My Danish Sweetheart Volume I Part 10

'I heard nothing,' I answered.

'It was the noise of a blow,' he exclaimed. 'Pray go and see if anything is wrong,' he added, speaking out of his habit of giving orders, and with a peremptoriness that forced a smile from me as I went to the door.

I made my way through the house on to the deck, and looked about me, but it was the same scene to stare at and hearken to that I had viewed before: the same thunder and shriek of wind, the same clouding of the forward part of the barque in foam, the same miserable dismal picture of water flashing from bulwark to bulwark, of high green frothing seas towering past the line of the rail as the vessel swung in a smother of seething yeast into the trough.

I caught sight of a long hencoop abaft the structure in which the sailors had lived, with the red gleam of a c.o.c.ks...o...b..betwixt a couple of the bars, and guessing that the wretched inmates must, by this time, be in sore need of food and water, I very cautiously made my way to the coop, holding on by something at every step. The coop was, indeed, full of poultry, but all lay drowned.

I returned to the deck-house and mounted on top of it, where I should be able to obtain a good view of as much of the ocean as was exposed, and where also I should be out of the wet which, on the main deck, rolled with weight enough at times to sweep a man off his legs. The roof of the house, if I may so term it, was above the rail, and the whole fury of the gale swept across it. I never could have guessed at the hurricane-force of the wind while standing on the deck beneath. It was impossible to face it; if I glanced but one instant to windward my eyes seemed to be blown into my head.

I had not gained that elevation above a minute when I heard a sharp rattling aloft, and, looking upwards, I perceived that the main royal had blown loose. For the s.p.a.ce of a breath or two it made the rattling noise that had called my attention to it, then the whole bladder-like body of it was swept in a flash away from the yard, and nothing remained but a whip or two streaming straight out like white hair from the spar.

A moment later the maintopgallantsail, that had been, no doubt, hastily and badly furled, was blown out of the gaskets. I thought to see it go as the royal had, but while I watched, waiting for the flight of the rags of it down into the leeward gloom of the sky, the mast snapped off at the cap at the instant of the sail bursting and disappearing like a gush of mist, and down fell the whole ma.s.s of hamper to a little below the stay, under which it madly swung, held by its gear.

This disaster, comparatively trifling as it was, gave the whole fabric a most melancholy, wrecked look. It affected me in a manner I should not have thought possible in one who knew so much about the sea and shipwreck as I. It impressed me as an omen of approaching dissolution.

'What, in G.o.d's name, can save us?' I remember thinking, as I brought my eyes away from the two broken masts, swinging and spearing high up under the smoke-coloured, compacted, apparently stirless heaps of vapour stretching from sea-line to sea-line. 'What put together by mortal hands can go on resisting this ceaseless, tremendous beating?' and as I thus thought the vessel, with a wild sweep of her bow, smote a giant surge rushing laterally at her, and a whole green sea broke roaring over the forecastle, making every timber in her tremble with a volcanic thrill, and entirely submerging the forepart in white waters, out of which she soared with a score of cataracts flying in smoke from her sides.

I looked for the flag that Helga and I had half-masted a little while before; it had as utterly disappeared from betwixt its toggles as though the bunting had been ripped up and down by a knife. As I was in the act of dragging myself along to the ladder to go below, I spied a sort of smudge oozing out of the iron-hued thickness past the head of a great sea whose arching peak was like a snow-clad hill. I crouched down to steady myself, and presently what I had at first thought to be some dark shadow of cloud upon the near horizon grew into the proportions of a large ship, running dead before the gale under a narrow band of main-topsail.

She was heading to pa.s.s under our stern, and rapidly drew out, and in a few minutes I had her clear--clean and bright as a new painting against the background of shadow, along whose dingy, misty base the ocean line was washing in flickering green heights. She was a large steam frigate, clearly a foreigner, for I do not know that our country had a ship of the kind afloat at the time. She had a white band broken by ports, and the black and gleaming defences of her bulwarks were crowned with stowed hammocks. Her topgallant-masts were housed, and the large cross-trees and huge black tops and wide spread of shrouds gave her a wonderfully heavy, ma.s.sive ship-of-war look aloft. The band of close-reefed main-topsail had the glare of foam as it swung majestically from one sea-line to the other, slowly swaying across the dark and stooping heaven with a n.o.ble and solemn rhythm of movement. I never could have imagined a sight to more wholly fascinate my gaze. Always crouching low, I watched her under the shelter of my hands locked upon my brow. I beheld nothing living aboard of her. She came along as though informed by some spirit and government of her own. As her great stem sank to the figure-head, there arose a magnificent boiling, a mountainous cloud of froth on either bow of her, and the roar of those riven seas seemed to add a deeper tone of thunder to the gale. All was taut aboard--every rope like a ruled line--different, indeed, from our torn and wrecked and trailing appearance on high! She swept past within a quarter of a mile of us, and what pen could convey the incredible power suggested by that great fabric as her stern lifted to the curl of the enormous Atlantic surge, and the whole ship rushed forward on the hurling froth of the sea with an electric velocity that brought the very heart into one's throat.

