My Danish Sweetheart Volume III Part 20

'There ain't nothing in sight,' said Jacob, resuming his seat after a long look round; 'we shall have to go through the night.'

'Well, I've been out in worse weather than this,' exclaimed Abraham.

'Pity the breeze doesn't draw more north or south,' said I. 'The boat sails finely. A straight course for Teneriffe would soon be giving us a sight of the Peak.'

'Ye and the lady'll ha' seen enough, I allow, by this toime to make ye both want to get home,' said Abraham. 'Is there e'er a seafaring man who could tell of such a procession of smothering jobs all atreading on each other's heels? Fust, the loss of the _Hayneen_' [meaning the _Anine_], 'then the raft, then the foundering of the _Airly Marn_, then the feeding of Mussulmen with pork, then the skipper--as was a proper gentleman, tew--afalling in love, and afterwards being murdered; then that there fire, and now this here boat--and all for what? Not a blooming penny to come out of the whole boiling!' And his temper giving way, down went his cap again, and he jumped to his feet with a thirsty look astern; but fortunately by this time the barque was out of sight, otherwise there is no doubt we should have been regaled with another half-hour of 'longsh.o.r.e lamentation and invective.

The breeze held steady, and the boat swept through it as though she were in tow of a steamer. The sun sank, the western hectic perished, and over our heads was spread the high night of hovering silver with much meteoric dust sailing amid the luminaries; and in the south-east stood the moon, in whose light the fabric of the boat and her canvas looked as though formed of ivory. We had brought a bull's-eye lamp with us, and this we lighted that we might tell how to steer by a small compa.s.s which Abraham had taken from the Captain's cabin. We made as fair a meal as our little stock of provisions would yield, sitting in the moonshine eating and talking, dwelling much upon the incidents of the day, especially on the subtlety of the Malays, with occasional speculation on what yet lay before us; and again and again one after another of us would rise to see if there was anything in sight in the pale hazy blending of the ocean-rim with the sky, which the moon as it soared flooded with her light.

To recount the pa.s.sage of those hours would be merely to retrace our steps in this narrative. It was a tedious course of dozing, of watching, of whispering. At times I would start with the conviction that it was a ship's light my eyes had fastened upon out in the silvery obscure; but never did it prove more than a star or some phosph.o.r.escent sparkling in the eye itself, as often happens in a gaze that is much strained and long vigilant.

It was some time before five o'clock in the morning that I was startled from what was more a trance of weariness than of restful slumber, by a shout.

'Here's something coming at last!' cried the hoa.r.s.e voice of Abraham.

The moon was gone, but the starlight made the dark very clear and fine, and no sooner had I directed my eyes astern than I spied a steamer's lights. The triangle of red, green, and white seemed directly in our wake, and so light was the breeze, and so still the surface of the ocean, that the pulsing of the engines, with the respiratory splashing of the water from the exhaust-pipe, penetrated the ear as distinctly as the tick of a watch held close.

'Flash the bull's-eye, Jacob,' shouted Abraham, 'or she'll be a-cutting of us down.'

The fellow sprang into the stern-sheets and flourished the light.

'Now sing out altogether, when I count three,' cried Abraham again.

'Ship ahoy!--to make one word of it. Now then!--wan, tew, _three_!' We united our voices in a hurricane yell of 'Ship ahoy!'

'Again!'

Once more we delivered the shout with such a note in it as could only come from lungs made tempestuous by fear and desire of preservation. Six or seven times did we thus hail that approaching lump of shadow, defined by its triangle of sparks, and in the intervals of our cries Jacob vehemently flourished the bull's-eye lamp.

Suddenly the green light disappeared.

'Ha! She sees us!' exclaimed Abraham.

The sound of pulsing ceased, and then, with a swiftness due to the atmospheric illusion of the gloom, but that, nevertheless, seemed incredible in a vessel whose engines had stopped, the great ma.s.s of shadow came shaping and forming itself out within her own length of us into the aspect of a large brig-rigged steamer, dark as the tomb along the length of her hull, but with a stream of lamplight touching her bridge, from which came a clear strong hail:

'Boat ahoy! What is wrong with you?'

'We're adrift, and want ye to pick us up!' roared Abraham. 'Stand by to give us the end of a line!'

