My Danish Sweetheart,

A Novel Vol.3 (3 of 3)

William Clark Russell

CONTENTS OF VOL. III.

CHAPTER I.

WE SPEAK A SHIP.

On the afternoon of this same day of Tuesday, October 31, Helga having gone to her cabin, I stepped on deck to smoke a pipe—for my pipe was in my pocket when I ran to the lifeboat, and Captain Bunting had given me a square of tobacco to cut up.

We had dined at one. During the course of the meal Helga and I had said but very little, willing that the Captain should have the labour of talking. Nor did he spare us. His tongue, as sailors say, seemed to have been slung in the middle, and it wagged at both ends. His chatter was an infinite variety of nothing; but he spoke with singular enjoyment of the sound of his own voice, with ceaseless reference, besides, in his manner, to Helga, whom he continued silently and self-complacently to regard in a way that rendered her constantly uneasy, and kept her downward-looking and silent.

But nothing more at that table was said about our leaving his ship. Indeed, both Helga and I had agreed to drop the subject until an opportunity for our transference should arrive. We might, at all events, be very certain that he would not set us ashore in the Canary Islands; nor did I consider it politic to press him to land us there, for, waiving all consideration of other reasons which might induce him to detain us, it would have been unreasonable to entreat him to go out of his course to oblige us, who were without the means to repay him for his trouble and for loss of time.

He withdrew to his cabin after dinner. Helga and I sat over his draughtboard for half an hour; she then went below, and I, as I have already said, on deck, to smoke a pipe.

The wind had freshened since noon, and was now blowing a brisk and sparkling breeze out of something to the northward of east; sail had been heaped upon the barque, and when I gained the deck I found her swarming through it under overhanging wings of studdingsail, a broad wake of frost-like foam stretching behind, and many flying fish sparking out of the blue curl from the vessel's cutwater ere the polished round of brine flashed into foam abreast of the fore-rigging. Mr. Jones stumped the deck, having relieved Abraham at noon. The fierce-faced, lemon-coloured creature with withered brow and fiery glances grasped the wheel. As I crouched under the lee of the companion-hatch to light my pipe, I curiously and intently inspected him; strangely enough, finding no hindrance of embarrassment from his staring at me too; which, I take it, was owing to his exceeding ugliness, so that I looked at him as at something out of nature, whose sensibilities were not of a human sort to grieve me with a fancy of vexing them.

'Well, Mr. Jones,' said I, crossing the deck and accosting the shabby figure of the mate as he slouched from one end to another in shambling slippers and in a cap with a broken peak, under which his thimble-shaped nose glowed in the middle of his pale face like—to match the poor creature with an elegant simile—the heart of a daisy, 'this is a very good wind for you, but bad for me, seeing how the ship heads. I want to get home, Mr. Jones. I have now been absent for nearly eleven days, though my start was but for an hour or two's cruise.'

'There's no man at sea,' said he, 'but wants to get home, unless he's got no home to go to. That's my case.'

'Where do you hail from?'

'Whitechapel,' he answered, 'when I'm ashore. I live in a big house; they call it the Sailors' Home. There are no wives to be found there, so that the good of it is to make a man glad to ship.'

'The sea is a hard life,' said I, 'and a very great deal harder than it need be—so Nakier and his men think, I warrant you. There's too much pork goes to the making of the Captain's religious ideas.'

'The pork in this ship,' said he, 'is better than the beef; and what is good enough for English sailors is good enough for Malays.'

'Ay! but the poor fellows' religion is opposed to pork.'

'Don't you let them make you believe it, sir,' he exclaimed. 'Religion! You should hear them swear in English! They want a grievance. That's the nature of everything afore the mast, no matter what be the colour of the hide it's wrapped up in.'

'What sort of sailors are they?'

'Oh, they tumble about; they're monkeys aloft; they're willing enough; I'm bound to say that.'

I could instinctively guess that whatever opinions I might offer on the Captain's treatment of his crew would find no echo in him. Poverty must make such a man the creature of any shipmaster he sailed with.

'Have you received orders from Captain Bunting,' I asked, 'to signal and bring-to any homeward ship that may come along?'

'No, sir.'

'We wish to be transhipped, you know, Mr. Jones. We should be sorry to lose the opportunity of a homeward-bounder through the Captain omitting to give you orders, and through his being below and asleep, perhaps, at the time.'

