"You'll do," said Hardy.

He called the dog and they went forward. There is no good in talking of jiggers, down-hauls, sheets, halliards, winches, and such things to landsmen. Enough, then, if it be said that by first letting go and then by hauling down, Hardy, helped by the dog and the jigger—which is another word for the watch-tackle—succeeded in easing the ship of two or three pinions of staysails and jib. The jigger manned the down-haul stoutly, and the dog stuck like glue to all slack he was asked to concern himself with. The sails were left to flap and slat and thunder. What could Hardy do? If the canvas went to pieces they must carry the ship home without it; if it held, there were the dog, the jigger, and the man to rehoist it. A mate's ear does not love the noise of slatting canvas, and Hardy as he stood in the bows guessed with something of helpless disgust that the jib-boom was buckling a bit. The foretopmast staysail and the inner jib were roaring like a thunder-storm, and a living gale swept out of the iron curve of the bolt-rope of the fore-course.

It was white water often to the figure-head, the midnight magnificence and wrath of foam, the stormy bellowing of the recoiling and shattered sea. Heavenly Father! to think of this rushing, shadowy structure, this clipper fabric, whose stern was out of sight in darkness from the bows, controlled by a girl!

Hardy ran aft to take the wheel, and the dutiful dog trotted beside him. How did that night pass? In simple alternations of coop and wheel.

It was not to be a long night; the business of the half-gale did not begin until eight bells of the first watch, and it was nearly two bells before Hardy had made an end with his staysails and jib. It was not perhaps in those days so extremely necessary as it is in these to keep a bright lookout for ships' lights, simply because the steam vessel was comparatively few, and the sailing ship was not greatly accustomed to interpret her presence by the red and green wink. The flourish of the lamp hastily plucked out of the binnacle was deemed as good a flare as an empty flaming tar-barrel, and, indeed, it sometimes sufficed. Collision in the days of timber was not collision in the days of steel. Colliding ships ground away each other's channels amidst the benedictions of the forecastle and the poop, and the spluttering expostulations of crackling spars on high. Now 'tis touch and sink, so ingenious and preserving is the water-tight bulkhead, so grand in assurance of the salvation of precious life is the keel-up boat, secured beyond all release of knife or tool to the skid. Everything is riveted, and everything goes, and it takes half a dozen gunboats to sink a wooden wreck maliciously floating in the track of the supreme expression of the modern shipwright's art.

The break of day found Hardy at the wheel. But he had slept since he was last heard of, and Julia had stood her trick, kick or no kick, whilst Sailor kept watch on the forecastle head. The wind had greatly fallen, the sea had greatly fallen, and the complexion of fine weather was in the dawn. With the rising of the sun the weather promised beauty and splendour: blue seas far as the eye could reach breaking in foam, masses of sailing cloud in the sky like vast puffs of vapour from the funnel of a locomotive; and right astern, a film of pearl in the windy blue, hung a sail.

It was not seen for some time by Hardy, nor by the dog that slumbered in its kennel; but when Julia came out of her coop to the summons of the sun, she instantly saw the sail and called and pointed; and whilst she held the wheel the dog sprang on to the taffrail and barked, and Hardy fetched the glass.

A cloud of canvas coming up astern hand over hand. Topsails, topgallantsails, royals, and skysails; the wind fresh off the beam; a topgallant-stunsail yearning from its boom end: the beautiful vision, a leaning light with the blue sea in foam betwixt it and the York, and beyond, the immeasurable heavens sloping past the working rim of the deep.

"A Yankee," said Hardy, putting down the glass. "Skysails—why not moonsails, and angels' footstools? D'ye know that you can sometimes stop a ship by cracking on? I've hove the log and found her doing ten: thought to get more out of her; set royals and topmast-stunsails: hove the log and found her doing nine. Why? Because a ship isn't built to sail on her side."

The galley fire was lighted; coffee was boiled; the sun shone brightly, and the ship astern was coming up fast. Whilst Julia held the wheel, Hardy mastheaded the red flag of our country at the gaff end, and there it streamed, meteoric, as in the song.

"It is like being in the Docks to see it," cried Julia.

"It is like feeling that there are no bally Dutchmen in the world!" answered Hardy.

They breakfasted in a manner afore-described, and often watched the ship astern. She was a black spot under a white cloud.

"Undoubtedly a Yankee," said Hardy, with his mouth full of white biscuit. "She'll wonder at us, and what will she do?"

"They must not help us," said Julia.