Within five minutes the boat, with sail down and mast unstepped, was alongside the motionless steamer, and ten minutes later she was veering astern and the four of us, with such few articles as we had to hand up, safe aboard, the engines champing, the bow-wave seething, and the commander of the vessel asking us for our story.

CHAPTER VIII.

HOME.

On the morning of Sat.u.r.day, the 18th of November, the brig-rigged steamer _Mosquito_, from the west coast of Africa for London, stopped her engines and came to a stand off the port of Falmouth, to put Helga and me ash.o.r.e at that town, by the aid of a little West-country smack which had been spoken and now lay alongside.

The English coast should have been abreast of us days earlier than this; but very shortly after the _Mosquito_ had picked us up something went wrong in the engine-room; our pa.s.sage to Madeira was so slow as to be little more than a dull and tedious crawling over the waters; and we were delayed for some considerable time at Funchal, while the chief engineer and his a.s.sistants got the engines into a condition to drive the great metal hull to her destination.

But now the two bold headlands of the fair coast of Falmouth--the tenderest, most gem-like bit of scenery, I do honestly believe, not that England only, but that this whole great world of rich and varied pictures has to show--lay plain in our eyes. Streaks of snow upon the heights shone like virgin silver in the crisp brilliant November sun of that wintry Channel morning, and betwixt the headlands the hills beyond showed in ma.s.ses of a milk-white softness poised cloud-like in the keen blue distance, as though by watching you would see them soar.

I thanked the captain heartily for his kindness, and then, standing in the gangway with my sweetheart at my side, I asked for Abraham and Jacob, that we might bid them farewell. The worthy fellows, endeared to me by the a.s.sociation of peril bravely met and happily pa.s.sed, promptly arrived. I pulled out the money that I had taken from Mr. Jones's berth, and said: 'Here are thirteen pounds and some shillings, Abraham, which belonged to that poor mate whom the Malays killed. Here is half the amount for you and Jacob; the other half will carry Miss Nielsen and me to Tintrenale. I will make inquiries if the poor creature had any relatives, and, if I can hear of them, the money will be repaid. And now you will, both of you, remember a promise I made to you aboard the _Early Morn_. Let me have your addresses at Deal!'--for they were proceeding to the Downs in the steamer.

They told me where they lived. I then extended my hand.

'G.o.d bless you both!' I said. 'I shall never forget you!' And, indeed, more than that I could not have said at the moment, for my throat tightened when I looked into their honest faces and thought how Helga and I owed our lives to them.

It was a hearty farewell among the four of us; much hand-shaking and G.o.d-blessing of one and another; and when we had entered the smack and shoved off, the two poor fellows got upon the bulwark-rail and cheered us again and again with such contortions of form and violence of gesture that I feared to see them fall overboard. But the steamer was now in motion, and in a very little while the two figures were indistinguishable. I have never seen them since; yet, as I write these words and think of them, my heart is full; if they be living, I earnestly hope they are well and doing well; and if these lines meet their eyes they will know that the heartiest of hearty welcomes awaits them whenever they shall find themselves near my little Cornish home.

The 18th was a Sat.u.r.day, and I made up my mind to stay throughout Sunday at Falmouth, that I might have time to receive a line from Mr. Trembath, to whom my first business must be to send news of my safe return, that he might deliver it with all caution to my mother; for it was not to be foreseen how a sudden shock of joy might serve her. So we were no sooner ash.o.r.e than I wrote to Mr. Trembath, and then Helga and I quitted the hotel to make some purchases, taking care to reserve enough to pay our travelling expenses home.

Next morning we went to church, and kneeling side by side, we offered up the thanks of our deeply grateful hearts for our preservation from the many dark and deadly perils we had encountered, and for our restoration, sound in health and limb, to a land we had often talked of and had as often feared we should never again behold.

It was a quiet holiday with us afterwards: a brief pa.s.sage of hours whose happiness was alloyed only by anxiety to get news of my mother.

Our love for each other was true and deep--how true and deep I am better able to know now than I did then, before time had tested the metal of our hearts. I was proud of my Danish sweetheart, of her heroic nature, of her many endearing qualities of tenderness, goodness, simple piety, of her girlish gentleness of character, which, in the hour of trial and of danger, could harden into the courage of the lioness, without loss, as I knew, of the sweetness and the bloom of her maidenhood. I felt, too, she was mine in a sense novel indeed in the experiences of love-making; I mean, by the right of having saved her life, of plucking her, as it were, out of the fury of the sea; for we were both very conscious that, but for my having been aboard the _Anine_, she must have perished, incapable of leaving her dying father even had she been able with her girl's hands alone to save herself, as between us we had saved ourselves.

