My Danish Sweetheart Volume III Part 7

He went to his cabin to refresh himself, first taking care to inform us, with a large smile, that he had spent the whole of the night on deck in looking after the vessel, 'whose safety,' he exclaimed, with a significant leer at Helga, 'has been rendered extraordinarily precious to me since Monday last.'

I now told her--for I had forgotten the incident--how our oily friend had whipped out a small oath on the previous night.

'So, then, he has humanized himself to you?' said she, laughing.

'It is the only symptom of sincerity I have observed in him,' I exclaimed.

He reappeared presently, soaped, s.h.i.+ning, and smiling, with dried whiskers floating smoke-like on either hand a purple satin cravat. But the breakfast was to be a poor one that morning. The cook, it seems, could not keep the galley fire alight, and we had to make the best meal we could off a tin of preserved meat and some biscuit and wine-and-water. The Captain was profusely apologetic to Helga, and unctuously ascribed the poverty of the meal to me, who, he said with an air of jocosity, was the cause of half a ham and an excellent piece of beef being rendered unfit for the table. I made no answer to this.

Indeed, Helga and I sat like mutes at that table; but the Captain talked abundantly, almost wholly addressing himself to the girl. In truth, it was now easy to see that the unfortunate man was head over ears in love with her. His gaze was a prolonged stare of admiration, and he seemed to find nothing in her behaviour to chill or repel him. On the contrary, the more she kept her eyes downwards bent, the colder and harder grew her face, the more taciturn she was--again and again not vouchsafing even a monosyllabic answer to him--the more he warmed towards her, the more he encroached in his behaviour. If he had any sensibility, it was armour-clad by complacency. I never could have believed that vanity had such power as I here found to sheath so impenetrably the human understanding. 'Well,' thought I to myself, 'all this means a voyage for Helga, if not for me. a.s.suredly he'll not part with her this side of the Cape, and the fool's hope,' I thought, as I let my eyes rest on the grinning mask of his countenance, 'is that he will have won her long before he reaches the parallel of thirty-four degrees south, though he has to make the most of every calm and of every gale of wind to achieve his end.'

I will not attempt to follow the hours of that day. They were little more than a repet.i.tion of our experiences in the _Anine_. The Captain came and went, but for the most part Helga and I remained in the cabin.

The gale somewhat moderated at noon, as the skipper had predicted; but it still blew too hard to make sail on the s.h.i.+p, and she lay hove-to in the trough, sickening me to the inmost recesses of my soul with her extravagant somersaults and prodigious falls and upheavals. Somewhere about half-past four that afternoon, on looking through the cuddy-window, I saw Jacob smoking a pipe in the shelter of the projection of the Captain's and mate's cabins. I thought I would keep him company, and, having cut up a pipe of tobacco for myself, I quitted Helga, who showed a disposition to doze, and joined the boatman.

The wind made a great howling aloft, and the thunderous wash of the breaking waters against the vessel's side put a wild note of storm into the shrieking and hissing and hooting of the rigging. But it was fairly calm in the recess, and we conversed very easily. I asked Jacob, while I pointed over the lee-rail at the huge, dark-green, froth-laced backs of the seas rus.h.i.+ng from the s.h.i.+p in headlong race, what would be his thoughts of this weather if he were aboard the _Early Morn_.

'Why, the lugger 'ud be doing as well as this here bucket, any way,'

said he.

'Captain Bunting,' said I, 'will think that you are not half grateful enough for your deliverance.'

'He is a proper gentleman!' he exclaimed. 'Abraham swears there ain't the likes of him afloat for politeness; but his crew ben't of Abey's mind, I'm afraid. Looks to me as if there's going to be trouble.'

'Anything fresh happened?' I asked.

'It's all along of this matter of sarving out pork to them chaps as won't eat it, Mr. Tregarthen. The mate gave 'em pork again to-day. There ain't no galley fire alight, so it's all the same to them coloured chaps whether it be pork or beef. But it's the principle of it what's a-sticking in their gizzards. Nakier says to me, "It would be allee de same if de water boil," says he, "for it is eider pork or no meat," by which he sinnified that if so be as it was fine weather and the galley fire goin', the men's dinner to-day 'ud be pork or nothen. Now, Mr.

Tregarthen, Oi allow that they don't mean to keep all on enduring of this here treatment.'