"Fancy her sailors sparkling with the jewels in the safe, fancy her skipper and mates singing out orders with heavy gold chains round their necks, and diamond earrings in their Yankee lobes! I do love the Yankee captain; he stands at the break of the poop and watches his mate kicking a man's brains out of his skull, and he yells out, 'Heave him over the side whilst he's breathing.' It is all sweetness and light aboard the Yankeeman. Some of these days the great Republic will awaken to recognition of the claims of her merchant sailors. The immortal Dana did his best, which was noble and lasting. But oh, the crimes, the cruelties, the murders which make the Yankee ship of trade a bitterer hell for men than the hell of the monk's invention!"

But a stern chase is a long chase, albeit you are under single-reef topsails and fore-course only, whilst t'other heaps your wake with skysails and stunsails. It was half-past nine before the ship astern was on the York's quarter; a black barque with an almost straight stem, taking the seas under her swelling heights with the springs and leaps of a deer chased by the hound.

Her colour, if it flew, was invisible as yet, but her nationality was as certain as a goatee. Jonathan was at the helm and Jonathan was at the prow, and Hardy easily guessed that the condition of the York flying the flag of a rich relation was puzzling the intelligence of the gentleman whose legs are represented as clothed with the bunting of Stripes and Stars. Yes, Jonathan was puzzled, and like Paul Pry meant to intrude, whilst hoping that he didn't.

On a sudden she clewed up skysails, royals, and topgallantsails, boom-ended her studdingsails, and came surging with little more than the speed of the York on to the clipper's quarter within easy hail. A man stood on the rail holding on by the mizzen-rigging. No flag flew at the gaff end, but the word Yankee was writ in letters as big as the barque herself. The figure grasped an old-fashioned weapon for the conveyance of sound—a speaking-trumpet; he put it to his lips, and whilst a small crowd of men on the barque's forecastle, attired in dungaree and vary-coloured headgear, gazed at the York with the steadfast stare of sheep at a barking dog in a field, the man with the trumpet delivered his mind thus:

"Ho, the ship ahoy! What ship are you?"

Hardy, with one hand to his mouth, Julia meanwhile steering, roared back:

"The York, of London; bound to London."

This was all he said. He did not inquire the barque's name; it was no business of his to know it. But she was forging ahead, and the name under the counter in long white letters grew visible: Columbia—Boston.

"Where's your crew?" shouted the man with the trumpet.

"On deck," was the answer.

A man standing by the figure on the rail took the speaking-trumpet and replaced it by a telescope, which the figure levelled at Julia.

"He's admiring you," said Hardy.

"I dare say the crew on that forecastle are laughing," she exclaimed.

"Sailors are too well fed to laugh easily," replied Hardy. "Oily men, fat men, rich men, seldom laugh."

All between the two speeding vessels was the rush of the white surge, and the ships seemed to salute each other like acquaintances as they bowed in stately rolls and sang the song of the shrouds one to the other, for it is all singing at sea—singing or singing out.

Suddenly when the barque had drawn on to the weather-bow of the York she was luffed up into the wind, and the weather-half of her loftier canvas was aback.

"They mean to visit us," said Hardy.

"Not to stay, I hope," said Julia, anxiously.

In a few moments some figures broke from the barque's forecastle crowd and ran aft, and a white boat of a whaling pattern, sharpened stem and stern, sank from its davits with six men in her, and the man who had given the telescope to the figure on the rail steered the boat.

Hardy put his helm down and shook the wind out of his small canvas, and presently the boat was hooked on alongside, and an American sailor—a chief mate—clambered over the rail on to the deck of the York.

It is bad taste to imitate accents, or oddities of phrase, or nasal deliverances. This Yankee mate then shall speak as our first cousin does.

"Do you mean to say," said he, touching his cap as he approached Hardy and Julia, "that you and this lady"—he bowed to her—"are your ship's company?"

"No," answered Hardy. "We have that dog: he is worth ten foreigners, and we have a watch-tackle and a winch."

"And you are carrying this ship to London alone?"

"Ay."

The Yankee mate looked a little stupefied, glanced along the deck, then up at the Red Ensign, then at the girl who stood beneath it.

"Where are you from?" he asked.

"See here," said Hardy; "I intend to spin my own yarn when I get ashore, and I do not mean that it shall either be diminished or exaggerated by report. This lady and I propose to carry this ship home alone, and that flag flies in vain if we fail."

"Well, I am surprised," said the mate of the barque. "It must be very uncomfortable. Your outer jib is slatting, and your staysails want stowing. Can we help you?"

