My Danish Sweetheart Volume II Part 22

'Abraham,' said I, in a low voice, for I had no desire to be overheard by the mate, who came and went at the rim of the p.o.o.p overhead in his walk from the taffrail to the break of the deck, 'before you accept Captain Bunting's offer----'

'I _have_ accepted it, Mr. Tregarthen,' he interrupted.

'When?'

'Last noight, or call it this marning. He was up and down while I kep' a look-out, and wanst he says to me, "Are you agreeable, Vise?" says he; and I says, "Yes, sir," having talked the matter o'er with Jacob.'

'I hope the pair of you have thought the offer well out,' said I, with a glance at the Captain's cabin, from which, however, we stood too far to be audible to him in it. 'I saw Nakier haranguing you yesterday afternoon, and, though you told me you didn't quite understand him, yet surely by this time you will have seen enough to make you guess that if the Captain insists on forcing pork down those men's throats his ship is not going to continue a floating Garden of Eden!'

'Whoy, that may be roight enough,' answered Abraham; 'but them coloured chaps' grievances han't got nothen to do with Jacob an' me. What I considered is this: here am I offered fower pound a month, and there's Jacob, who's to go upon the articles for three pound; that'll be seven pound 'twixt us tew men. Ain't that money good enough for the likes of us, Mr. Tregarthen? Where's the _Airly Marn_? Where's my fifteen pound vorth o' property? Where's Jacob's height pound vorth--ay, every farden of height pound?' he exclaimed, looking at Jacob, who confirmed his a.s.surance with a prodigious nod. 'As to them leather-coloured covies----' he continued, with a contemptuous look forwards; then pausing, he cried out, "Soides, whoy _shouldn't_ they eat pork? If it's good enough for me and Jacob, ain't it good enough for the likes o'

such a poor little parcel o' sickly flesh as that there Nakier and his mates?'

'It is a question of religion with them,' said I.

'Religion!' grumbled Jacob. 'Religion, Mr. Tregarthen, don't lie here, sir,' putting his hand upon his waistcoat, 'but here,' pointing with a tarry-looking finger to where he imagined his heart was. 'There hain't no religion in dishes. I've heerd of chaps a-preaching in tubs, but I never heerd of religion lying pickled in a cask. Don't you let them chaps gammon you, sir. 'Tain't pork: it's a detarmination to find fault.'

'But have they not said enough in your hearing to persuade you they are in earnest?' said Helga.

'Why, ye see, lady,' answered Abraham, 'that their language is a sort o'

conversation which there's ne'er a man along Deal beach as has ever been eddicated in, howe'er it may be along o' your part o' the coast, Mr.

Tregarthen. What they says among themselves I don't onderstand.'

'But have they not complained to you,' persisted Helga gently, 'of being obliged by the Captain either to go without food every other day or to eat meat that is forbidden to them by their religion?'

'That there Nakier,' replied Abraham, 'spun a long yarn yesterday to Jacob and me whilst we lay agin the galley feeling werry ordinary--werry ordinary indeed--arter that there bad job of the _Airly Marn_; but he talked so fast, and so soft tew, that all that I could tell ye of his yarn, miss, is that he and his mates don't fancy themselves as comfortable as they might be.'

I said quietly, for Mr. Jones had come to a halt at the rail above us: 'Well, Abraham, my advice to you both is, look about you a little while longer before you allow your names to be put upon the articles of this ship.'

At that moment the Captain came out of the door of the cuddy, and the two boatmen, with a flourish of their hands to Helga, went rolling forward. He came up to us, all smiles and politeness. It was easy to see that he had taken some trouble in dressing himself; his whiskers were carefully brushed; he wore a new purple-satin scarf; his ample black waistcoat hinted that it belonged to his Sunday suit, or 'best things,'

as servants call it; his boots were well polished; he showed an abundance of white cuff; and his wideawake sat somewhat jauntily upon his head. His two or three chins went rolling and disappearing like a ground swell betwixt the opening of a pair of tall starched collars--an unusual embellishment, I should have imagined at sea, where starch is as scarce as newspapers. He hoped Helga had slept well; he trusted that the noises of straining and creaking below had not disturbed her. She must really change her mind, and occupy Mr. Jones's cabin. After shaking me by the hand, he seemed to forget that I stood by, so busy was he in his attention to Helga. He asked her to step on to the p.o.o.p or upper deck.

'These planks are not yet dry,' said he; 'and besides,' he went on smiling always, 'your proper place, my dear young lady, is aft, where there is, at all events, seclusion, though, alas! I am unable to offer you the elegances and luxuries of an ocean mail steamer.'

