The Pilot and his Wife Part 13

CHAPTER XVII.

They doubled Cape Horn, and came to Valparaiso. But, on the morning they were to enter the harbour, Salve, to his intense exasperation, was put under arrest. The captain found him too useful in keeping the crew in order forward, and therefore took the most effectual means of preventing him from putting into execution his declared determination to leave the ship on their arrival at that port.

After leaving Valparaiso they called at the Chincha Islands, took in a cargo of guano for China, and shaped their course then eastward across the calm southern ocean, whose lonely monotony was only broken by the occasional appearance of one of the larger kind of sea-birds, or by the distant spouting of a whale. On board, however, the same peace was far from prevailing. That little nut-sh.e.l.l that crept like a dot across the limitless expanse of waters was a little floating h.e.l.l, where every evil pa.s.sion raged from morning until night; and it was only by secretly fomenting discord and divisions among the crew that the officers could sleep with any sense of security in their berths. As it was, a large section of them, with the Irishman at their head, had a project on hand for murdering their officers, and converting the ship into a whaling vessel. And even Salve, in moments of bitterness and indignation at the tyranny to which he was subjected by these men, whose lives were at the mercy of the crew, would sometimes entertain the thought of joining with the mutineers, who were restrained from carrying out their designs mainly by the fear which he had inspired, and by the refusal of his sanction. Many a desperate struggle with himself he went through when one of his tyrants pa.s.sed him on deck in the dark, and the temptation to stick a knife into his back would rise strong within him, and almost master him. The other's life hung upon a hair, and Salve knew it; but that hair was stronger than he thought. Elizabeth's face, and the still unexhausted might of early impressions, made him always shrink from the thought of having a murder on his conscience, and to that depth he never fell, deteriorated though his character gradually became, from daily a.s.sociation with everything that was vile, to that degree that he lost all power of believing in the existence of good amongst his fellow-creatures, or in a higher Power.

We need follow no further this dark period of his life. After a year and a half on board the Stars and Stripes, and many a wild scene of turbulence and riot, he brought his connection with her to a close at last at New Orleans, where the acc.u.mulation of his wages was handed over to him.

The life on board the other vessels in which he afterwards served did not differ greatly from that which he had left; but he had become accustomed to it, and his sensibilities were blunted by long habit. It was not until some four years had thus pa.s.sed that he again began to feel a longing for Europe--he would not acknowledge to himself that it was Norway exactly that he wanted to see again;--and after looking out then for some time for a suitable ship for the home voyage, he found himself at last with his Brazilian friend on board a large barque that was homeward bound from Curacoa, with tobacco and rum, for Rotterdam and Nieuwediep.

Federigo had been his inseparable companion through all the vicissitudes of his southern life; the secret of his faithful attachment, as Salve suspected, being that the latter had saved money, which he had turned into gold pieces and kept in a belt round his waist. He had never, like Federigo, sought occasions to squander his pay on land in gambling or in other diversions. He hated women; and in the taverns which were frequented by sailors he was looked upon as a dangerous customer, to whom it was prudent to give as wide a berth as possible. Federigo, he fancied, looked upon him as his reserve cash-box; and when on one occasion, after they came into port, the Brazilian proposed that they should desert and put their money into some mines that were very favourably reported of just then, and share the profits, Salve remarked with perfect composure that he thought it highly probable that if they started upon any expedition of the kind, his friend, if he got him alone some fine night in a lonely place, would quietly stick his knife into him and make off with the whole. He therefore declined the proposition, but their relations nevertheless continued as friendly as before. Money was the only power, Salve reflected with bitterness, and this satisfaction at least he could now enjoy in life.

It had become so obvious to him that Federigo's attachment was more to his money than to himself, that he determined to get rid of his irksome attentions. Accordingly, when they arrived at Nieuwediep, he made all his arrangements for leaving the vessel, legally this time, without saying a word to him of his intention; and Federigo only heard of it at the last moment when he met him coming up with his hammock clothes. He turned pale, and tears came into his eyes,--whether from a feeling of injured friendship, or from disappointment, Salve could not quite make out. The expression of his face, with his restless small black eyes, resembled that of a disturbed rat. At last he fell on Salve's neck in his impetuous way, and broke out--

"But at any rate we must have one parting gla.s.s together this evening. I don't know how I shall ever do without you--it is so long now since we two have chummed together."

Against his better reason Salve allowed himself to feel a little softened at the thought; and the remembrance of all the attachment this scoundrel had shown for him aroused something that almost resembled emotion.

