Hardy and Mr. Harper touched their caps to each other.
"This is business, sir," said the boatswain, "and this ship is going to point a moral to that there steamer!"
Hardy sent a critical gaze aloft. Everything was set to a hair and rounded firm as a boiler full of steam. Everything was doing the work of a boiler and more than the work of a boiler, as witness yonder sky-blackening fabric, like panting Time, toiling to elude the Camilla of the sea.
"Your captain has sent me some good men," said Hardy. "It did not take you long, I reckon, to bend new canvas."
The boatswain smiled loftily betwixt his red whiskers.
"It isn't all New Navy yet, sir," he answered; "but it's coming."
He sighed like a risen porpoise.
"There'll be no call for sailors when it's to be nothing but that, with pole-masts and so built"—he was pointing as he spoke to the steamer—"that a dock-master might fitly sing out to the skipper, Which end of you is coming in?"
He suddenly drew himself up as though on drill, and Julia stepped out of the companion-hatch. Sleep had touched her cheeks with a delicate bloom. She had refreshed herself with soap and water; her abundant hair was gracefully dressed; with the cunning fingers of a woman she had somehow, I do not know how, effaced in effect at least from her attire the soiling and creasing influence of hard weather upon the single robe. She had managed to warp her hat to its old bearings, and it sat cocked in its old coquettish pride upon her head. Her gaze was full of rapture as she looked at the ship, the straining sweep of white water over the side, the easy, manly figure of the man at the wheel, the Magicienne, which if this breeze lasted the ship must presently shift her helm to pass.