My Danish Sweetheart Volume I Part 11

'What _can_ be done?' cried I. 'We shall have to make some desperate thrust for life--contrive something out of the hencoop--spare booms--whatever is to be found.'

'What chance--what chance have we in such a sea as this?' she exclaimed, clasping her hands and looking up at me with eyes large with emotion, though I found nothing of fear in the shining of them or in the working of her pale face.

I had no answer to make. Indeed, it put a sort of feeling into the blood like madness itself even to _talk_ of a raft, with the sound in our ears of the sea that was raging outside.

'And then there is my father,' she continued, 'helpless--unable to move--how is he to be rescued? I would lose my life to save his. But what is to be done if this gale continues?'

'His experience should be of use to us,' said I. 'Let us go and talk with him.'

She opened the door of the berth, halted, stared a minute, then turned to me with her forefinger upon her lip. I peered, and found the poor man fast asleep. I believed at first that he was dead, so still he lay, so easy was his countenance, so white too; but after watching a moment, I spied his breast rising and falling. Helga drew close and stood viewing him. A strange and moving sight was that swinging cot--the revelation of the deathlike head within, the swaying boyish figure of the daughter gazing with eyes of love, pity, distress at the sleeping, haggard face, as it came and went.

She sat down beside me. 'I shall lose him soon,' said she. 'But what is killing him? He was white and poorly yesterday; but not ill as he is now.'

It would have been idle to attempt any sort of encouragement. The truth was as plain to her as to me. I could find nothing better to say than that the gale might cease suddenly, that a large steam-frigate had pa.s.sed us a little while before, that some vessel was sure to heave into sight when the weather moderated, and that meanwhile our efforts must be directed to keeping the vessel afloat. I could not again talk of the raft; it was enough to feel the sickening tossing of the ship under us to render the thought of _that_ remedy for our state horrible and hopeless.

The time slowly pa.s.sed. It was drawing on to one o'clock. I went on deck to examine the helm and to judge of the weather; then sounded the well, but found no material increase of water. The barque, however, was rolling so furiously that it was almost impossible to get a correct cast. Before re-entering the house, I sent a look round from the shelter of the weather-bulwark, to observe what materials were to be obtained for a raft should the weather suffer us to launch such a thing, and the barque founder spite of our toil. There was a number of spare booms securely lashed on top of the seamen's deck-house and galley, and these, with the hencoop and hatch-covers, and the little casks or scuttle-b.u.t.ts out of which the men drank would provide us with what we needed. But the contemplation of death itself was not so dreadful to me as the prospect which this fancy of a raft opened. I hung crouching under the lee of the tall bulwark, gnawing my lip as thought after thought arose in me, and digging my finger-nails into the palms of my hands. The suddenness of it all! The being this time yesterday safe ash.o.r.e, without the dimmest imagination of what was to come--the anguish of my poor old mother--the perishing, as I did not doubt, of my brave comrades of the lifeboat--then, this vessel slowly taking in water, dying as it were by inches, and as doomed as though h.e.l.l's curse were upon her, unless the gale should cease and help come!

I could not bear it. I started to my feet with a sense of madness upon me, with a wild and dreadful desire in me to show mercy to myself by plunging and by silencing the delirious fancies of my brain in the wide sweep of seething waters that rushed from the very line of the rail of the barque as she leaned to her beam-ends in the thunderous trough of that instant. It was a sort of hysteria that did not last; yet might I have found temptation and time in the swift pa.s.sage of it to have destroyed myself, but for G.o.d's hand upon me, as I choose to believe, and to be ever thankful for.

CHAPTER VII.

THE RAFT.

How pa.s.sed the rest of this the first day of my wild and dangerous adventure, of Helga's and my first day of suffering, peril, and romantic experience, I cannot clearly recall. A few impressions only survive. I remember returning to the deck-house and finding the captain still sleeping. I remember conversing with Helga, who looked me very earnestly in the face when I entered, and who, by some indefinable influence of voice and eye, coaxed me into speaking of my fit of horror on deck. I remember that she left me to obtain some food, which, it seems, was kept in one of the cabins below, and that she returned with a tin of preserved meat, a little gla.s.s jar of jam, a tin of biscuits, and a bottle of red wine like to what we had before drunk--a very pleasant, well-flavoured claret; that all the while we ate, her father slept, which made her happy, as she said he needed rest, not having closed his eyes for three nights and days, though it was wonderful to me that he should have fallen asleep in such a mood of excitement and of consternation as I had left him in; but as to his slumbering amid that uproar of straining timbers and flying waters, it is enough to say that he was a seaman.

