The steamer was H.M.S. _Magicienne_, bound from Rio to Devonport, having halted at the Cape de Verde for coal. She was full of men, as the Navy ship usually is. Here and there she was spotted by the red coat of a marine. She sparkled to the risen fine weather, and the sea was now blue to both the ships, though northwest it breathed in leaden shadow. She dipped her visible wheel in foam. The colour of her country trembled in handkerchief-size at her gaff end, and her pennon streamed in a line of silk. An officer stood upon the paddle-box and hailed the _York_. Hardy thought he could answer, and tried to do so, but found that his voice would not carry. Indeed he had been overburdened, and every function was bowed and humped. To make himself understood he shook his head and pointed to his mouth, and flew the signal of "No voice" by pantomime. The trill of a whistle could be heard. In a few moments--moments are minutes, minutes are hours on board the ship of war with hundreds of a crew, as compared with the moments, minutes, and hours aboard a ship of trade with thirty of a crew--a boat-full of men with something glittering in the stern-sheets sank to the water at the steamer's side, and, as though but one oar was wielded at either gunwale, the boat came with flashful iteration of feathered blade, a pulse of sparkling locomotion each side of her, and the something that glittered astern beside the coxswain enlarged swiftly into the proportions of a midshipman twenty years old. He gained the deck with the scrambling bounds of a kangaroo as he sprang from the rail saluting the ship with some convulsion of thumb near the bottom button of his waistcoat. His freckled face was well bred; his looks had the ardency of the youthful British sailor. You felt that here was a young man, perhaps an honourable, perhaps a lord, who at the call of duty would do his "bit," and do it well. He stared hard at the girl whilst he walked slap up to Hardy. "What's the matter with this ship?" said he, and his accost made Hardy feel as though he were a north-country Geordie skipper with an auld wife in the companion-hatch darning his stockings. "I am stumpended with work," said Hardy, "and must sit, or I shall fall." And he sat down. "You look like the end of a long voyage," said the midshipman. "And you look as if the roast beef of Old England smokes in the gunroom," answered Hardy. "So help me God, then," cried the midshipman with heat, "nothing has fed us since Rio but salt horse. Where's your crew?" and he looked at the girl without greatly admiring her, for Julia was very draggled and broken about the hat, and dejected about the hair and white and worn, and she knew she was all this with a girl's distress. "The crew are before you," replied Hardy, languidly pointing at the dog. "What do you want?" said the midshipman, directing his eyes aloft. "The help of the nation represented by your ship of state," answered Hardy.