And slowly, for the helm was wearily worked and the braces were dragged by languid hands, the yards came round, and then the maintopsail was mastheaded, and the ship with the wind right abeam crushed the flint-like surge into froth, and forged ahead for the abandoned vessel. It was time to make for her if she was to be visited at all, for the horizon was narrowing and narrowing with the thickness of rain, and soon within the distance of a mile the brig would have vanished. Hardy's glass was full of powerful lenses--its magnifying power was double that of the ship's telescope; when he now put it to his eye he instantly saw a figure just this side of the brig's main-rigging waving something white. His heart brightened. He looked again. She was a woman, and alone! The boatswain was coming aft as Hardy looked forward. "There's a figure aboard that brig," he shouted. "It's a woman, and she's waving a handkerchief." "She'll be yourn," said the boatswain, and as surprise did not immediately follow perception, he added, "Well, I'm damned!" "Stand by to back the maintopsail!" roared Hardy, who was delirious with excitement. "Let some hands lay aft and clear away the starboard quarter-boat ready for lowering. I'd board her if twice this sea was running. I knew I was right. I knew he'd head straight away. I knew I'd find her by shaping the madman's course." "Suppose it isn't her?" said the boatswain. "To hell with your supposings!" yelled Hardy. "In any case it's a woman, and she must be taken off." The men came aft and got ready the boat and stood aft, prepared for the command to back the maintopsail. Again Hardy levelled the glass. The girl--for we know who it was--had ceased to flutter her handkerchief; but the wind, full of wet, bewildered the eye, and the mate would make no more of it than this: the figure was a woman. He headed the _York_ so as to heave to to windward of the brig, and a little while before the topsail-yard was backed Hardy had seen and mentally kissed the poor girl's face in the lens, and frantic with joy was waving his cap to her, whilst she, guessing who it would be that motioned thus, tossed her handkerchief again and again. The ship was brought to a stand, and Hardy shouted, "I am coming to fetch you." She waved her hand. There was an ugly bit of sea between for a boat, choppy, with deep sucking hollows, and plenty of spiteful foam to whiten over the low gunwales. "Who'll volunteer?" said Hardy. "Three will do." "Blast me," said one of them, "if I don't feel as I should be in the road in a boat." "_You_'re likely," said Hardy, pointing to another--"and you, and you. Three will do, and it shall be two pound a man, which God knows I wouldn't offer for a deed of duty, only you're lowered by the captain's drug." "Right y' are, sir," said Jim, who got in the boat and was followed by Tom and Joe. The mate sprang into the stern-sheets and shipped the rudder.