My Danish Sweetheart Volume I Part 14

'If this raft were a boat, I would board the barque and set her on fire.

She may float through the night, for who is to know but that one of her worse leaks may have got choked, and the blaze she would make might bring us help.'

The Captain uttered some exclamation in Danish, in a small but vehement and shrill tone. He had not spoken for above an hour, and I had believed him sleeping or dying and speechless.

'What does he say?' I called across softly to Helga.

'That the _Anine_ might have been saved had we stood by her,' she answered, struggling, as I could hear by the tremor in her voice, to control her accents.

'No, no!' said I, almost gruffly, I fear, with the mood that was upon me of helplessness, despair, and the kind of rage that comes with perception that one is doomed to die like a rat, without a chance, without a soul of all those one loves knowing one's fate. 'No, no!' I cried, 'the _Anine_ was not to be saved by us two, nor by twenty like us, Helga. _You_ know that--for it is like making me responsible for our situation here to doubt it.'

'I do not doubt it,' she answered firmly and reproachfully.

Captain Nielsen muttered in his native tongue; but I did not inquire what he said, and the hush of the great ocean night, with its delicate threading of complaining wind, fell upon us.

My temper of despair was not to be soothed by recollection of this time yesterday, by perception of the visible evidence of G.o.d's mercy in this tranquillity of sky and sea, at a time when, but for the change of weather, we had certainly been doomed. I was young; I pa.s.sionately desired to live. Had death been the penalty of the lifeboat attempt, I might, had time been granted me, have contemplated my end with the fort.i.tude that springs from the sense of having done well. But what was heroic in this business had disappeared out of it when the lifeboat capsized and left me safe on board. It was now no more than a vile pa.s.sage of prosaic shipwreck, with its attendant horror of lingering death, and nothing n.o.ble in what had been done, or that might yet have to be done, to prop up my spirits. Thus I sat, full of wretchedness, and miserably thinking, mechanically eyeing the dusky heap of barque; then breaking away from my afflicting reverie, I stood up, holding by the mast, to carefully sweep the sea, with a prayer for the sight of the coloured gleams of a steamer's lights, since there was nothing to be expected in the way of sail in this calm that was upon the water.

I was thus occupied, when I was startled by a strange cry--I cannot describe it. It resembled the moan of a wild creature wounded to death, but with a human note in it that made the sound something not to be imagined. For an instant I believed it came from the sea, till I saw by the dim light of the starshine the figure of Captain Nielsen, in a sitting-posture, pointing with the whole length of his arm in the direction of his barque. I looked, and found the black ma.s.s of hull gone, and nothing showing but the dark lines of spars and rigging that melted out of my sight as I watched. A noise of rending, intermingled with the shock of an explosion, came from where she had disappeared. It signified no more than the blowing up of the decks as she sank; but the star-studded vastness of gloom made the sound appalling beyond language to convey.

'Help!' cried Helga. 'My father is dying.'

I gained the side of the cot in a stride, and kneeled by him, but there was no more to be seen of his face than the mere faint whiteness of it, and I could not tell whether his eyes were open or not. Imagining, but scarcely hoping, that a dram might put some life into the poor fellow, I lowered the bull's-eye lamp from the masthead to seek for one of the jars of spirits we had stowed; but when we came to put the tin pannikin to his lips we found his teeth set.

'He is not dead, Helga,' I cried; 'he is in a fit. If he were dead his jaw would drop;' and this I supposed, though I knew little of death in those days.

I flashed the bull's-eye upon his face, and observed that though his eyes were open the pupils were upturned and hidden. This, with the whiteness of the skin and the emaciation of the lineaments, made a ghastly picture of his countenance, and the hysteric sob that Helga uttered as she looked made me grieve that I should have thrown the light upon her father.

I mastheaded the lamp again, and crouched by the side of the cot talking to Helga across the rec.u.mbent form in it. Who could remember what was said at such a time? I weakly essayed to cheer her, but soon gave up, for here was the very figure of Death himself lying between us, and there was Death awaiting us in the black invisible folds in which we swung; and what had I to say that could help her heart at such a time?

Occasionally I would stand erect and peer around. The weak wind that went moaning past us as the raft rose to the liquid heave, had the chill in it of the ocean in October; and fearing that Helga's jacket did not sufficiently protect her, I pulled off my oilskin-coat--there is no warmer covering for ordinary apparel--and induced her to put it on. Her father remained motionless, but by stooping my ear to his mouth I could catch the noise of his breathing as it hissed through his clenched teeth. Yet it was a sort of breathing that would make one expect to hear it die out in a final sigh at any minute.

I mixed a little spirit and water, and gave it to the girl, and obliged her to swallow the draught, and begged her to eat for the sake of the life and heart food would give her; but she said 'No,' and her frequent silent sobbing silenced me on that head, for how could one grieving as she did swallow food? I filled the pannikin for myself and emptied it, and ate a biscuit and a piece of cheese, which were near my hand in an interstice of the raft, and then lay down near the cot, supporting my head on my elbow. Never did the stars seem so high, so infinitely remote, as they seemed to me that night. I felt as though I had pa.s.sed into another world that mocked the senses with a few dim semblances of things which a little while before had been real and familiar. The very paring of moon showed small as though looked at through an inverted telescope, and measurelessly remote. I do not know why this should have been, yet once afterwards, in speaking of this experience to a man who, in a voyage to India, had fallen overboard on such another night as this, and swam for three hours, he told me that the stars had seemed to him as to me, and the moon, which to him was nearly full, appeared to have shrunk to the size of the planet Venus.

