"I shall keep the deck till twelve," he answered; "I have a watch, and there is the binnacle light which from time to time will want trimming. Sailor will call you at twelve--see now his use? And I'll trim the lights, and lie close beside you there for a couple of hours, for I can do with very little sleep, and the more sleep you can get the better, because you will keep strong and will be able to steer in the day whilst I take an off-shore spell in my coop." "If I felt I could sleep, I would go and lie down at once," she answered; "but I love to sit and talk with you. What time is it, George?" "Nearly half-past eight," he answered, putting his watch to the binnacle. "Grant me till nine, I may then be sleepy. But I feel as if that sleep of drug was going to suffice me a year." "Oh, my heart, am not I rejoiced that you should be with me!" he exclaimed, in a soft and melodious note of love. "Think if that madman had missed the brig and sailed on!" She shuddered and answered, "I dare not think." Then after a pause she said, "Suppose a steamer came in sight, wouldn't she tow us home?" "I wouldn't give her the chance." "Why?" "She would demand salvage, and get it." "It is shameful," she exclaimed, "that a ship should be paid for helping a ship in distress." "The shipowner knows no shame," answered Hardy, "and neither does his dumb confederate, the underwriter. One builds a jerry ship to sink, and the other pins a policy on to the villain's back that he may sleep whether his ship goes down or not." It was strange to look along the decks and witness no figure of man. No shape of seaman was on the forecastle to extinguish a thousand stars as the jib-booms rose pointing to the sky; no shadow of man stirred in the waist or the main-deck. The mighty loneliness of the deep was in this ship from the wheel to where the forecastle rails clasped hands above the figure-head. But sentience was in her and she knew it, and nobly confessed the spirit of control by the glad, direct and cleaving shear of her stem. Happy is the sailor who can sit beside his sweetheart on board ship on a fine night and discourse of love and other matters without dread of the eye of the master-mariner. This couple talked of the safe arrival of the ship. They would buy a little cottage; they would not go to sea any more. It is always a cottage well inshore that is the sailor's dream. It was our glorious Nelson's for many years; witness his letters to his wife, whom he loved before the traitress wound her brilliant coils round the hero's heart, and numbed the loyalty of its pulse to one who had cherished him in sickness and was his dearest one when the shadow of his life was yet short in the sun of his glory.