'I can do nothing without his instructions, sir,' he exclaimed, with a singular look that rose to the significance of a half-smile.

'All right!' I said, perceiving that his little blue eyes had witnessed more than I should have deemed them capable of observing in the slender opportunities he had had for employing them.

The wind blew the fire out of my pipe, and to save the tobacco I went down to the quarter-deck for the shelter of the bulwarks there. While I puffed I spied Jacob low down in the lee fore-rigging repairing or replacing some chafing-gear upon the swifter-shroud. I had not exchanged a word with this honest boatman since the previous day, and strolled forward to under the lee of the galley to greet him. I asked him if he was comfortable in his new berth. He answered 'Yes;' he was very well satisfied; the Captain had given orders that he was to have a glass of grog every day at noon; the provisions were also very good, and there was no stint.

''Soides,' he called down to me, with his fat, ruddy face framed in the squares of the ratlines, 'three pound a month's good money. There'll be something to take up when I gets home, something that'll loighten the loss o' my eight pound o' goods and clothes, and make the foundering of the Airly Marn easier to think of.'

'You and Abraham, then, have regularly entered yourselves for the round voyage?'

'Ay; the Capt'n put us on the articles this afternoon. He called us to his cabin and talked like a gemman to us. Tain't often as one meets the likes of him at sea. No language—a koind smoile—a thank'ee for whatever a man does, if so be as it's rightly done—a feeling consarn for your morals and your comforts: tell'ee, Mr. Tregarthen, the loikes of Capt'n Buntin' ain't agoin' to be fallen in with every day—leastways, in vessels arter this here pattern, where mostly a man's a dog in the cap'n's opinion, and where the mate's got no other argument than the fust iron belaying-pin he can out with.'

'I am very glad to learn that you are so well satisfied,' said I. 'A pity poor Thomas isn't with you.'

'Pore Tommy! There's nothen in my toime as has made me feel so ordinary as Thomas's drownding. But as to him making hisself happy here——'

'I beg your pardon, sah,' said a voice close beside me.

I turned, losing the remainder of Jacob's observations, and perceived the face of Nakier in the galley door, that was within an arm's length of me from where I leaned. His posture was one of hiding, as though to conceal himself from sight of the poop. As I looked, a copper-coloured face, with black, angry eyes flashing under a low forehead as wrinkled as the rind of an old apple, with the temper that worked in the creature, showed behind Nakier's head, and vanished in a breath. I now recollected that when I had first taken up my station under the lee of the galley I had caught the hiss of a swift fiery whispering within the little structure, but it had instantly ceased on my calling to Jacob, and the matter went out of my head as I listened to the boatman in the rigging.

'I beg your pardon, sah! May I speak a word wit you?'

'What is it, Nakier?' I exclaimed, finding a sort of pleasure in the mere contemplation of his handsome face and noble liquid Eastern eyes, dark and luminous like the gleam you will sometimes observe in a midnight sea.

'Are you a sailor, sah?'

'I am not,' I responded.

'Can you tellee me de law of ships?'

Here the copper-coloured face came out again, and now hung steadily with its frown over Nakier's shoulder; but both fellows kept all but their heads hidden.

'I know what you mean,' I answered. 'I fear I cannot counsel you.'

'Our Captain would have us starve,' said he; 'he give us meat we must not eat, and on dose days we have only bread and water. Dat is not right?'

'No, indeed,' said I; 'and how little we think it right you may know by what the lady said to-day.'

'Ah! she is good; she is good!' he exclaimed, always speaking very softly, and clasping his long thin fingers with filbert-shaped nails while he upturned his wonderful eyes. 'We are not of de Captain's religion—he sabbe dat when we ship. Is dere law among Englishman to ponish he for trying to make us eat what is forbidden?'

'I wish I knew—I wish I could advise you,' said I, somewhat secretly relieved by hearing this man talk of law; for when I had watched him that morning on the poop I could have sworn that his and his mates' whole theory of justice lay in the blades which rested upon sheaths strapped to their hips. 'One thing you may be sure of, Nakier: Captain Bunting has no right to force food upon you that is forbidden to you by your religion. There must be lawyers in Cape Town who will tell you how to deal with this matter if it is to be dealt with. Meanwhile, try to think of your Captain in this business as——' I significantly tapped my forehead. 'That will help you to patience, and the passage to the Cape is not a long one.'

