Thus proceeded this pleasant tuition, and for half an hour Hardy stood beside the wheel teaching his sweetheart how to steer. The Newfoundland sat alongside of them and seemed to listen, for his loving eyes were often on Hardy's face whilst he spoke. He tried the girl again and again, and at the end of half an hour she was expressing keen appreciation of his delightful lecture by dutiful movement of the wheel. But, indeed, the ship did not need much steering that fine day. Had the helm been lashed it is probable that, braced as the yards lay, and pulling in steadfast accord as the sails were, the ship would have made a tranquil passage of an hour with no other check to the dull kicks of the rudder than a rope's end.
He left the girl to steer whilst he tautened here and there a brace with the watch-tackle; then entered the galley, saw to the fire, the coppers, and their contents. He was accepting an enormous obligation; could he discharge it? He felt the heart of a dozen men in his pulse, and he knew that if God did not smite her with sickness the spirit of his heroic girl would make her the match of any man, able-bodied or ordinary; so, though the York might be undermanned, her crew of a man and a girl, with a dog for a lookout, would carry her home.
The weather was so fine that he did not mean to make a job of seamanship. He did not intend to keep a lookout for ships unless it was to escape collision, because no ship that hove in sight, however willing, should be allowed to help him. The York was to be his own and the girl's fortune, and, much as he respected the sailor, no man afloat would be permitted to share in this estate.
He stood a minute on the forecastle to admire the beautiful fabric, and to pity the powerlessness which held imprisoned the cloths whose lustrous spaces would have climbed to the trucks in bright breasts yearning for home. Afar trembled the pocket-handkerchiefs of the sodden brig. The naked vision could no longer distinguish their appeal. She broke the continuity of the girdle, that was all, and she hovered on the skirts of the deep like a gibbet beheld afar. Hardy went right aft to the wheel; it was in the afternoon, and the speed of the ship was about four miles an hour.
"We will make ourselves happy," said he. "This is yachting, and if you strain the imagination of your eyes you shall see close aboard the white terraces of the Isle of Wight."
She laughed and answered, "We shall be off that island some day."
"No fear," he replied. "Don't suppose I mean to sail her up channel. Plymouth is our port, and as we sha'n't be able to let go the anchor, I'll seize a blue shirt to the fore-lift and that 'ull bring a man-o'-war's boat alongside."
"Why?" she asked.
"Because it is the merchant seaman's signal that he wants to join the white ensign, and the naval officer is always greedy for men."
But this was spoken many years ago. The signal of the blue shirt has been hauled down and buried with many other customs under the thin white wake of the metal battleship.