"It is no use, my friend," he replied; "what is done can't be undone.

But I'll give you this evening, at all events. You'll find me waiting for you in the Aurora."

As usual at this season of the year, there were a great many vessels in the harbour, and the Aurora tavern was full that evening of seafaring folk laughing and talking and singing, and renewing, or laying the foundations of, acquaintanceships over brandy or gin; while in the little room over the bar, dance music was going on uninterruptedly, and the boards were creaking under alternate Dutch schottische and English hornpipe.

To properly appreciate a genuine sailors' reel or hornpipe, one should see it danced by men who for a whole year at a time have been battling with the waves and storms in every corner of the world, and who during all that time have hardly set eyes upon a female form. They come on sh.o.r.e bursting with a full masculine longing for the society of the other s.e.x, with a year's stored-up feeling to let out; and there is a positive intoxication to them in the mere dance--in the mere holding at Nieuwediep Anniken or Bibecke, or at Portsmouth Mary Ann, by the waist; and Mary Ann and Bibecke perfectly understand this, and for the moment feel themselves persons of no small importance. There is no element of coa.r.s.eness in the feeling. The sailor is more given to sentiment proper than perhaps any other cla.s.s of men, and generally speaking a more romantic feeling for woman is cherished on board ship than anywhere else in the world. If we wish to find in these times quietly romantic enthusiasm, we must be the companion of the sailor on his lonely watch, or listen to him as he lies on the forecastle and talks with _nave_ simplicity about his wife or his sweetheart--how their attachment came about, and what he means to buy for her when he gets into port. Love on board ship is a more naturally rich and varying theme than it is in the peasant's monotonous life; and being in love, by reason of separation from the object of his love, is a different thing to the sailor, a something more entirely of the heart and the imagination, which does not lose its ideal hue in the wear and tear of everyday use. A married sailor is always an object of quiet respect to his comrades who have not had means to take the same step themselves; and without exaggeration it may be said that woman is present in her truest sense in the midst of the often outwardly rough life on board ship--warm, loving, and venerated, and surrounded by all the enchantment which distance can supply. If we are tempted to think otherwise, we have not penetrated to the simple, childlike nature which underlies the sailor's rough exterior.

The exteriors, indeed, in the dancing-room of the Aurora that evening were rough enough. Through the cloud of steam and tobacco-smoke, men of the most various physiognomies were to be seen, the majority tanned and bearded, with their hats on the back of their heads, and short clay pipes in their mouths, and all in the wildest state of enjoyment, dripping with perspiration and dancing indefatigably. There were French and Swedish sailors in their red woollen shirts, Norwegians and Danes in blue, with white canvas trousers, Yankees and English all in blue; and as they swung the gracefully dressed Dutch girls with their small white caps and little capes, and petticoats fastened up to do justice to the neat shoes and white stockings below, vying with each other who should dance the best and longest, the foundation of many a friendship or enmity was laid, to be prosecuted later on in the evening over a bottle of brandy or in a stand-up fight.

Salve and Federigo were sitting over their gin in a side-room which opened into the dancing-room, and was filled with men talking and drinking, or with couples who came in to rest for a moment. Neither took part in the dancing. Salve was gloomy and out of tune for pleasure, although, for Federigo's sake, he made his humour as little apparent as possible. Federigo looked very disconsolate, and during the early part of the evening sat and sipped his gla.s.s abstractedly. But as the time wore on he kept filling Salve's gla.s.s unconsciously as it were, and getting apparently more and more drunk himself, until he several times spilt the contents of his own gla.s.s on the floor. He became very talkative, recalling incident after incident of their life together. "I shall never forget you," he cried, with open-hearted impulsiveness, "never!" And as he repeated the word, there was a gleam of suppressed feeling of some kind or other in his eye.

Salve's attention was preoccupied at the moment. He had heard two voices speaking Norwegian by the window at his back, and it made his heart knock against his ribs--it was so long since he had heard his mother-tongue. They were two men belonging to timber ships, and one of them, very red and excited, was singing the praises of one of the girls in the other room.

"Ah!" broke in the other, a Tonsberger, "you should have seen handsome Elizabeth in 'The Star' at Amsterdam. But she wasn't for such as you to dance with, my lad."

Salve's interest was awakened at once. He listened with strained attention for what might come next.

"And why not?" asked the other, a little on his dignity.

