My Danish Sweetheart Volume II Part 6

His second vife has the heart of a flint, spite of her prowiding him with ten children, fower by her first and six by Tommy. Of course it's got nothen to do with _me_; but there ain't the loike of Molly Budd--I mean Tommy's vife--in all Deal--ay, ye may say in all Kent--for vickedness. Tommy owned to me wan day that though she'd lost children--ay, and though she'd lost good money tew--he'd never knowed her to shed a tear saving wonst. That was when she went out a-chairing.

The master of the house had been in the habit of leaving the beer-key in the cask for th' ale to be sarved out by the hupper servant. Molly Budd was a-cleaning there one day, when down comes word for the key to be drawed out of the cask, and never no more to be left in it. This started Molly. She broke down and cried for a hour. Tommy had some hopes of her on that, but she dried up arterwards, and has never showed any sort of weakness since. But, of course, this is between you and me and the bed-post, Mr. Tregarthen.'

'Oh, certainly!' said I.

'And now about the lady's sleeping,' he continued.

'I was anxious to see her snugly under cover; but she was in trouble to know how I was to get rest. I pointed to the open s.p.a.ce under that overhanging ledge of deck which I have before described, and told her that I should find as good a bedroom there as I needed. So after some little discussion it was arranged that she should take possession of the forepeak at nine o'clock, and, meanwhile, Abraham undertook to so bulkhead the opening under the deck with a spare mizenmast-yard and sail as to ensure as much shelter as I should require. I believe he observed Helga's solicitude about me, and proposed this merely to please her: and for the same motive I consented, though I was very unwilling to give the poor honest fellows any unnecessary trouble.

When the twilight died out, the night came down very black. A few lean, windy stars hovered wanly in the dark heights, and no light whatever fell from the sky; but the atmosphere low down upon the ocean was pale with the glare of the foam that was plentifully arching from the heads of the seas, and this vague illumination was in the boat to the degree that our figures were almost visible one to another. Indeed, a sort of wave of ghastly sheen would pa.s.s through the darkness amid which we sat each time the lugger buried herself in the foam raised by her shearing bounds, as though the dim reflection of a giant lantern had been thrown upon us from on high by some vast shadowy hand searching for what might be upon the sea.

When nine o'clock arrived, Abraham went forward and routed Thomas out of the forepeak. The man muttered as he came aft to where we were, but I was resolved to have no ears for anything he might say at such a time. A sailor disturbed in his rest, grim, unshorn, scarcely awake, with the nipping night blast to exchange for his blanket, is proverbially the sulkiest and most growling of human wretches.

'I will see you to your chamber door, Helga,' said I, laughing.

'Abraham, can you spare the lady this lantern? She will not long need it.'

'She can have it as long as she likes,' he answered. 'Good-night to you, mum, and I hope you'll sleep well, I'm sure. Feared ye'll find the forepeak a bit noisy arter the silence of a big vessel's cabin.'

She made some answer, and I picked up the lantern that had been placed in the bottom of the boat for us to sit round, and, with my companion, went clambering over the thwarts to the hatch.

'It is a dark little hole for you to sleep in, Helga,' said I, holding the lantern over the hatch while I peered down, 'but then--this time last night! Our chances we _now_ know, but what were our hopes?'

'We may be even safer this time to-morrow night,' she answered, 'and rapidly making for England, let us pray!'

'Ay, indeed!' said I. 'Well, if you will get below, I will hand you down the light. Good-night, sleep well, and G.o.d bless you!'

I grasped and held her hand, then let it go, and she descended, carrying with her the little parcel she had brought with her from the barque.

