Why was not this fine ship taken possession of by the people who had received her crew? I will tell you at once, for the story came out on the men's arrival. Her drift had been swifter, with the helping hand of the surge, than Hardy could have imagined or allowed for, and in the morning of the gale she was close aboard a French brig that was hove to sitting deep in the sea. They hailed her and were answered. They stated they were without a navigator and they didn't know what to do. The French captain spoke English, and said he would receive them if they came aboard in their own boat and land them at Marseilles, the port he was bound to. The weather was then moderating, and after calling a council the boatswain, giving the mate and the girl up as lost, swiftly decided, with the heedlessness of seamen, to abandon the _York_, and with great difficulty the sailors gained the deck of the brig, leaving their clothes behind them. Very shortly afterward the French captain braced his yards round and shaped a course for Marseilles, leaving nothing alive on board the _York_ but the dog. This is the true story of the ship's adventure, and whoever questions it is no sailor. Hardy left the forecastle and stood awhile on deck near the hatch, gazing aloft. In this moment he was fired by a resolution which would have inspired no other heart than that of a true British sailor. He determined that he and the girl and the dog should save this fine ship without help, and carry her to England, and entitle them to a reward which should prove a living to them whilst they endured. His face, which was as manly as Tom Bowline's, was irradiated by the glory of this resolution as he gazed aloft, smiling. It was possible--and being possible it was to be done. But it needed doing by two hearts of oak and the dog as a lookout, and great anxiety would accompany the discharge of this splendid duty, much sleeplessness and ceaseless urging of the spirit. But the eye of God would dwell lovingly upon their toil and peril; he felt that and raised his cap to the thought, and he said to himself, in the language of Nelson, "When we cannot do all we wish, we must do as well as we can!" He walked aft and joined the girl. "Julia," he said, "I have formed the resolution of my life, and if I can fulfil it we shall be rich, though that will not make us happy." "What is it?" she asked, looking a little frightened, with her head slightly drooped to the shoulder, and her left hand, white as foam, reposing like a coronet upon the Newfoundland's head. Indeed, what with the mad captain, drugs, and ghosts she was in such a condition of mind that she was easily alarmed by any divergence from the commonplace.