I also recollect that throughout the remainder of the day we worked the pump at every two hours or thereabouts; but the water was unmistakably gaining upon the barque, and to keep her free would have needed the incessant plying of the pumps--both pumps at once--by gangs of fellows who could relieve one another and rest between. Helga told me that her father had given orders for a windmill pump to be rigged, Scandinavian fashion, but that there had been some delay, so the barque sailed without it. I said that no windmill pump would have stood up half an hour in such a gale of wind as was blowing; but all the same, I bitterly lamented that there was nothing of the sort aboard, for these windmill arrangements keep the pumps going by the revolution of their sails, and such a thing must have proved inexpressibly valuable when the weather should moderate, so as to allow us to erect it.

The Captain slept far into the afternoon, but I could not observe when he awoke that he was the better for his long spell of rest. I entered his cabin fresh from a look round on deck, and found him just awake, with his eyes fixed upon his daughter, who sat slumbering upon the locker, with her back against the cabin-wall and her pale face bowed upon her breast. He immediately attacked me with questions, delivered in notes so high, penetrating, and feverish with hurry and alarm that they awoke Helga. We had to tell him the truth--I mean, that the water was gaining, but slowly, so that it must conquer us if the gale continued, yet we might still hope to find a chance of our lives by keeping the pump going. He broke into many pa.s.sionate exclamations of distress and grief, and then was silent, with the air of one who abandons hope.

'There are but two, and one of them a girl,' I heard him say, lifting his eyes to the deck above as he spoke.

The night was a dreadful time to look forward to. While there was daylight, while one could see, one's spirits seemed to retain a little buoyancy; but, speaking for myself, I dreaded the effect upon my mind of a second interminable time of blackness, filled with the horrors of the groaning and howling gale, of the dizzy motion of the tormented fabric, of the heart-subduing noises of waters pouring in thunder and beating in volcanic shocks against and over the struggling vessel.

Well, there came round the hour of nine o'clock by my watch. Long before, after returning from a spirit-breaking spell of toil at the pump, we had lighted the deck-house and binnacle lamps, had eaten our third meal that day to answer for tea or supper, and at Helga's entreaty I had lain down upon the deck-house locker to sleep for an hour or so if I could, while she went to watch by her father and to keep an eye upon the ship by an occasional visit to the deck.

We had arranged that she should awaken me at nine, that we should then apply ourselves afresh to the pump, that she should afterwards take my place upon the locker till eleven, I, meanwhile, seeing to her father and to the barque, and that we should thus proceed in these alternations throughout the night. It was now nine o'clock. I awoke, and was looking at my watch when Helga entered from the deck. She came up to me and took my hands, and cried:

'Mr. Tregarthen, there are some stars in the sky. I believe the gale is breaking!'

Only those who have undergone the like of such experiences as these I am endeavouring to relate can conceive of the rapture, the new life, her words raised in me.

'I praise G.o.d for your good news!' I cried, and made a step to the barometer to observe its indications.

The rise of the mercury was a quarter of an inch, and this had happened since a little after seven. Yet, being something of a student of the barometer in my little way, I could have heartily wished the rise much more gradual. It might betoken nothing more than a drier quality of gale, with nothing of the old fierceness wanting. But then, to be sure, it might promise a shift, so that we stood a chance of being blown homewards, which would signify an opportunity of preservation that must needs grow greater as we approached the English Channel.

I went with Helga on deck, and instantly saw the stars shining to windward betwixt the edges of clouds which were flying across our mastheads with the velocity of smoke. The heaven of vapour that had hung black and brooding over the ocean for two days was broken up; where the sky showed it was pure, and the stars shone in it with a frosty brilliance. The atmosphere had wonderfully cleared; the froth glanced keenly upon the hurling shadows of the seas, and I believed I could follow the clamorous mountainous breast of the ocean to the very throb of the horizon, over which the clouds were pouring in loose ma.s.ses, scattering scud-like as they soared, but all so plentiful that the heavens were thick with the flying wings.

