My Danish Sweetheart Volume II Part 12

He pulled at his long whiskers with a complacent smile, now contemplating me and now Helga.

'Captain Bunting,' said I, 'this lady and myself are shipwrecked people, very eager indeed to get home. We have met with some hard adventures, and this lady, the daughter of the master of the barque _Anine_, has not only undergone the miseries of shipwreck, the hardships of a raft, and some days of wretchedness aboard that open boat alongside: she has been afflicted, besides, by the death of her father.'

'Very sorry indeed to hear it, miss,' said the Captain; 'but let this be your consolation, that every man's earthly father is bound to die at some time or other, but man's Heavenly Father remains with him for ever.'

Helga bowed her head. Language of this kind in the mouth of a plain sea-captain comforted me greatly as a warrant of goodwill and help.

'I'm sure,' said I, 'I may count upon your kindness to receive this lady and me and put us aboard the first homeward-bound ship that we may encounter.'

'Why, of course, it is my duty as a Christian man,' he answered, 'to be of service to all sorrowing persons that I may happen to fall in with. A Deal lugger--as I may presume your little ship to be--is no fit abode for a young lady of sweet-and-twenty----'

He was about to add something, but at that moment Abraham came up the ladder, followed by the white man whom I had noticed standing on the forecastle.

'What can I do for you, my man?' said the Captain, turning to Abraham.

'Whoy, sir, it's loike this----' began Abraham.

'He wants us to give him a spare boom to serve as a mast, sir,' clipped in the other, who, as I presently got to know, was the first mate of the vessel--a sandy-haired, pale-faced man, with the lightest-blue eyes I had ever seen, a little pimple of a nose, which the sun had caught, and which glowed red, in violent contrast with his veal-coloured cheeks. He was dressed in a plain suit of pilot-cloth, with a shovel peaked cap; but the old pair of carpet slippers he wore gave him a down-at-heels look.

'A spare boom!' cried the Captain. 'That's a big order, my lad. Why, the sight of your boat made me think I hadn't got rid of the Downs yet!

There's no hovelling to be done down here, is there?'

'They're carrying out the boat to Australia, sir!' said the mate.

The Captain looked hard at Abraham.

'For a consideration, I suppose?' said he.

'Ay, sir, for a consideration, as you say,' responded Abraham, grinning broadly, and clearly very much gratified by the Captain's reception of him.

'Then,' said the Captain, pulling down his whiskers and smiling with an expression of self-complacency not to be conveyed in words, 'I do not for a moment doubt that you _are_ carrying that lugger to Australia, for my opinion of the Deal boatmen is this: that for a consideration they would carry their immortal souls to the gates of the devil's palace, and then return to their public-houses, get drunk on the money they had received, and roll about bragging how they had bested Old Nick himself!

Spare boom for a mast, eh?' he continued, peering into Abraham's face.

'What's your name, my man?'

'Abraham Vise,' answered the boatman, apparently too much astonished as yet to be angry.

'Well, see here, friend Abraham,' said the Captain turning up his eyes and blandly pointing aloft, 'my ship isn't a forest, and spare booms don't grow aboard us. And yet,' said he, once again peering closely into Abraham's face, 'you're evidently a fellow-Christian in distress, and it's my duty to help you! I suppose you _are_ a Christian?'

'Born one!' answered Abraham.

'Then, Mr. Jones,' exclaimed the Captain, 'go round the ship with friend Abraham Vise, and see what's to be come at in the shape of a spare boom. Off with you now! Time's time on the ocean, and I can't keep my tops'l aback all day.'

The two men went off the p.o.o.p. The Captain asked me my name, then inquired Helga's, and said, 'Mr. Tregarthen, and you, Miss Nielsen, I will ask you to step below. I have a drop of wine in my cabin, and a gla.s.s of it can hurt neither of you. Come along, if you please;' and, so saying, he led the way to a little companion-hatch, down which he bundled, with Helga and myself in his wake; and T recollect, as I turned to put my foot upon the first of the steps, that I took notice (with a sort of wonder in me that pa.s.sed through my mind with the velocity of thought) of the lemon-coloured face of a man standing at the wheel, with such a scowl upon his brow, that looked to be withered by the sun to the aspect of the rind of a rotten orange, and with such a fierce, glaring expression in his dusky eyes, the pupils of which lay like a drop of ink slowly filtering out upon a slip of coloured blotting-paper, that but for the hurry I was in to follow the Captain I must have lingered to glance again and yet again at the strange, fierce, forbidding creature.

We entered a plain little state-cabin, or living-room, filled with the furniture that is commonly to be seen in craft of this sort--a table, lockers, two or three chairs, a swinging tray, a lamp, and the like. The Captain asked us to sit, and disappeared in a berth forward of the state-cabin; but he returned too speedily to suffer Helga and me to exchange words. He put a bottle of marsala upon the table, took the winegla.s.ses from a rack affixed to a beam, and produced from a side-locker a plate of mixed biscuits. He filled the gla.s.ses, and, with his singular smile and equally curious bow, drank our healths, adding that he hoped to have the pleasure of speedily transhipping us.

