'Why?' she inquired. 'The flag we hoist will not be seen in the dark'—knowing that the mast was there for no other purpose than to display a flag on.
'But we ought to light the lamp and masthead it,' said I, 'and keep it burning all night—if God suffers us to live through the night. Who can tell what may come along?—what vessel invisible to us may perceive the light?'
She answered quickly: 'Yes. Your judgment is clearer than mine. I will help you to set up the mast.'
Her father again addressed her in Danish. She answered him, and then said to me, 'My father asks why we are without a sail.'
'I thought of a sail,' I replied, speaking as I went about to erect the mast, 'but without wind it could not serve us, and with wind it would blow away like a cobweb. It would have occupied too much time to rig and securely provide for a sail. Besides, our hopes could never lie in the direction of such a thing. We must be picked up—there is no other chance for us.'
The Captain made no response, but sat, propped up on his pillows, motionless, his eyes fixed upon the barque.
The sun had sunk, but a strong scarlet yet glowed in the western sky by the time we had erected and stayed the spar. I then lighted the lamp and ran it aloft by means of a line and a little block which I had taken care to throw into the raft. This finished, we seated ourselves.
There was now nothing more to be done but watch and pray. This was the most solemn and dreadful moment that had as yet entered into the passage of our fearful and astonishing experience. In the hurry and agitation of leaving the barque there had been scarcely room for pause. All that we could think of was how quickly to get away, how speedily to equip and launch the raft, how to get Captain Nielsen over, and the like; but all this was ended: we could now think—and I felt as if my heart had been suddenly crushed in me as I sat on the slanting, falling, and rising platform viewing the barque, that lay painted in clear black lines against the fast-dimming glow in the west.
Helga sat close against her father's cot. So far as I was able to distinguish her face, there was profound grief in it, and a sort of dismay, but no fear. Her gaze was steady, and the expression of her mouth firm. Her father kept his eyes rooted upon his ship. I overheard her address him once or twice in Danish, but getting no reply, she sighed heavily and held her peace. I was too exhausted in body and spirits to desire to speak. I remember that I sat, or rather squatted, Lascar fashion, upon the hatch-cover, that somewhat raised the platform of the raft, with my hands clasped upon my shins, and my chin on a level with my knees, and in this posture I continued for some time motionless, watching theAnine, and waiting for her to sink, and realizing our shocking situation to the degree of that heart-crushing sensation in me which I have mentioned. I was exactly clad as I had been when I boarded the barque out of the lifeboat. Never once, indeed, from the hour of my being in the vessel, down to the present moment, had I removed my oilskins, saving my sou'-wester, which I would take from my head when I entered the cabin; and I recollect thinking that it was better for me to be heavily than thinly clad, because being a stout swimmer, a light dress would help me to a bitter long battle for life, whereas the clothes I had on must make the struggle brief, and speedily drag me down into peace, which was, indeed, all that I could bring my mind to dwell upon now, for when I sent my glance from the raft to the darkling ocean, I felt hopeless.
The rusty hectic died out. The night came along in a clear dusk with a faint sighing of wind over the raft every time the swell threw her up. There was a silver curl of moon in the south-west, but she was without power to drop so much as a flake of her light into the dark shadow of water under her. Yet the starlight was in the gloom, and it was not so dark but that I could see Helga's face in a sort of glimmer, and the white outline of the cot and the configuration of the raft upon the water in dusky strokes.
The barque floated at about a cable's length distant from us, a dark mass, rolling in a strangling manner, as I might know by the sickly slide of the stars in the squares of her rigging and along the pallid lines of the canvas stowed upon her yards. There was more tenacity of life in her than I should have believed possible, and I said to Helga:
'If this raft were a boat, I would board the barque and set her on fire. She may float through the night, for who is to know but that one of her worse leaks may have got choked, and the blaze she would make might bring us help.'
The Captain uttered some exclamation in Danish, in a small but vehement and shrill tone. He had not spoken for above an hour, and I had believed him sleeping or dying and speechless.
'What does he say?' I called across softly to Helga.
'That theAninemight have been saved had we stood by her,' she answered, struggling, as I could hear by the tremor in her voice, to control her accents.
