My Danish Sweetheart Volume III Part 1

My Danish Sweetheart.

Volume 3.

by William Clark Russell.

CHAPTER I.

WE SPEAK A SHIP.

On the afternoon of this same day of Tuesday, October 31, Helga having gone to her cabin, I stepped on deck to smoke a pipe--for my pipe was in my pocket when I ran to the lifeboat, and Captain Bunting had given me a square of tobacco to cut up.

We had dined at one. During the course of the meal Helga and I had said but very little, willing that the Captain should have the labour of talking. Nor did he spare us. His tongue, as sailors say, seemed to have been slung in the middle, and it wagged at both ends. His chatter was an infinite variety of nothing; but he spoke with singular enjoyment of the sound of his own voice, with ceaseless reference, besides, in his manner, to Helga, whom he continued silently and self-complacently to regard in a way that rendered her constantly uneasy, and kept her downward-looking and silent.

But nothing more at that table was said about our leaving his ship.

Indeed, both Helga and I had agreed to drop the subject until an opportunity for our transference should arrive. We might, at all events, be very certain that he would not set us ash.o.r.e in the Canary Islands; nor did I consider it politic to press him to land us there, for, waiving all consideration of other reasons which might induce him to detain us, it would have been unreasonable to entreat him to go out of his course to oblige us, who were without the means to repay him for his trouble and for loss of time.

He withdrew to his cabin after dinner. Helga and I sat over his draughtboard for half an hour; she then went below, and I, as I have already said, on deck, to smoke a pipe.

The wind had freshened since noon, and was now blowing a brisk and sparkling breeze out of something to the northward of east; sail had been heaped upon the barque, and when I gained the deck I found her swarming through it under overhanging wings of studdingsail, a broad wake of frost-like foam stretching behind, and many flying fish sparking out of the blue curl from the vessel's cut.w.a.ter ere the polished round of brine flashed into foam abreast of the fore-rigging. Mr. Jones stumped the deck, having relieved Abraham at noon. The fierce-faced, lemon-coloured creature with withered brow and fiery glances grasped the wheel. As I crouched under the lee of the companion-hatch to light my pipe, I curiously and intently inspected him; strangely enough, finding no hindrance of embarra.s.sment from his staring at me too; which, I take it, was owing to his exceeding ugliness, so that I looked at him as at something out of nature, whose sensibilities were not of a human sort to grieve me with a fancy of vexing them.

'Well, Mr. Jones,' said I, crossing the deck and accosting the shabby figure of the mate as he slouched from one end to another in shambling slippers and in a cap with a broken peak, under which his thimble-shaped nose glowed in the middle of his pale face like--to match the poor creature with an elegant simile--the heart of a daisy, 'this is a very good wind for you, but bad for me, seeing how the ship heads. I want to get home, Mr. Jones. I have now been absent for nearly eleven days, though my start was but for an hour or two's cruise.'

'There's no man at sea,' said he, 'but wants to get home, unless he's got no home to go to. That's my case.'

'Where do you hail from?'

'Whitechapel,' he answered, 'when I'm ash.o.r.e. I live in a big house; they call it the Sailors' Home. There are no wives to be found there, so that the good of it is to make a man glad to ship.'

'The sea is a hard life,' said I, 'and a very great deal harder than it need be--so Nakier and his men think, I warrant you. There's too much pork goes to the making of the Captain's religious ideas.'

'The pork in this ship,' said he, 'is better than the beef; and what is good enough for English sailors is good enough for Malays.'

'Ay! but the poor fellows' religion is opposed to pork.'

'Don't you let them make you believe it, sir,' he exclaimed. 'Religion!

You should hear them swear in English! They want a grievance. That's the nature of everything afore the mast, no matter what be the colour of the hide it's wrapped up in.'

'What sort of sailors are they?'

'Oh, they tumble about; they're monkeys aloft; they're willing enough; I'm bound to say that.'

I could instinctively guess that whatever opinions I might offer on the Captain's treatment of his crew would find no echo in him. Poverty must make such a man the creature of any shipmaster he sailed with.

'Have you received orders from Captain Bunting,' I asked, 'to signal and bring-to any homeward ship that may come along?'

'No, sir.'

'We wish to be transhipped, you know, Mr. Jones. We should be sorry to lose the opportunity of a homeward-bounder through the Captain omitting to give you orders, and through his being below and asleep, perhaps, at the time.'

'I can do nothing without his instructions, sir,' he exclaimed, with a singular look that rose to the significance of a half-smile.

'All right!' I said, perceiving that his little blue eyes had witnessed more than I should have deemed them capable of observing in the slender opportunities he had had for employing them.