I gave her the lantern, and returned to smoke a pipe in the bottom of the boat under the shelter of the stern sheets, before crawling to the sail that was to form my bed under the overhanging deck. Thomas, whose watch below it still was, was already resting under the ledge, Abraham steered, and Jacob sat with a pipe in his mouth to leeward. I noticed that one of these men always placed himself within instant reach of the foresheet. Abraham's talk altogether concerned Helga. He asked many questions about her, and got me to tell for the second time the story of her father's death upon the raft. He frequently broke into homely expressions of sympathy, and when I paused, after telling him that the girl was an orphan and without means, he said:

'Beg pardon, Mr. Tregarthen; but might I make so bold as to ask if so be as you're a married man?'

'No,' said I; 'I am single.'

'And is her heart her own, sir, d'ye know?' said he. 'For as like as not there may be some young Danish gent as keeps company with her ash.o.r.e.'

'I can't tell you that,' said I.

'If so be as her heart's her own,' said he, 'then I think even old Tommy could tell 'ee what's agoing to happen.'

'What do you mean?' I asked.

'Why, of course,' said he, 'you're bound to marry her!'

As she was out of hearing, I could well afford to laugh.

'Well,' said I, 'the sea has been the cause of more wonderful things than that! Any way, if I'm to marry her, you must put me in the way of doing so by sending us home as soon as you can.'

'Oy,' said he, 'that we'll do, and I don't reckon, master, that you'd be dispoged to wait ontil we've returned from Australey, that Tommy and me and Jacob might have the satisfaction of drinking your healths and cutting a caper at your marriage.'

Jacob broke into a short roar that might or might not have denoted a laugh.

'I shall now turn in,' said I, 'for I am sleepy. But first I will see if Miss Nielsen is in want of anything, and bring the lantern aft to you.'

I went forward and looked down the hatch. By stooping, so as to bring my face on a level with the coaming, I could see the girl. She had placed the lantern in her bunk, and was kneeling in prayer. Her mother's picture was placed behind the lantern, where it lay visible to her, and she held the Bible she had brought from the barque; but that she could read it in that light I doubted. I supposed, therefore, that she grasped it for its sacredness as an object and a relic while she prayed, as a Roman Catholic might hold a crucifix.

I cannot express how much I was affected by this simple picture. Not for a million would I have wished her to guess that I watched her; and yet, knowing that she was unconscious I was near, I felt I was no intruder.

She had removed her hat: the lantern-light touched her pale hair, and I could see her lips moving as she prayed, with a frequent lifting of her soft eyes. But the beauty, the wonder, the impressiveness of this picture of maidenly devotion came to it from what surrounded it. The little forepeak, dimly irradiated, showed like some fancy of an old painter upon the shadows and lights of whose masterly canvas lies the gloom of time. The strong wind was full of the noise of warring waters, and of its own wild crying; the foam of the surge roared about the lugger's cleaving bows, and to this was to be added the swift leaps, the level poising, the shooting, downward rushes of the little structure upon that wide, dark breast of wind-swept Atlantic.

She rose to her feet, and, stooping always, for her stature exceeded the height of the upper deck, she carefully replaced the Bible and picture in their cover. I withdrew, and, after waiting a minute or two, I approached again and called down to ask if all was well with her. 'Yes, Hugh,' she answered, coming under the hatch with the lantern. 'I have made my bed. It was easily made. Will you take this light? The men may want it, and I shall not need to see down here.'

I grasped the lantern, and told her I would hold it in the hatch that it might light her while she got into her bunk.

'Good-night, Hugh,' said she, and presently called, in her clear, gentle voice, to let me know that she was lying down; on which I took the lantern aft, and, without more ado, crawled under the platform, or raft, as the Deal boatmen called it, crept into a sail, and in a few moments was sound asleep.

And now for three days, incredible as it will appear to those who are acquainted with that part of the sea which the lugger was then traversing, we sighted nothing--nothing, I mean, that provided us with the slenderest opportunity of speaking it. At very long intervals, it would be a little streak of canvas on the starboard or port sea-line, or some smudge of smoke from a steamer whose funnel was below the horizon; nothing more, and these so remote that the dim apparitions were as useless to us as though they had never been.

