My Danish Sweetheart Volume II Part 20

'He will not want to keep us,' continued I, talking with the confidence of a young man to a girl whom he is protecting, and whose behaviour a.s.sures him that she looks up to him and values his judgment. 'We may prove very good company for a day or two, but the master of a vessel of this sort is a man who counts his sixpences, and he has no idea of maintaining us for a longer time than he can possibly help, depend upon it.'

'I hope so,' she answered.

'But you don't think so,' said I, struck by her manner.

She answered by speaking of his treatment of his crew, and we were upon this subject when he descended the cabin ladder.

'A small freshening of the wind,' said he, 'and a trifling squall of rain.' There was no need for him to tell us this, for his long whiskers sparkled with water drops, and carried evidences of a brisk shower. 'The barque is now very snug, and there is nothing in sight,' said he, with a sort of half-humorous, reproachful significance in his way of turning to Helga.

She smiled, as though by smiling she believed I should be pleased. The Captain begged her to drink a little wine and eat a biscuit, and she consented. This seemed to gratify him, and his behaviour visibly warmed while he relighted his cigar, mixed himself another little dose, and resumed his chat about Deal boatmen and his experiences in the Downs.

CHAPTER VIII.

A CREW OF MALAYS.

We sat chatting thus until something after nine. The comfort of this cabin after the lugger, the knowledge that Helga and I would each have a comfortable bed, comparatively speaking, to lie in, the conviction that our stay in the barque must be short, and that a very few hours might see us homeward bound, coupled with a sense of security such as never possessed me in the open lugger, not to mention the influence of my one pretty big tumbler of rum punch, had put me into a good humour.

'Is not this better than the lugger?' I said to Helga, as I motioned with my cigar round the cabin, and pointed to the slippers upon my feet.

'Think of my little windy bed under that boat's deck, Helga, and recollect your black forepeak.'

She seemed to acquiesce. The Captain's countenance was bland with gratification.

'You tell me you have not travelled, Mr. Tregarthen?' said he.

'I have not,' I replied.

'But you would like to see the world? All young men should see the world. Does not the poet tell us that home-keeping youths have ever homely wits?' and here he harangued me for a little with commonplaces on the advantage of travel; then, addressing Helga very smilingly, he said, '_You_ have seen much of the world?'

'Not very much,' she answered.

'South America?'

'I was once at Rio,' she answered. 'I was also at Port Royal, in Jamaica, and have accompanied my father in short voyages to one or two Portuguese and Mediterranean ports.'

'Come, there is extensive observation, even in that,' said he, 'in one so--in one whose years are still few! Did you ever visit Table Bay?'

She answered 'No.'

He smoked meditatively.

'Helga,' said I, 'you look tired. Would you like to go to your cabin?'

'I should, Hugh.'

'Well, I shall be glad to turn in myself, Captain. Will you forgive our early retreat?'

'By all means,' he exclaimed. 'Let me show you the cabins.'

He went to the cuddy door and bawled for Punmeamootty. 'Light a lantern,' I heard him say, 'and bring it aft!'

After a minute or two the steward made his appearance with a lantern swinging in his hand. The Captain took it from him, and we pa.s.sed out on to the quarter-deck where the hatch lay. After the warmth of the cuddy interior, the wind, chilled as it had been with the damp of the squall, seemed to blow with an edge of frost. The rays of the lantern danced in the blackness of the wet planks. The vessel was rolling slowly and plunging heavily, and there were many heavy, complaining, straining noises aloft amid the invisible s.p.a.ces of canvas swinging through the starless gloom. The cold, bleak roar of seething waters alongside recalled the raft, and there was a sort of sobbing all along the dusk close under either line of bulwarks.

'Let me help you through this little hatch, Miss Nielsen,' said the Captain, dangling the lantern over it that we might see the aperture.

If she answered him, I did not hear her; she peered a moment, then put her foot over and vanished. The steps were perpendicular--pieces of wood nailed to the bulkhead--yet she had descended this up-and-down ladder in an instant, and almost as she vanished was calling to me from below to say that she was safe.

