CHAPTER EIGHTEEN.
WE BEAT UP FOR THE AZORES.
It was early dawn when the unwonted sound of feet bustling about over my head on the deck, which I had not heard now it seemed for an unconscionable length of time, roused me up to the realisation of our having at last been relieved from our terrible peril and the privations we had suffered whilst the ship was on her beam-ends.
Oh, what joy it was to think we were all safe on board the _Josephine_ again! Hunger, one of the most painful of the sufferings we had experienced, and indeed the one which I felt the most of any, was now banished completely to the realms of the past; and I had presently trustworthy evidence of this, Jake appearing at the door of my cabin and bringing in a steaming bowl of coffee and some biscuits, as a sort of "little breakfast" before the larger and more substantial meal was ready--the galley being already fixed up properly and Cuffee having resumed his culinary duties with all his paraphernalia in train.
When I got out on the poop, I noticed that the hands had not been idle while I was sleeping, so much already having been accomplished in the way of restoring the ship to an effective condition that the men must have set to work long before daylight, I was certain.
Moggridge was just going down the poop-ladder as I mounted it, on his way forward to execute some order Captain Miles had given him.
"Fine morning, Master Tom," he said.
"It is," I responded, "a regular jolly one; but, how busy you all are!" "Aye, aye, young master, we can't afford to wait when there's so much to be done and so precious little time to do it in." And then he was off in a jiffey.
Captain Miles was sitting on the port bulwarks, which were intact, polishing up his sextant.
"Good morning, captain," I said.
"Morning," he answered absently, so much engrossed with one of the eye- pieces of the instrument that he couldn't even look up.
I felt like the idle little boy in the story-book, who went and asked, first, the horse to play with him, and then, when that sagacious animal refused to accede to his request, on the plea of having his master's business to attend to, he tried to induce various other quadrupeds to come and amuse him, only to meet with a constant refusal--the idle boy having in the end to go to work himself, finding idleness, without companions to share it, the reverse of pleasure.
Everybody on board seemed too much engrossed with some task in hand to attend to me; even Jake, when I went below again, could hardly spare me a word, for he was intent on polishing up the saloon table again, trying to efface the effects of its long immersion in the water from the surface of the mahogany--a somewhat vain task, I may add, as the wood never recovered its original tone.
I then went forwards, only to see the men there working like bees.

Not a soul even raised his head to glance at me as I passed by.
Adze, the carpenter, was up to his ears in the pump casing, which he had fixed again over the well amidships, after first taking out the valves and fitting new suckers to them.

Cuffee, too, was blowing away at the galley fire till his black face looked like that of a red Indian; and, as for Mr Marline, he was in his element, as he always was when overseeing anything connected with the rigging of the ship, enjoying himself to his heart's content in setting up a jury-mast to take the place of our broken foremast.

He had made the men lash the topmast and topgallant-mast to the fragment left of the original spar, securing it with back-stays and preventers on the port and starboard sides before getting up the shrouds.

These latter, of course, would have now to be reduced, in order to suit the diminished height of the new mast, whereon the topsail-yard would have to do duty for the old fore-yard, and the topgallant one be transferred into a topsail-yard.
Mr Marline seemed rather proud of his handiwork; so, this made him more conversational than anyone I had yet tried to talk to.
"Ha, Tom," he said, "you're just in time to see us cross our yards again--not a bad job, eh ?" "No, sir," I replied; "have you been long over it ?" "Ever since daylight." "And have all of you been equally busy ?" I asked.
"Bless you, yes! As for Cuffee, he roused out poor Moggridge early in the middle watch, to help him to fix the galley, bribing him with the promise of some hot coffee.