Read "The Mate of the Good Ship York" by W. Clark Russell online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
Now in this business of transferring the four men Hardy noticed that the captain made no reference to Miss Armstrong. Another captain would have asked her if she wished to go home: perhaps, indeed, would have sent her home without asking her. Was it because Captain Layard knew she had no home? Hardy hoped it might be that, but suspected it was not so. This ship wanted no stewardess; the girl was one more to feed, and owners do not love liberality in their captains. In short, the mate came to the conclusion that the captain's benevolence in keeping the girl and giving her a passage to Australia for nothing was due to hallucination, and the thought was uneasiness itself both for Julia's sake and the ship's.
It was the day following the transshipment of the men that he found an opportunity during the captain's absence to take a turn with the girl and talk to her. The sun was shining a little hotly, and the clouds were sailing fast. Each round of swell, as it came under-running the ship out of the northeast, was ridged and wrinkled with arches of foam, and the day was alive with the music in the rigging, with the speckled wings of sea-birds in the wake, and the smoke-like shadow of vapour floating through the sunshine on the water.