"I will make you a good wife, never fear," she answered, joyous in despite distress of breath.
The ship's head was slowly paying off as the boat's stem struck the side. Hardy secured the painter and jumped into the mizzen-chains.
"Hold out your hands," he exclaimed, "and jump when the boat lifts," and to the lift and to his fearless, muscular haul she sprang, and was alongside of him.
He grasped her by the arm, passed her round the rigging, and helped her over the bulwark rail. The dog was barking in fury of joy. When they gained the deck he sprang upon the girl in love and delight and nearly knocked her down.
"Get him some water and biscuit whilst I look about me," said Hardy.
He had long ago known by the help of the telescope that the ship was abandoned because two pairs of davits were empty, and with the perception of a sailor he understood that the crew had transferred themselves to another ship in one boat, whereas if they had abandoned the ship on their own account, which was improbable, they would have gone away in three companies, and the davits would have been like gibbets, since the after-boat had been used by the captain when he stole the girl.
The wheel was not lashed, and was constantly playing in swift revolution to starboard and port and back again. Hardy judged that the dog had been left by the men because the faithful creature would not quit the ship which had been his master's home, and the men, who would have had very little time, did not choose that their flesh should be torn by using violence. Yet it was cruel of them to leave him, for they would know that the noble creature would soon need water and food, and perish as lamentably as a famine-stricken sailor on a raft.
He saw that the figures of Mr. Candy and the man at the wheel, which had been concealed by a tarpaulin, were gone; they had of course been buried. Julia looked after the dog, that was lapping water thankfully as she filled a bowl from the galley with fresh water out of the scuttle-butt. Hardy slowly went forward, carefully gazing about him.
No man lay dead on the deck; he dropped into the forecastle and found it empty of human life, so that the captain's birthday had killed but two men, which was surely wonderful, for he had commanded a power that could have murdered a thousand.
Why was not this fine ship taken possession of by the people who had received her crew? I will tell you at once, for the story came out on the men's arrival. Her drift had been swifter, with the helping hand of the surge, than Hardy could have imagined or allowed for, and in the morning of the gale she was close aboard a French brig that was hove to sitting deep in the sea. They hailed her and were answered. They stated they were without a navigator and they didn't know what to do. The French captain spoke English, and said he would receive them if they came aboard in their own boat and land them at Marseilles, the port he was bound to. The weather was then moderating, and after calling a council the boatswain, giving the mate and the girl up as lost, swiftly decided, with the heedlessness of seamen, to abandon the York, and with great difficulty the sailors gained the deck of the brig, leaving their clothes behind them. Very shortly afterward the French captain braced his yards round and shaped a course for Marseilles, leaving nothing alive on board the York but the dog.