"Well, in the first place, they don't dance there; and in the next, you would want to be a skipper at least to pay court in that quarter, mind you. I saw her in the spring of last year, when we were lying there with the Galatea; she was talking to the captain, for she's Norwegian--and a proud one she is, too; with hair like a crown of gold on her head, and so straight rigged that it makes a man nervous to come alongside her."

Salve sat rapt in thought, and more absent than was polite to his friend for the rest of the evening. An idea that it might be Elizabeth had shot through him, and he could not divest himself of it, although the more he reflected the more certain he knew he ought to be that she had been married long ago to young Beck. His mind was in a ferment, and a wild longing now possessed him to get home to Arendal and find out for certain how matters actually stood.

When the time came for breaking up, Federigo was drunk, and Salve was obliged to accompany his inconsolable friend in the darkness over the long narrow dam down by the dock, where there was water on both sides, Federigo clinging to his arm the whole way, and leaning heavily upon it.

When they had reached the middle of the dam, Salve saw him make a sudden movement, and almost at the same moment he received a thrust in the region of the heart, of such force that he staggered two or three steps backwards. At the same time he heard Federigo say, in a voice trembling with vindictive pa.s.sion--

"Take that for Paolina, you hound!"

The object of his cupidity, the belt of money, had saved Salve, who now felled him to the ground with a blow that sent him rolling over the embankment into the sea.

"Help! help!" came up to him from the water.

"You shall have it," replied Salve, derisively, "for our fine friendship's sake. Throw up your knife, though, first;" and he made a noose in his handkerchief then to reach down to him. "You and your owl of a sister," he muttered as he did so, "have taught me a thing or two.

I should only have had exactly what I deserved if I had been both stuck and plundered, after being fool enough to put faith for one moment in you or any one else."

"Now, up with you!"

When he saw Federigo's form scrambling up over the edge, he said, scornfully, "Now then, at last we part. Good-bye, my old and faithful friend!"

With that he went his way, and heard the Brazilian screaming and stamping with rage down on the dam behind him in the dark.

CHAPTER XVIII.

An opportunity offered almost immediately for taking a pa.s.sage home with the Tonsberger before alluded to, and Salve gladly availed himself of it, calculating upon being taken off by one of the pilot boats off the coast of Arendal.

It was with a strange deep feeling that he once more trod the deck of a home vessel, and as he went about and listened to the people's talk, felt himself an object for their curiosity. The southern brown of his face, the foreign cut of his clothes, and his whole exterior, marked him as coming from a much higher condition of sailor life than any with which they were acquainted, and he pa.s.sed for an Englishman or an American; for he purposely avoided being recognised by them as a countryman, and had made his agreement with the skipper in English.

It was certainly a long time since he had been on board a craft so miserably found in every way as this leaky old galliot was. She had been bought by auction for a small sum at Faerder; and in shape resembled an old wooden shoe, in which her skipper venturesomely trudged across to Holland through the spring and winter storms, calculating that he and his crew could always lash themselves to something to avoid being washed overboard; that their timber cargo would keep them afloat; and that as long as the rigging held they could sail. He carried no top-gallant-mast, so as not to strain her; her sails were all in holes, as if they had been riddled with bullets; and where ropes had broken in the rigging, they had been tied in clumsy knots, instead of being spliced in proper sailor-like fashion. There was not much to boast of in the way of navigation either; the captain keeping his log by the simple method of spitting over the side, or throwing a chip of wood overboard, and making his calculations according to the pace it drifted past. The food, too, was on a par with all the rest, and the cook could be heard beating the dried fish with the back of an axe to make it tender. Salve seemed to have dropped all at once into home life and ways again.

The crew were dressed in thick winter clothing, and had the appearance of navvies rather than of sailors, but they were all fearless, hardy-looking fellows, as most of the men who risk their lives on these timber vessels are; and what immediately struck him with a feeling of pleasure, was the honest expression which every countenance, without exception, wore. It was long since he had seen a sight of the kind, and he felt ashamed of himself for going about with his knife ready to hand, as had been his custom for so many years, and put it away in his chest the very first day. He took a pleasure in leaving his watch and money out on the top where they might easily have been taken, and was filled with surprise and admiration when he found that they were not stirred.

