She picked up the glass, and inspected the approaching vessel. And so the time was whiled away until the steamer was close on the York's quarter, her paddle-wheels ceased to revolve, and now all about her could easily be understood without the glass.
She was one of that class of naval steamers which still survive (in aspect at least), at the date of the composition of this story, in the Royal Yacht, familiar in the Solent. She had a square stern, embellished with gilded mouldings and sparkling with windows. She had yellow paddle-boxes, a tall black hull with a few square gunports of a side. She was a barque, though they tried to make her look like a ship by fixing square yards without canvas on her mizzenmast and fidded topmast, which was a brigantine's mainmast with its crosstrees. For a full-rigged ship must have fidded topmast and fidded topgallantmast and royalmast, and if she has not these you may call her what you like but she is not a ship.
The steamer was H.M.S. Magicienne, bound from Rio to Devonport, having halted at the Cape de Verde for coal. She was full of men, as the Navy ship usually is. Here and there she was spotted by the red coat of a marine. She sparkled to the risen fine weather, and the sea was now blue to both the ships, though northwest it breathed in leaden shadow. She dipped her visible wheel in foam. The colour of her country trembled in handkerchief-size at her gaff end, and her pennon streamed in a line of silk. An officer stood upon the paddle-box and hailed the York. Hardy thought he could answer, and tried to do so, but found that his voice would not carry. Indeed he had been overburdened, and every function was bowed and humped.
To make himself understood he shook his head and pointed to his mouth, and flew the signal of "No voice" by pantomime. The trill of a whistle could be heard. In a few moments—moments are minutes, minutes are hours on board the ship of war with hundreds of a crew, as compared with the moments, minutes, and hours aboard a ship of trade with thirty of a crew—a boat-full of men with something glittering in the stern-sheets sank to the water at the steamer's side, and, as though but one oar was wielded at either gunwale, the boat came with flashful iteration of feathered blade, a pulse of sparkling locomotion each side of her, and the something that glittered astern beside the coxswain enlarged swiftly into the proportions of a midshipman twenty years old.
He gained the deck with the scrambling bounds of a kangaroo as he sprang from the rail saluting the ship with some convulsion of thumb near the bottom button of his waistcoat. His freckled face was well bred; his looks had the ardency of the youthful British sailor. You felt that here was a young man, perhaps an honourable, perhaps a lord, who at the call of duty would do his "bit," and do it well.
He stared hard at the girl whilst he walked slap up to Hardy.
"What's the matter with this ship?" said he, and his accost made Hardy feel as though he were a north-country Geordie skipper with an auld wife in the companion-hatch darning his stockings.
"I am stumpended with work," said Hardy, "and must sit, or I shall fall." And he sat down.
"You look like the end of a long voyage," said the midshipman.