My Danish Sweetheart Volume I Part 16

'You talk like a girl now that you are dressed as one, Helga. The hearty young sailor-lad that I met aboard the _Anine_ would have found nothing more than a raft and salt water in this business, and would have "planked" it here as comfortably as in his cabin bunk.'

'It did not please you to see me in boy's clothes,' said she.

'You made a very charming boy, Helga; but I like you best as you are.'

'No stranger should have seen me dressed so,' she exclaimed in a tone of voice that made me figure a little flush in her cheeks, though there was nothing to be seen in that way by the twilight which had drawn around us. 'I did not care what the mates and the crew thought, but I could not have guessed----' she stammered and went on: 'when I saw in the bay what the weather was likely to prove, I determined to keep my boy's dress on, more particularly after that wretched man, Damm, went away with the others, for then the _Anine_ would be very short-handed for what might happen; and how could I have been of use in this attire?' and she took hold of her dress and looked down it.

'I have heard before,' said I, 'of girls doing sailors' work, but not for love of it. In the old songs and stories they are represented as going to sea chiefly in pursuit of absconding sweethearts.'

'You think me unwomanly for acting the part of a sailor?' said she.

'I think of you, Helga,' said I, taking her by the hand, 'as a girl with the heart of a lioness. But if I once contrive to land you safely at Kolding, you will not go to sea again, I hope?'

She sighed, without replying.

There was nothing but her father's cloak and my oilskins to make a couch for her with. When I pressed her to take some rest, she entreated softly that I would allow her to go on talking and sitting--that she was sleepless--that it lightened her heart to talk with me--that there were many hours of darkness yet before us--and that before she consented to lie down we must arrange to keep watch, since I needed rest too.

I was willing, indeed, to keep her at my side talking. The dread of the loneliness which I knew would come off the wide, dark sea into my brain when she was silent and asleep, and when there would be nothing but the stars and the cold and ghastly gleam of the ebony breast on which we lay, to look at, was strong upon me. I mastheaded the bull's-eye lamp, and spread the poor Danish Captain's cloak, and we seated ourselves upon it, and for a long two hours we talked together, in which time she gave me her life's history, and I chatted to her about myself. I listened to her with interest and admiration. Her voice was pure, with a quality of plaintive sweetness in it, and now and again she would utter a sentence in Danish, then translate it. It might be that the girlish nature I now found in her was accentuated to my appreciation by the memory of her boyish attire, by her appearance when on board the barque, the work she did there and the sort of roughness one a.s.sociates with the trade of the sea, whether true of the individual or not; but, as I thought, never had I been in the company of any woman whose conversation and behaviour were so engaging, with their qualities of delicacy, purity, simplicity, and candour, as Helga's.

It was such another night as had pa.s.sed, saving that the ocean swell had the softness of the long hours of fine weather in its volume, whereas on the previous night it still breathed as in memory of the fierce conflict that was over.

A little after midnight there was a red scar of moon in the west, and the hour was a very dark one, spite of the silver showering of the plentiful stars. I had made for Helga the best sort of couch it was in my power to manufacture, and at this time she lay upon it sleeping deeply, as I knew by the regularity of her respiration. The sense of loneliness I dreaded had been upon me since she lay down and left me to the solitary contemplation of our situation. A small wind blew out of the north-west, and there was much slopping noise of waters under my feet amid the crevices of the clumsily framed raft. I had promised Helga to call her at three, but without intending to keep my word if she slept, and I sat near her head, her pale face glimmering out of the darkness as though spectrally self-luminous, and for ever I was turning my eyes about the sea and directing my gaze at the little masthead lantern to know that it was burning.

Happening to bend my gaze down upon the raft, into some interstice close against where the hatch-cover was secured, I spied what, for the moment, I might have supposed a pair of glow-worms, minute, but defined enough. Then I believed there was a little pool of water there, and that it reflected a couple of stars. A moment after I guessed what it was, and in a very frenzy of the superst.i.tion that had been stirring in me, and in many directions of thought influencing me from the moment of my leaving the barque, I had my hand upon the great rat--for that was what it was--and sent it flying overboard. I remember the wild squeak of the thing as I hurled it--you would have supposed it the cry of a distant gull. There was a little fire in the water, and I could see where it swam, and all very quietly I seized hold of a loose plank and, waiting till it had come near, I hit it, and kept on hitting it, till I might be sure it was drowned.

Some little noise I may have made: Helga spoke in her sleep, but did not wake. You will smile at my mentioning this trifling pa.s.sage; you would laugh could I make you understand the emotion of relief, the sense of exultant happiness, that possessed me when I had drowned this rat. When I look back and recall this little detail of my experiences, I never doubt that the overwhelming spirit of the loneliness of that ocean night lay upon me in a sort of craziness. I thought of the rat as an evil spirit, a something horribly ominous to us, a menace of suffering and of dreadful death while it stayed with us. G.o.d knows why I should have thus thought; but the imagination of the shipwrecked is quickly diseased, and the moods which a man will afterwards look back upon with shame and grief and astonishment are, while they are present, to him as fruitful of terrible imaginings as ever made the walls of a madhouse ring with maniac laughter.

It might have been some half-hour after this--the silly excitement of the incident having pa.s.sed out of my mind--that I fell into a doze.

Nature was well-nigh exhausted in me, yet I did not wish to sleep. In proportion, however, as the workings of my brain were stealthily quieted by the slumberous feelings stealing over me, so the soothing influences without operated: the cradling of the raft, the hushing and subduing gaze of the stars, the soft whispering of the wind.

