My Danish Sweetheart Volume III Part 6

That few vessels would better know how to plunge and roll than this old _Light of the World_ I might have guessed from her behaviour in quiet weather, when there was nothing but a slight swell to lift her. But I never could have conjectured how truly prodigious was her skill in the art of tumbling. She soared and sank as an empty cask might. She took every hollow with a shock that threatened to rend her bones into fragments, as though she had been hurled through the air from a mighty height; and when she swung up an acclivity, the sensation was that of being violently lifted, as by a balloon or by the grip of an eagle.

Groans and cries rose from her interior as though she had a thousand miserable, perishing slaves--men, women, and children--locked up in her hold.

'This,' said I to Helga, 'is worse than the _Anine_.'

'Yet it was blowing harder on that Sat.u.r.day night than it is now,' she answered, watching the mad oscillations of the cabin lamp with serene eyes and a mouth steadfast in expression. 'I have a greater dread of Captain Bunting's smile,' she continued, 'than of any hurricane that can blow across the ocean.' She looked at the clock. 'He is certain to arrive shortly. He is sure to find some excuse to torture me with his politeness. He will tease me to exchange my cabin. I think I will go to bed, Hugh.'

There was little temptation to remain up. I put my hand under her arm to steady the pair of us, and we pa.s.sed on to the quarter-deck, where I found the hatch that led to our sleeping quarters shut. We lifted it, and looked into a blackness profounder than that of a coal-mine. On this I roared for Punmeamootty. I shouted four or five times at the top of my lungs, and then some voice bawled from over the rail of the deck above, 'What's wrong down there?' Who it was I could not tell; it was impossible to distinguish voices amid the h.e.l.lish clamour of the wind roaring in the rigging with the sound of a tempest-swept forest. I took no notice, and bawled again for Punmeamootty, and, after a little, the poor coloured wretch came out of the darkness into the sheen of the cabin-light that feebly touched the quarter-deck, crawling on his hands and knees. He was soaked through, and when he stood up could scarcely keep his feet. Indeed, forward, the seas were sweeping the decks in sheets, and each time the vessel lifted her bows the water came roaring in a fury of foam to the cuddy front.

We were forced to put the hatch on again to keep the sea out of the ship till Punmeamootty came staggering out of the cuddy with a lantern. Helga then dropped below with amazing dexterity, and I handed the light down to her, requesting that she would hang it up and leave it burning, as I was in no mood to 'turn in' just then, wishing to see more of the weather before resting, and to smoke a pipe. I put the hatch on and re-entered the cuddy, followed by Punmeamootty.

'You seem half drowned!' said I.

'A sea knock me down, sah. Is dere danger, sah?'

'I hope not,' I answered. 'Do you feel equal to picking up that mess?'

and I pointed to the broken china and bit of beef, and so on.

He turned a terrified eye upon them, staggering and swaying wildly, and then, as though he had not heard my question, he exclaimed, 'We all say dis storm come tro' Capt'n being wicked man! Tankee de Lor'! we hab no eat pork! Tankee de Lor'! we hab no eat pork!'

He bared his gleaming teeth, as though in the anguish of cold, and shook his small clenched fist at the skylight. I sat down and lighted a pipe, and, having been somewhat chilled by waiting out in the wet of the quarter-deck for Punmeamootty to bring the lantern, I slided and clawed my way round to Captain Bunting's locker for a bottle of rum that lay within. As I did this, the companion door opened, and down came the skipper. The wind and the wet had twisted his whiskers into lines like lengths of rope. I could have burst into a laugh at the sight of his singular face, framed in the streaming thatch and flannel ear-protectors of his sou'-wester. The water poured from his oilskins as he came to a stand at the end of the table, grabbing it, and looking about him.

'What's all that?' cried he, pointing with a fat forefinger to the mess on deck.

This was addressed to Punmeamootty, but I answered, flinging the surliest note I could manage into my voice, which I had to raise into a shout, 'An accident. This is a beast of a ship, sir! No barge could make worse weather of a breeze of wind.'

I let fall the lid of the locker, and sat upon it, poising the bottle of rum, and blowing a great cloud with my pipe.