"I am very much obliged," replied Hardy, "but before you call your men aboard this lady will kindly bring from the cabin a bottle of grog and glasses, that we may drink to the good voyage of the Columbia and to the increasing greatness of your magnificent country."

"I am willing," answered the mate, and as Julia disappeared he exclaimed, "Is she your wife, sir?"

"No; she is my sweetheart; she is the daughter of a retired commander in our Royal Navy, and if God suffers us to reach home she will be my wife."

"She is a very fine young woman," said the mate.

"She has a splendid spirit," answered Hardy, "and she is a very fine young woman as you say."

Julia knew the ways of the under-stewardess, and was quickly on deck again with a tray of glasses, cold water, and a bottle of brandy. She mixed the spirits, each man saying "when," and took a little drop herself, just enough to be sincere with in her good wishes. The Yankee mate did not seem to greatly trouble himself that the figure on the barque—undoubtedly the skipper—should keep the telescope bearing upon them. With one hand on the spoke Hardy, with the other hand, held aloft the glass of grog, and said:

"Here's to your beautiful barque, and to the noble country from which she hails!"

He drank and so did Julia, and the mate before drinking said:

"Here's to the Red Flag of Old England, and to the fine girls who steer ships under it!"

Julia laughed merrily, and thought the mate better looking now than she had at first believed. He was a little sallow, a little long-faced, and on the whole what the Americans call slab-sided; but he had the eyes of an honest man and the looks of a good sailor, and if his name were inscribed on the dome of St. Paul's nothing better could be said of it.

"My captain will be getting impatient," said the mate. "He'll wonder that you don't take assistance."

"If your men will hoist that canvas for me," answered Hardy, "I shall ask no more help."

"What a beautiful dog is that!" said the Yankee mate, hanging in the wind, so much did he relish this novel rencounter and brief association in mid-Atlantic with a young lady of incomparable figure. "I would be the happiest man in America if I owned that dog."

"All America would not purchase him," answered Hardy; "his name is Sailor, and he has the spirit of Nelson. He helps me and the watch-tackle to brace up, keeps a lookout like a madman in search of the philosopher's stone, never gets drunk, and always says his prayers before he turns in. Will you have another drop of brandy?"

"No more, sir, I thank you."

Saying which the mate went to the side and hailed the boat. Hardy kept the York in the wind and the barque was already in the wind, and neither vessel therefore had any way to speak of. The boat, well fended off, slobbered alongside, chucked and dived, spat and hissed like a kitten sporting with its mother. To the cry of the mate four men sprang into the chains, and were on deck with the activity of Britons boarding a Frenchman. Fine-looking fellows they were, three of them Englishmen who had been forced by Great Britain's love of foreign labour to earn their bread under the Stripes and Stars. They stared about them with sheepish grins because a woman was hard by. Had the girl been a British skipper their smileless faces would have grown as long as wet hammocks.

"Fill a drink for them, Julia," said Hardy.

Another glass was fetched, four glasses brimmed, and with a "Well, here's luck, sir," down went the doses through throats to which the aroma of cognac was as strange a bliss as heaven to a newly arrived soul.

"Shall we make more sail for you?" said the mate.

"Not a cloth, thank ye," answered Hardy at the wheel.

So the mate and the men went forward and hoisted the outer jib and scientifically belayed the sheet, then lay aft, and did likewise with the staysails, hauled taut the braces, and generally made things snugger than they had found them. The dog went with them and watched their conduct with admiration.

"Well," said the mate, approaching Hardy with an outstretched hand, "we have done all you wish us to do, and I am sorry you won't let us do more. We will report you."

"I hope you won't," answered Hardy; "the owners will send out a tug in search of us, and then it's good night to my salvage."

"I twig," responded the mate, with a grave smile. "Yes, it shall be made apparent to the Old Man," meaning his captain, for at sea the captain would be called Old Man by the sailors if he were a beardless youth of twenty-two.

He shook hands with Hardy, and their grasp was cordial. He shook hands with Julia, and admired her and praised her with a look. Then the five tumbled over the side like rats from a sinking ship, gained the boat, and went away with a smoking stem to the barque. Julia stepped to the rail to watch, and when the men saw her they cheered; three times they cheered, and the mate in the stern-sheets lifted his cap and cheered whilst Julia flourished her hand. There is much good-fellowship at sea, and English-speaking sailors are as brothers when they meet.

"Those men do not look as though they were starved and kicked," said Julia, returning to Hardy.

"If every ship kicked and starved her sailors there would be no ships afloat," replied Hardy. "All the same, there is much starvation and kicking at sea."