'What have you noticed to make you suppose this?' said I, with a glance along the deserted decks, dark with sobbing wet, and often shrouded forwards by vast showers of flying spray.

'Well,' he answered, 'all the darkies has been a-sitting below saving the chap at the wheel, there being nothen for them to do on deck. I was in the fok'sle when Nakier comes down and tells the men that it was to be pork again. I couldn't understand him, for he spoke his own language, but guessed what was up when I heerd the hullabaloo his words raised.

They all began to sing out together in a sort of screeching voice like the row made by a crowd of women a-quarrelling and a-pulling the hair out of each other's heads up a halley. Some skipped about in their rage as though there was a fiddle going. One chap, him with a face like a decayed lemon, he outs with his knife and falls a-stabbing of the atmosphere; and Oi tell ye, Mr. Tregarthen, when I saw _that_ I just drawed my legs up into my bunk and tried to make myself as little as possible, with the hope of escaping his hobservation, for damme! thought I, if that there article's agoing to run amuck, as I've heerd tell the likes of him is in the habit of doing, strike me dark, thinks Oi, if I ben't the fust man he'll fall foul on!'

'What was said?' I asked.

'Why, ask yourself the question, sir! What do monkeys say when they start a-yelling. Who's to know _what_ they said?'

'How do you know, then, that it was the serving out of pork again that excited them?' said I.

'Whoy, that there Nakier told me so arterwards.'

'Ha!' I exclaimed; 'and for how long did they go on shrieking, as you say, and brandis.h.i.+ng their knives?'

'It was over wonderful soon,' he answered. 'Nakier looked on whilst they was all a-shouting together, then said something, and it was like blowing the head off a pint o' ale--nothen remained but flatness. They just stood and listened whilst Nakier spouted, and ye should ha' seen 'em a-nodding and a-grimacing, and brandis.h.i.+ng their arms and slapping their legs; but they never said nothen; they just took and listened.

Tell 'ee, Mr. Tregarthen, the suddenness of it, and the looks of 'em, was something to bring the pusperation out of the pores of a Polar bear.'

'What does Abraham think?' said I.

'Whoy, I dunno how it is, he don't seem to obsarve--appears to find nothen to take to heart. He's growed a bit consequential, being now what the skipper would call a orficer, and though he sleeps forrard his feelings is aft. 'Tis mere growling, he thinks, with the fellows. But there's more 'n that,' said he, striking a match and catching the flame of it in his clasped hand, and lighting his pipe as easily as if there were not a breath of air stirring.

'The lunatic of a Captain has eyes in his head,' said I, thinking aloud rather than conversing. 'If _he_ can't see the mischief his mad notion of conversion is breeding, it is not for me to point it out. In fact, I heartily wish the Malays would seize the barque and sail her to Madeira or the Canaries. Is it not abominable that Miss Nielsen and I should be carried away to the Cape of Good Hope against our will by that long-whiskered rogue?' signifying the Captain by a backward motion of my head at the cabin.

'Abraham was a-telling me about this here traverse. The skipper's gone and fallen in love with the young lady, ain't he?' said Jacob, with a grin overspreading his flat face.

'Yes,' said I, 'and hopes by keeping her aboard to win her heart. The dolt!'

'Dunno about _dolt_, sir!' exclaimed Jacob. 'She's a nice-looking young gal, is Miss Nielsen, and, I allow, just the sort of wife as a s.h.i.+pmaster would live heasy vith.'

'You argue as vilely as Abraham,' said I, looking at him angrily. 'Will you pretend that this Captain is not acting outrageously in detaining the young lady on board his s.h.i.+p--imprisoning her, in short--for that is what it comes to?'

A little look of intelligence gave a new expression to the flat-faced fellow's smile as he respectfully surveyed me.

'Well, sir--I don't blame you, I can't blame you,' he exclaimed. 'I've kep' company myself. I was for five year along with as nice a gal as was ever seen in Deal, a-courting and a-courting, and always too pore to git spliced. I know what the pa.s.sion of jealousy is. She took up with a corporal of Marines, and, I tell ye, I _suffered_. It came roight, then it went wrong again, and it ended in her marrying a measly little slice of a chap, named Billy Tusser, who'd saved a bit out o' sprattin' and hovellin'. I _can't_ blame 'ee, sir.'

