My Danish Sweetheart Volume II Part 4

'I understood from you, I think, that you depend upon ships supplying you with your wants.'

Abraham responded with an emphatic nod.

Well, thought I, I suppose the fellows know what they are about; but in the face of that chart I could not but feel mightily thankful that Helga and I stood the chance of being transhipped long before experience should have taught the men that charity was as little to be depended upon at sea as ash.o.r.e. They talked of five months, and even of six, in making the run, and who was to question such a possibility when the distance, the size of the boat, the vast areas of furious tempest and of rotting calm which lay ahead, were considered? The mere notion of the sense of profound tediousness, of sickening wearisomeness, which must speedily come, sent a shudder through me when I looked at the open craft, whose length might have been measured by an active jumper in a couple of bounds, in which there was no s.p.a.ce for walking, and, for the matter of that, not very much room for moving, what with the contiguity of the thwarts and the inc.u.mbrances of lockers, spare masts and oars, the pump, the stove, the little deck forward, the boat, and the rest of the furniture.

I asked Abraham how they managed in the matter of keeping a look-out.

'One tarns in for four hours, and t'other two keep the watch, one a-steering for two hours and the other relieving him arterwards.'

'That gives you eight hours on deck and four hours' sleep,' said Helga.

'Quite right, mum.'

'Eight hours of deck is too much,' she cried; 'there should have been four of you. Then it would have been watch and watch.'

'Ay, and another share to bring down ourn,' exclaimed Thomas.

'Mr. Abraham,' said Helga, 'Mr. Tregarthen has told you that I can steer. I promise you that while I am at the helm the lugger's course shall be as true as a hair, as you sailors say. I can also keep a look-out. Many and many a time have I kept watch on board my father's ship. While we are with you, you must let me make one of your crew.'

'I, too, am reckoned a middling hand at the helm,' said I; 'so while we are here, there will be five of us to do the lugger's work.'

Abraham looked at the girl admiringly.

'You're werry good, lady,' he said: 'I dorn't doubt your willingness.

On board a ship I shouldn't doubt your capacity; but the handling of these here luggers is a job as needs the eddication of years. Us Deal boatmen are born into the work, and them as ain't, commonly perish when they tries their hand at it.'

"Sides, it's a long woyage,' growled Thomas, 'and if more shares is to be made of it I'm for going home.'

'You're always a-thinking of the shares, Tommy,' cried Abraham; 'the gent and the lady means nothing but koindness. No, mum, thanking you all the same,' continued he, giving Helga an ungainly but respectful sea-bow. 'You're shipwrecked pa.s.sengers, and our duty is to put ye in the way of getting home. That's what you expect of us; and what we expect of you is that you'll make your minds easy and keep comfortable ontil ye leave us.'

I thanked him warmly, and then stood up to take another look at the vessel that was overhauling us astern. She was rising fast, already dashing the sky past the blue ridges of the ocean with a broad gleam of canvas.

'Helga,' said I softly, 'there's a large ship rapidly coming up astern.

Shall we ask these men to put us aboard her?'

She fastened her pretty blue eyes thoughtfully upon me.

'She is not going home, Hugh.'

'No, nor is the lugger. That ship should make us a more comfortable home than this little craft, until we can get aboard another vessel.'

She continued to eye me thoughtfully, and then said: 'This lugger will give us a better chance of getting home quickly than that ship. These men will run down to a vessel, or even chase one to oblige us and to get rid of us; but a ship like that,' said she, looking astern, 'is always in a hurry when the wind blows, and is rarely very willing to back her topsail. And then think what a swift ship she must be, to judge from her manner of overtaking us! The swifter, the worse for us, Hugh--I mean, the farther you will be carried away from your home.'

She met my eyes with a faint wistful smile upon her face, as though she feared I would think her forward.

'You are right, Helga,' said I. 'You are every inch a sailor. We will stick to the lugger.'