'What extraordinary nimbleness in a young lady!' cried the Captain, in a voice of unaffected admiration. 'What an exquisite sailor! Now, Mr.

Tregarthen!'

I shuffled down, keeping a tight hold on the edge of the hatch, and felt my feet before there was occasion to let go with my hands. There was very little to be seen of this interior by the lantern light. It was the forepart of the steerage, so far as I could gather, with two rows of bulkheads forming a little corridor, at the extremity of which, aft, I could faintly distinguish the glimmering outlines of cases of light cargo. Forward of the hatch, through which we had descended, there stood a solid bulkhead, so there was nothing to be seen that way. The doors of the cabins opened out of the little corridor; they were mere pigeon-holes; but then these 'tweendecks were very low, and while I stood erect I felt the crown of the wideawake I wore brushing the planks.

Never could I have imagined so much noise in a ship as was here--the squeaking, the grinding, the groaning; the jar and shock of the rudder upon its post; the thump of the seas outside, and the responsive throbbing within; the sullen, m.u.f.fled roar of the Atlantic surge washing past; all these notes were blended into such a confusion of sounds as is not to be expressed. The lantern swayed in the Captain's hand, and the shadows at our feet sprang from side to side. There were shadows, too, all round about, wildly playing upon the walls and bulkheads of the vessel with a mopping and mowing of them that might have filled a lonely and unaccustomed soul down here with horrible imaginations of sea monsters and ocean spectres.

'I heartily wish, Miss Nielsen,' cried the Captain--and, in truth, he had need to exert his voice to be audible amid that bewildering clamour--'that you had suffered me to provide you with better accommodation than this. Jones could have done very well down here.

However, for to-night this will be your cabin. To-morrow I hope you will change your mind, and consent to sleep above.'

So saying, he opened the foremost of the little doors on the port side.

It was a mere hole indeed, yet it somehow took the civilized look of an ordinary ship's berth from the round scuttle or thickly-glazed porthole which lay in an embrasure deep enough to comfortably warrant the thickness of the vessel's side. Under this porthole was a narrow bunk, and in it a bolster, and, as I might suppose, blankets, over which was spread a very handsome rug. I swiftly took note of one or two conveniences--a looking-gla.s.s, a washstand secured to the bulkhead (this piece of furniture, I made no doubt, had come direct from the Captain's cabin); there was also a little table, and upon it a comb and brush, and on the cabin deck was a square of carpet.

'Very poor quarters for you, Miss Nielsen,' said the Captain, looking round, his nose and whiskers appearing twice as long in the fluctuations of the lantern light and his fixed smile odd beyond words, with the tumbling of the shadows over his face.

'The cabin is very comfortable, and you are very kind!' exclaimed Helga.

'You are good to say so. I wish you a good night and pleasant dreams.'

He extended his hand, and held hers, I thought, rather longer than mere courtesy demanded.

'That will be your cabin, Mr. Tregarthen,' said he, going to the door.

I bade Helga good-night. It was hard to interpret her looks by that light, yet I fancied she had something to say, and bent my ear to her mouth; but instead of speaking, she hurriedly pa.s.sed her right hand down my sleeve, by no means caressingly, but as though she desired to cleanse or dry her fingers. I looked at her, and she turned away.

'Good-night, Helga!' said I.

'Good-night, Hugh!' she answered.

'You will find a bolt to your door, Miss Nielsen,' called the Captain.

'Oh, by the way,' he added, 'I do not mean that you shall undress in the dark. There is an opening over your door; I will hang the lantern amidships here. It will shed light enough to see by, and in half an hour, if that will not be too soon, Punmeamootty will remove it.

Good-night, Mr. Tregarthen!'

He left me, after hanging up the lantern by a hook fixed in a beam amidships of the corridor. I waited until his figure had disappeared up the steps of the hatch and then called to Helga. She heard me instantly, and cried, 'What is it, Hugh?'

'Did not you want to say something to me just now?' I exclaimed.

She opened the door and repeated, 'What is it, Hugh? I cannot hear you!'