"How beautiful that ship looks!" said Julia; "I never saw a vessel's canvas shine so brightly. How delicate are the shadows at the edges! A sailing ship owes its life to the wind, and all the spirit of the sea is in her. Steamers are full of coals and ashes, they blacken the air with disgusting smoke, their life is compulsion, they are driven by a wheel or a screw. The sailing ship floats on wings like the sea-bird."

"All is compulsion," exclaimed Hardy, watching the keen-ended boat as she foamed sweeping with a lightning flash of wet oars to the sun, to the mother she belonged to; "compulsion hurled the universe into being, and everything is driven by it. I do not like to be compelled to be born or to die. I do not like to be compelled to carry a hump or to grow bald or hideous with age. But I am compelled into these enormities and there's no getting away from it. You must hold this wheel whilst I dip our flag when they get their boat to the tackles."

This did not take long to happen. The sweethearts watched the white boat rising out of the water, and when the little fabric was hanging at its davits the American flag soared heavenward, streaming to the gaff end.

"Hold the wheel," said Hardy, and Julia grasped the spokes.

He sprang to the signal-halliards and lowered the flag, just as you pull off your hat when you say good-bye. The American colour sank in graceful beauty and soared again, and again sank the Red Ensign to be again gaff-ended, and thrice did these two vessels salute each other and then belayed their halliards, leaving their banners flying.

A faint cheer came from the American vessel, and Hardy sprang into the mizzen-rigging and flourished his cap. Then the Yankee fell off and filled a rap-full; her wake throbbed in pulses of foam under her counter, fountain-bursts of sparkling stars of brine flashed off her bows, every stitch of canvas was mastheaded, and away she went with yearning stunsail, a leaning vision of transcendent beauty—a spirit now, for she hath long since departed from the waters which she walked, and remains but a memory to the old.

Hardy went to the wheel, put his helm a little up, and the York started again for home under steady curves of canvas.

For two days after this the ship's company of three had their hands full. It came on to blow a strong breeze right ahead: they managed to brace up, and went staggering away to the west and north. It was impossible for so slender a company to put the ship about; neither could Hardy wear her, for who was to square and then brace round the yards to the hard-over helm? Every wind then must be a fair wind for that ship; she must splutter through it as best she could, and all that the two brave hearts could pray for was that it should never blow so hard as to dismast them or burst the canvas into rags.

Julia was now a practised as well as a fearless helmswoman, and Hardy was able to get the sleep he needed; she too enjoyed plenty of intervals. In those two days it did not blow fiercer than a two-reef breeze, and Hardy eased the ship by keeping her a little away. For it mattered nothing to him or Julia if the passage home extended into months so long as they got home at last.

CHAPTER XIX. THE CAMILLA OF THE SEA

Within ten weeks of the date of the sailing of the clipper ship York from the River Thames the vessel was about two hundred miles to the westward of the coast of Portugal. It was a leaden day. The ocean was breathing deeply after a long conflict with the gale. The swell ran in sullen masses, lifting with the lazy sickness of oil, but the breeze was light and scarcely creased the moving knolls, and the shadow of cloud hung like tapestry in a darkened chamber, low down in ragged skirts upon the winding line of the sea.

The ship looked wrecked aloft. All her spars were standing indeed, but her mizzentopsail hung in rags, and the bolt ropes made a skeleton of the fabric aft. The foresail was split in halves, and with each weary roll gaped like a cut in an india-rubber ball when pressed. Rags of the outer jib fluttered from lacing or hanks. The maintopgallantsail had been blown loose and had gone to pieces, and was shaking from the yard in lengths like Irish pennants in the rigging. The ship was rolling drearily, and the channels would often slap white thunder out of the sulky brow of the swell, and she groaned greatly throughout her length and made some dim sound of lamentation aloft.

