My Danish Sweetheart Volume III Part 17

'Here!' said I. 'Hold down this corner of the chart, will you, while I call to Mr. Wise to bring me the box of instruments? Miss Nielsen cannot find the things. Wise put the box away, and knows where it is.'

I left the table and stood under the hatch a moment to address a word to Nakier in that wild mad spirit of defiance that will often in the timidest mock at peril in the most terrible instant of it.

'Make your men understand,' I cried, 'that if we fall in with a man-of-war, every soul of them stands to be hanged by the neck until he is dead!'

As I said these words I sprang, caught the coaming of the hatch, gained the deck with another bound, and the next instant the slide of the hatch was swept in a roar through its grooves by the powerful hands of the two Deal boatmen.

CHAPTER VII.

FIRE!

'Well, and if this here ain't been a right-down sort of proper cajolin'

job tew! Strike me bald, Mr. Tregarthen, if the hexecution of this here trepanning ain't vurth a gold medal, let alone the planning of it!'

shouted Jacob.

I rose from my knees with my hand upon my heart, breathing short. The reaction from the intense mental strain of the preceding twenty minutes ran a feeling of swooning through my brain, but the fresh air and sense of safety speedily rallied me. Helga stood at the wheel, steering the barque. I flourished my arm to her, and she kissed her hand to me. Close against the securely covered hatch stood the two boatmen, and at either man's feet lay a heavy belaying-pin, which, as I knew by what had been preconcerted, had been gripped by their powerful fists ready for the first black head that might have followed me as I emerged.

'Never should ha' believed you could have compa.s.sed it!' exclaimed Abraham. 'Never could ha' supposed that such artful chaps as them darkies was so easy to be took in! A hay wan piece of acting, Mr.

Tregarthen! No theayter show that e'er I've heard of or sat at ever came up to it!'

All was silent below. I had thought, on the hatch being thrust to, that the imprisoned devils would have fallen to beating and bawling. Not a sound! Were they accepting their fate with the resignation of the Mussulman? The scantling of the hatch-cover that secured them was of unusual thickness. When opened, the foremost lid slid back on top of the other, and when closed, as it now was, it was held fast to the coaming by a strong iron-hinged bar fitting to a staple in which lay a padlock.

The after-lid was kept down by an iron batten, so that, once secured, the hatch-cover was in all respects as impenetrable from above or below as the deck itself. Nor were we under any apprehension that the immured men could find other means of escaping. The bulkhead of the forecastle was a ma.s.sive wall of wood. There was, indeed, a little hatch right forward, by which the forepeak might be entered, but this forepeak was also stoutly bulkheaded, with the cargo in the hold coming hard against the division; and though the men should contrive to break through into the hold, the secured after-hatches would still as effectually bar the deck to them as though every mother's son lay helplessly manacled in the bottom of the s.h.i.+p.

'Now,' said I, 'the poor wretches must not suppose we mean to starve them. Murderers though they be, Heaven knows one can't but pity them, seeing what the wrong was that drove them into crime. Hush, that I may catch their answer!'

I stepped over to the forecastle chimney, which, as I have already told you, pierced the planks close against the opening under the top-gallant deck. It stood as high as a man; my mouth was on a level with the orifice, and the zigzag funnel provided as excellent a speaking-tube as though designed for that and no other purpose.

'Below, there!' I cried through it, and thrice did I utter this summons before I received a response.

'What you wantchee?' floated up a reply--thin, reed-like, unreal, a tone not to be distinguished.

'I am hailing to let you know that we shall keep you liberally supplied with food and fresh water,' I shouted. 'Plenty of fresh air will blow down to you through this chimney. Take notice: you are securely imprisoned. There is no possibility of your escaping. At the same time, if you make the least effort to release yourselves we will leave you to starve below and to perish miserably with thirst.'

'What do you mean to do with us?' was the faint cry that followed my speech.

'That is our business,' I roared back. 'Keep you quiet, and you shall be well used!'