Abraham went forward to lie down, after instructing Jacob to arouse him at a quarter before noon, that he might shoot the sun. Thomas sat with a sulky countenance at the helm, and Jacob overhung the rail close against the foresheet, his chin upon his hairy wrist, and his gaze levelled at the horizon, after the mechanical fashion of the 'longsh.o.r.eman afloat.

At intervals the wind continued to freshen in small 'guns,' to use the expressive old term--in little blasts or shocks of squall, which flashed with a shriek into the concavity of the lug, leaving the wind steady again, but stronger, with a higher tone in the moan of it above and a stormier boiling of the waters round about the lugger, that seemed to be swirling along as though a comet had got her in tow, though this sense of speed was no doubt sharpened by the closeness of the hissing white waters to the rail. Yet shortly after ten o'clock the ship astern had risen to her waterline, and was picking us up as though, forsooth, we were riding to a sea-anchor.

A n.o.bler ocean picture never delighted a landsman's vision. The snow-white spires of the oncoming ship swayed with solemn and stately motions to the underrun of the quartering sea. She had studdingsails out to starboard, one mounting to another in a very pyramid of soft milky cloths, and her wings of jibs, almost becalmed, floated airily from masthead to bowsprit and jibboom-end like symmetric fragments of fleecy cloud rent from the stately ma.s.s of fabric that soared behind them brilliant in the flashing sunshine. Each time our lugger was hove upwards I would spy the dazzling smother of the foam, which the shearing cut.w.a.ter of the clipper, driven by a power greater than steam, was piling to the hawse-pipes, even to the very burying of the forecastle-head to some of the majestic structure's curtseys.

Helga watched her with clasped hands and parted lips and glowing blue eyes full of spirit and delight. The glorious sea-piece seemed to suspend memory in her; all look of grief was gone out of her face; her very being appeared to have blent itself with that windy, flying, triumphant oceanic show, and her looks of elation--the abandonment of herself to the impulse and the spirit of what she viewed, a.s.sured me that if ever old Ocean owned a daughter, its child was the pale, blue-eyed, yellow-haired maiden who sat with rapt gaze and swift respiration at my side.

Jacob, who had been eyeing the ship listlessly, suddenly started into an air of life and astonishment.

'Whoy, Tommy,' cried he, grasping the rail and staring over the stern, out of his hunched shoulders, 'pisen me, mate, if she ain't the _Thermoppilly_!'

Thomas slowly and sulkily turned his chin upon his shoulder, and after a short stare, put his back again on the ship, and said: 'Yes, that's the _Thermoppilly_, right enough!'

'The _Thermopylae_?' said I. 'Do you mean the famous Aberdeen clipper?'

'Ay,' cried Jacob, 'that's her! Ain't she a beauty? My oye, what a run!

What's agoing to touch her? Look at them mastheads! Tall enough to foul the stars, Tommy, and _de_-range the blooming solar system.'

He beat his thigh in his enjoyment of the sight, and continued to deliver himself of a number of nautical observations expressive of his admiration and of the merits of the approaching vessel.

She had slightly shifted her helm, as I might take it, to have a look at us, and would pa.s.s us close. The thunder of the wind in her towering heights came along to our ears in the sweep of the air in a low continuous note of thunder. You could hear the boiling of the water bursting and pouring from her bows: her copper gleamed to every starboard roll on the white peaks of the sea along her bends in dull flashes as of a stormy sunset, with a frequent starlike sparkling about her from bra.s.s or gla.s.s. How swiftly she was pa.s.sing us I could not have imagined until she was on our quarter, and then abreast of us--so close that I could distinguish the face of a man standing aft looking at us, of the fellow at the wheel, of a man at the break of the short p.o.o.p singing out orders in a voice whose every syllable rang clearly to our hearing. A crowd of seamen were engaged in getting in the lower studdingsail, and this great sail went melting out against the hard mottled-blue of the sky as the clipper stormed past.