I was awakened by a rude shock, followed by a hoa.r.s.e bawling cry. There was a second shock of a sort to smartly bring my wits together, attended with several shouts, such as--'What is it? What have ye run us into?

Why, stroike me silly, if it ain't a raft!'

I sprang to my feet, and found the bows of a little vessel overhanging us. Small as I might know her to be, she yet loomed tall and black, and even seemed to tower over us, so low-seated were we. She lined her proportions against the starry sky, and I made out that she had hooked herself to us by running her bowsprit through the stays which supported our mast.

My first thought was for Helga, but she was rising even as I looked, and the next moment was at my side.

'For G.o.d's sake!' I cried, 'lower away your sail, or your stem will grind this raft to pieces! We are two--a girl and a man--shipwrecked people. I implore you to help us to get on board you!'

A lantern was held over the side, and the face of the man who held it showed out to the touch of the l.u.s.tre like a picture in a _camera obscura_. The rays of the lantern streamed fairly upon us, and the man roared out:

'Ay! it's a raft, Jacob, and there are two of 'em, and one a gal. Chuck the man a rope's-end and he'll haul the raft alongside.'

'Look out!' shouted another voice from the after-part of the little vessel, and some coils of rope fell at my feet.

I instantly seized the line, and, Helga catching hold too, we strained our united weight at it, and the raft swung alongside the craft at the moment that she lowered her sail.

'Catch hold of the lady's hands!' I shouted.

In a moment she was dragged over the side. I handed up the little parcel, containing her mother's picture and Bible, and followed easily, scrambling over the low rail.

The man who grasped the lantern held it aloft to survey us, and I saw the dusky glimmer of two other faces past him.

'This is a queer start!' said he. 'How long have you been knocking about here?'

'You shall have the yarn presently,' said I; 'but before the raft goes adrift, it's well you should know that she is pretty handsomely stocked with provisions--all worth bringing aboard.'

'Right!' he cried. 'Jacob, take this here lantern and jump over the side, and hand up what ye find.'

All this had happened too suddenly to suffer me as yet to be sensible of what came little short of a miraculous deliverance; for had the craft been a vessel of burthen, or had there been any weight in the soft night air still blowing, she would have sheared through us as we lay asleep, and scattered the raft and drowned us out of hand--nay, before we could have cried 'O G.o.d!' we should have been suffocating in the water.

I believed her at first a fishing-boat. She was lugger-rigged and open, with a little forecastle in her bows, as I had noticed while the lantern dangled in the hand of the man who surveyed us. Yet, had she been a line-of-battle ship, she could not, as a refuge and a means of deliverance after the horror and peril of that flat platform of raft, have filled me with more joy and thanksgiving.

'The worst is over, Helga!' I cried, as I seized the girl's cold and trembling hand. 'Here is a brave little vessel to carry us home, and you will see Kolding again, after all!'

She made some answer, which her emotion rendered scarcely intelligible.

Her being suddenly awakened by the shock of the collision, her alarm on seeing what might have pa.s.sed in the gloom as a tall, black ma.s.s of bow crushing into the raft; then the swiftness of our entry into the lugger, and the sensations which would follow on her perception of our escape from a terrible death--all this, combined with what she had gone through, was too much for the brave little creature; she could scarcely whisper; and, as I have said, her hand was cold as frost, and trembled like an aged person's, as I gently brought her to one of the thwarts.

By this time I had made out that the boat carried only three of a crew.

One of them, holding the lantern, had sprung on to the raft, and was busy in handing up to the others whatever he could lay his hands upon.

They did not spend many minutes over this business. Indeed, I was astonished by their despatch. The fellow on the raft worked like one who was very used to rummaging, and, as I knew afterwards by observing what he had taken, it was certain not a single crevice escaped him.

'That's all,' I heard him shout. 'There's naught left that I can find, unless so be as the parties have snugged any valuables away.'

'No!' I cried, 'there are no valuables, no money--nothing but food and drink.'

'Come aboard, Jacob, arter ye've chucked up what's loose for firewood.'

Presently the lantern flashed as it was pa.s.sed across the rail, and the figure of the man followed.

'Shove her clear!' was bawled, and shortly afterwards, 'Up foresail!'

The dark square of sail mounted, and one of the men came aft to the helm. Nothing was said until the sheet had been hauled aft, and the little craft was softly rippling along over the smooth folds of the swell, communicating a sensation so buoyant, so vital after the flat mechanical swaying and slanting of the inert raft, that the mere feeling of it to me was as potent in virtue as some life-giving dram.

The other two men came out of the bows and seated themselves, placing the lighted lantern in the midst of us, and so we sat staring at one another.

'Men,' said I, 'you have rescued us from a horrible situation. I thank you for my life, and I thank you for this lady's life.'

'How long have ye been washing about, sir?' said the man at the helm.

'Since Monday night,' said I.

'A bad job!' said he; 'but you'll have had it foine since Monday night.

Anyone perish aboard your raft?'

'One,' I answered quickly. 'And now I'll tell you my story. But first I must ask for a drop of spirits out of one of those jars you have transhipped. A sudden change of this sort tries a man to the soul.'

'Ay, you're right,' growled one of the others. 'I know what it is to be plucked by the hair o' the head out of the hopen jaws of Death, and the sort of feelings what comes arter the plucking job's o'er. Which'll be the particler jar, sir?'