In the course of the afternoon Hardy stepped into the after-berths, but found nothing to reward his search. The papers of an old timberman are uninteresting; the letters of an auld wife of Sunderland to her Geordie are sacred, and saving three or four clay pipes and some tobacco, for which Hardy was grateful, there was little to be seen worth mentioning. If this gale slackened into moderate weather the girl should sleep in one of these berths; if not, near the door in the interior on the best sort of bed he could contrive, because, as he meant to keep watch and watch himself throughout the night, she would be close by to rescue if some thunderous surge should discharge the deck-house from its obligation of sticking. He had searched for candles and had found none; a few boxes of matches were in a sort of desk fixed to the bulkhead near the bunk. So he came out of the captain's berth with an old mattress, and then he brought some wearing apparel, a heavy coat with big horn buttons, and a pair of north-country breeches, which, if seized to a stay for fresh air, might fill up and stand out like the half of a Dutchman in a jump. "What's all that for?" said Julia. He explained, and she loved him, and thought how good he was. Yes, there are even worse conditions of life to a girl than being shipwrecked with a sailor who is a gentleman, and if the gentleman informs the spirit of a sailor, its impulse is never greater than when it responds to the appeal of a girl's helplessness. He cut up a little tobacco and smoked a pipe. It seemed to bring him within hail of civilisation, and Julia enjoyed the smell of the tobacco-smoke immensely, and said it made her think of her father. "How would he relish this picture?" said he, referring to their situation. "He would not like to be here, that is all he would think. Will this brig keep together, do you fancy?" "Oh, yes, and I'll tell you what--the gale doesn't harden, which is a good sign. There was plenty of weather in the moon last night, but in these parts it is not often long-lived." "Is not a tremendous sea running?" she asked. "Yes, from the Ramsgate or Margate Sands point of view. You must go to about fifty-eight south, right off the Horn, and get amongst the ice to know what a tremendous sea is like. They come like the cliffs of Dover at you, and the deck is up and down, whilst the keel sweeps up the acclivity. It is splendid and frightful. I was hove to for a fortnight down there; we couldn't drive clear of the ice, and we had about four hours of daylight to see by. All the devils in hell raved in our rigging as we sat upright a breathless instant on the amazing peak we had climbed. No, Julia, this is not a tremendous sea, and the brig will hang together and outweather twenty such."