The copper-coloured face behind Nakier violently wagged, the frown deepened, and the little dangerous eyes grew, if possible, more menacing in their expression.

'He is a cruel man,' said Nakier, with a sigh as plaintive as one could imagine in any love-sick Eastern maid: 'but we will be patient; and, sah, I tank you for listening.'

The copper-coloured face disappeared.

'You are no sailor, sah!' continued Nakier, smiling and showing as pearl-white a set of teeth as were ever disclosed by the fairest woman's parted lips; 'and yet you have been shipwreck?'

I briefly related my lifeboat adventure, and in a few words completed the narrative of the raft and of our deliverance by the lugger. Indeed, it pleased me to talk with him: his accent, his looks, were a sort of realization, in their way, of early boyish dreams of travel; they carried me in fancy to the provinces of the sun; I tasted the ripe aromatic odours of tropic vegetation, there seemed a scent as of the hubble-bubble in the blue and sparkling breeze gushing fair over the rail. He begot in me a score of old yearning imaginations—of the elephant richly castellated, of the gloom of palatial structures dedicated to idols, their domes starry with encrustation of gems and the precious ores.

The brief spell was broken by Jacob's gruff, 'longshore voice:

'It don't look, Mr. Tregarthen, as if you and the lady was to git home as fast as ye want to.'

'No,' I replied. 'Do you see anything in sight up there, Jacob?'

He spat, and looked leisurely ahead.

'Nothen, sir.'

'I beg pardon, sah!' broke in Nakier's voice. 'Do you sabbe navigation?'

'I do not,' I answered, struck with a question that recalled Punmeamootty's inquiries that morning.

'But Mr. Vise,' he continued, 'he sabbe navigation?'

I shook my head with a slight smile.

'He has some trifling knowledge,' said I. 'Fortunately, there is no occasion to trust to his skill.'

'De sweet young lady sabbe navigation, sah?'

'I will not answer for it!' I exclaimed, looking at him. A sudden fancy in me may have been disclosed by my eyes. His gaze fell, and he drew in his head. Just then I caught sight of Helga at the break of the poop to leeward, looking along the decks. She saw me, and beckoned. As I knocked the ashes out of my pipe, Jacob cried out:

'Blowed if I don't believe that's a steamer's smoke ahead.'

'Ha!' thought I, 'Helga has seen it;' and I at once made for the poop-ladder.

It was as I supposed. She had seen the smoke when she came on deck, and instantly looked about for me. It was the merest film, the faintest streak, dim as a filament of spider's web; but it was directly ahead, and it was easy to guess that unless the steamer was heading east or west she must be coming our way, for assuredly, though the Light of the World was sweeping through it at some six or seven knots, we were not going to overhaul a steamer at that pace.

A telescope lay in brackets inside the companionway; I fetched and levelled it, but there was nothing more to be seen than the soaring of the thin blue vein of smoke from behind the edge of the sea, where the dark, rich central blue of it went lightening out into a tint of opal. It did not take long, however, to discover, by the hanging of the smoke in the same place, that the steamer was heading directly for us. I put down the glass, and said to Mr. Jones:

'Will you be so good as to call the Captain and tell him that there is a steamer in sight, coming this way?'

'I have no orders to call the Captain merely to report a ship in sight, sir,' he answered.

'That may be,' said I; 'but here is a chance for us to leave this vessel, and the Captain might not thank you to keep him ignorant of the opportunity.'

'I can't help it, sir. My duty here is to obey orders and to do what's expected of me, and no more;' and so saying, he marched shambling aft; yet I will not say that his manner of leaving me was abrupt or offensive.

'There is no time to be lost, Helga,' said I. 'If that steamer is doing ten and we are doing six the joint speed is sixteen knots, and she will be abreast of us and away again quickly. I will report to the Captain myself,' with which I went on to the quarter-deck and passed into the cabin and knocked on the door of Captain Bunting's berth.

He immediately cried:

'Who's there?'

'Mr. Tregarthen,' I answered.

'Are you alone?' he called.

I told him I was.

'Then pray walk in,' said he.

I opened the door and found him lying in his bunk in his shirt-sleeves. Full as I was of the business of the steamer heaving into view, I could yet manage to notice, now that he was under no particular obligation to smile, that his habitual grin when his face was off duty, so to speak, was of the kind that is called sardonic. It was the set of his mouth with the thick curve of its upper lip that made the smile; but his eyes bore not the least part in this expression of mirth. It was a mere stroke of nature in him, however, and, though the congenital grin did not increase his beauty, it left untouched in his countenance the old character of blandness, self-complacency and an air of kindness too.

