough to brace these yards square," said Hardy. "We can let go and clew up and wait till the men are strong enough to stow the canvas; but if we lie like this something may come to whip the masts out of her."
But it was a full half-hour before hands enough could be collected, and they all seemed as though freshly awakened from the crimp's debauch; their knees shook, their heads lolled, they lifted their arms as though they were operated upon by slow machinery. Yet the business, in a fashion, was contrived. They clewed up the royals and topgallantsails, they hauled up the mainsail, they let go some jib and staysail halliards, and they brailed the mizzen to the mast. The least dead of the poor fellows took the helm, and the ship with her head to the eastward, with much flap of canvas aloft, bowed slowly over the black run of swell. Her pace was very slow because the wind was light, and all the canvas she showed to it were two topsails and her forecourse.
This was as Hardy desired, because the moon was slowly vanishing like a dimming stain of bloody ooze, and it promised a black night. If he had held the ship moving under all her wings she would have passed the boat if she had not run her down, for it was his conviction, heaven inspired, that the madman had blown away straight before it, and how prophetically right he was in that we all know, and yet for some hours it remained very quiet, though black as the inside of a coal sack. Again this was as Hardy could have prayed for, as this raven serenity promised security to the boat, and if it lasted till daybreak she might be in sight.
The mate and another man placed the two bodies on the quarter-deck side by side under the bulwarks, clear of the gear, and hid them under a tarpaulin. It would not have been proper nor decent to have buried them out of hand, for though Hardy had no doubt that they were dead, he yet felt that time should be given to prove it; and so the two figures lay motionless under the tarpaulin.