The stars and moon went out and it blew very faint with a deepening of the blackness overhead, so that you looked for lightning. About three o'clock some of the men had come out of the forecastle, and by Hardy's commands the galley fire was lighted and strong coffee brewed. This wonderfully refreshed the men, and Hardy then asked them if they thought they were strong enough to go aloft and furl the lighter canvas, as he could not tell at what moment heavy weather might set in. The poor fellows managed it somehow, but were long over it. Then as many as were equal furled the mainsail, at which hour it was hard upon daybreak. In the blackness of those small hours it was impossible to guess the character of the sky, and in which direction the soot of it was trending. But all of a sudden the wind freshened with a long, melancholy wail, as though 'twas the spirit of the night that was dying, the troubled water ran in fitful flashes, and the ship broke the brine into white foam about her. The mate talked with the boatswain beside the quarter-deck skylight: they were both almost recovered, and you could hear reviving life in voices about the deck.
"I have no doubt," said Hardy, "that the captain blew away straight from the ship's side, because you see he had no destination in his mind."
"Not onlikely," answered the boatswain.
"Suppose I'm right," continued Hardy, "then I reckon we're not abreast of her yet; but if I pass the boat before the light comes and it proves thick, as I fancy you'll find it, we shall miss her for good, and I want my sweetheart badly."
"That's quite natural," said the boatswain. "We're walkin' now and the breeze freshens, and if you think you are right, sir, in steering as we go, then what d'ye say to hauling up the foresail and lowering the maintopsail-yard on the cap, and manning the reef-tackles?"
"Get it done," said Hardy.
It was easily done, for it was not a furling job. A bit of sea was beginning to run; it smacked the ship under the counter, and flooded the wake with light. Hardy walked up and down the deck, mad with desire for daybreak. He was steering by a theory of a madman's action, and he might be wrong, and if he was wrong—but even if he was right, how would the boat fare in the sea that was now running with a madman at the yoke, and the full sail and tearing sheet gripped by the hand of madness?
These were considerations scarce endurable to the man, and for ever he was sending searching glances ahead for the ghastly hue of the dawn. The day broke at last, and it was a day of gloom and mist and a narrow horizon; the sky was a dome of apparently motionless vapour, and each surge ere it broke arched in an edge of flint, and the whole surface was an olive-green decorated by lines of foam.
As yet there was no great weight in the wind, but the sailor's eyes saw that more was to be expected. Hardy went to his cabin for a glass of his own. He slung it over his shoulder, and regaining the deck sprang aloft to the height of the mizzen-top, from which altitude, with the glass set firmly against the topmast-rigging, he searched the sea. As the lenses made the circuit there leapt into the field of the telescope the apparition of a little brig unmistakenly derelict, with loose canvas hollowing like a kite against the masts. He examined her intently, and then muttering, "They may be aboard that vessel. It is a chance. The madman may have taken refuge, or thought his son was there," he threw the strap of the telescope over his head, and noting the brig's bearing, descended.
He walked rapidly aft to the compass, and found that the brig was in sight from the quarter-deck. She bore a little to the west of south. The Newfoundland, seeing Hardy looking, spied the brig and barked his report of a sail in sight.