'What can I do for you, Mr. Tregarthen?' said he, promptly sitting up in his bunk, with a glance around for his coat.

'I must ask your pardon for intruding upon you,' said I; 'there is a steamer's smoke in sight over the bows. Mr. Jones declined to report to you. I venture to do so, and I have also to ask you, Captain Bunting, to signal her to stop that she may receive Miss Nielsen and me.'

'I shall be very willing to transfer you, Mr. Tregarthen,' said he, without more or less significance in his manner than was usual in it; 'but you must not, you really must not, ask me to part in this sort of hurry with your sweet engaging companion.'

'I certainly shall not leave you without her,' said I, breathing quickly.

'Just so,' he exclaimed, 'nor is it my wish that you should. I want you to convert your experience of shipwreck into a little holiday cruise. I hope you are comfortable with me?'

'Perfectly comfortable; but all the same, Miss Nielsen and I desire to return to England, and I must entreat—indeed, Captain Bunting, I must insist upon your signalling the steamer that is rapidly approaching us.'

He opened his eyes at the word insist, which I deplored having made use of the moment it had escaped me; but he continued very bland, and his smile, being now vitalized, as when he was at the table or on deck with us, had lost what I had found sardonic in it.

'A captain's powers, Mr. Tregarthen, are considerable,' he exclaimed. 'He is first on board his own ship; his will is the law that governs the vessel; no man aboard but he can insist for an instant. But my desire is for cordial feelings between us. Let us be friends and talk as friends. Pray bear with me. You are in possession of my hopes. Do not add fears to them by your behaviour.'

He dropped his head on one side, and surveyed me with an eye that seemed almost wistful. I believed that he meant to keep me talking till the steamer had passed.

'Captain Bunting,' said I, 'I am as fully disposed as you are to be friendly; but I must tell you that, if you decline to transfer us—if, in other words, you force us to proceed on this voyage—you will be acting at your peril. I shall exact reparation, and whatever the law can do for me shall be done. Practically you will be abducting Miss Nielsen, and that, you must know, is a highly punishable offence.'

He motioned with both his hands.

'It is no abduction,' said he. 'When you rescue a young lady with your lifeboat from a foundering craft you do not abduct her. I can understand your impatience, and forgive your irritability. Yet I had thought to have some claim upon you for a more generous, for a handsomer interpretation of my wishes. What is the reason of this extreme hurry in you to return home?'

'You surely do not require me to repeat my answer to that question!' I exclaimed, curbing my temper with an effort.

'To be sure. You are concerned for your poor dear mother. Come, Mr. Tregarthen, suppose we send news of your safety by this steamer you have reported!' His face beamed. 'Let me see—your home is—your home is——' he scratched his head. I viewed him without speaking. 'Ah, I have it—Tintrenale!' He spelt it twice or thrice. 'Hugh Tregarthen, Tintrenale. Come, the steamer shall report your safety, and then your mind will be at ease.'

'I am to understand that you refuse to transfer us?'

'Nay, never interpret the mind of another harshly. You know my wishes: every hour renders them dearer and dearer to me.'

Under all this blandness I could now perceive a spirit of resolution that was clearly no more to be influenced by me than his ship's side was to be kicked out by a blow of my foot. I turned to leave the cabin.

'If you are going on deck, will you have the kindness to send Mr. Jones to me?' said he.

I pulled the door to, and regained the poop.

'The Captain wants you,' I called to Mr. Jones, who immediately left the deck.

Helga came to me.

'He refuses to tranship us,' said I.

'He dare not!' she cried, turning pale.

'The man, all smiles and blandness, says no, with as steady a thrust of his meaning as though it were a boarding-pike. We have to determine either to jump overboard or to remain with him.'

She clasped her hands. Her courage seemed to fail her; her eyes shone brilliant with the alarm that filled her.

'Can nothing be done? Is it possible that we are so entirely in his power? Could we not call upon the crew to help us?' A sob arrested her broken exclamations.

