"If I see you in the water behind me I shall jump after you," she cried, with a look of alarm and real anxiety.
"Can't I drop into a ship's chains without going overboard?" he answered, and disappeared, and a short scream at the wheel attended his going.
The boat was easily released, and to the great joy of Julia the manly face of her sailor was once more visible. They both watched the boat as she receded.
"She'll be fallen in with," said Hardy, "and some skipper will log her and make a fearful mystery of her. Every tragic possibility of shipwreck is in her. She is the issue of fire, collision, the leak, the meteor-cloven craft—"
"What do you mean?" interrupted Julia.
"The ship's off her course," said Hardy. "That's quite right. Three spokes did it. Now look how fair the compass course points to the lubber's mark."
"What's a meteor-cloven ship?" she asked.
"I never heard of a big ship having been sunk by a meteor," he answered; "but I have been told of a great stone dropping out of the sky with the meteoric flash of a fallen star plump through the hatchway of a schooner and down through her: the sailors took to the pumps and then to the boats. That's what I mean."
And now he must prepare a bed for himself and the dog. He could not find an empty barrel, but just against the windlass the cook or the cabin servant had placed for firewood perhaps, or for other reasons, a big empty case, which might have contained wine or commodities of some sort. This placed on its side would do, and as it was too heavy for him to carry, and too rough for him to shove, he harnessed the Newfoundland to it as to the coop, and Sailor, helped by Hardy, ran the case close against the wheel.