The girl stood beside him with uplifted arms, frozen by horror into the marble rigidity of a statue. It was going to blow a gale. The black scowl of the sky had the menace of storm in its fixity. No yellow curl of scud, no faintness here or there relieved that grim, austere, down-look. The day might have been closing, so dusky it was with the flying sheets of rain and the white haze torn out of the foaming brow by the rending hand of the wind. The seas swung fast and fierce, and serpentine pillars of white water leapt on high from the brig's side, and fled in shrieking clouds of sparkles to leeward. "We shall lose the ship," said Hardy, with the coolness of desperation. "We could not launch that boat," and he pointed to the small, chubby fabric that lay stowed near the foremast; "and if we could she would not live a minute. What became of your boat?" "I looked for her," she answered, "and saw her floating yonder in the moonlight. The captain fastened her rope to something and it slipped." "Come out of the wet," said he. "We can do no good here. They'll keep the ship hove to, and the weather may clear by noon." They entered the deck-house, and Hardy began to explore it, and in the two little cabins aft he found all the information he required about this abandoned brig. The log-book was dated down to two days earlier, and the entries were by a hand that spelt in the speech of Newcastle-on-Tyne. She was the _Betsy_, of Sunderland. The sea began to flow into her on a sudden to some gape or yarn of butt-end; you can't tell how it is until you dry-dock them. She would have gone down in an hour, despite her pump, but for the timber on which she floated. By the entries it was clear the crew had stuck to her for two days. Hardy then guessed that, growing weary of waiting for a ship, they had gone away in the boat. In one cabin he found a telescope and an old-fashioned quadrant, some wearing apparel, and a tall hat such as an old skipper might wear, bronzed by weather, and instantly suggesting to an active imagination a round, purple face, streaks of white whisker, a chocolate-coloured shawl round the throat, and a nose of the colour of a bottle of rum in the sun.