I stood looking at the approaching steamer, wrestling with my mind for some idea to make known our situation to her as she passed, but to no purpose. Why, though she should thrash through it within earshot of us, what meaning could I hope to convey in the brief cry I might have time to deliver? I cannot express the rage, the bitterness, the mortification, the sense, too, of the startling absurdity of our position, which fumed in my brain as I stood silently gazing at the steamer, with Helga at my side, white, straining her eyes at me, swiftly breathing.

In the short time during which I had been below, the approaching vessel had shaped herself upon the sea, and was growing large with a rapidity that expressed her an ocean mail-boat. Already with the naked sight I could catch the glint of the sun upon the gilt device at her stemhead, and sharp flashes of the reflection of light in some many-windowed deck structure broke from her, end-on as she was, to her slow stately swaying, as though she were firing guns.

The Captain remained below. A few minutes after Mr. Jones had gone to him, he—that is, the mate—came on to the poop bearing a great black board, which he rested upon the deck.

'Captain Bunting's compliments, Mr. Tregarthen,' said he, 'and he'll be glad to know if this message is satisfactory to you?'

Upon the board were written, in chalk, in very visible, decipherable characters, like the letters of print, the following words:

HUGH TREGARTHEN, OF TINTRENALE,
BLOWN OUT OF BAY NIGHT OCTOBER 21ST,
IS SAFE
ON BOARD THIS SHIP, 'LIGHT OF THE WORLD,'
BUNTING, MASTER, TO CAPE TOWN.
PLEASE REPORT.

'That will do,' said I coldly, and resumed my place at the rail.

Helga said, in a low voice:

'What is the object of that board?'

'They will read the writing aboard the steamer,' I answered, 'make a note of it, report it, and my mother will get to hear of it and know that I am alive.'

'But how will she get to hear of it?'

'Oh, the message is certain to find its way into the shipping papers, and there will be twenty people at Tintrenale to hear of it and repeat it to her.'

'It is a good idea, Hugh,' said she. 'It is a message to rest her heart. It may reach her, too, as quickly as you yourself could if we went on board that steamer. It was clever of you to think of it.'

'It was the Captain's suggestion!' I exclaimed.

'It is a good idea!' she repeated, with something of life coming into her blanched, dismayed face; 'you will feel a little happier. I shall feel happier too. I have grieved to think your mother may suppose you drowned. Now, in a few days she will know that you are well.'

'Yes, it is a good idea,' said I, with my eyes gloomily fastened upon the steamer; 'but is it not monstrous that we should be imprisoned in this fashion? That fellow below has no right to detain us. If it should cost me five years of my income, I'll punish him. It is his admiration for you that makes him reckless—but what does the rascal hope? He talked of his willingness to transfer me, providing you remained.'

'Oh, but you would not leave me with him, Hugh!' she cried, grasping my arm.

'Leave you, Helga! No, indeed. But I made one great blunder in my chat with him this morning. He asked me if there was anything between us—meaning were we sweethearts—and I said no. I should have answered yes; I should have told him we were betrothed; then perhaps he would have been willing to let us leave him.'

She returned no answer. I looked at her, and saw an expression in her face that told me I had said too much. The corners of her little mouth twitched, she slightly glanced at me, and tried to smile on observing that I was regarding her, then made a step from my side as though to get a better view of the steamer.

'She's a fine big ship,' exclaimed Mr. Jones, who had quietly drawn close to me; 'a Cape boat. In six days' time she'll be snug in dock. When I was first going to sea I laughed at steam. Now I should be glad if there was nothing else afloat.'

My impulse was to draw away, but my temper had somewhat cooled, and was now allowing me to exercise my common-sense again. If I was to be kept aboard this ship, it could serve no sort of end to make an enemy of Mr. Jones.

'Yes,' said I, 'she is coming along in fine style—a mail-steamer apparently. Why will not the Captain signal her? Surely she would receive us!'

'Not a doubt of it,' he answered, almost maliciously; 'but the Captain knows his own business, sir.'

'Where's your flag-locker?' cried I. 'Show it me, and I'll accept the responsibility of hoisting the ensign half-mast high!'

'Not without the Captain's orders, Mr. Tregarthen,' said he.

'The Captain!' I exclaimed. 'He has nothing to do with me. He's your master, not mine!'

'He's master of this ship, sir; and the master of a ship is the master of everything aboard of her!'

Helga softly called to me. I went to her.

'Do not reason with him!' she whispered. 'Let the people in that steamer read the message, and we can afford to be patient—for a little,' she added.