"Six and a half at least," he answered.
He made haste to trim the lamp and saw to the side-lights, and his spirits were high and his hope more exalted yet when he saw how well the girl steered. A big ship for a girl to control! And all the sweet archness of her incomparable posture was unconsciously expressed to her lover as he flashed the light over her before adjusting it for the illumination of the card.
"Now for a little supper," said he, "then I shall lie down."
He fetched some food and wine, and ate himself whilst he helped Julia to eat; the dog was remembered; and all the while he kept his eyes fixed in critical attention upon the girl's handling of the wheel.
"Sailor, go forward and keep a lookout, sir," he exclaimed, and this was an order which, as you know, the dog understood, and was accustomed to obey. He had supped and was thankful, and, faithful to his duty as Tom Bowline, the brave Newfoundland trotted forward to the forecastle, and took up a position of lookout betwixt the knight-heads.
"Here is my watch, Julia," said Hardy. "Call me at half-past two—but sooner, at the instant of need, if your arm should weary or the breeze shift and drive you off your course. I am a sailor and used to keeping my ears open in sleep. I am close beside you there, and your first cry will bring me out like a cork to the drag of a corkscrew."
"I will call you at half-past two," she answered. "She is as easy to steer as a boat. Look how steady the course swings at the mark there!"
He paused and gazed round him. The white cloud was speeding swiftly across the stars, and the ship hummed with the wind as the thrill of its ebon lines of gear, of shroud and stay and back-stay, shook its transport into the plank. The glass was steady—he had seen to that when he went below for the midnight supper; and there was no sign of worse, or changeful, or other weather within or on the verge of the mighty liquid sweep, whose heart was the ship, carrying onwards always the illimitable girdle on which she floated, the central figure of the night.
Hardy got into the hen-coop—a tight fit; but in it he was well sheltered, for the coop was under the lee of the weather-bulwark. He drew an old coat he had brought up over him, pillowed his head on the rolled-up flag he had thrown into the hen-coop, and in a minute was asleep.
A sailor's sleep is sound, and sacred as the slumber of death to his messmates and shipmates as they mutter softly round about him and tread the upper plank with airy feet that all shall be hushed in the forecastle—hushed unless it be the crying of the wind or the sullen thunder of the bow-sea, or the cries of the watch on high furling or reefing to the trumpet commands of the quarter-deck. Nothing in all ocean romance is comparable to this picture of a full-rigged ship in command of a girl who is alone at the wheel whilst her lover sleeps, whilst a dog on the forecastle-head watches the ocean line with faithful eye for the sparkle of light, for the dim sheen of canvas, for the stream of smoke spangled with the stars of the furnace, that shall make him bark in barks as truthful of indication as the strokes of the tongue upon the ship's bell.