Jacob sprang on to a thwart, and in an ecstasy of greeting that made a very windmill of his arms shrieked rather than roared out, 'How d'ye do, sir?--how d'ye do, sir? How are ye, sir? Glad to see ye, sir!'

The man that he addressed stared a moment, and hastily withdrew, and returned with a binocular gla.s.s which he levelled at us for a moment, then flourished his hand.

'What are you doing down here, Jacob?' he bawled.

'Going to Australey!' shouted Jacob.

'_Where?_' roared the other.

'To Sydney, New South Vales!' shouted Jacob.

The man, who was probably the captain, put his finger against his nose and wagged his head; but further speech was no longer possible.

'He don't believe us!' roared Jacob to his mate, and forthwith fell to making twenty extravagant gestures towards the ship in notification of his sincerity.

The wonderful squareness of the ship's canvas stole out as she gave us her stern, with the foam of her wake rushing from under the counter like to the dazzling backwash of a huge paddle-wheel, and she seemed to fill the south-west heaven with her cloths, so high and broad did those complicated pinions, soaring to the trucks, look to us from the low seat of the bounding and sputtering lugger.

'Lord now!' cried Jacob, 'if she'd only give us the end of a tow-rope!'

'Yes,' said I, gazing with admiration at the beautiful figure of the ship rapidly forging ahead, and already diminishing into an exquisite daintiness and delicacy of shape and tint, 'you would not, in that case, have to talk of five and six months to Australia.'

At a quarter before twelve she was the merest toy ahead--just a glance of mother-of-pearl upon the horizon; but by this hour it was blowing a strong breeze of wind, and when Abraham came out of the forepeak he called to Jacob, and between them they eased up the fore-halliards and hooked the sheet to the second staken--in other words, to a sort of cringle or loop, of which there were four; then, having knotted the reef points, Abraham came aft to seek for the sun.

My humour was not a little pensive, for the sea that was now running was a verification of the boatman's words to me, and I could not keep my thoughts away from what must have happened to Helga and me had we not been mercifully taken off the raft. The lugger rose buoyantly to each flickering, seething head; but, in spite of my lifeboat experiences, I could not help watching with a certain anxiety the headlong rush of foam to her counter, nor could I feel the wild, ball-like toss the strong Atlantic surge would give to our eggsh.e.l.l of a boat, without misgiving as to the sort of weather she was likely to make should such another storm as had foundered the _Anine_ come down upon the ocean. I was also vexed to the heart by the speed at which we were driving, and by the a.s.surance--I was seafarer enough to understand--that in such a lump of a sea as was now running there would be a very small probability indeed of our being able to board, or even to get alongside of, a homeward-bounder, though twenty vessels, close-hauled for England, should travel past us in an hour. How far were we to be transported into this great ocean before the luck of the sea should put us in the way of returning home? These were considerations to greatly subdue my spirits; and there was also the horror that memory brought when I glanced at the rushing headlong waters and thought of the raft.

I looked at Helga: her eyes were slowly sweeping the horizon, and on their coming to mine the tender blue of them seemed to darken to a gentle smile. Whatever her heart might be thinking of, a.s.suredly no trace of the misgivings which were worrying me were discernible in her.

The shadow of the grief that had been upon her face during the morning had returned with the pa.s.sing away of the life the n.o.ble picture of the ship had kindled in her; but there was nothing in it to weaken in her lineaments their characteristic expression of firmness and resolution and spirit. Her tremorless lips lay parted to the sweep of the wind; her admirable little figure yielded to the bounding, often violent, jerking motions of the lugger with the grace of a consummate horsewoman, who is one with the brave swift creature she rides; her short yellow hair trembled under the dark velvet-like skin of her turban-shaped hat, as though each gust raised a showering of gold-dust about her neck and cheeks.

Yet I believe, had I been under sentence of death, I must have laughed outright at the spectacle of Abraham bobbing at the sun with an old-fashioned quadrant that might well have been in use for forty years.