We mounted the ladder, and he came to a stand to survey the sea.

'What a mighty waste, is it not, Miss Nielsen? Nothing in sight. All hopelessly sterile. But it is not for me to complain,' he added significantly.

He then called to Mr. Jones, and all very blandly, with the gentlemanly airs and graces which one a.s.sociates with the counter, he asked him how the weather had been since eight bells, if any vessels had been sighted, and so forth, talking with a marked reference to Helga being near and listening to him.

Mr. Jones, with his purple pimple of a nose of the shape of a woman's thimble standing out from the middle of his pale face, with a small but extraordinary light-blue eye twinkling on either side of it under straw-coloured lashes and eyebrows resembling oak.u.m, listened to and addressed the Captain with the utmost degree of respect. There was an air of shabbiness and of hard usage about his apparel that bespoke him a man whose locker was not likely to be overburthened with shot. His walk was something of a shamble, that was heightened by the loose pair of old carpet slippers he wore, and by the frayed heels of his breeches. His age was probably thirty. He impressed me as a man whose appearance would tell against him among owners and shipmasters, who would therefore obtain a berth with difficulty, but who when once in possession would hold on tight by all possible strenuous effort of fawning, of agreeing, of submissively undertaking more work than a captain had a right to put him to.

While we thus stood I sent a look around the little _Light of the World_ to see what sort of a ship we were aboard of, for down to this time I had scarcely had an opportunity of inspecting her. She was an old vessel, probably forty years old. This I might, have guessed from the existence of the cabins in the steerage; but her beam and the roundness of her bows and a universal worn air, that answered to the wrinkles upon the human countenance, likewise spoke her age very plainly. Her fittings were of the homeliest: there was no bra.s.swork here to glitter upon the eye; her deck furniture was, indeed, as coa.r.s.e and plain as a smack's, with scars about the skylight, about the companion hatch-cover, about the drumhead of the little quarter-deck capstan, and about the line of the p.o.o.p and bulwark rail, as though they had been used over and over again by generations of seamen for cutting up plug tobacco upon. She had a very short forecastle-deck forward, under which you saw the heel of the bowsprit and the heaped ma.s.s of windla.s.s; but the men's sleeping quarters were in the deck beneath, to which access was to be had only by what is commonly called a fore-scuttle--that is to say, a little hatch with a cover to it, which could be bolted and padlocked at will. Abaft the galley lay the long-boat, a squab tub of a fabric like the mother whose daughter she was. It rested in chocks, on its keel, and was lashed to bolts in the deck. There were some spare booms secured on top of it, but the boat's one use now was as a receptacle for poultry for the Captain's table. On either side of the p.o.o.p hung a quarter-boat in davits--plain structures, sharp-ended like whaling-boats. Add a few details, such as a scuttle-b.u.t.t for holding fresh water for the crew to drink from; a harness-cask against the cuddy-front, for storing the salted meats for current use; the square of the main-hatch tarpaulined and battened down; and then the yards mounting the masts and rising from courses to royals, spars and gear looking as old as the rest of the ship, though the sails seemed new, and shone very white as the wind swelled their b.r.e.a.s.t.s to the sun, and you have as good a picture as I can put before you of this _Light of the World_ that was bearing Helga and me hour by hour farther and deeper into the heart of the great Atlantic, and that was also to be the theatre of one of the strangest and wildest of the events which furnished forth this trying and desperate pa.s.sage of my life.

Captain Bunting moved away with an invitation in his manner to Helga to walk. I lingered to exchange a word with the mate from the mere desire to be civil. Helga called me with her eyes to accompany her, then, hearing me speak to Mr. Jones, she joined the Captain and paced by his side. I spied him making an angle of his arm for her to take, but she looked away, and he let fall his hand.

'If Abraham Wise,' said I, 'agrees to sail with you, Mr. Jones, you will have a very likely lively fellow to relieve you in keeping watch.'

'Yes; he seems a good man. It is a treat to see a white face knocking about this vessel's deck,' he answered in a spiritless way, as though he found little to interest him when his Captain's back was turned.

'You certainly have a very odd-looking crew,' said I. 'I believe I should not have the courage to send myself adrift along with one white man only aboard a craft full of Malays.'

'There were three of us,' he answered, 'but Winstanley disappeared shortly after we had sailed.'

As he spoke, Nakier, on the forecastle, struck a little silver-toned bell eight times, signifying eight o'clock.

'Who is that copper-coloured, scowling-looking fellow at the wheel?' I asked, indicating the man who had been at the helm when Helga and I came aboard on the preceding day.