He had not been able to get out of his head the idea that Elizabeth was now in Amsterdam, in spite of the almost certain feeling which he had that she had been long ago married to young Beck. His thoughts kept returning to, and dwelling upon, this subject, and he began to sound the skipper as to whether the trade with Holland was a paying one, and to post himself up generally in all particulars. Their conversation was carried on in a kind of jumble of English chiefly, and he gathered, at all events, that it was a lucrative business, and an occupation which seemed likely to suit him in every way. It was adventurous, and that was a recommendation; and a way of living at home in which he would be under n.o.body's orders but his own, fell in exactly with his nature. He had more than money enough to purchase some old craft or other, and--in fact, it was decided; he would be the owner of a timber ship, and ply to Holland.

He began now to look out more impatiently than ever for land, and longed so to catch the first streak of the Norwegian coast above the horizon, as if it was something he hardly dared hope that he should live to see.

He paced up and down for hours together, anathematising through his teeth the old tub with her slack sails and rolling motion--they seemed to be drifting, not sailing; and from the restlessness and impatience he exhibited, it began to be whispered among the crew that the Englishman must have a screw loose somewhere. When the dim outline of Lindesnaes became discernible at last in the far distance, there was not a palm-clad promontory in all the southern seas that could compare with it, he thought; and the pleasure he experienced was only dashed by the apprehension of what he might have to learn about Elizabeth on landing.

They were hailed shortly after by a pilot boat from Arendal, and he arrived there after dark the same evening, and went to Madam Gjers's unpretending lodging-house until the morning.

The following day was Sunday. And as he listened to the bells ringing, and watched the townspeople, great and small, going decorously up the street in their best clothes to church--most of them he recognised, and among them Elizabeth's old aunt going up by herself, with her psalm-book and her white folded handkerchief in her hand--an indescribable feeling came over him, and his eyes filled so that he could hardly see. Here pa.s.sing before him were all the gentleness and the purity that he had once believed in, when his young faith had as yet received no shock, and when he was as joyous and credulous as the rest; and he could not resist the temptation of joining the stream, trusting to the alteration in his appearance to save him from recognition.

Beside him, almost, there walked a respectable family--he knew well who they were--with a couple of handsome daughters, in light dresses, who had grown up since he last saw them, and a younger brother whom he did not remember. The foreign, black-bearded sailor, with his fine cloth clothes, and his patent gold watch-chain, seemed to excite their curiosity; while he on his side was thinking how they would fly from him, as if a wolf had suddenly appeared in their midst, if they had any conception of the life that he had been leading for years, half-a-day of which would have filled them with more horror than they had ever imagined. They would not understand it if it was described to them, and the description would be too foul for their ears. As he quietly followed the stream up the hill, it seemed as if all the sunny houses in his beautiful native town were crying out against him, and asking whether it was possible that a man from the Stars and Stripes could be permitted to go to church as well as other people; and on entering the building he had to summon up all his self-command--he had a feeling that he was violating the sanct.i.ty of the place.

He took his seat in the last pew close to the door, and watched the people pa.s.sing up the aisle. It was like a dream; they all seemed creatures of a purer world than his. The organ commenced to play, the singing was begun, and he leaned his head forward on his hands, completely overcome, and trying to conceal his sobs. In this position he remained during the greater part of the service, his past life coming up, scene by scene, before him. What a gulf he felt there was between the present condition of his mind and what it had been in the days when as a boy or lad he had gone to church like the rest. He had been familiar with more murder and blasphemy than the whole congregation together could conceive; and the simple faith he had once possessed he had been robbed of, he feared irrecoverably. His eyes flashed then with a sudden wildness as he thought who it was that had brought him to this; and it was with a deep hatred in his heart to one of the two at least, that he left the church. In a couple who were coming out at the same time, he recognised Captain Beck and his wife, and the sight added fuel to the flames. He hastened on; and was hardly to be recognised as the same man who had gone up the same way so quietly two hours before.

He had meant to go over at once to Sandvigen to see his father, but he thought that before going it would be as well to find out for certain all about Elizabeth; and his landlady seemed as likely a person to be able to satisfy him as any one. He remembered well that sharp, bright-eyed little woman, and knew that she was a regular magpie for chatter, and for repeating the gossip of the town.

At that time of the day on Sunday there were no other customers in the house, and while she was busying herself with preparations for his dinner, he asked casually if Captain Beck's son, the one in the navy, was married?

"To be sure he is," she replied, surprised to hear him speak Norwegian.

"He has been married for--let me see--about three years."

She looked fixedly at him.

"But who are you?" she asked; and then, as if the thought had suddenly flashed upon her, she said, "It's never Salve Kristiansen, who--" She stopped here, and Salve dryly finished the sentence for her--