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 fi