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I don’t know if this satisfied my father: but I know that he meant it to satisfy me, which it was pretty far from doing. Before daylight the boats hoisted sail again, and were well under the Islands and out of sight by breakfast-time.

After this, for a whole long week I reckon I did little more than pace the ship to and fro; a fisherman’s walk, as they say–three steps and overboard. I took the three steps and wished I was overboard. My father watched me queerly all the while; but we said no word to each other, not even at meals.

It was the eighth day after the fishing-boats left us, and about four in the afternoon, that we saw a brown sail standing towards us from the Islands, and my father set down the glass, resting it on the gunwale, and said:

“That’s Old John’s boat.”

I took the glass from him, and was putting it to my eye; but had to set it down and turn my back. I couldn’t wait there with my eye on the boat; so I crossed to the other side of the ship and stood staring at the Lighthouse away on the sky-line, and whispered: “Come quickly!” But the wind had moved a couple of points to the east and then fallen very light, and the boat must creep towards us close-hauled. After a long while my father spoke again:

“That will be Old John steerin’ her. I reckoned so: he’ve got her jib shakin’–that’s it: sail her close till she strikes the tide-race, and that’ll fetch her down, wind or no wind. Halloa!– Lad, lad! ’tis all right! See there, that bit o’ red ensign run up to the gaff!”

“Why should that mean aught?” asked I.

“Would he trouble to hoist bunting if he had no news? Would it be there, close under the peak, if the news was bad?–and she his own daughter, his only flesh!”

It may have been twenty minutes later that Old John felt the Gunnel current, and, staying the cutter round, came down fast on us with the wind behind his beam. My father hailed to him once and twice, and the second time he must have heard. But, without answering, he ran forward and took in his foresail. And then I saw an arm and a little hand reached up to take hold of the tiller; and my heart gave a great jump.

It was she, my wife Bathsheba, laid there by the stern-sheets on a spare-sail, with a bundle of oilskins to cushion her. With one hand she steered the boat up into the wind as Old John lowered sail and they fell alongside: and with the other she held a small bundle close against her breast.

“Such a whackin’ boy I never see in my life!”–These were Old John’s first words, and he shouted them. “Born only yestiddy week, an’ she ought to be abed: an’ so I’ve been tellin’ her ever since she dragged me out ‘pon this wildy-go errand!”

But Bathsheba, as I lifted her over the lightship’s side, said no more than “Oh, Tom!”–and let me hold her, with her forehead pressed close against me. And the others kept very quiet, and everything was quiet about us, until she jumped back on a sudden and found all her speech in a flood.

“Tom,” she said, “you’re crushin’ him, you great, awkward man!” And she turned back the shawl and snatched the handkerchief off the baby’s face–a queer-looking face it was, too. “Be all babies as queer as that?” thought I. Lucky I didn’t say it, though. “There, my blessed, my handsome! Look, my tender! Eh, Tom, but he kicks my side all to bruises; my merryun, my giant! Look up at your father, and you his very image!” That was pretty stiff. “I declare,” she says, “he’s lookin’ about an’ takin’ stock of everything”–and that was pretty stiff, too. “So like a man; all for the sea and the boats! Tom, dear, father will tell you that all the way on the water he was as good as gold; and, on shore before that, kicking and fisting–all for the sea and the boats; the man of him! Hold him, dear, but be careful! A Sunday’s child, too–