Hardy stood alone at the wheel. He was fresh from a long and desperate fight with the sea, and you read the character of the struggle in his face. His beard was a week old: in the hollows under his eyes lay a little whiteness, the encrustation of salt; this gave him the ghastly look of the life-boat man who steps ashore after standing two nights and a day by a stranded ship with frozen figures in her shrouds. His hair was a little long, and this gave a something of wildness to his aspect. His looks were haggard, his eyes wanting in their usual lustre, his lips were pale; he looked worn. For ten days he and Julia had been fighting a gale of wind. In ten days they had managed to obtain but two or three hours sleep in a day of twenty-four hours. But happily for them it never blew so hard but that they could keep their course shaped for the English Channel. It never blew so hard that a ship well manned would have needed to heave to. It came in roaring weight upon the quarter, and one midnight the mizzentopsail burst in a blast of cannon, and shortly after the maintopgallantsail was blown into shreds out of the gaskets, and next morning, in the screaming fury of a bleaching squall, the outer jib flew into pennons from the stay, and the veil of the fore-course was rent asunder. But the reefed maintopsail, the foretopmast-staysail, and the inner jib were as faithful to their duty as Tom Bowline in the song, and the ship rushed on in foam to the figurehead, whitening acres of the sea abaft her, passing a brig hove to in the haze; passed by a ship that would not stay to speak; passed by a Fruiter schooner from the Western Islands, whose spring over the surge was the glance of the albatross, whose envanishment in the haze ahead, into which the York was for ever rushing, was the extinction of a meteor in a cloud.

And now the gale was gone the sea would shortly smooth its panting breast; it was the early forenoon. Hardy called the dog, but he did not exert the powerful voice that was familiar to Julia.

The Newfoundland came out of its kennel and looked up in affectionate expectation at the sailor.

"Go below and bring her up!" said Hardy, pointing, and the dog perfectly understanding disappeared down the companionway.

His hands were almost raw with grasping the spokes. His arms were almost lifeless with their long resistance to the mulish tug of the wheel-chains in response to the kick of the rudder. His feet ached with standing, knots seemed to have been tied in the muscles of his legs; but in the gauntness of his looks was visible the spirit of a noble heart, and there was no better or more fearless sailor in the world than that grim, unshorn figure that stood alone at the helm of that reeling ship.

You will think it strange that a man, a woman, and a dog should have brought a big, full-rigged ship in safety down to the present hour through some thunderous Atlantic parallels. Yet this ship's adventure is not so strange to me as the mysterious good fortune of the ocean-tramp of to-day that washes through the Bay of Biscay without her funnel, and quietly discharges her cargo without any one feeling one penny the worse. Take, for instance, the second mate of an ocean-tramp. He walks the bridge; there are three foreign seamen in his watch, one of whom steers the ship, whilst the other two paint her. By secret compulsion, well understood by the owner and the captain of the ship, the second mate quits the bridge and helps the two sailors to paint the ship. Who looks after the ship whilst the person in charge of her paints? The ship herself.

Or the same second mate may be on the bridge in the first watch; the foreign sailor at the wheel has been labouring almost continuously at deck-work through the greater portion of the day. The second mate for convenience has set the ship's course by a star. Suddenly he finds the star sliding slowly abeam. He rushes to the wheel and beholds the helmsman standing erect, and asleep. The second mate shakes the fellow furiously, and shouts, "Hard a-starboard!" and the sleepy foreigner, who scarcely understands the commands of the helm in English, tries to port by every spoke until he is stopped by the second mate's boot.

Is not the voyage of our every-day ocean-tramp more wonderful in the unrevealed conditions of the life of the staggering tank than this story of a full-rigged ship worked by an English seaman, an English girl, a Newfoundland dog, a watch-tackle, and a winch? I served for eight years at sea as a sailor, and I venture to say that the tramp is far more wonderful than this ship.

Sailor knew his business, and in a few minutes Julia arrived on deck. She looked ill and worn. Her straw hat was beginning to show like the end of a long voyage; her dress would have made an ill figure of her in Piccadilly. But you saw all that was necessary of spirit and resolution in her eyes.

"Julia," said Hardy, "the pumps suck with me. I feel worn out. I can't stand at this wheel any longer, and there would be no good in your attempting to hold it. I'll secure the helm, and the ship must take her chance. It'll be a dead calm before long, and we have come to a moment when a great deal must be left to fortune. Look yonder!"

He pointed on the quarter where streaks of fine weather were expanding and lifting, lines and spaces of silver blue irradiating the ragged gloom of the firmament which was moving ponderously and slowly northwest.

"You will find it cold," continued Hardy. "Go and wrap yourself up in the captain's cloak whilst I secure the wheel."

Before he had secured the helm the girl returned apparelled as commanded, for to her his word was law. He then sank down in a chair near the wheel with his chin upon his breast, and the girl went forward to boil a kettle of water.

She remained forward until some hot coffee was ready, and when she came aft with it she found her sweetheart sound asleep. It is not love that disturbs the sleeping sailor. It is love that watches and shields the repose of love, as the guardian angel the slumber of the baby. Julia looked at Hardy. How gaunt and hollow! How grim and bristly with the week's growth! Yet how peaceful in sleep, how manly in look, how dear to her; oh, how dear to her by loyal devotion, by beautiful honour, by self-respect, by his fear and his love of God!