I waited for the voice to speak again, but all remained hushed, and I came away very well satisfied to know that Nakier, at all events, would understand my language and translate it to the others.

This plot had been so carefully prepared that we knew exactly what to do. Our first business was to s.h.i.+ft the barque's helm and trim sail for the Canaries--the land that lay nearest to us--where, at Santa Cruz, we might count upon getting all the help we required. We briefly arranged that Jacob should keep watch at the hatch. At the first sound of disturbance below he was to call us. There was small need for such sentinelling, yet our fears seemed to find it necessary, at the outset at all events, for they were eleven to three, and we could not forget _that_, securely imprisoned as we knew them to be.

I went aft with Abraham. My brave little Helga, on my approach, let go the wheel, and extended her hands. My love for her, that had been held silent in my heart by the troubles, the worries, the anxieties, the perils which had been pressing heavily upon us for many days, now leapt in me, a full and abounding emotion, and, taking her in my arms, I held her to me, and kissed her once, and yet again. Abraham, grasping a spoke of the wheel, swung off from it, giving us, with 'longsh.o.r.e modesty, his back, as he gazed steadfastly over the stern. She struggled for a moment, and was then quiet, trying to hide her blus.h.i.+ng face against my shoulder.

'It must have come to this,' I whispered, 'sooner or later; and what is soonest is always best, my love, in such matters. You are mine by right of the poor old _Anine_; you are mine, Helga, by right of your father's commands to me.'

I kissed her again, released her, and she went to the rail and overhung it for a few minutes, while I waited, watching her.

'Now, dear heart,' said I, 'let us get the s.h.i.+p round, and you shall tell us what course to steer for Santa Cruz.'

From this moment we were too busy for a long while to think of sentiment. The barque was under all plain sail, and we were but three men to get the yards braced round. The wind was a very light breeze, the sea smooth and delicately crisped, the sky a pure azure, unblurred anywhere by so much as a feather-tip of cloud. Helga, still wearing a rosy face, but with the very spirit of happiness and hope radiant in her eyes--and no better sign of how it was with her heart could I have asked of her--fetched the chart, and, having determined the course, took the wheel from Abraham, and the three of us went to work with the braces.

We sprang about in red-hot haste, since none of us liked the notion of leaving the hatch unwatched for even a few minutes. But two pairs of hands only could not have dealt without tedious toil with those yards.

According to Captain Bunting's reckoning, we had been in the lat.i.tude of Madeira on Tuesday the 31st of October, but, spite of our having been hove to during the fierce weather of November the 1st and 2nd, we had driven heavily to the southward, so that now on this afternoon of Friday, November 3rd, we computed our distance from the Canaries to be some hundred miles: I can but speak as my memory serves me, but these figures I believe fairly represent the distance. The light wind softly humming in our rigging out of the north-east would not suffer the barque to lie her course for the islands by a point or two, but this was a matter of little moment. We might surely count from one hour to another now on heaving some sort of sail into sight, and in expectation of this we took the English ensign out of the locker and bent it on to the peak halliards with the jack down ready for hoisting when the moment arrived. Not that we expected that any merchantman we might fall in with would greatly help us. It was hardly to be supposed that a s.h.i.+pmaster would consent to receive a mutinous, murderous crew of eleven coloured men into his vessel. The utmost we could hope from a s.h.i.+p homeward bound like ourselves was the loan of a couple of men to a.s.sist us in navigating the barque to Funchal.

Indeed, the sense of our necessity in this way grew very strong in me after we had come to a pause in our labour of bracing the yards up, and were standing near the forecastle hatch pale with heat and wet with perspiration, and panting heavily: I say I grew mighty sensible of the slenderness of our little crew of three men and a girl--who, to be sure, in her boy's clothes would have been the nimblest of us all aloft, but who could do no service in that way in her woman's dress--when I sent my gaze up at the quiet b.r.e.a.s.t.s of sail softly swelling one upon another, and rising spire-like, and thought of how it must be with us should heavy weather set in, such a gale as we might be able to show no more than a close-reefed topsail to, unless the whole fabric of masts and canvas was to go overboard.

