He answered this question by pulling out his knife and cutting off a piece of the meat. Another half-hour would have cooked it, but it was eatable to human necessity. He stowed this provender away in the deck-house and filled the breaker from the scuttle-butt, then went with Julia to look at the bell. "You did not hear it last night," he said. "No," she answered. "It shall not trouble you again," said he, and he unhooked it, and threw it down. "But who struck it?" she asked. "He'll not strike it again," he answered. He peeped through the forescuttle and saw nothing but the gleam of black water washing below. "The rats don't like this sort of thing," said he. "Can you pull upon a rope, Julia?" "I am as strong as you," she answered. He smiled with a glance at her beautiful figure, and said: "Turn to, then, and lend me a hand to shorten sail." Between them they manned the necessary buntlines and clewlines, and Julia dragged as handsomely as her sweetheart. "Give us a song, George, for time," she said, and he started "Chillyman," which sea-air Julia had caught from hearing it on board the _Glamis Castle_, and her voice threaded his like the notes of a flute. "Randy dandy, heigh-ho! Chillyman! Pull for a shilling, heigh-ho! Chillyman!"[1] In fact, you may put any words you like to these sea-tunes, and the sailors will pull the better if you damn the eyes of the quarter-deck in rhyme. Hardy next thoroughly overhauled the brig, so far as perception of her condition was possible. He could not see why she should not hold together through twenty such gales as roared over her last night. He stood with Julia looking at their only boat, beside which there lay, as though placed by some angel of mercy, a watch-tackle. The sight of that watch-tackle sank him into contemplation, and Julia gazed at him whilst he thought. How weary were the motions of the brig upon that sulky sweep of swell! Yet the fine figure of the girl swayed to it with the graceful ease of a figurehead curtseying at the bow. She was shipwrecked, she was in a dreadful situation of peril, this time to-morrow she might be floating in the sea a corpse, and yet never on board the Indiaman, on board the _York_, or at home had she felt happier. She was loving him passionately and he was always with her, and she could not but be happy. Presently he said: