My Danish Sweetheart Volume III Part 18

On this I pulled the hatch open a little wider, Abraham bending over it with the belaying-pin lifted; and, the interstice being now wide enough, I fell to work as quickly as possible to hand down the provisions. These consisted of three or four bags of ship's biscuit and a number of large pieces of boiled salt horse. But the water-cask, or breaker rather, gave me some trouble. What its capacity was I do not know. It was too heavy for me to deal with single-handed. I called Jacob, and together we slung it in a couple of bights of rope, and, rolling it over the coaming, lowered away. It effectually blocked the hatch while it hung in it, and Punmeamootty had to back away to receive it.

This done, I threw down a few pannikins, not knowing but that they might be without a drinking-vessel in the forecastle, then closed the hatch, catching a loud cry from below as I did so; but I dared not pause to ask what it was, and a moment later the cover was securely bolted, with Jacob sitting upon it, leisurely pulling out his pipe, and Abraham and I walking aft.

Some time later than this, bringing the hour to about six o'clock, Helga and I were eating some supper--I give the black tea, the biscuit, and beef of this meal the name they carry at sea--one or the other of us holding the wheel that Abraham might obtain some sleep in the cabin, when the man Jacob, who was trudging a little s.p.a.ce of the deck forward, suddenly called to me. I left the wheel in Helga's hands, and made my way to the boatman.

'Oi fear them chaps is a-suffocating below,' said he; 'they're a-knocking desperate hard against the hatch, and their voices has been a-pouring through that there chimney as though their language wor smoke.

Hark! and ye'll hear 'em.'

The sound of beating was distinct. I went to the mouth of the funnel, and heard a noise of wailing.

'What is it?' I cried. 'What is wrong with you below?'

'Oh, give us air, sah! give us air!' was the response. 'Some men die; no man he live long downee here.'

G.o.d knows to whom that weak, sick voice belonged. It struck a horror into me.

'We must give them air, Jacob,' I cried, 'or they're all dead men. What is to be done?'

'There's nowt for it but to open the hatch,' he answered.

'Yes,' cried I; 'we can lay bare a little s.p.a.ce of the hatchway--enough to freely ventilate the forecastle. But how to contrive that they shall not slip the cover far enough back to enable them to get out?'

He thought a moment, then, with the prompt.i.tude that is part of the education of the seafaring life, he cried, 'I have it!'

Next moment he was speeding aft. I saw him spring into the starboard quarter-boat with an energy that proved his heart an honest and humane one, and in a trice he was coming forward holding a couple of boat stretchers--that is to say, pieces of wood which are placed in the bottom of a boat for the oarsman to strain his legs against.

'These'll fit, I allow,' cried he, 'and save half an hour of sawing and cutting and planing.'

He placed them parallel upon the after-lid, and their foremost extremities suffered the lid which travelled to be opened to a width that gave plenty of scope for air, but through which it would have been impossible for the slenderest human figure to squeeze. Between us we bound these stretchers so that there was no possibility of their shifting, and then I tried the sliding cover, and found it as hard-set as though wholly closed and padlocked.

'How is it now with you?' I cried, through this interstice.

The reply came in the form of a near chorus of murmurs, which gave me to know that all the poor wretches had drawn together under the hatch to breathe. I desired to be satisfied that there was air enough for them, and called again, 'How is it with you now, men?'

This time I could distinctly recognise the melodious voice of Nakier: 'It is allee right now. Oh, how sweet is dis breeving! Why you wantchee keep us here?'

He was proceeding, but I cut him short; the liberation of the wretched creatures was not to be entertained for an instant, and it could merely grieve my heart to the quick, without staggering my resolution, to listen to the protests and appeals of them as they stood directly under the hatch in that small, black, oppressive hole of a forecastle.

After this all remained quiet among them. I was happy to believe that they were free from suffering; but, though I knew the hatch to be secure as though it was shut tight and the hinged bar bolted, yet it was impossible not to feel uneasy at the thought of its lying even a little way open. Of all the nights that Helga and I had as yet pa.s.sed, this one of Friday, November the 3rd, was the fullest of anxiety, the most horribly trying. The wind held very light; the darkness was richly burthened with stars, there was much fire in the sea too, and the moon, that was drawing on to her half, rode in brilliance over the dark world of waters which mirrored her light in a wedge of rippling silver that seemed to sink a hundred miles deep. We dared not leave the hatch unwatched a minute, and our little company of four we divided into watches, thus: one man to sentinel the Malays, two resting, the fourth at the wheel. But there was to be no rest for me, nor could Helga sleep, and for the greater s.p.a.ce of the night we kept the deck together.

Yet there were times when anxiety would yield to a quiet, pure emotion of happiness, when I had my little sweetheart's hand under my arm, and when by the clear light of the moon I gazed upon her face and thought of her as my own, as my first love, to be my wife presently, as I might hope--a gift of sweetness and of gentleness and of heroism, as it might well seem to me, from old Ocean himself. That she loved me fondly I did truly believe and, indeed, know. It might be that the memory of her father's words to me had directed, and now consecrated, her affection.

She loved me, too, as one who had adventured his life to save hers, who had suffered grievously in that attempt--as one, moreover, whom bereavement, whom distress, privation, all that we had endured, in short, had rendered intimate to her heart as a friend, and, as it might be, now that her father was gone and she was a girl dest.i.tute of means, her only friend. All had happened since October the 21st: it was now the 3rd of November. A little less than a fortnight had sufficed for the holding of this wild, adventurous, tragical, yet sweet pa.s.sage of our lives. But how much may happen in fourteen days! Seeds sown in the spirit have time to shoot, to bud, and to blossom--ay, and often to wither--in a shorter compa.s.s of time. Was my dear mother living? Oh! I might hope that, seeing that, if ever Captain Bunting's message about me had been delivered, she would before this be knowing that I was safe, or alive, at least. What would she think of Helga? What of me, coming back with a sweetheart, and eager for marriage?--coming back with a young girl of whom I could tell her no more than this: that she was brave and good and gentle; an heroic daughter; all that was lovely and fair in girlhood meeting in her Danish and English blood.

The morning broke. All through the night there had been silence in the forecastle; but daylight showed how the extreme vigilance of those long hours had worked in my face, as I might tell by no other mirror than Helga's eyes, whose gaze was full of concern as we viewed each other by the spreading light of the dawn. There was the dim gleam of a ship's canvas right abreast of us to starboard, and that was all to be seen the whole horizon round.

After we had got breakfast, the three of us went forward and received the empty breaker from the fellows below, contriving on our removing the stretchers so to pose ourselves as to be ready to beat down the first of them if a rush should be attempted, and instantly close the hatch. The breaker came empty to our hands. We filled and lowered it as on the previous evening, then left the hatch a little open as before; and now, so far as the provisioning of the fellows was concerned, our work for the day was ended, seeing that they had beef and biscuit enough to last them for several days. They made no complaint as to the heat or want of air; but after we had lowered the little cask, and were fixing the stretchers, several of them shouted out to know what we meant to do with them, and I heard Nakier vowing that if we released them they would be honest, that they had sworn by the Koran and would go to h.e.l.l if they deceived us; but we went on securing the hatch with deaf ears, and then Jacob and I went aft, leaving Abraham to watch.

The sun was hanging about two hours and a half high over the western sea-line that afternoon, when the light air that had been little more than a crawling wind all day freshened into a pleasant breeze with weight enough slightly to incline the broad-beamed barque. This pleasant warm blowing was a refreshment to every sense: it poured cool upon our heated faces; it raised a brook-like murmur, a sound as of some shallow fretting stream on either hand the vessel; and, above all, it soothed us with a sense and reality of motion, for to it the barque broke the smooth waters bravely, and the wake of her, polished and iridescent as oil, went away astern to the scope of two or three cables. A few wool-white clouds floated along the slowly darkening blue like puffs of steam from the funnel of a newly started locomotive; but they had not the look of the trade cloud, Helga said. She had taken sights at noon, had worked out the vessel's reckoning, and had made me see that it would not need very many hours of sailing to heave the high land of Teneriffe into sight over the bow, if only wind enough would hold to give the old bucket that floated under us headway.