It was not a matter to pursue with this worthy man, whose small intelligence lay too deep to be worth boring for; so I dropped the subject, and talked afresh of the coloured crew, and continued lingering till I could not have told how long our chat lasted. Though the gale was much less hard than it had blown down from noon, it was still a very violent wind, and the sea as wild as ever it had been, with the shadow of the evening now to add a darker tinge of gloom to the whirl of stooping, sooty heaven, under which every head of surge broke like a flash of ghastly light. The vessel was a strangely desolate picture--not a living creature to be seen forward, the decks half drowned, water sluicing white off the forecastle rim, or blowing up into the wind from off that raised deck in bursts of crystalline smoke, like corkscrew leapings of fine snow to the hurl of a blast roaring across a wintry moor. The black gear curved black with wet: again and again the vessel would pitch into the head sea till the spreading froth made by the ma.s.sive plunge of her round bows rose to her forecastle rail. I had had enough of the cold and the wet; the cheerless picture of the barque and the ocean, too, was unspeakably depressing, and, with a glance round at the near horizon of broken creaming waters on which nothing showed, I bestowed a nod of farewell on Jacob, and re-entered the cuddy.

Captain Bunting was sitting close to Helga. The light was so weak in this interior that I had to peer a little to make sure that it was the Captain, for the dim figure might well have been the mate's. Helga was at the extreme end of the locker, as though she had uneasily worked her way from his side while they sat; but he had followed, and was now close, and her next and only step to get rid of him must be to rise. He was addressing her very earnestly when I entered; his whiskers floated from his cheeks as he bent towards her. Though the cuddy was charged with the complaining sounds of the labouring fabric, speech was very easy within it, nor was it necessary to raise the voice. Indeed, the interior had the effect of a hush upon my ears, coming as I did fresh from the shriek and thunder of the weather out on deck.

On seeing me the Captain instantly broke off, sat up, and called out:

'Well, and how are things looking on deck?'

Helga rose and went to the little window against the door.

'The weather could not be worse,' I answered, with the air and tone of sullenness I had resolved on. 'Your s.h.i.+p is too old and squab for such a conflict.'

'She is old, but she is a stout s.h.i.+p,' he answered. 'She will be afloat when scores of what you might consider beauties have vanished.'

'I think not,' said I, looking towards Helga, and wondering what the man had been saying to her.

'Let us hope,' he exclaimed, lifting a great pilot coat from the locker and struggling into it, 'that the necessity for your remaining here will not last very much longer. I should have expected handsomer treatment at your hands, Mr. Tregarthen.'

'I do not know what you can find to base such an expectation on,' I cried. 'Your detention of us is cruel, and, as I hope and believe, punishable. But there is no good in discussing _that_ matter with you here and now. I have merely to beg that we may be as strangers while we are so unfortunate as to be together in the same s.h.i.+p.'

He drew his sou'-wester down upon his head, surveying me meanwhile; but I witnessed no malevolence in his regard; indeed, I may say, no trace of temper. His enduring smile lay broad with such expansion, indeed, as gave an air of elation to his face.

'No,' said he, wagging his head, while he slipped the elastic band of his sou'-wester behind his whisker; 'we will not live together as strangers, as you desire. Brotherly love is still practicable, and nothing that you can say or do, my young friend, shall dissuade me from cultivating it. That we shall be long together I do not believe,' he added, with a significance that astonished me and sent my eyes askant at Helga, whose back was still upon us. 'Meanwhile, endeavour to be contented. To have content is to have all, and to have all is to be richer than the richest.'

He inclined his sou'-westered head in an odd benedictory, grotesque nod, or bow, and, with a half-pause in his manner as though he would call some speech to Helga, turned on his heel and went on deck.

'What has he been saying, Helga?'

She looked round, and, finding the Captain gone, came to my side and locked her fingers upon my arm. She had drawn to me with a pale face, but the blood flushed her throat and cheeks as she let fall her eyes from mine. I had never before thought her so sweet as she showed at that moment. She was without a hat, and her short fair hair glimmered on her head in the gathering gloom of the evening with a sheen like the glancing of bright amber. My memory gave me a thought full of beauty--a wild caprice of sentiment at such a time:

'The freshness of new hay is on thy hair, And the withdrawing innocence of home Within thine eye.'

'What has he been saying to you, Helga?'

'That he loves me,' she answered, now fixing her artless, tender gaze upon me, though her blush lingered.