The Mate of the Good Ship York; Or, The Ship's Adventure

by William Clark Russell

"Why?"

"She would demand salvage, and get it."

"It is shameful," she exclaimed, "that a ship should be paid for helping a ship in distress."

"The shipowner knows no shame," answered Hardy, "and neither does his dumb confederate, the underwriter. One builds a jerry ship to sink, and the other pins a policy on to the villain's back that he may sleep whether his ship goes down or not."

It was strange to look along the decks and witness no figure of man. No shape of seaman was on the forecastle to extinguish a thousand stars as the jib-booms rose pointing to the sky; no shadow of man stirred in the waist or the main-deck. The mighty loneliness of the deep was in this ship from the wheel to where the forecastle rails clasped hands above the figure-head. But sentience was in her and she knew it, and nobly confessed the spirit of control by the glad, direct and cleaving shear of her stem.

Happy is the sailor who can sit beside his sweetheart on board ship on a fine night and discourse of love and other matters without dread of the eye of the master-mariner. This couple talked of the safe arrival of the ship. They would buy a little cottage; they would not go to sea any more. It is always a cottage well inshore that is the sailor's dream. It was our glorious Nelson's for many years; witness his letters to his wife, whom he loved before the traitress wound her brilliant coils round the hero's heart, and numbed the loyalty of its pulse to one who had cherished him in sickness and was his dearest one when the shadow of his life was yet short in the sun of his glory.

The dust of the shooting star glittered on high; the steady voice of the night wind filled the shrouds with the melodies of invisible spirits; the white wake gleamed astern like the dusty highway which is the road to home; the softly plunging bows awoke the minstrelsy of the surge. It was night upon the Atlantic, and no twinkle of side-lamp was to be seen upon the sea line.

At nine by Hardy's watch, Julia kissed her sweetheart's lips and held him by the hand a little.