He had removed his wideawake hat, and there was nothing, for the moment, to distract me from a swift but comprehensive survey of him. He had a long hooked nose, small, restless eyes, and hair so plentiful that it curled upon his back. His cheeks were perfectly colourless, and of an unwholesome dinginess, and hung very fat behind his long whiskers, and I found him remarkable for the appearance of his mouth, the upper lip of which was as thick as the lower. He might have pa.s.sed very well for a London tradesman--a man who had become almost bloodless through long years of serving behind a counter in a dark shop. He had nothing whatever of the sailor in his aspect--I do not mean the theatrical sailor, our old friend of the purple nose and grog-blossomed skin, but of that ordinary every-day mariner whom one may meet with in thousands in the docks of Great Britain. But that, however, which I seemed to find most remarkable in him was his smile. It was the haunting of his countenance by the very spectre of mirth. There was no life, no sincerity in it. Nevertheless, it caused a perpetual play of features more or less defined, informed by an expression which made one instantly perceive that Captain Joppa Bunting had the highest possible opinion of himself.

He asked me for my story, and I gave it him, he, meanwhile, listening to me with his singular smile, and his eyes almost embarra.s.singly rooted upon my face.

'Ah!' cried he, fetching a deep sigh, 'a n.o.ble cause is the lifeboat service. Heaven bless its sublime efforts! and it is gratifying to know that her Majesty the Queen is a patron of the inst.i.tution. Mr.

Tregarthen, your conscience should be very acceptable to you, sir, when you come to consider that but for you this charming young lady must have perished'--he motioned towards Helga with an ungainly inclination of his body.

'I think, Captain,' said I, 'you must put it the other way about--I mean, that but for Miss Nielsen _I_ must have perished.'

'Nielsen--Nielsen,' said he, repeating the word. 'That is not an English name, is it?'

'Captain Nielsen was a Dane,' said I.

'But you are not a Dane, madam?' he exclaimed.

'My mother was English,' she answered; 'but I am a Dane, nevertheless.'

'What is the religion of the Danes?' he asked.

'We are a Protestant people,' she answered, while I stared at the man, wondering whether he was perfectly sound in his head, for nothing could seem more malapropos at such a time as this than his questions about, and his references to, religion.

'What is your denomination, madam?' he asked, smiling, with a drag at one long whisker.

'I thought I had made you understand that I was a Protestant,' she answered, with an instant's petulance.

'There are many sorts of Protestants!' he exclaimed.

'Have you not a black crew?' said I, anxious to change the subject, sending a glance in search of Abraham through the window of the little door that led on to the quarter-deck, and that was framed on either hand by a berth or sleeping-room, from one of which the Captain had brought the wine.

'Yes, my crew are black,' said he; 'black here'--he touched his face--'and, I fear, black here'--he put his hand upon his heart. 'But I have some hope of crushing one superst.i.tion out of them before we let go our anchor in Table Bay!'

As he said these words a sudden violent shock was to be felt in the cabin, as though, indeed, the ship, as she dropped her stern into the trough, had struck the ground. All this time the vessel had been rolling and plunging somewhat heavily as she lay with her topsail to the mast in the very swing of the sea; but after the uneasy feverish friskings of the lugger, the motion was so long-drawn, so easy, so comfortable, in a word, that I had sat and talked scarcely sensible of it. But the sudden shock could not have been more startling, more seemingly violent, had a big ship driven into us. A loud cry followed. Captain Bunting sprang to his feet; at the same moment there was a hurried tramp and rush of footsteps overhead, and more cries. Captain Bunting ran to the companion-steps, up which he hopped with incredible activity.

'I fear the lugger has been driven against the vessel's side!' said Helga.

'Oh, Heaven, yes!' I cried. 'But I trust, for the poor fellows' sake, she is not injured. Let us go on deck!'

We ran up the steps, and the very first object I saw as I pa.s.sed through the hatch was Jacob's face, purple with the toil of climbing, rising over the rail on the quarter. Abraham and two or three coloured men grasped the poor fellow, and over he floundered on to the deck, streaming wet.

Helga and I ran to the side to see what had happened. There was no need to look long. Directly under the ship's quarter lay the lugger with the water sluicing into her. The whole of one side of her was crushed as though an army of workmen had been hammering at her with choppers. We had scarcely time to glance before she was gone! A sea foamed over and filled her out of hand, and down she went like a stone, with a snap of the line that held her, as though it had been thread, to the lift of the barque from the drowning fabric.

'Gone!' cried I. 'Heaven preserve us! What will our poor friends do?'

Captain Bunting was roaring out in true sea-fashion. He might continue to smile, indeed; but his voice had lost its nasal tw.a.n.g.

'How did this happen?' he bawled. 'Why on earth wasn't the lugger kept fended off? Mr. Jones, jump into that quarter-boat and see if we've received any injury.'

The mate hopped into the boat, and craned over. 'It seems all right with us, sir!' he cried.

'Well, then, how did this happen?' exclaimed the Captain, addressing Jacob, who stood, the very picture of distress and dejection, with the water running away upon the deck from his feet, and draining from his finger-ends as his arms hung up and down as though he stood in a shower-bath.

'I'd gone forward,' answered the poor fellow, 'to slacken away the line that the lugger might drop clear, and then it happened, and that's all I know;' and here he slowly turned his half-drowned, bewildered face upon Abraham, who was staring over the rail down upon the sea where the lugger had sunk, as though rendered motionless by a stroke of paralysis.