'His name is Ong Kew Ho,' he answered. 'A rare beauty, ain't he?' he added, with a little life coming into his eyes. 'His face looks rotten with ripeness. Sorry to say he's in my watch, and he's the one of them all that I never feel very easy with of a dark night when he's where he is now and I'm alone here.'

'But the looks of those Asiatic folk don't always express their minds,'

said I. 'I remember boarding a ship off the town I belong to and noticing among the crew the most hideous, savage-looking creature it would be possible to imagine: eyes asquint, a flat nose with nostrils going to either cheek, black hair wriggling past his ears like snakes, and a mouth like a terrible wound; indeed, he is not to be described; yet the captain a.s.sured me that he was the gentlest, best-behaved man he had ever had under him, and the one favourite of the crew.'

'He wasn't a Malay,' said Mr. Jones drily.

'The captain didn't know his country,' said I.

Here Abraham arrived to take charge of the deck. He had polished himself up to the best of his ability, and mounted the ladder with an air of importance. He took a slow, merchant-sailor-like, deep-sea survey of the horizon, following on with an equally deliberate gaze aloft at the canvas, then knuckled his brow to Mr. Jones, who gave him the course and exchanged a few words with him, and immediately after left the deck, howling out an irrepressible yawn as he descended the ladder.

It was not for me to engage Abraham in conversation. He was now on duty, and I understood the sea-discipline well enough to know that he must be left alone. I thereupon joined Helga and Captain Bunting, not a little amused secretly by the quarter-deck strut the worthy boatman put on, by the knowing, consequential expression in his eyes as they met in a squint in the compa.s.s-bowl, by his slow look at the sea over the taffrail and the twist in his pursed-up lips as he went rolling forwards to the break of the p.o.o.p, viewing the sails as though anxious to find something wrong, that he might give an order and prove his zeal.

At half-past eight Punmeamootty rang a little bell in the cabin, and we went down to breakfast. The repast, it was to be easily seen, was the best the ship's larder could furnish, and in excess of what was commonly placed upon the table. There was a good ham, there was a piece of ship's corned beef, and I recollect a jar of marmalade, some white biscuit, and a pot of hot coffee. The coloured steward waited nimbly, with a singular swiftness and eagerness of manner when attending to Helga, at whom I would catch him furtively gazing askant, with an expression in his fiery, dusky eyes that was more of wonder and respect, I thought, than of admiration. At times he would send a sideways look at the Captain that put the fancy of a flourished knife into one's head, so keen and sudden and gleaming was it. Mr. Jones had apparently breakfasted and withdrawn to his cabin, thankful, no doubt, for a chance to stretch his legs upon a mattress.

In the course of the meal Helga inquired the situation of the ship.

'We are, as nearly as possible,' answered the Captain, 'on the lat.i.tude of the island of Madeira, and, roundly speaking, some hundred and twenty miles to the eastward of it. But you know how to take an observation of the sun, Mr. Tregarthen informed me. I have a spare s.e.xtant, and at noon you and I will together find out the lat.i.tude. I should very well like to have my reckoning confirmed by you;' and he leaned towards her, and smiled and looked at her.

She coloured, and said that, though her father had taught her navigation, her calculations could not be depended upon. But for her wish to please me, I believe she would not have troubled herself to give him that answer, but coldly proceeded with the question she now put:

'Since we are so close to Madeira, Captain Bunting, would it be inconveniencing you to sail your barque to that island, where we are sure to find a steamer to carry us home?'

He softly shook his head with an expression of bland concern, while he sentimentally lifted his eyes to the tell-tale compa.s.s above his head.

'You ask too much, Helga,' said I. 'You must know that the deviation of a ship from her course may vitiate her policy of insurance, should disaster follow.'

'Just so!' exclaimed the Captain, with a thankful and smiling inclination of his head at me.

'Besides, Helga,' said I gently, 'supposing, on our arrival at Madeira, we should find no steamer going to England for some days, what should we do? There are no houses of charity in that island of Portuguese beggars, I fear; and Captain Bunting may readily guess how it happens that I left my purse at home.'

'Just so!' he repeated, giving me such another nod as he had before bestowed.

The subject dropped. The Captain made some remark about the part of the ocean we were in being abundantly navigated by homeward-bound craft, then talked of other matters; but whatever he said, though directly addressed to me, seemed to my ear to be spoken for the girl, as though, indeed, were she absent, he would talk little or in another strain.

CHAPTER IX.

BUNTING'S FORECASTLE FARE.