Sunrise is beautiful at sea on a fine morning; the sky ripples with silver and rose, and the sea uplifts its fountain note of rejoicing as that great imperial mystery of the heavens, the sun, floats off the verge of the deep. The dawn found Hardy at the wheel and the girl asleep in the hen-coop. He did not curiously seek for a ship in sight, for he did not stand in need of help, and would reject it if offered. A sail was twinkling like a peak of iceberg right abeam to starboard, and Hardy looked at her, and thought of twenty other things. The breeze had slackened slightly; it was still a pleasant summer breast of sea, and the ship's speed was four. All plain sail might have given her seven, and the wings of the stunsail from topgallant yard-arm to swinging-boom end might have helped her into eight. No matter! She was homeward bound, and there was no growler in her ship's company if it was not the dog.
When Julia came out of her strange little bedroom she arose like Arethusa in Shelley's poem: rosy and fire-eyed, sweet with the refreshment of slumber, and sweeter perhaps to a man's eye because she was unadorned. She pressed her lips to her sweetheart's cheek.
"Let me take the wheel," said she, "while you rest."
"Can you light a fire?" he answered.
She looked at him with reproachful wonder.
"What cannot I do? What has not poverty made me do?"
"Will you light the galley fire?" said he, "and fill a kettle out of that scuttle-butt, boil some water, and give us a hot drink of coffee? Poor old Crummie is dead and gone, but her spirit survives in tins, and I believe there is some preserved milk in the cabin."
She did not waste much time in lighting the galley fire. Everything was at hand. Whilst the kettle was boiling she fetched food from the cabin, and on top of the dog's kennel made some little display of tablecloth, cup and saucer, and knife and fork. This disturbed Sailor, who at once beheld the distant sail and saluted it.
"You shall be even more useful than that," said Hardy to the dog. "This morning I will look for the key of the safe and judge of the value of the contents."
"It is pleasanter than yachting," exclaimed Julia.