'Where is Miss Nielsen?' he exclaimed.

'Gone to bed,' I answered. 'Punmeamootty, reach me a gla.s.s out of that rack.'

The man, in taking the tumbler, reeled to a violent heel of the deck, and let it fall.

'D--n it!' roared the Captain, 'you clumsy son of a b.i.t.c.h! What more damage is to be done?' His sudden pa.s.sion made his fixed smile extraordinarily grotesque. 'Get a basket and pick up that stuff, and bear a hand!' he thundered. 'Has Miss Helga a light?'

'Yes,' I answered. 'I have seen to that.'

'But she may fall--she may let the lantern drop!'

'She is a better sailor than you,' I called out; 'she knows how to keep her feet. Punmeamootty! a tumbler, if you please, before you begin picking up that stuff.'

'I must see that Miss Nielsen's lantern is safe,' said the Captain; and he was coming forward as though to pa.s.s through the cuddy door. I sprang to my feet and confronted him on widely stretched legs.

'No man,' said I, 'enters Miss Nielsen's sleeping quarters while she and I remain in this ship.'

He stared at me, with twenty emotions working in his face. His countenance then changed. I perceived him glance at the bottle of rum that I held by the neck, and that I was just in the temper to let him have fair between his eyes had he attempted to shove past me. I believe he thought I had been drinking.

'I can a.s.sure you,' he exclaimed, with a violent reaching out of his mind, so to speak, in the direction of his regular and familiar blandness, 'that Miss Nielsen's privacy is as sacred to me as to you.

Will you go below and see that her light is all right? It is a matter that as much concerns your safety as ours.'

Without answering him, I opened the locker, replaced the bottle, and continuing to puff out great clouds of smoke through the excitement under which I laboured--for I had been prepared for a hand-to-hand struggle with him, and my heart beat fast to the resolution of my temper--I quitted the cuddy, with a loud call to Punmeamootty to follow me and replace the hatch.

Whether the coloured steward put the hatch on, whether, indeed, he followed me as I bade him, I cannot tell. I found the lantern burning bravely and swinging fiercely under the beam, and extinguished it, and lay down completely clothed, with the exception of my boots, shrewdly guessing there would be little sleep for me that night.

That it blew at any time as hard as it had when we were aboard the _Anine_, I cannot say; enough that the dreadful maddened motions of the old vessel made a truly hideous gale of wind of the weather. Again and again she would tumble off the head of a sea and fall headlong into the yawn of water at the base, heeling over as she fell, till you would have believed the line of her masts parallel with the horizon, and strike herself such a mighty blow when she got to the bottom, that you listened, with a thumping heart, for a crackling and a rending noise of timbers to tell you that she was going to pieces like a child's house of cards. It was impossible to sleep; twice I was flung from my bunk, and came very near to breaking a limb. I called to Helga, and found her awake. I asked her how she did; but, silver-clear and keen as her voice was, I could not catch her answer.

It is likely that towards the small hours of the morning I now and again s.n.a.t.c.hed a few minutes of sleep. From one of these brief spells of slumber I was aroused by the blow of a sea that thrilled like an electric shock through every plank and fastening of the vessel, and to my great joy I observed, as I thought, the faint gray of dawn colouring the dim and weeping gla.s.s of the scuttle. I immediately pulled on my boots and made for the hatch, but the cover was on and the darkness was as deep as ever it had been at midnight. I considered for a minute how I should make myself heard, and groping my way back to my berth, I took a loose plank, or bunk-board as it is called, from out of the sea-bedstead, and with it succeeded in raising such a thunder in the hollow cover that in a few minutes it was lifted. The homely, flat, ruddy-cheeked face of Jacob, his head clothed in a somewhat tattered yellow sou'-wester, which he had probably borrowed from one of his coloured mates forward, looked down upon me through the glimmering square of the aperture.

'Why, blowed, Mr. Tregarthen,' cried he, 'if Oi didn't think the barque was ash.o.r.e! But ye'd have had to hammer much louder and much longer before escaping from that rat-trap, if it hadn't been for me a-sheltering of moyself under this 'ere break.'