The wind blew the fire out of my pipe, and to save the tobacco I went down to the quarter-deck for the shelter of the bulwarks there. While I puffed I spied Jacob low down in the lee fore-rigging repairing or replacing some chafing-gear upon the swifter-shroud. I had not exchanged a word with this honest boatman since the previous day, and strolled forward to under the lee of the galley to greet him. I asked him if he was comfortable in his new berth. He answered 'Yes;' he was very well satisfied; the Captain had given orders that he was to have a gla.s.s of grog every day at noon; the provisions were also very good, and there was no stint.

"Soides,' he called down to me, with his fat, ruddy face framed in the squares of the ratlines, 'three pound a month's good money. There'll be something to take up when I gets home, something that'll loighten the loss o' my eight pound o' goods and clothes, and make the foundering of the _Airly Marn_ easier to think of.'

'You and Abraham, then, have regularly entered yourselves for the round voyage?'

'Ay; the Capt'n put us on the articles this afternoon. He called us to his cabin and talked like a gemman to us. Tain't often as one meets the likes of him at sea. No language--a koind smoile--a thank'ee for whatever a man does, if so be as it's rightly done--a feeling consarn for your morals and your comforts: tell'ee, Mr. Tregarthen, the loikes of Capt'n Buntin' ain't agoin' to be fallen in with every day--leastways, in vessels arter this here pattern, where mostly a man's a dog in the cap'n's opinion, and where the mate's got no other argument than the fust iron belaying-pin he can out with.'

'I am very glad to learn that you are so well satisfied,' said I. 'A pity poor Thomas isn't with you.'

'Pore Tommy! There's nothen in my toime as has made me feel so ordinary as Thomas's drownding. But as to him making hisself happy here----'

'I beg your pardon, sah,' said a voice close beside me.

I turned, losing the remainder of Jacob's observations, and perceived the face of Nakier in the galley door, that was within an arm's length of me from where I leaned. His posture was one of hiding, as though to conceal himself from sight of the p.o.o.p. As I looked, a copper-coloured face, with black, angry eyes flashing under a low forehead as wrinkled as the rind of an old apple, with the temper that worked in the creature, showed behind Nakier's head, and vanished in a breath. I now recollected that when I had first taken up my station under the lee of the galley I had caught the hiss of a swift fiery whispering within the little structure, but it had instantly ceased on my calling to Jacob, and the matter went out of my head as I listened to the boatman in the rigging.

'I beg your pardon, sah! May I speak a word wit you?'

'What is it, Nakier?' I exclaimed, finding a sort of pleasure in the mere contemplation of his handsome face and n.o.ble liquid Eastern eyes, dark and luminous like the gleam you will sometimes observe in a midnight sea.

'Are you a sailor, sah?'

'I am not,' I responded.

'Can you tellee me de law of ships?'

Here the copper-coloured face came out again, and now hung steadily with its frown over Nakier's shoulder; but both fellows kept all but their heads hidden.

'I know what you mean,' I answered. 'I fear I cannot counsel you.'

'Our Captain would have us starve,' said he; 'he give us meat we must not eat, and on dose days we have only bread and water. Dat is not right?'

'No, indeed,' said I; 'and how little we think it right you may know by what the lady said to-day.'

'Ah! she is good; she is good!' he exclaimed, always speaking very softly, and clasping his long thin fingers with filbert-shaped nails while he upturned his wonderful eyes. 'We are not of de Captain's religion--he sabbe dat when we ship. Is dere law among Englishman to ponish he for trying to make us eat what is forbidden?'

'I wish I knew--I wish I could advise you,' said I, somewhat secretly relieved by hearing this man talk of law; for when I had watched him that morning on the p.o.o.p I could have sworn that his and his mates'

whole theory of justice lay in the blades which rested upon sheaths strapped to their hips. 'One thing you may be sure of, Nakier: Captain Bunting has no right to force food upon you that is forbidden to you by your religion. There must be lawyers in Cape Town who will tell you how to deal with this matter if it is to be dealt with. Meanwhile, try to think of your Captain in this business as----' I significantly tapped my forehead. 'That will help you to patience, and the pa.s.sage to the Cape is not a long one.'

The copper-coloured face behind Nakier violently wagged, the frown deepened, and the little dangerous eyes grew, if possible, more menacing in their expression.

'He is a cruel man,' said Nakier, with a sigh as plaintive as one could imagine in any love-sick Eastern maid: 'but we will be patient; and, sah, I tank you for listening.'

The copper-coloured face disappeared.