My Danish Sweetheart Volume II Part 9

'Willingly!' I cried.

I remembered at that moment that my oilskin coat lay in the side of the boat close to where I stood. I stooped and felt it, and in a moment I had whipped it over Helga's shoulders, for she was now holding the lantern, and I had her clear in my sight. It would be a G.o.dsend to her, I knew, in the wet that was now sluicing past us, and that must speedily have soaked her to the skin, clad as she was.

For the next few minutes all was bustle and hoa.r.s.e shouts. I see little Helga, now, hanging over the side and swinging the lantern, that its light might touch the wreckage; I see the crystals of rain flashing past the lantern, and blinding the gla.s.s of it with wet; I feel again the rush of the fierce squall upon my face, making breathing a labour, while I grab hold of the canvas, and help the men to drag the great, sodden heavy sail into the boat. We worked desperately, and, as I have said, in a few minutes we had got the whole of the sail out of the water; but the mast was too heavy to handle in the blackness, and it was left to float clear of us by the halliards till daylight should come.

We were wet through, and chilled to the heart besides--I speak of myself, at least--not more by the sharp bite of that black, wet squall, than by the horror occasioned by the sudden loss of a man, by the thought of one as familiar to the sight as hourly a.s.sociation could make him, who was just now living and talking, lying cold and still, sinking fathoms deep into the heart of that dark measureless profound on whose surface the lugger--in all probability the tiniest ark at that moment afloat in the oceans she was attempting to traverse--was tumbling.

'Haul aft the mizen sheet, Jacob!' said Abraham in a voice hoa.r.s.e indeed, but marked with depression also. 'Ye can secure the tiller too.

She must loie as she is till we can see what we're about.'

The man went aft with the lantern. He speedily executed Abraham's orders; but by the aid of the dim lantern light I could see him standing motionless in the stern-sheets, as though hearkening and straining his gaze.

'He's gone, Abraham!' he cried suddenly in a rough voice that trembled with emotion. 'There will be never no more to hear of Tommy Budd. Ay, gone dead--drownded for ever!' I heard him mutter, as he picked up the lantern and came with heavy booted legs clambering over the thwarts to us.

'As G.o.d's my loife, how sudden it were!' cried Abraham, making his hands meet in a sharp report in the pa.s.sion of grief with which he clapped them.

It was still raining hard, and the atmosphere was of a midnight blackness; but all the hardness of the squall was gone out of the wind, and it was now blowing a steady breeze, such as we should have been able to expose our whole lugsail to could we have hoisted it. Jacob held the lantern to the mast, or rather to the fragment that remained of it. You must know that a Deal lugger's mast is stepped in what is termed a 'tabernacle'--that is to say, a sort of box, which enables the crew to lower or set up their masts at will. This 'tabernacle' with us stood a little less than two feet above the forepeak deck, and the mast had been broken at some ten feet above it. It showed in very ugly, fang-like points.

'Two rotten masts for such a voyage as this!' cried Jacob, with a savage note in his voice. "Tis old Thompson's work. Would he was in Tommy's place! S'elp me! I'd give half the airnings of this voyage for the chance to drown him!' By which I might gather that he referred to the boat-builder who had supplied the masts.

'No use in standing in this drizzle, men,' said I. 'It's a bad job, but there's nothing to be done for the present, Abraham. There's shelter to be got under this deck, here. Have you another lantern?'

'What for?' asked Abraham, in the voice of a man utterly broken down.

'Why, to show,' said I, 'lest we should be run into. Here we are stationary, you know, and who's to see us as we lie?'

'And a blooming good job if we _was_ run into!' returned Abraham.

'Blarst me if I couldn't chuck moyself overboard!'

'Nonsense!' cried I, alarmed by his tone rather than by his words. 'Let us get under shelter! Here, Jacob, give me the light! Now, Helga, crawl in first and show us the road. Abraham, in with you! Jacob, take this lantern, will you, and get one of those jars of spirits you took off the raft, and a mug and some cold water! Abraham will be the better for a dram, and so will you.'

The jar was procured, and each man took a hearty drink. I, too, found comfort in a dram, but I could not induce Helga to put the mug to her lips. The four of us crouched under the overhanging deck--there was no height, and, indeed, no breadth for an easier posture. We set the lantern in our midst--I had no more to say about showing the light--and in this dim irradiation we gazed at one another. Abraham's countenance looked of a ghostly white. Jacob, with mournful gestures, filled a pipe, and his melancholy visage resembled some grotesque face beheld in a dream as he opened the lantern and thrust his nose, with a large raindrop hanging at the end of it, close to the flame to light the tobacco.

'To think that I should have had a row with him only this marning!'

growled Abraham, hugging his knees. 'What roight had I to go and sarce him about his rent? Will any man tell me,' said he, slowly looking round, 'that poor old Tommy's heart warn't in the roight place? Oi hope not, Oi hope not--Oi couldn't abear to hear it said. He was a man as had had to struggle hard for his bread, like others along of us, and disappointment and want and marriage had tarned his blood hacid. Oi've known him to pa.s.s three days without biting a crust. The wery bed on which he lay was took from him. Yet he bore up, and without th'help o'

drink, and I says that to the pore chap's credit.'

He paused.

'At bottom,' exclaimed Jacob, sucking hard at his inch of sooty clay, 'Tommy was a _man_. He once saved my loife. You remember, Abey, that job I had along with him when we was a-towing down on the quarter of a big light Spaniard?'

'I remember, I remember,' grunted Abraham.

