"We are lonely indeed, now," she presently exclaimed, bringing her eyes from the boat to cast them round the horizon.
"Yes," said I, "but we are going home," and I pointed to the compass.
But she was right, for all that. Lonely the schooner looked with her deserted decks and small canvas, and lonely I felt, not so much at the beginning as later on, when the rolling hours brought the night along, without heaving anything into view that we could turn to account. Miss Noble earnestly wished to help; she assured me she could steer; she was sprung, she said, from a naval stock, and she told me that salt water had run in the veins of several generations on her father's side, and that she was to be trusted at the helm. And, indeed, I found that she steered perfectly well; she held the yacht's head steady to her course; and as half the art of steering lies in that, the most experienced man could not have done more.
Her taking the helm enabled the boy to cook for us, and it gave me an opportunity to obtain sights, to attend to the sails, and the like. Yet, when day broke next morning, I well remember heartily praying that I should not have to pass, single-handed, such another night as we had managed to scrape through. I was on deck all night long. I obliged Miss Noble to go below and take some rest, and Tom slept at my feet while I grasped the tiller, ready to relieve me when I was exhausted with standing. Happily it was a fine night; a warm wind blew out of the west, and the stars shone purely with a few shadows of clouds sailing down the eastern slope.
It was shortly after eight o'clock, while I stood near the tiller drinking a cup of chocolate which Tom had brought me out of the galley, where he had lighted a fire, that, happening to look astern, I spied a sail. Nothing else was in sight, and I had but to look once to know that she was overtaking us. This, indeed, must have been practicable to the clumsiest wagon afloat; for the canvas the schooner was under, merry as was the breeze that whipped the sea into snow and fire under the risen sun, was scarcely sufficient to drive her along at four miles in the hour.
When I had drunk my chocolate I bade Tom prepare some breakfast for Miss Noble, who was, or had been, resting on a sofa in the cabin. When the girl had finished her meal she came on deck. And now the overtaking vessel had risen to her hull, and in the telescope which I pointed at her was proving herself a large ship, with a black and white band and a red gleam of copper under the checkered side as she leaned from the breeze.
"I wish she may not be an English frigate," said I to Miss Noble.
"Why?" she asked.
"Because," said I, "she is sure to prove too inquisitive to be convenient. She'll be sending a lieutenant on board; he will see you; he will ask questions; he will demand the schooner's papers; he will not be satisfied, and will return to his ship for instructions; and we want to get home comfortably, Miss Noble."
"I understand you," she answered. "But an English frigate! What security, what safety is there in the very sound of the words!"