But there was no sobering of the wind. It blew with its old dreadful violence, and the half-smothered barque climbed and plunged and rolled amid clouds of spray in a manner to make the eyes reel after a minute of watching her. Yet the mere sight of the stars served as a sup of cordial to us. We strove at the pump, and then Helga lay down; and in this manner the hours pa.s.sed till about four o'clock in the morning, when there happened a sensible decrease in the wind. At dawn it was still blowing hard, but long before this, had we had sailors, we should have been able to expose canvas, and start the barque upon her course.

I stood on top of the deck-house watching the dawn break. The bleak gray stole over the frothing sea and turned ashen the curve of every running surge. To windward the ocean-line went twisting like a corkscrew upon the sky and seemed to boil and wash along it as though it were the base of some smoking wall. There was nothing in sight. I searched every quarter with a pa.s.sionate intensity, but there was nothing to be seen.

But now the sea had greatly moderated, and, though the deck still sobbed with wet, it was only at long intervals that the foam flew forwards. The barque looked fearfully wrecked, stranded and sodden. All her rigging was slack, the decks were enc.u.mbered with the ends of ropes, the weather side of the mainsail had blown loose and was fluttering in rags, though to leeward the canvas lay furled.

I went on to the quarter deck and sounded the well. Practice had rendered me expert, and the cast, I did not doubt, gave me the true depth, and I felt all the blood in me rush to my heart when I beheld such an indication of increase as was the same as hearing one's funeral knell rung, or of a verdict of death p.r.o.nounced upon one.

I entered the deck-house with my mind resolved, and seated myself at the table over against where Helga lay sleeping upon the locker, to consider a little before arousing her. She showed very wan, almost haggard, by the morning light; her parted lips were pale, and she wore a restless expression even in her sleep. It might be that my eyes being fixed upon her face aroused her; she suddenly looked at me, and then sat up. Just then a gleam of misty sunshine swept the little windows.

'The bad weather is gone!' she cried.

'It is still too bad for us, though,' said I.

'Does the wind blow from the land?' she asked.

'Ay! and freshly too.'

She was now able to perceive the meaning in my face, and asked me anxiously if anything new had happened to alarm me. I answered by giving her the depth of water I had found in the hold. She clasped her hands and started to her feet, but sat again on my making a little gesture.

'Miss Nielsen,' said I, 'the barque is taking in water very much faster than we shall be able to pump it out. We may go on plying the pump, but the labour can only end in breaking our hearts and wasting precious time that might be employed to some purpose. We must look the truth in the face, and make up our minds to let the vessel go, and to do our best, with G.o.d's help, to preserve our lives.'

'What?' she asked in a low voice, that indicated awe rather than fear, and I noticed the little twitch and spasm of her mouth swiftly vanish in an expression of resolution.

'We must go to work,' said I, 'and construct a raft, then get everything in readiness to sway it overboard. The weather may enable us to do this.

I pray so. It is our only hope, should nothing to help us come along.'

'But my father?'

'We shall have to get him out of his cabin on to the raft.'

'But how? But how?' she cried with an air of wildness. 'He cannot move!'

'If we are to be saved, he must be saved, at all events,' said I. 'What, then, can be done but to lower him in his cot, as he lies, on to the deck and so drag him to the gangway and sling him on to the raft by a tackle?'

'Yes,' she said, 'that can be done. It will have to be done.' She reflected, with her hands tightly locked upon her brow. 'How long do you think,' she asked, 'will the _Anine_ remain afloat if we leave the pumps untouched?'

'Your father will know,' said I. 'Let us go to him.'

Captain Nielsen sat erect in his cot munching a biscuit.

'Ha!' he cried as we entered. 'We are to have pleasant weather. There was some sunshine upon that port just now. What says the barometer, Mr.

Tregarthen?' then contracting his brows while he peered at his daughter as though he had not obtained a view of her before, he exclaimed, 'What is the matter, Helga? What have you come to tell me?'

'Father,' she answered, sinking her head a little and so looking at him through her eyelashes, 'Mr. Tregarthen believes, and I cannot doubt it, for there is the sounding-rod to tell the story, that water is fast entering the _Anine_, and that we must lose no time to prepare to leave her.'

'What!' he almost shrieked, letting fall his biscuit and grasping the edge of the cot with his emaciated hands, and turning his body to us from the waist, leaving his legs in their former posture as though he were paralyzed from the hip down. 'The _Anine_ sinking? prepare to leave her? Why, you have neglected the pump, then!'