"You are very clever, George. The more I see of you the cleverer you become. Dear old Sailor! must he lie beside you on deck unsheltered?"
"I shall lash an empty cask to the grating; there is plenty of sailcloth forward, and he shall have a kennel. Take the wheel, Julia; there is something to be done before the night falls. The breeze freshens too; hurrah, see how straight the white race flies astern of her! Under such canvas too! Keep her steady and don't be afraid."
"Afraid!" she answered with a glance at him, which made him feel as if he was married.
He walked forward, laughing, trusting his girl as though she had been an able seaman. A great deal of confusion followed when he caught a few hens out of one coop and thrust them into the other. Such heartrending screams of despair, and two cocks and five or six hens in the other coop strained their throats in clamorous sympathy, and you could have sworn that the whole crowd of them, cocks and all, had just laid eggs. When the hen-coop was clear he passed his knife through the lashings, fetched an axe, swept the bars out of their fixings to the accompaniment of the orchestra in the other hen-coop, drew a bucket of water, and with a scrubbing brush thoroughly cleansed the dirty thing, which had the width of a trunk, though much longer.
He found it was heavy to drag, being a somewhat solid structure, so he called the Newfoundland to him and harnessed him to the coop by the watch-tackle. The dog tugged with the vigour of a man, Hardy shoved, and the hen-coop rushed along the deck right aft, whilst Julia with tears of laughter in her eyes kept the speeding ship to her course as though she had done nothing but steer ever since she could stand. But there was more yet to be done, and the sun was setting. He took the cooked meat out of the coppers and placed the steaming mass on a dish until it should grow cold.
Suddenly his ear was taken by a strange noise of hissing over the side; it was something more than the sheeting of the ship through the soft whiteness she made. It was like a continuous snarl threading the blowing off of steam.
He looked over the rail and saw the boat they had come aboard in from the brig rushing with comet-like velocity close alongside, like a little child swept to her home by the enraged mother that had lost her.
He debated a minute, and then said to himself, "She is of no use, neither she, nor the fresh water, nor the grub that is in her."
He was making his way into the channels to cast the painter adrift.
"Where are you going?" shrieked Julia at the wheel. He explained.