I was holding the wheel at this hour I am speaking of, and Helga was abreast of me, leaning against the rail, sending her soft blue glances round the sea as she talked. Abraham, with a pipe in his mouth, his arms folded, and his head depressed, was slowly marching up and down beside the forecastle hatch. Jacob lay sound asleep upon a locker in the cuddy within easy reach of a shout down the companionway or through the skylight.

On a sudden my attention was taken from what Helga was saying, and I found myself staring at the mainmast, which was what is called at sea a 'bright' mast--that is to say, unpainted, so that the slowly crimsoning sun found a reflection in it, and the western splendour lay in a line of pinkish radiance upon the surface of the wood. This line, along with a portion of the spar, to the height, perhaps, of eighteen or twenty feet, seemed to be slowly revolving, as though, in fact, it were part of a gigantic corkscrew, quietly turned from the depth of the hold. At first I believed it might be the heat of the atmosphere. Helga observing that I stared, looked too, and instantly cried out:

'The vessel is on fire!'

'Why, yes!' I exclaimed; 'that bluish haze is smoke!'

I had scarcely p.r.o.nounced these words when Abraham, with his face turned our way, came to a dead halt, peered, and then roared out:

'Mr. Tregarthen, there's smoke a-filtering up out of the main hatch!'

'Take this wheel!' said I to Helga; then, in a bound, I gained the skylight, into which I roared with all my lungs for Jacob to come on deck. As I ran forward I saw smoke thinly rising in bluish wreaths and eddies round about the sides of the main-hatch, and from under the mast-coat at the foot of the mainmast.

'They're a-shouting like demons in the fok'sle, sir,' cried Abraham, throwing his pipe overboard in his excitement.

'They have set fire to the ship!' I cried. 'Does smoke rise from the fok'sle?'

'Yes! ye may see it now!--ye may see it now!' he bawled.

In the moment or two's pause that followed I heard the half-m.u.f.fled shouts of the dark-skinned crew, with one or two clearer voices, as though a couple of the fellows had got their mouths close against the narrow opening in the hatch. I rushed forward from abreast of the mainmast, where I had come to a stand.

'What is wrong?' I cried. 'Where is this smoke coming from?'

A voice answered--it was Nakier's--but his dark skin blended with the gloom out of which he spoke, and I could not see him.

'Some man hab taken de fok'sle lamp into de forepeak, and hab by haccident set fire to de cargo by putting de lamp troo a hole in de bulkhead. For your G.o.d's sake let we out or we burn!'

'Is this a trick?' cried I to Abraham.

'Test it, sir!--test it by opening the main hatch!' he shouted.

Jacob had by this time joined us. In a few moments we had removed the battens and torn off the tarpaulin, but at the first rise of the after-hatch cover that we laid our hands upon up belched a volume of smoke, with so much more following that each man of us started back to catch his breath. Now could be plainly heard a noise of shrieking forward.

'My G.o.d! men, what shall we do?' I cried, almost paralyzed by this sudden confrontment of the direst peril that can befall humanity at sea, but rendered in our case inexpressibly more horrible yet, to my mind, by the existence of the pent-up wretches whom I felt, even in that moment of stupefying consternation, we dared not liberate while we remained on board.

'What's to be done?' cried Jacob, whose wits seemed less abroad than Abraham's. 'Ask yourself the question. The wessel's on fire, and we must leave if we ain't to be burnt.'

'What! leave the Malays to perish?' I exclaimed.

'Let's smother this smoke down first, anyways,' cried Abraham; and he and his mate put the hatch on.

'Helga,' I shouted, 'drop the wheel! Come to us here! The ship is on fire!'

She came running along the p.o.o.p.

'See this!' cried Abraham extending his arms, which trembled with the hurry and agitation of his mind; 'if them fellows forward are not to be burnt--and oh, my Gord! listen to them a-singing out!--we must provision a quarter-boat and get away, and, afore casting off, one of us must pull them stretchers off that the men may get out. Who's to be that last man? _I_ will!'

'No, ye can't swim, Abey! That must be moy job,' shouted Jacob.