The wind held northerly, and on the Friday and Sat.u.r.day it blew freshly, and in those hours Abraham reckoned that the _Early Morn_ had done a good two hundred and twenty miles in every day, counting from noon to noon. I was for ever searching the sea, and Helga's gaze was as constant as mine; until the eternal barrenness of the sinuous line of the ocean induced a kind of heart-sickness in me, and I would dismount from the thwart in a pa.s.sion of vexation and disappointment, asking what had happened that no ship showed? Into what part of the sea had we drifted?

Could this veritably be the confines of the Atlantic off the Biscayan coast and waters? or had we been transported by some devil into an unnavigated tract of ocean on the other side of the world?

'There's no want of ships,' Abraham said. 'The cuss of the matter is, we don't fall in with them. S'elp me, if I could only find one to give me a chance, I'd chivey her even if she showed the canvas of a _R'yal Jarge_.'

'If this goes on you'll have to carry us to Australia,' said I, guessing from my spirits as I spoke that I was carrying an uncommonly long and dismal countenance.

'Hope not,' exclaimed sour Tommy, who was at the helm at this time of conversation. "Taint that we objects to your company; but where's the grub for five souls a-coming from?'

'Don't say nothen about that,' said Abraham sharply. 'Both the gent and the lady brought their own grub along with them. _That_ ye know, Tommy, and I allow that ye hain't found their ham bad eating either. They came,' he added, softening as he looked at his mate, 'like a poor man's twins, each with a loaf clapped by the angels on to its back.'

It was true enough that the provisions which had been removed from the raft would have sufficed Helga and me--well, I dare say, for a whole month, and perhaps six weeks, but for the three of the crew falling to the stock; and therefore I was not concerned by the reflection that we were eating into the poor fellows' slender larder. But, for all that, Thomas's remark touched me closely. I felt that if the three fellows, hearty and sailorly as were Abraham and Jacob--I say, I felt that if these three men were not already weary of us they must soon become so, more particularly if it should happen that they met with no ship to supply them with what they might require; in which case they would have to make for the nearest port, a delay they would attribute to us, and that might set them grumbling in their gizzards, and render us both miserable until we got ash.o.r.e.

However, I was no necromancer; I could not conjure up ships, and staring at the sea-line did not help us; but I very well recollect that that time of waiting and of expectation and of disappointment lay very heavily upon my spirits. There was something so strange in the desolation of this sea that I became melancholy and imaginative, and I remember that I foreboded a dark issue to my extraordinary adventure with Helga, insomuch that I took to heart a secret conviction I should never again see my mother--nay, that I should never again see my home.

Sunday morning came. I found a fine bright day when I crawled out of my sail under the overhanging ledge. The wind came out of the east in the night, and the _Early Morn_, with her sheet aft, was buzzing over the long swell that came flowing and br.i.m.m.i.n.g to her side in lines of radiance in the flashing wake of the sun. Jacob was at the tiller, and, on my emerging, he instantly pointed ahead. I jumped on to a thwart, and perceived directly over the bows the leaning, alabaster-like shaft of a ship's canvas.

'How is she steering?' I cried.

'Slap for us,' he answered.

'Come!' I exclaimed with a sudden delight, 'we shall be giving you a farewell shake of the hand at last, I hope. You'll have to signal her,'

I went on, looking at the lugger's masthead. 'What colours will you fly to make her know your wants?'

'Ye see that there pole?' exclaimed Thomas, in a grunting voice, pointing with a shovel-ended forefinger to the spare booms along the side of the boat. I nodded. 'Well,' said he, 'I suppose you know what the Jack is?'

'Certainly,' said I.

'Well,' he repeated, 'we seizes the Jack on to that there pole and hangs it over, and if that don't stop 'em it'll be 'cause they have a cargo of wheat aboard, the fumes of which'll have entered their eyes and struck 'em bloind.'

'That's so,' said Jacob, with a nod.

Just then Abraham came from under the deck, and in another moment Helga rose through the little hatch, and they both joined us.