"She is sailing as fast as we," she exclaimed.
"No!" answered Hardy, in a rage.
"Must they be left to perish?" she cried.
It was an awful problem for fate to submit to a sailor's mind. The very thought of thirst, of famine, of suffering incarnate in the miserable figures of men in an open boat at sea makes faint the heart of the seaman, and sooner would he expire than not fly to help. But how stood this ghastly conundrum with Hardy? First, who were the men? They might be foreigners—Greeks, Italians, Portuguese, Spaniards. They had knives on their hips, and their hearts would redden with the spirit of murder when, being on board, they understood that the flag was the Red Flag of England, and that nothing stood between them and the ship and a fair-haired English girl, of incomparable figure, but one man, whose heart beat within the reach of their shortest blade! No! They must be helped but not received. And how was it to be done? And meanwhile grew this fear—if the wind slackened, if a calm fell, they would gain the ship with their oars. Hardy was without a revolver. Captain Layard had taken away his; how could he resist—how could one man resist the desperate clamber of eight men infuriate with thirst, famine, and deadlier passions yet if they were foreigners?
He pondered deeply, grasping the wheel; the dog upon the grating watched the boat, a lustrous spot to the naked eye, and Julia gazed in silence at her sweetheart.
"Come and hold the wheel," said he.
Still in silence witnessing distress but resolution in his face, she seized the spokes, and he went to work to help that open boat. There were, as you know, two boats in the davits, and a gig, called the captain's gig, hung by davits over the stern. Rushing to the foremost boat, Hardy seized the empty breaker out of its bows and ran with it to the scuttle-butt, and, swiftly as he could, filled it. He then replaced the breaker in the boat's bows. He next sped down the companion-ladder, filled a tin basket with bottles of beer and two bottles of rum, returned on deck with this basket, and placed it in the boat. He then fetched some tinned food, a quantity of ship's biscuit and an uncooked ham, which would be good eating to starving men. They were eight, and he made calculations for a week's supply with care. He threw a pannikin into the boat. He breathed hard and fast, and his face was coloured with blood, and the sweat drained from his hair to his eyebrows; for he was mad to succour and mad to escape, and all the while he worked he never spoke a word to the girl.
It would have been an impossible task but for the steady flow of the sea, and the gentle yielding of the ship to the caressing sway of the fold. But it fell out as it was, and Hardy did it whilst Julia steered, and the ship blew softly onwards, whilst the white spot abaft the beam, watched by the dog, gleamed like a meteor whose foam would be a little disc when near. He freed the boat of its gripes by his knife, a sharp blade, then, just as Layard had before him, he lowered the boat by easing away first the bow, then the after falls, until she was water-borne, when, with a sailor's activity, he passed his knife through the tackles, and the ropes fell into the boat. She was liberated! and whilst he filled his lungs, distressed in breath, so ardent and energetic had been his toil, the boat was astern, then in the ship's wake, and Julia could see her by looking over the taffrail.
"They'll come up with it," said Hardy, going to the girl's side, "and their overhauling her will widen our distance."
"It was the only way to feed them," Julia answered.