"They only meet at sea," answered Hardy, "and the motion of a ship will neutralise prejudice in the man who can't stand it." In due course the galley fire was lighted, coffee was boiled, and the ship's company broke their fast. The breeze hung steady, the glass spoke hopefully, and Hardy found, after taking sights, that home was nearer by some hundred miles than it had been yesterday. It was nine o'clock on the evening of this day. The lights of heaven winked sparely through an atmosphere that nevertheless was unthickened by mist. The fresh wind of the noon had slackened much, and the sound of the fall of the sea off the bow was sloppy, as though the cook was emptying buckets of stuff over the side, and indeed the noise was in keeping with the sort of smoking, greasy face of the sea, which rolled in knolls of soft, black oil speedily out of sight, so general and closing was the dusk. Julia stood at the wheel, and the dog as usual was on the forecastle head keeping a lookout. The girl could distinctly hear her lover snoring in his hen-coop. The magic of the ear of love runs melody into the snore of the sweetheart; to the burdened marital organ the snore is not the voice of the heavenly chorister. Shakespeare wonders whether we dream in our sleep of death; Julia might have wondered if we snored. The binnacle lamp burnt brightly, so did the side-lights. The girl had been sleeping whilst Hardy steered, and now stood fresh and firm at the wheel, a very shadow of British girl, snug in the madman's cloak; but the faint stars knew that her figure was beautiful. Suddenly the dog began to bark; its deep note rolled aft in low thunder. Julia, with her heart slightly fluttering, strained her eyes to port and then to starboard, believing that the dog was reporting the side-light or white masthead light of a ship or steamer. But the dog continued to bark, and in the midst of it, before it awoke Hardy, before she could call to Hardy, a smell, an overpowering stench, fumes as overwhelming as any that could rise from the shallow tombs of thousands of plague-stricken wretches--this subduing and distracting presence was in the air. "George! George!" shrieked the girl. But she could not again speak, for the filth of the breeze compelled her right hand to her mouth and nostrils, and the brave heart steadied the spoke with her left hand only. In a minute Hardy was beside her. "Phew!" said he, and spat. This was his comment. The dog continued to bark. Its note had that quality of alarm which makes the sailors spring as for life or death to the affrighting shout of a single man upon the forecastle. "What in hell--" But it might have been the devil himself who stopped Hardy's mouth then, for even as he spoke the ship struck something soft, and slided away from it points off her course, so blubbery was the thing, proper for the "ways" of a launch.