'The boat sheered,' continued Jacob, addressing me, 'and got agin the steamer's screw, and the stroke of the blade cut the boat roight in halves. They chucked us a loife-buoy. Poor old Tommy got hold of it and heads for me, who were drowning some fadoms off. He clutched me by the hair just in toime, and held me till we was picked up. And now _he's_ gone dead and we shall never see him no more.'

'Tommy Budd,' exclaimed Abraham, 'was that sort of man that he never took a pint himself without asking a chap to have a gla.s.s tew, if so be as he had the valley of it on him. There was no smarter man fore and aft the beach in steering a galley-punt. There was scarce a regatta but what he was fust.'

'He was a upright man,' said Jacob, observing that Abraham had paused; 'and never mere upright than when he warn't sober, which proves how true his instincts was. When his darter got married to young darkey d.i.c.k, as Tommy didn't think a sootable match, he walks into the room of the public-house where the company was dancing and enjoying themselves, kicked the whole blooming party out into the road, then sits down, and calls for a gla.s.s himself. Of course he'd had a drop too much. But the drink only improved his nat'ral disloike of the wedding. Pore Tommy!

Abey, pa.s.s along that jar!'

In this fashion these plain, simple-hearted souls of boatmen continued for sometime, with now and again an interlude in the direction of the spirit-jar, to bewail the loss of their unhappy shipmate. Our situation, however, was of a sort that would not suffer the shock caused by the man Thomas's death to be very lasting. Here we were in what was little better than an open boat of eighteen tons, lying dismasted, and entirely helpless, amid the solitude of a black midnight in the Atlantic Ocean, with nothing but an already wounded mast to depend upon when daybreak should come to enable us to set it up, and the lugger's slender crew less by one able hand!

It was still a thick and drizzling night, with a plentiful sobbing of water alongside; but the _Early Morn_, under her little mizzen and with her bows almost head to sea, rose and fell quietly. By this time the men had pretty well exhausted their lamentations over Thomas. I therefore ventured to change the subject.

'Now there are but two of you,' said I, 'I suppose you'll up with your mast to-morrow morning and make for home?'

'No fear!' answered Abraham, speaking with briskness out of the drams he had swallowed. 'We're agoing to Australey, and if so be as another of us ain't taken we'll _git_ there.'

'But surely you'll not continue this voyage with the outfit you now have?' said I.

'Well,' said he, 'we shall have to "fish" the mast that's sprung and try and make it sarve till we falls in with a wessel as'll give us a sound spar to take the mast's place. Anyhow, we shall keep all on.'

'Ay, we shall keep all on,' said Jacob: 'no use coming all this way to tarn back again. Why, Gor' bless me! what 'ud be said of us?'

'But, surely,' said Helga, 'two of you'll not be able to manage this big boat?'

'Lord love 'ee, yes, lady,' cried Abraham. 'Mind ye, if we was out a-pleasuring I should want to get home; but there's money to take up at the end of this ramble, and Jacob and me means to airn it.'

Thus speaking, he crawled out to have a look at the weather, and was a moment later followed by Jacob, and presently I could hear them both earnestly consulting on what was to be done when the morning came, and how they were to manage afterwards, now that Thomas was gone.

The light of the lantern lay upon Helga's face as she sat close beside me on the spare sail that had formed my rough couch.

'What further experiences are we to pa.s.s through?' said I.

'Little you guessed what was before you when you came off to us in the lifeboat, Hugh!' said she, gazing gently at me with eyes which seemed black in the dull light.

'These two boatmen,' said I, 'are very good fellows, but there is a pig-headedness about them that does not improve our distress. Their resolution to proceed might appear as a wonderful stroke of courage to a landsman's mind, but to a sailor it could signify nothing more than the rankest foolhardiness. A plague upon their heroism! A little timidity would mean common-sense, and then to-morrow morning we should be heading for home. But I fear you are wet through, Helga.'

'No, your oilskin has kept me dry,' she answered.

'No need for you to stay here,' said I. 'Why not return to the forepeak and finish out the night?'

'I would rather remain with you.'

'Ay, Helga, but you must spare no pains to fortify yourself with rest and food. Who knows what the future may be holding for us--how heavily the pair of us may yet be tried? These experiences, so far, may prove but a few links of a chain whose end is still a long way off.'

She put her hand on the back of mine, and tenderly stroked it.

'Hugh,' said she, 'remember our plain friend Abraham's advice: do not let imagination run away with you. The spirit that brought you to the side of the _Anine_ in the black and dreadful night is still your own.

Cheer up! All will be well with you yet. What makes me say this? I cannot tell, if it be not the conviction that G.o.d will not leave unwatched one whose trials have been brought about by an act of n.o.ble courage and of beautiful resolution.'

She continued to caress my hand as she spoke--an unconscious gesture in her, as I perceived--maybe it was a habit of her affectionate heart, and I could figure her thus caressing her father's hand, or the hand of a dear friend. Her soft eyes were upon my face as she addressed me, and there was light enough to enable me to distinguish a little encouraging smile full of sweetness upon her lips.

If ever strength is to be given to a man in a time of bitter anxiety and peril, the inspiration of spirit must surely come from such a little woman as this. I felt the influence of her manner and of her presence.

'You have a fine spirit, Helga,' said I. 'Your name should be Nelson instead of Nielsen. The blood of nothing short of the greatest of English captains should be in your veins.'

She laughed softly and answered, 'No, no! I am a Dane first. Let me be an English girl next.'