"Why, it has come as thick as cockroaches," he answered. "When you get home you shall write your story, and the critics who take shipping on a summer day from Putney to Henley will exclaim as one man, 'What a lie!'" "Who rang the bell?" said Julia. "That question will worry me whilst I live." A sea struck the deck-house and blinded the weather-windows. The sturdy structure quivered. Hardy waited until the water had roared away overboard, and then said: "A bell will strike of itself in a rolling ship. I have heard it. Or it was hit by a rope. Do you believe in ghosts, Julia?" "I don't want to." "The stroke was a sudden come-to in the reel of the brig, or a rope did it," said Hardy, and she tried to look as though she believed him. Thus they talked whilst they sat in the deck-house, for out of it they would have stood to be washed overboard. The seas poured in gray-green folds, and the foam rolled about the decks like the cream of the breaker on shelving sand. She was a stout bucket and strongly knit, and if all had been well with her she would have sported with this breeze. Her canvas was setting her to the eastwards broadside on, and Hardy was glad of it, because he guessed that the _York_ would remain hove to, and that her drift would not be much greater than the sag of this half-drowned Geordie. But though he looked abroad he never witnessed any signs of improvement, or even promise of improvement, in the weather. It was not blowing harder, however, which was a good thing, yet he guessed that even if the weight of the wind remained as it stood, then, should it blow all night, a fair daybreak would not reveal the _York_, in which case they were shipwrecked, and must either wait to be taken off, or trust to God's mercy to keep the boat in her place forward, that they might launch her, and seek the succour that would not come. The deck-house was often hit by the sea, but the blows were rarely hard, and there was more terror in the thunder of the stroke than in the possibility of the structure going. "I see a scuttle-butt out there," said he once during the course of the morning. "What's that?" she asked. "A cask for holding fresh water for the men to drink when on deck."