"We have to cross the Bay," replied Hardy. "It may come on hard from the east'ard and blow us to Boston."
"Is it always rough in the Bay of Biscay?" said the girl.
"I have swept up and down it often in my life," replied Hardy, "and five times out of ten we were becalmed on it, and thankful for catspaws. The thunder of the Bay continues to roar loud in the song, and alarms the man in the street who talks of taking shipping south. Let him be hove to off the Horn in fifty-eight degrees south. Suppose you see if the kettle boils."
They made an excellent breakfast and so did the dog. Hardy ate and held the wheel, the ship, as though in love with her people, almost steered herself. There would come a change; the God-given mood of the sea is sweet, it is the weather that breaks her heart. As a drunken husband seizes his pale and pretty wife by the hair, and flogs her into shrieks and madness, so does the weather serve the ocean. It is good for the fish who breathe thereby, but bad for the passenger at whose white, overhanging face the invisible eye of the fish is uplifted languishingly.
"Now, Julia," said Hardy, "hold the wheel whilst I teach the dog a lesson in practical seamanship."
He stepped to the mizzen-royal halliards and called to the dog, which followed. He cast the rope off the pin, but kept one turn under the pin, and said to the dog:
"Seize it and pull!" holding out the slack.
The dog with much wagging of tail, as though he reckoned that Hardy meant some caper-cutting, seized the rope with his teeth. It was now a job. He wanted the dog to pull at the rope, so that when he swigged off at the halliards the dog by dragging would keep the slack taut as though strained by human hands. The intelligence of the Newfoundland is proverbial and marvellous, but it took Hardy all an hour to make the noble creature see what it was expected to do. He then did it, and Julia, whose laugh had been constant throughout the procedure, let go the wheel to clap her hands, whilst Hardy with purple face swigged off upon the halliards, and the dog, with forward slanting legs, strained the slack. All three then rested: Hardy steered sitting, for, as I have told you, a little movement of the spokes sufficed.
After smoking a pipe whilst Julia looked to the galley fire—not with a view to cooking, there was plenty to eat—the sailor yielded the wheel to his sweetheart, and went below into the captain's cabin to explore the contents of the safe. First of all, he was to find the key; this proved a hunt, running into ten minutes; then of course he found the bunch of keys exactly where he looked last and should have looked at first—in the captain's desk. The key of the safe was one of a few on a ring. When he opened the safe he found several large metal boxes like cash-boxes. All these boxes were to be fitted by the keys on the ring. The first was flush with magnificent jewelry—bracelets, earrings, rings; and the flash of the diamond was like the sparkle of the sea under the sun. The second metal box was filled with gold chains of all sorts of pattern, some massive, some delicate as twine, of very beautiful workmanship. In the third box were watches and seals, all gold, of splendid manufacture, for in those days the watch was handsome, the mechanism exquisite as the chronometer of to-day, and the gold case was heavy. The fourth and last box contained curiosities, such as a Jew dealer with a yellow grin of awe would steal out of some mysterious hiding-place and show you with something of breathlessness and a frequent glance to right and left, and sometimes over his shoulder.