But not to dwell upon this, nor to recount our walks on that quiet November Sabbath day, our exquisite and impa.s.sioned enjoyment of the scenes and sights and aromas of this favoured s.p.a.ce of land after our many privations and after the sickening iteration of the ocean girdle, flawless for days and making our sight ache with gazing and with expectation: not to dwell upon this and much more that memory loves to recall, Monday morning's post brought me a letter from Mr. Trembath. My mother was well--he had told her I was at Falmouth--I was to come to her without delay. It was a long letter, full of congratulations, of astonishment, but--my mother was well! She knew I was at Falmouth! All the rest was idle words to my happiness, full of news as the letter was, too. Helga laughed and cried and kissed me, and an hour later we were in a railway carriage on our way to Tintrenale.

On our arrival we immediately proceeded to the house of Mr. Trembath. We were on foot, and on our way from the railway station, as we turned the corner of the hilly road that led to the town, the whole view of the s.p.a.cious bay opened upon our eyes. We instantly stopped, and I grasped Helga's hand while we stood looking. It was a keen bright blue morning, the air of a frosty, of an almost prismatic brilliance of purity owing to the shining ranges of snow upon the slopes and downs of the headlands of the cliffs. The Twins and the Deadlow Rock showed their black fangs with a recurrent flash of light as the sun smote them while wet from the lift of the swell that was rolling into the bay.

'Yonder is where the _Anine_ brought up. Do you remember?'

White gulls were hovering off the pier. To the right was the lifeboat house out of which we had launched on that dark and desperate night of October 21. The weather-c.o.c.k crowning the tall spire of St. Saviour's was glowing like fire in the blue. Far off, at the foot of Hurricane Point, was the cloudy glimmer of boiling water, the seething of the Atlantic fold recoiling from the giant base. A smart little schooner lay half a mile out on a line with the pier, and, as she rolled, her copper glistened ruddily upon the dark-blue surface. Sounds of life arose from the town: the ringing of bells, the rattling of vehicles, the cries of the hawker.

'Come, my darling!' said I, and we proceeded.

I shall never forget the look of astonishment with which Mr. Trembath received us. We were shown into his study--his servant was a new hand and did not know me; she admitted us as a brace of parishioners, I dare say. 'Great Heaven! it is Hugh Tregarthen!' he cried, starting out of his chair as though a red-hot iron had been applied to him. He wrung both my hands, overwhelming me with exclamations. I could not speak. He gave me no opportunity to introduce Helga. Indeed, he did not seem sensible of her presence.

'Alive, after all! A resurrection, in good faith! What a night it was, d'ye remember? Ha! ha!' he cried, clinging to my hands and staring, with the wildest earnestness of expression, into my face, while his eyes danced with congratulation and gratification. 'We gave you up. You ought to be dead--not a doubt of it! No young fellow should return to life who has been mourned for as you were!' Thus he rattled on.

'But my mother--my mother, Mr. Trembath! How is my mother?'

'Well, well, _perfectly_ well--looking out for you. Why are you not with her instead of with me? But to whom am I talking? To Hugh Tregarthen's ghost?'

Here his eyes went to Helga, and his face underwent a change.

'This young lady is a friend of yours?' and he gave her an odd sort of puzzling, inquisitive bow.

'If you will give me leave, Mr. Trembath. I have not yet had a chance.

First let me introduce you to Miss Helga Nielsen, my betrothed--the young lady who before long will be Mrs. Hugh Tregarthen, so named by your friendly offices.'

He peered at me to see if I was joking, then stepped up to her, extended his hand, and courteously greeted her. Sweet the dear heart looked as she stood with her hand in his, smiling and blushing, her blue eyes filled with emotion, that darkened them to the very complexion of tears, and that made them the prettier for the contrast of their expression with her smile.

'My dear mother being well,' said I, 'the delay of a quarter of an hour can signify nothing. Let us seat ourselves that I may briefly tell you my story and explain how it happens that Helga and I are here instead of going straight to my home.'

He composed himself to listen, and I began. I gave him our adventures from the hour of my boarding the _Anine_, and I observed that as I talked he incessantly glanced at Helga with looks of growing respect, satisfaction, and pleasure.