After awhile the Captain's breathing grew less harsh, and Helga asked me to bring the lamp that she might look at him. His teeth were no longer set, and his eyes as in nature, saving that there was no recognition in them, and I observed that he stared straight into the brilliant gla.s.s of magnified flame without winking or averting his gaze. I propped him up, and Helga put the pannikin to his lips, but the fluid ran from the corners of his mouth; upon which I let him rest upon his pillows, softly begging the girl to let G.o.d have His way with him.

'He cannot last through the night!' she exclaimed, in a low voice; and the wonderful stillness upon the sea, unvexed by the delicate winnowing of the draught, gathered to my mood an extraordinary emphasis from my being able to hear her light utterances as distinctly as though she whispered in a sickroom.

'You are prepared, Helga?' said I.

'No, no!' she cried, with a little sob. 'Who can be prepared to lose one that is dearly loved? We believe we are prepared--we pray for strength; but when the blow falls it finds us weak and unready. When he is gone, I shall be alone. And, oh! to die _here_!'

We sank into silence.

Another hour went by, and I believed I had fallen into a light, troubled doze, less sleepful than a waking daydream, when I heard my name p.r.o.nounced, and instantly started up.

'What is it?' I cried.

'My father is asking for you,' answered Helga.

I leaned over the cot and felt for his hand, which I took. It was of a deathlike coldness, and moist.

'I am here, Captain Nielsen,' said I.

'If G.o.d preserves you,' he exclaimed, very faintly, 'you will keep your word?'

'Be sure of it--be sure of it,' I said, knowing that he referred to what had pa.s.sed between us about Helga.

'I thank you,' he whispered. 'My sight seems dark; yet is not that the moon down there?'

'Yes, father,' answered the girl.

'Helga,' he said, 'did you not tell me you had brought your mother's likeness with you?'

'It is with us, and her Bible, father.'

'Would to G.o.d I could look upon it,' said he, 'for the last time, Helga--for the last time!'

'Where is the parcel?' I asked.

'I have it close beside me,' she answered.

'Open it, Helga!' said I. 'The lamp will reveal the picture.'

Again I lowered the bull's-eye from the masthead, and, while Helga held the picture before her father's face, I threw the light upon it. It was a little oil-painting in an oval gilt frame. I could distinguish no more than the face of a woman--a young face--with a crown of yellow hair upon her head. The sheen of the lamp lay faintly upon the profile of Helga.

All else, saving the picture, was in darkness, and the girl looked like a vision upon the blackness behind her, as she knelt with the portrait extended before her father's face.

He addressed her in weak and broken tones in Danish, then turned his head and slightly raised his arm, as though he wished to point to something up in the sky, but was without power of limb to do so. On this Helga withdrew the portrait, and I put down the lamp, first searching the dark line of ocean, now scintillant with stars, before sitting again.

As the moon sank, spite of her diffusing little or no light, a deeper dye seemed to come into the night. The shooting-stars were plentiful, and betokened, as I might hope, continuance of fair weather. Here and there hovered a steam-coloured fragment of cloud. An aspect of almost summer serenity was upon the countenance of the sky, and though there was the weight of the ocean in the swing of the swell, there was peace too in the regularity of its run and in the soundless motion of it as it took us, sloping the raft after the manner of a see-saw.

In a boat, aboard any other contrivance than this raft put together by inexpert hands, I must have felt grateful--deeply thankful to G.o.d indeed, for this sweet quietude of air and sea that had followed the roaring conflict of the long hours now pa.s.sed. But I was without hope, and there can be no thankfulness without that emotion. These were the closing days of October; November was at hand; within an hour this sluggish breathing of air might be storming up into such another hurricane as we were fresh from. And what then? Why, it was impossible to fancy such a thing even, without one's spirits growing heavy as lead, without feeling the presence of death in the chill of the night air.

No! for this pa.s.sage of calm, G.o.d forgive me! I could not feel grateful.

The coward in me rose strong. I could not bless Heaven for what affected me as a brief pause before a dreadful end, that this very quiet of the night was only to render more lingering, and fuller, therefore, of suffering.

Captain Nielsen began to mutter. I did not need to listen to him for above a minute to gather that he was delirious. I could see the outline of Helga against the stars, bending over the cot. The thought of this heroic girl's distress, of her complicated anguish, rallied me, and I broke in a very pa.s.sion of self-reproach from the degradation of my dejection. I drew to the cot, and Helga said:

'He is wandering in his mind.' She added, with a note of wailing in her voice, 'Jeg er nu alene! Jeg er nu alene!' by which she signified that she was now alone. I caught the meaning of the sentence from her p.r.o.nunciation of it, and cried:

'Do not say you are alone, Helga! Besides, your father still lives.

Hark! what does he say?'

So far he had been babbling in Danish; now he spoke in English, in a strange voice that sounded as though proceeding from someone at a distance.

'It is so, you see. The storks did not return last spring. There was to be trouble!--there was to be trouble! Ha! here is Pastor Madsen. Else, my beloved Else! here is the good Pastor Madsen. And there, too, is Rector Gronlund. Will he observe us? Else, he is deep in his book.

Look!' he cried a little shrilly, pointing with a vehemence that startled me into following the indication of his shadowy glimmering hand directed into the darkness over the sea. 'It is Kolding Latin School--nay, it is Rector Gronlund's parsonage garden. Ah, Rector, you remember me? This is the little Else that your good wife thought the prettiest child in Denmark. And this is Pastor Madsen.'

He paused, then muttered in Danish, and fell silent.