She sat on the deck beside him and drank a little coffee, and the dog lay at her feet. The helm was paralysed by the rope which secured the wheel, and the ship was slowly knocked by the head into the hollow of the swell; the topsail was aback, and the ship lay rolling quietly on the quieting folds with streamers of canvas swaying from the yard and from the stay.

Julia continued to sit by her sleeping lover's side for more than half an hour, leaving him once only to see to the galley fire. When again she arose to attend to the fire the dog stood up and shook himself and sprang upon the taffrail to take a look around, and before Julia had stepped ten paces the noble animal was sounding in deep tones his report of a ship in sight.

The noise awoke Hardy, who started and stood up, and Julia stayed where she was to look at the sea.

Nearly right abeam, in the midst of the lifting bright weather whose suffusion of radiance was over the mastheads, was visible the feathering of a steamer's smoke.

"It is something coming our way," said Hardy to Julia, and he took the glass, and pointed it.

His hands trembled, and he steadied the tubes by grasping the vang of the gaff with them. After a long look—Julia was at his side—he said:

"She rises fast. By her square yards I take her to be a man-of-war. If she is British she will be the help I have sometimes prayed for."

He put down the glass, bent on the Red Ensign Jack down, and ran it aloft.

"I will get you some hot coffee," said Julia. "Do you feel rested a little?"

"I am good for an eight hours' spell," he replied, but he did not look so.

She went forward, and he watched the approaching steamer, and the dog watched her also. When the girl returned with a pannikin of hot coffee Hardy had more news to give her. He first drank, then lighted a pipe, and he told her that the ship abeam, whose paddle-wheels had by this time slapped her hull into clear view, was undoubtedly a British man-of-war, and to judge by her course she was either from the Cape de Verde or direct from Rio, or some port on the eastern coast of South America.

"How do you know she is British?" asked Julia.

"By every token of yards squared by lifts and braces, by white bunt, and something white at the gaff end."

"Can you distinguish her flag?"

"It is a speck of light, but I know what it means."

"Will you accept help from her?" inquired Julia.

"Of course I will," he answered. "The Admiralty do not claim salvage, or they so hedge about the claim as to make the claimant's case prohibitory."

"How will she help us?" said the girl.

"Either by towing or sending men. But I doubt if she will tow," answered Hardy. "She may not have enough coal. She may be in a hurry to get home. The sailor is always in a hurry—God help him—and often when he gets home he finds the canary dead in the cage."

"We have no canary to greet us with its corpse," said Julia.

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.

"And you look as if the roast beef of Old England smokes in the gunroom," answered Hardy.

"So help me God, then," cried the midshipman with heat, "nothing has fed us since Rio but salt horse. Where's your crew?" and he looked at the girl without greatly admiring her, for Julia was very draggled and broken about the hat, and dejected about the hair and white and worn, and she knew she was all this with a girl's distress.

"The crew are before you," replied Hardy, languidly pointing at the dog.

"What do you want?" said the midshipman, directing his eyes aloft.

"The help of the nation represented by your ship of state," answered Hardy.

The midshipman, who was a gentleman, perceived that the grim, unshorn, labour-wearied man on the chair was a gentleman, whatever might be his rating aboard a merchantman, and his manner changed.

"You are in a very odd situation," said he. "What a magnificent dog! What is your story, that I may return and report it to the captain?"

It took Hardy ten minutes to relate the ship's adventure, and the midshipman listened to it with parted lips, just as his face would overhang a thrilling novel which is true with all those touches that make the world akin.

"Well," said he when Hardy had finished, "I always thought going into the Navy was going to sea, but that's the real flag of adventure," he added, with a glance at the inverted ensign. "You want help and deserve it, and I'll go to the ship, and report."

He touched his cap with a look of pitying admiration at Julia. It was not the admiration of a man for a pretty face, but for the heart of a lioness.

The boat left the York and Hardy continued to sit, and Julia stood beside him. It was fine weather above the fore-royal truck, and the gloom was thinning in the northwest. Where the brightness had broken the sea was darkening its blue; a breeze was coming up that way, and it would prove a homeward bound breeze to the York, with a sparkling sun to dry her and to cheer her.

"I do not think that midshipman greatly respects the Merchant Service," said Julia.

"Midshipmen occasionally condescend to us," answered Hardy, "but the majority of naval officers have good sense, and wherever there is good sense our flag is respected, because the naval officer has read history and sometimes contributes to it."

