In fact, Julia was sparkling to the caressing hand of this new life. The health of the sea was hers, the love of the sailor was hers, content and hope were hers. Do not these things wait upon appetite and help digestion? Do not they irradiate slumber with entrancing visions? If the girl soiled her hands by lighting the galley fire, she knew where to find the head pump and the galley clout or a towel from aft to dry her fingers.
Whilst they were eating their breakfast this morning the dog sprang on the grating abaft the wheel and barked its lookout to the sea to windward, about two points before the beam.
"Hold this wheel, Julia!" exclaimed Hardy.
He sprang for the telescope and levelled it, and the light sweep of the ship's summer lurch darted a boat with a lugsail into the lens. He viewed her intently in silence, which Julia did not dare to break into by heedless, girlish cries of "What is it?" like the distracting marginal notes of the lady's pencil in the tearful, the hysteric, and the religious novel. How far distant that boat was off I do not know, but she lay very clean and clear in the powerful tubes which Hardy was bringing to bear upon her. Her sail was like a square of satin; the fabric was painted black; as she rose to the fold you saw the delicate gush of foam at the bow. Hardy counted eight men in her, and one figure that was in the bows continuously waved some streaming thing white in his hands.
"My God!" cried Hardy, letting fall the glass to his side. "What a misfortune!"
"What is it?" asked Julia.
"A boat-full of shipwrecked men," he replied, and his face grew grim as he said it. "They may be dying of thirst and famine, and they must not come aboard."
"Oh, George!" exclaimed Julia, grasping the thing in an instant.
"If they came aboard," he continued, speaking swiftly and even fiercely, "they may seize the ship; in any case their salvage claim would wreck our hopes. Put the helm up. By God, they shall not board us!"
He sprang to the wheel, and the ship sloped away to leeward from her course, and the bearings of the boat were then abaft the beam. Julia picked up the glass, and with an easy hand directed it.