She was a mere smudge again--this time to leeward--in a few minutes. I could only stare at her. Our flag had blown away, I was without power to signal, and, even if I had been able to communicate our condition of distress, what help could she have offered? What could she have done for us in such a sea as was now running? Yet the mere sight of her had heartened me. She made me feel that help could never be wanting in an ocean so ploughed by keels as the Atlantic.

I crawled down on to the quarter-deck, and returned to the Captain's cabin. The poor man at once fell with feverish eagerness to questioning me. I told him honestly that the maintopgallant-mast had carried away while I was on deck, but that there was nothing else wrong that I could distinguish; that the barque was still making a n.o.ble fight, though there were times when the seas broke very fiercely and dangerously over the forecastle.

He wagged his head with a gesture of distress, crying: 'So it is! so it is! One spar after another, and thus may we go to pieces!'

I told him of the great steam frigate that had pa.s.sed, but to this piece of news he listened with a vacant look, and apparently could think of nothing but his spars. He asked in a childish, fretful way how long Helga had been below, and I answered him stoutly, 'Not nearly long enough for sleep.'

'Ay,' cried he, 'but the barque needs to be pumped, sir.'

'Your daughter will work the better for rest,' said I; and then looking at my watch, I found it was time to give him his physic.

He exclaimed, looking at the winegla.s.s, 'There is no virtue in this stuff! The sufferer can make but one use of it.' And, still preserving a manner of curious childishness, he emptied the contents of the gla.s.s over the edge of his cot on to the deck, and, as he swung, lay watching the mess of it on the floor with a smile. I guessed that expostulation would be fruitless, and, indeed, having but very little faith myself in any sort of physic, I secretly applauded his behaviour.

I sat down upon the locker, and leaning my back against the bulkhead, endeavoured, by conversation, to bring a cheerful look to his countenance; but his mood of depression was not to be conquered. At times he would ramble a little, quote pa.s.sages from Danish plays in his native tongue, then pause with his head on one side, as though waiting for me to applaud what he forgot I did not understand.

'How fine is this from "Palnatoke"!' he would cry, or, 'Hark to this from that n.o.ble performance "Hacon Yarl"! Ah, it is England alone can match Oehlenschlager.'

I could only watch him mutely. Then he would break away to bewail his spars again, and to cry out that Helga would be left penniless, would be a poor beggar-girl, if his ship foundered.

'But is not the _Anine_ insured?' said I.

'Yes,' he answered; 'but not by me. I was obliged to borrow money upon her, and she is insured by the man who lent me the money.'

'But you have an interest in the cargo, Captain Nielsen?'

'Ay,' cried he, 'and that I insured; but what will it be worth to my poor little Helga?' And he hid his face in his hands and rocked himself.

However, he presently grew somewhat composed, and certainly more rational, and after awhile I found myself talking about Tintrenale, my home and a.s.sociations, my lifeboat excursions, and the like; and then we conversed upon the course that was to be adopted should the weather moderate and find us still afloat. 'We should be able to do nothing,' he said, 'without a.s.sistance from a pa.s.sing ship,' in the sense of obtaining a few sailors to work the barque; or a steamer might come along that would be willing to give us a tow.

'The Land's End cannot be far off,' said he.

'No,' said I, 'not if this gale means to drop to-day. But it will be far enough off if it is to go on blowing.'

He inquired what I made the drift to be, and then calculated that the English coast would now be bearing about east-north-east, sixty miles distant. 'Let the wind chop round,' cried he, with a gleam in his sunken eye, 'and you and Helga would have the _Anine_ in the Channel before midnight.'

We continued to talk in this strain, and he seemed to forget the wretchedness of our situation; then suddenly he called out to know the time, abruptly breaking away from what he was saying.

'Hard upon eleven o'clock,' said I.

'This will not do!' he cried. 'The barque, as we talk, is filling under our feet. The well should be sounded. Helga must be called. I beseech you to call Helga,' he repeated nervously, smiting the side of his cot with his clenched hand. 'Ah, G.o.d!' he added, 'that I should be without the power to move!'

'I will sound the well,' said I. 'Should I find an increase, I will arouse your daughter.'

'Go, I beg of you!' he cried, in high notes. 'The barque seems sodden to me. She does not lift and fall as she did.'

