"I will tell you how it can be done when it needs to be done. She is a small boat and not heavy, and you and I will cant her on to her bilge with handspikes, then I'll hook that watch-tackle to a strop round the foremost thwart and take the hauling part to the winch, and rouse her along to abreast of the gangway. That gangway there unships, and we sit low upon the sea, and we'll tumble the boat through the gangway overboard, smack-fashion. If she proves too heavy we'll rig out a spar"--here he cast his eyes round--"with the watch-tackle made fast to her, and the winch will do the rest. Yes, that is my scheme if it should come to it. Meanwhile let us be patient and keep a lookout for ships." But the imprisonment on board this abandoned hull of Mr. George Hardy and Miss Julia Armstrong was to continue until the dawn of three days, counting from Hardy's time of finding the girl. All this while it was very fine weather, and of a night they would sit on top of the deck-house whilst Hardy smoked and Julia prattled. They watched the sea lights which glittered upon the black breast of the ocean; they watched the flight of the meteor. They talked of the stars, which nowhere wheel in so much splendour as over the sea, and of the great Spirit who controls their flight. Morally they were the least shipwrecked of people. They were happy in each other's company; if either one had been alone it might have proved madness to him or to her, but the voice of love, the presence of love even in the gloom of calamity, made a light of their own which was as inspiriting as the hope that springs eternal. It was not strange that no ships ever showed a white rag of canvas, a coil of sooty smoke upon the horizon in any point of the compass, because the brig sat low and her "dip" would be small, and a ship may be within the compass of a boat-race and yet not be seen. Hardy often went aloft and searched the waters; he did not lose heart, because he felt sure that something must heave in sight sooner or later, and meanwhile with great care the food they had would last them a week or perhaps longer, and there was fresh water for a fortnight or perhaps longer; for I am telling you what I have heard, and like the tramp in Dickens's sketch, my squire "would not tell a lie for no man."