The girl looked at the steamer and the boat that was foaming to her to its dazzling line of oars.

"It is a fine service!" said Hardy, taking the steamer in from streaming pennon to the dip of the red-tongued wheel. "I might just as easily have been there as here. One is the butterfly rich with the wing of the peacock tail; the other is the plain white butterfly"—he looked afloat—"that blows like a piece of paper about the summer garden. But deprive them of their wings and you'll find their bodies very much alike."

"What are they going to do?" said Julia.

"We shall soon find out," answered Hardy. "British men-of-war are not accustomed to keep people long waiting to find out."

Though the ships lay at a fair seaworthy distance from each other, men and matters were visible to the naked eye aboard either.

Hardy saw the midshipman conversing with the commander on the bridge. He did not choose to level a glass, it might be deemed impertinent, but he saw the commander lift a binocular to his eyes in evident wonder; certainly the gallant officer had never heard a stranger story of the sea. Officialism could not neutralise curiosity, and the man, the girl, and the dog being within easy reach of the sight helped by the magnifying lens, the commander watched whilst the midshipman talked.

What was to happen was to be speedily understood. The pipe shrilled and trilled, kits and hammocks were flung into the cutter, and in a few minutes the large boat containing twenty-one men and a warrant officer came alongside. Twelve men climbed out of her into the ship, first throwing up to a few who had preceded them their sea wardrobes and bedding. They were followed by the warrant officer—the man-o'-war's boatswain. His ruddy face flamed betwixt two red whiskers; his small, sharp blue eyes shot a bayonet glance in twenty directions in two seconds. He and his men had come to stay, and the cutter laboured to her sea mother to the stroke of five oars controlled by a helmsman.

"I'm the bo'sun of her Majesty's ship Magicienne," said the flaming seaman, coming up to Hardy with a salute. "My orders are to help you to carry this ship home."

"It is very good of your captain," said Hardy, deeply moved, and smiling with an expression that accentuated the weariness of his soul, and that also emphasised the manly nature of his character, which instantly won the recognition of the boatswain because he was a sailor in the presence of a sailor.

"Do I understand your discipline? I give my orders through you. Your men would not accept my command."

"Quite right, sir," answered the boatswain, cheerfully, "and if you will turn me to at once I will turn them men to immediately after. But I beg you won't overtire yourself, sir. And the lady has helped you! And that's a beautiful dog of yourn. A small ship's company, sir; and, begging your pardon, you and the lady both look as if a good night's rest would do you good."

"What is your name?" said Hardy.

"Harper, sir."

"Mr. Harper, will you kindly see that the men make themselves comfortable in the forecastle? You will then bend fresh sails and make all sail. I will show you where everything you want is to be found."

He sat as he spoke, and the boatswain, touching his cap, went amongst his men and executed Hardy's orders.

The two lovers watched the steamer. A man-o'-war, even when she carries paddle-boxes, is always a gracious object. Yonder ship's rails were embellished with a snow-white line of hammocks, and snow-white lines of furled canvas brightened the yards with a gleaming streak of sunshine. The full philosophy of spit and polish was to be found in that steamer. It spoke in the flash of brass; it lurked in the gleam of glass; it was visible in many colours in paint work. Every rope was hauled taut; the yards were unerringly square. The boat rose without a song, the wheels revolved, the foam of a harpooned whale fell in dazzling masses from under the sponsons, and the splendour of the yeast under the square counter flamed like the rising day-star in the windows of the stern.

Hardy staggered to the signal halliards; his motions were seen—he could not salute with the distress signal. With somewhat shaking hands, therefore, he unbent and rebent the Red Ensign and hoisted it and dipped, and the courtesy found its response in the graceful sinking and heavenward soaring of the White Flag of our country.

Before the sailors came out of the forecastle, the queen's ship was on a line with the York's port cathead, merrily slapping her way to England.

Mr. Harper came aft. His salute was respectful, his manner sympathetic.

"If you will tell me where the spare sails are kept, sir, I will see to everything, that you and the lady may go below and take the rest you stand in need of."

Hardy told him all that was necessary, thanking him also, whilst Julia looked at the fifteen men that were gathered forward and admired their well-fed appearance, trim attire, manly shapes, and the whiskers of those who wore them. The discipline of a ship of state was in their postures, different from the longshore, lounging attitude of Jack Muck when waiting, and yet some of the best of those men had been Jack Mucks in their day; one had even been mate of a ship, and the look he sent aloft was charged with recognition of familiar conditions.