I said to Abraham: 'Don't you think we could safely trust a couple of those poor devils below--Punmeamootty, for example, and that tawny fellow, Mow Lauree? We're terribly short-handed.'

'Ay,' he answered, 'short-handed we are, as you say, sir; but trust e'er a one of 'em, arter the trick they've been sarved! Lord love 'ee! the first thing them two men 'ud do whensoever our backs should be tarned for a moment 'ud be to lift that hatch there. And then stand by!'

"Soides,' exclaimed Jacob, 'this ere's to be a salwage job, and, as poor old Tommy 'ud ha' said, we don't want to make no more shares than the diwisions what's already represented.'

I was not to have been influenced by Jacob's talk about shares; but Abraham's remark was to the point; it convinced me, and I dropped the subject, making up my mind to this--that, if the wind should freshen, there was nothing for it but to shorten sail as best we could, and leave what we could not deal with to blow away.

When our work of tr.i.m.m.i.n.g yards was ended, I told Jacob to boil a quant.i.ty of salt beef for the fellows below, that they might have rations to last them several days. We found a breaker stowed away in the long-boat, and this we filled with fresh water from the scuttle-b.u.t.t, ready to hand through the hatch. I was very earnest in this work. It was easily imagined that the interior in which the men lay imprisoned would be desperately hot, with no more air to get to them than such as sulkily sank out of the listless breeze through the zigzag chimney, and with the planks of the deck above their heads like the top of an oven with the day-long pouring of the sun. And, miscreants as they were, villains as I have no doubt they would have ultimately proved themselves to us, I could not endure to think of them as athirst, and also tormented with fears that we intended to leave them to perish of that most horrible form of suffering.

Yet it would not do to make separate parcels of the provisions we intended for them. We must open the hatch at our peril while we lowered the food; and this was to be done once, and once only.

It was past five by the time that all was ready. Twice had we heard a sound of knocking in the hatchway; but I guessed that it signified a demand for water, and dared take no notice of it until we were prepared.

The three of us--Helga being at the wheel--armed ourselves with a heavy iron belaying-pin apiece, and, stationing the boatmen at the hatch, I put my face against the mouth of the funnel and hailed the men through it. I was instantly answered:

'Yaas, yaas, sah! In the name of Allah, water!'

It was such another thin, reed-like voice as had before sounded, yet not the same. This time it might have been Nakier who spoke.

'We are going to give you water and food now!' I shouted. 'We will open the hatch; but only one man must show himself to receive the things. If more than one of you shows himself we will close the hatch instantly, and you will get no water. Do you understand me?'

'Yaas, yaas,' responded the voice, sounding in my ear as though it were half a mile distant. 'We swear by Allah only one man he show hisself.'

'Let that man be Punmeamootty!' I bawled.

I then returned to the hatch. Jacob, putting the belaying-pin into his coat pocket, stood abaft ready to rush the lid of the hatch to at a cry from me, while Abraham, on the left, hung, with poised weapon, prepared for the first hint of a scramble up from below. I remember the look in his face: it was as though he were already fighting for his life. I slipped the padlock, withdrew the bar, and pushed the cover back some three or four inches. The glare on the deck blinded me when I peered down: the interior seemed as black as midnight to my eyes.

'Are you there, Punmeamootty?' I cried.

I heard a faint 'Yaas,' p.r.o.nounced in a subdued, terrified tone.

'Come up till your hands show,' cried I, for I feared that he might have his knife drawn and would stab me if I put my arms down.

His hands, with extended fingers, rose through the mere slice of opening like those of a drowning man above water, and then I could see the glimmer of his eyes as he looked up.

'Are the rest of you well away?'

'Allee standing back! Allee standing back!' he exclaimed piteously.