Hardy stood at the wheel with a pipe in his mouth, and the dog slept in his kennel alongside. It was not for long that Julia was allowed to sleep. When it was a quarter before four, when the darkness that grows deeper before the dawn dwelt like a sable vapour upon the face of the sea, when the flash of the star was fast in its westward sweep, and the red scar of moon looked dully down like a piece of broken glass thick stained, through which the crimson splendour above drains and oozes, the wind shifted suddenly three points; 'twas then almost abeam.
He called to the girl. Her awakening found her astounded by her situation. Was she in a coffin? He called again, and the saint-like voice of love brought her from her sepulchre of hen-coop with an eager cry of, "I am wide awake. What is it?"
"The wind has shifted, Julia. Do you know what I mean?"
"The wind has changed."
"Yes, you are awake. Take hold of this wheel."
She grasped the spokes. The dog would be of no use then; all Hardy could do was to slacken away the weather-braces and haul taut the lee-braces as well as a single pair of British arms could. He clapped on the watch-tackle here and there, and made the best job possible under the circumstances; but he was bothered by the want of somebody to hold on to the slack. However, by belaying the watch-tackle and then belaying the brace he in a one-man fashion managed it, and when he returned to the wheel the ship slipped to her course again with her shortened canvas rap-full, and a wake like a mill-race.
"Hurrah!" cried Hardy, with a slap of his thigh; "storm along, old Stormy! Whilst she creaks she holds! I'll teach that dog this morning to pull a rope. He has teeth and sense and some sailors have neither, because their teeth are worn out by chewing salt junk, and the crimp drugs their brains till the skull is like a rotten nut, full of dust."
"It is my turn at the wheel," said Julia.
"Just you go and turn in," he answered. "Here's the skipper and there's the bed. I shall take an off-shore spell sometime to-day. Rest till breakfast-time, and then you shall light the galley fire, and boil some coffee."
She crept into the hen-coop after holding the binnacle lamp to his pipe, and the ship moved in the glimmering shadow through the hour of darkness with slightly restless yards at every solemn plunge, for, like the figure of a beautiful woman, she was the fairer in grace and the easier in carriage when moulded by the fingers of art.