"What did you say to that?" Hardy had asked.
"I said, 'You be damned!'" Candy replied.
Not until five bells, half-past six, in Hardy's watch did the fog show signs of breaking up. It thinned in places, and presently through the stretching ceiling of it the cold, pale dawn looked down upon the sea, and made it piebald with granite-coloured spaces. The breeze then freshened and the fog began to fly. Columns of it moved away stately like pillars of sand on the desert; it swept in Titan cobwebs between the masts; it sped like silken veils streaming from viewless fleeting spirits over the trucks. Wide vistas opened to windward; large blue eyes, soft with the moistness of their light, floated upon the trembling eastern brine. The sun darted a pale yellow lance, and as the captain put his head through the companion-hatch the scene of deep, saving a blankness in the west, opened around, and it was a shining morning with a bright sun and a blue sea and an azure sky and a pleasant breeze of wind.
Scarcely had the captain's head shown when Hardy, looking seawards over the quarter, exclaimed:
"There's the barque that fouled us last night, sir. She's got a wift at her mizzen-peak."
She could be no other vessel than the barque; the morning light was strong and she lay within a mile, and you could see that she had lost her foretopgallantmast and jib-booms. Her maintopsail was aback; she had clearly hove to after losing her mate and splintering clear of the ship and the smother. Her backed topsail curved inwards like carved ivory, her ruddy sheathing flashed its wet length to the sun as the heave rolled her light, tall shape, with its slanting stare of black ports, upon the wide white line that girdled her.
"Why is she flying that gamp?" said the captain, taking a telescope out of the companionway; but before he levelled it at the ship he sent a glance full of scrutiny aloft to gather if his vessel had been hurt in the night, which was distinctly professional and sane, and quite enough to have convinced the Jacks that the "old man" knew the time of day, even if they suspected that the compass of his mind was wrong by points.
The gamp, as he termed the wift, consisted of the French flag stopped in the middle, that is, bound by a rope yarn into the appearance of a gamp umbrella. It tumbled at its block, and was a syllable of sea talk signifying "help!" The skipper whistled to his dog, which had kept a brave lookout throughout the night without relief, and which, seated on the heel of the starboard cathead, seemed to be listening with a grave countenance to the remarks of an ordinary seaman who was addressing him. The beautiful and dutiful creature came bounding aft and pawed his master to the shirt-front, rising nearly his height.
"You had better lower a boat and go and see what that fellow wants," said the captain, and he motioned the dog into the cabin and told it to wait there for breakfast.
"They're lowering a boat, and mean to come aboard of us," exclaimed Hardy, whose eyes were on the barque.