It was a ticklish sitting-ground and they sometimes slided, which was a very good reason why Hardy should hold her by the waist, and why Julia should cling lovingly with her head. And in this posture they entered the night and passed perhaps a couple of hours, so that when Hardy struck a match he found the time nine.
He made for the mattress, felt and found it, and the north-country apparel which was to form the bedclothes. He then lurched back to Julia, who did not want to lie down, but he was her lord in resolution and her love consented.
Always groping, for despite the sea-flash it was inside here of a midnight blackness, he pillowed her head with a garment of north-country measurement, and then carefully covering her to the neck with the skipper's coat, he pressed his lips to the brow of the girl who was to be his wife, and who was therefore sacred to him, and bade her sleep and leave him to watch and nod and watch.
And now all that followed was sickening, sloppy, howling, reeling, foaming hours of darkness, with nothing in them but the drunken vision of brig, and the noisy rage of her straining heart. But at half-past three o'clock by Hardy's watch the weather was undoubtedly moderating; by five it was blowing a little fresh; by six it was daylight and the wind northeast, a pleasant breeze, and the green sea rolled in foamless swells, cutting the wake of the sun, which shone brightly out of every blue lagoon 'twixt the clouds.
The girl was up and sitting at the table. She had slept a little, but that little was sound and good. Hardy brought the telescope out of the berth: it was a poor glass, but you could see more through it than with the naked eye. The brig was rolling ponderously on the swell, whose heave was sometimes too sudden for her, and she would stagger with a scream of white water from her side. Her canvas was blowing out, and the sodden old cask may have had some way on her.
Hardy stepped out and looked for the York. Had he looked for St. Paul's Cathedral he could not have seen less of it. The ship was not in sight and he fetched a deep breath, for either her crew had abandoned him and Julia to what sailors would know might prove a terrible death, or the ship's drift had been faster than he had allowed for.
"She's not in sight," he shouted to Julia, then sprang into the main-shrouds, put his telescope over the rim of the top, and got into the top.
She was not in sight from the top and he crawled as high as the cross-trees, and she was not in sight from that elevation. Nothing was in sight but the horizon, which wound eel-like to the flashing clasp of the sun upon it.
He regained the deck and put the telescope down and sat beside Julia.
"What shall we do?" she said, when he had given her the news.