He walked forward, laughing, trusting his girl as though she had been an able seaman. A great deal of confusion followed when he caught a few hens out of one coop and thrust them into the other. Such heartrending screams of despair, and two cocks and five or six hens in the other coop strained their throats in clamorous sympathy, and you could have sworn that the whole crowd of them, cocks and all, had just laid eggs. When the hen-coop was clear he passed his knife through the lashings, fetched an axe, swept the bars out of their fixings to the accompaniment of the orchestra in the other hen-coop, drew a bucket of water, and with a scrubbing brush thoroughly cleansed the dirty thing, which had the width of a trunk, though much longer. He found it was heavy to drag, being a somewhat solid structure, so he called the Newfoundland to him and harnessed him to the coop by the watch-tackle. The dog tugged with the vigour of a man, Hardy shoved, and the hen-coop rushed along the deck right aft, whilst Julia with tears of laughter in her eyes kept the speeding ship to her course as though she had done nothing but steer ever since she could stand. But there was more yet to be done, and the sun was setting. He took the cooked meat out of the coppers and placed the steaming mass on a dish until it should grow cold. Suddenly his ear was taken by a strange noise of hissing over the side; it was something more than the sheeting of the ship through the soft whiteness she made. It was like a continuous snarl threading the blowing off of steam. He looked over the rail and saw the boat they had come aboard in from the brig rushing with comet-like velocity close alongside, like a little child swept to her home by the enraged mother that had lost her. He debated a minute, and then said to himself, "She is of no use, neither she, nor the fresh water, nor the grub that is in her." He was making his way into the channels to cast the painter adrift. "Where are you going?" shrieked Julia at the wheel. He explained. "If I see you in the water behind me I shall jump after you," she cried, with a look of alarm and real anxiety. "Can't I drop into a ship's chains without going overboard?" he answered, and disappeared, and a short scream at the wheel attended his going. The boat was easily released, and to the great joy of Julia the manly face of her sailor was once more visible. They both watched the boat as she receded. "She'll be fallen in with," said Hardy, "and some skipper will log her and make a fearful mystery of her. Every tragic possibility of shipwreck is in her. She is the issue of fire, collision, the leak, the meteor-cloven craft--" "What do you mean?" interrupted Julia. "The ship's off her course," said Hardy. "That's quite right. Three spokes did it. Now look how fair the compass course points to the lubber's mark." "What's a meteor-cloven ship?" she asked.