"Well, Mr. Harper," said Hardy, "I will leave the ship to you. There are plenty of provisions and there is plenty of fresh water, and there is rum for you to serve out as you think proper."

Saying this, he took Julia by the arm, conducted her to the companion, and followed her into the cabin.

And now occurred another extraordinary incident in this ship's adventure. It had indeed once occurred visibly before, but it will not be credited in this age of the religious novel. When Hardy was in the cabin he put his cap upon the table, and going to a cushioned locker knelt beside it. Julia immediately approached him and likewise knelt, shoulders touching. When they had thanked God—and it was meet that they should thank him for their very merciful deliverance—they ate some food, drank some wine, and went to their cabins.

The sleep of the wearied mariner is profound, and the sleep of the toil-worn girl at sea is likewise profound. Hardy was the first to awake. Through the little port-hole or scuttle in the ship's side he witnessed the scarlet of the dying afternoon; he also observed the creaming curl of the breaking sea streaming swiftly past. In the plank with his feet he felt the buoyancy of sea-borne motion, the floating lift, the floating reel of a fabric winging over the deep. He shaved himself, and emerged a clean, a manly though a pallid sailor, still something gaunt but with eyes brightened by sleep, and with an expression gallant with hope and with victory.

He looked round for Julia. She was still in her cabin, and he would not awaken her. At the foot of the companion-steps lay the Newfoundland; Hardy knelt beside the noble creature and put his cheek to the wet muzzle, and the dog groaned in pleasure and gratitude. Then they went on deck together.

It was a strange, new, surprising sight to Hardy and perhaps to the dog: a British man-of-war's man stood at the wheel of the ship; up and down the quarter-deck stumped the stout figure of Mr. Harper in all pomp of commanding strut. It was the first dog-watch, and some of the sailors were walking about the forecastle smoking pipes, and some of them, also smoking pipes, lurked about the galley door. A fresh breeze was sweeping down upon the quarter. The ship was under full sail from main-royal to flying jib, from mizzen-royal to spanker. The weather-clew of the mainsail was up, and—what was that yonder, right ahead? By heaven! the Magicienne slapping along at ten and pouring incense of soot to the very extremity of the visible universe, and the York was doing twelve and overhauling her with foam to the figurehead, with derisive laughter aloft, with all graceful scorn of the wind-swept structure in every leap, that brought closer yet to the eye the laborious ploughing of the paddles.

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.

"What do you think of this?" said Hardy to her.

"Is it a dream, Mr. Harper?" said the girl. "Shall Mr. Hardy and I awaken to find ourselves on board an abandoned wreck?"

"Call it a dream, mum," answered the boatswain, "and when you awake it will be England!"

This story of the ship's adventure is told. Because what you wish and expect is bound to happen when safety and home are to be reached and realised by a noble, well-found clipper ship in charge of two sailors of the manliest character, and manned by fifteen splendid examples of the man-of-war's men of the Navy of that age.

The merciful eye of God was upon this ship, for certainly the strength of our courageous couple had been expended in a long strife with the gale, and the dog, and the watch-tackle, and the winch without human help would have been of no use. Hardy would have been forced to take the first assistance that offered. It came to him in the triumphant spirit which informs the whole of this couple's adventures. Our sailor yearned for an estate for himself and for the girl that was to be his wife. He richly deserved the reward he desired. Had any ship but a man-of-war assisted him to get home the salvage claimed would have diminished his proportion to a sum which at the present rate of interest would not have yielded him the value of the pension of the retired naval bluejacket. The British man-of-war demands no salvage, and this is but just, because her very existence depends upon the safety of the British merchantman. If you extinguish the Merchant Service, you extinguish the need for a Navy and you extinguish the nation herself, because we are surrounded by the ocean, we are fed by the merchant sailor, and the bluejacket is paid to protect him whilst he brings us the daily bread for which we pray every Sunday in church, and sometimes more often than every Sunday.

I have never heard of a single instance in which the Admiralty have claimed salvage for services rendered to a British merchantman. Possibly they may have sent in a claim for the value of stores expended in the salvage services. In the case of a successful salvage it has sometimes happened that the owners of the ship have by permission of the Admiralty presented a service of plate for the officers' mess, or they have made personal gifts to the officers and a dinner or supper ashore to the crew. Thus it will be gathered that Hardy reaped the harvest he had sown and held in view; and having said this no more need be asked, for the hand that has penned these lines has no cunning as a reporter of the Marriage Service.