It was a wild scene indeed to arrive on deck and suddenly view. Furious as was the behaviour of the barque, I could have got no notion of the weight of the surge from her capers. A huge swelling, livid, frothing surface--every billow looking to rear to the height of the maintop, where it was shattered and blown into a snowstorm--a heaven of whirling soot: this, in brief, was the picture. The vessel, however, was undamaged aloft. She was lying hove-to under a band of close-reefed topsail, which glanced like a sheet of foam against the stooping dismal dusk of the sky. None of the dark-skinned crew were visible. Jacob roared in my ear that they had been half wild with fear during the night.

'There's some sort of superst.i.tion a-working in them,' he shouted; 'they've been a-praying and a-praying horrible, arter their fashion.

Lucky for the ship that she was snugged afore the storm busted. Them poor covies ain't agoing to save their lives when the call comes for them to live or perish.'

'Who has the watch?' said I.

'The mate,' he answered.

I looked at my watch, and was astonished to find that it was after eight. I had believed the hour to be daybreak, but, indeed, it was surprising that any light at all should have had power to sift through that storm-laden sky. Helga at this moment showed in the hatch. I took her hand. She looked pale, but her mouth was firm as she swept the boiling, swollen scene with her gaze, holding the deck with feet that seemed to float above the planks.

'What a night it has been!' she cried. 'This is a bad ship for bad weather. Hour after hour I have been thinking that she was going to pieces!'

I told Jacob to replace the hatch-cover, and the girl and I entered the cuddy, as it was impossible to converse in the open; while, spite of the parallel on which we reeled, the weight of the wind carried an edge as of a Channel January blast in it. In the comparative shelter of the interior we were able to talk, and I told her how I had behaved to the Captain on the previous night.

'Nothing that we can do,' said she, 'can signify while this weather lasts!'

'No, indeed!' I exclaimed. 'We must now pray for the ship to live. Our leaving her is made a twopenny consideration of by this gale.'

She rose to look at the tell-tale compa.s.s, and returned to my side with a look of concern and a sad shake of the head.

'This must end our dream of Santa Cruz,' said she.

'It was an idle dream at the best,' I answered.

'Unless it should result in disabling the barque!' she continued. She added, with a little pa.s.sion, as she looked through the cuddy window on to the quarter-deck: 'I wish all three masts would go overboard!'

'Leaving the hull sound,' said I.

'Yes, yes, leaving the hull sound. I would be content to roll about in this hateful vessel for a whole fortnight, if I could be sure of being taken off at the end. Anything, _anything_ to terminate this cruel, this ridiculous captivity!'

As these words left her lips, the Captain came down the companion-steps.

He paused on seeing us, as though he had supposed the cuddy empty, and was ashamed to be seen in that figure. The dried white salt lay like flour in his eyes, his whiskers were mere rags of wet hair; a large globule of salt water hung at the end of his nose, like a gem worn after the Eastern fashion. He struggled along to where we sat, and extended his hand to Helga. In his most unctuous manner, that contrasted ludicrously with his streaming oilskins, he expressed the hope that she had slept well, lamented the severity of the gale, for her sake, but a.s.sured her there was no danger, that the barque was making n.o.ble weather of it, and that he expected the wind to moderate before noon. He held her hand while he spoke, despite her visible efforts to withdraw it from his grasp. He then addressed me:

'I have to apologize,' he exclaimed, 'for a little exhibition of temper last night. I employed an expletive which I am happy to think has not escaped me for years. The provocation was great--the anxieties of the gale--the loss of a foretopmast-staysail--the ruined crockery on the deck--a bottle of my valuable cordial-brandy wasted--Punmeamootty's somewhat insolent stupidity: the most pious mind might be reasonably forgiven for venting itself in the language of the forecastle, under the irritation of so many trials! But I offer you my apologies, Mr.

Tregarthen, and I hope, sir, that you slept well!'

I answered him coldly and with averted eyes, being now resolved to persevere in my a.s.sumption of contemptuous dislike, which I also desired he should believe was animated by a determination to punish him when I got ash.o.r.e.