I guessed this to be imagination; but the mere fancy of such a thing being true frightened me also, and I hastily went out. I dried the rod and chalked it as Helga had, and, watching my chance, dropped it, and found five inches of water above the level our last spell at the pump had left in the hold. I was greatly startled, and to make sure that my first cast was right, I sounded a second time, and sure enough the rod showed five inches, as before. I hastened with the news to the Captain.

'I knew it! I feared it!' he cried, his voice shrill with a very ecstasy of hurry, anxiety, and sense of helplessness that worked in him. 'Call Helga!--lose not an instant--run, I beg you will run!'

'But run where?' cried I. 'Where does the girl sleep?'

'Go down the hatchway in the deck-house,' he shouted in shrill accents, as though bent upon putting into this moment the whole of his remaining slender stock of vitality. 'There are four cabins under this deck. Hers is the aftermost one on the starboard side. Don't delay! If she does not instantly answer, enter and arouse her.' And as I sped from the cabin I heard him crying that he knew by the motions of the ship she was filling rapidly, and that she would go down on a sudden like lead.

It was a black, square trap of hatchway into which I looked a moment before putting my legs over. There was a short flight of almost perpendicular steps conducting to the lower deck. On my descending I found the place so dark that I was forced to halt till my eyes should grow used to the obscurity. There was a disagreeable smell of cargo down here, and such a heart-shaking uproar of straining timbers, of creaking bulkheads, of the thumps of seas, and the m.u.f.fled, yearning roar of the giant waters sweeping under the vessel, that for a little while I stood as one utterly bewildered.

Soon, however, I managed to distinguish outlines, and, with outstretched hands and wary legs, made my way to the cabin Captain Nielsen had indicated, and beat upon the door. There was no response. I beat again, listening, scarcely thinking, perhaps, that the girl would require a voice as keen as a boatswain's pipe to thread the soul-confounding and brain-muddling clamour in this after-deck of the storm-beaten barque.

'He bade me enter,' thought I, 'and enter I must if the girl is to be aroused;' and I turned the handle of the door and walked in.

Helga lay, attired as she had left the deck, in an upper bunk, through the porthole of which the daylight, bright with the foam, came and went upon her face as the vessel at one moment buried the thick gla.s.s of the scuttle in the green blindness of the sea, and then lifted it weeping and gleaming into the air. Her head was pillowed on her arm; her hair in the weak light showed as though touched by a dull beam of the sun. Her eyes were sealed--their long lashes put a delicate shading under them; her white face wore a sweet expression of happy serenity, and I could believe that some glad vision was present to her. Her lips were parted in the expression of a smile.

There was a feeling in me as of profanity in this intrusion, and of wrongdoing in the obligation forced upon me of waking her from a peaceful, pleasant, all-important repose to face the bitter hardships and necessities of that time of tempest. But for my single pair of arms the pump was too much, and she must be aroused. I lightly put my hand upon hers, and her smile was instantly more defined, as though my action were coincident with some phase of her dream. I pressed her hand; she sighed deeply, looked at me, and instantly sat up with a little frown of confusion.

'Your father begged me to enter and arouse you,' said I. 'I was unable to make you hear by knocking. I have sounded the well, and there is an increase of five inches.'

'Ah!' she exclaimed, and sprang lightly out of her bunk.

In silence and with amazing despatch, seeing that a few seconds before she was in a deep sleep, she put on her sea-helmet, whipped a handkerchief round her neck, and was leading the way to the hatch on buoyant feet.

On gaining the deck I discovered that the wrecked appearance of the ship aloft had been greatly heightened during my absence below by the foretopsail having been blown into rags. It was a single sail, and the few long strips of it which remained blowing out horizontally from the yards, stiff as crowbars, gave an indescribable character of forlornness to the fabric. Helga glanced aloft, and immediately perceived that the maintopgallant-mast had been wrecked, but said nothing, and in a minute the pair of us were hard at work.

I let go the brake only when my companion was too exhausted to continue; but now, on sounding the well, we found that our labours had not decreased the water to the same extent as heretofore. It was impossible, however, to converse out of shelter; moreover, a fresh danger attended exposure on deck, for, in addition to the wild sweeping of green seas forward, to the indescribably violent motions of the barque, which threatened to break our heads or our limbs for us, to fling us bruised and senseless against the bulwarks if we relaxed for a moment our hold of what was next us--in addition to this, I say, there was now the deadly menace of the topgallant-mast, with its weight of yards, fiercely swinging and beating right over our heads, and poised there by the slender filaments of its rigging, which might part and let the whole ma.s.s fall at any moment.

We entered the deck-house, and paused for a little while in its comparative silence and stagnation to exchange a few words.

'The water is gaining upon the ship, Mr. Tregarthen,' said Helga.

'I fear so,' I answered.

'If it should increase beyond the control of the pumps, what is to be done?' she asked. 'We are without boats.'