'No, no!' said I, almost gruffly, I fear, with the mood that was upon me of helplessness, despair, and the kind of rage that comes with perception that one is doomed to die like a rat, without a chance, without a soul of all those one loves knowing one's fate. 'No, no!' I cried, 'theAninewas not to be saved by us two, nor by twenty like us, Helga.Youknow that—for it is like making me responsible for our situation here to doubt it.'
'I do not doubt it,' she answered firmly and reproachfully.
Captain Nielsen muttered in his native tongue; but I did not inquire what he said, and the hush of the great ocean night, with its delicate threading of complaining wind, fell upon us.
My temper of despair was not to be soothed by recollection of this time yesterday, by perception of the visible evidence of God's mercy in this tranquillity of sky and sea, at a time when, but for the change of weather, we had certainly been doomed. I was young; I passionately desired to live. Had death been the penalty of the lifeboat attempt, I might, had time been granted me, have contemplated my end with the fortitude that springs from the sense of having done well. But what was heroic in this business had disappeared out of it when the lifeboat capsized and left me safe on board. It was now no more than a vile passage of prosaic shipwreck, with its attendant horror of lingering death, and nothing noble in what had been done, or that might yet have to be done, to prop up my spirits. Thus I sat, full of wretchedness, and miserably thinking, mechanically eyeing the dusky heap of barque; then breaking away from my afflicting reverie, I stood up, holding by the mast, to carefully sweep the sea, with a prayer for the sight of the coloured gleams of a steamer's lights, since there was nothing to be expected in the way of sail in this calm that was upon the water.
I was thus occupied, when I was startled by a strange cry—I cannot describe it. It resembled the moan of a wild creature wounded to death, but with a human note in it that made the sound something not to be imagined. For an instant I believed it came from the sea, till I saw by the dim light of the starshine the figure of Captain Nielsen, in a sitting-posture, pointing with the whole length of his arm in the direction of his barque. I looked, and found the black mass of hull gone, and nothing showing but the dark lines of spars and rigging that melted out of my sight as I watched. A noise of rending, intermingled with the shock of an explosion, came from where she had disappeared. It signified no more than the blowing up of the decks as she sank; but the star-studded vastness of gloom made the sound appalling beyond language to convey.
'Help!' cried Helga. 'My father is dying.'
I gained the side of the cot in a stride, and kneeled by him, but there was no more to be seen of his face than the mere faint whiteness of it, and I could not tell whether his eyes were open or not. Imagining, but scarcely hoping, that a dram might put some life into the poor fellow, I lowered the bull's-eye lamp from the masthead to seek for one of the jars of spirits we had stowed; but when we came to put the tin pannikin to his lips we found his teeth set.
'He is not dead, Helga,' I cried; 'he is in a fit. If he were dead his jaw would drop;' and this I supposed, though I knew little of death in those days.
I flashed the bull's-eye upon his face, and observed that though his eyes were open the pupils were upturned and hidden. This, with the whiteness of the skin and the emaciation of the lineaments, made a ghastly picture of his countenance, and the hysteric sob that Helga uttered as she looked made me grieve that I should have thrown the light upon her father.
I mastheaded the lamp again, and crouched by the side of the cot talking to Helga across the recumbent form in it. Who could remember what was said at such a time? I weakly essayed to cheer her, but soon gave up, for here was the very figure of Death himself lying between us, and there was Death awaiting us in the black invisible folds in which we swung; and what had I to say that could help her heart at such a time? Occasionally I would stand erect and peer around. The weak wind that went moaning past us as the raft rose to the liquid heave, had the chill in it of the ocean in October; and fearing that Helga's jacket did not sufficiently protect her, I pulled off my oilskin-coat—there is no warmer covering for ordinary apparel—and induced her to put it on. Her father remained motionless, but by stooping my ear to his mouth I could catch the noise of his breathing as it hissed through his clenched teeth. Yet it was a sort of breathing that would make one expect to hear it die out in a final sigh at any minute.
I mixed a little spirit and water, and gave it to the girl, and obliged her to swallow the draught, and begged her to eat for the sake of the life and heart food would give her; but she said 'No,' and her frequent silent sobbing silenced me on that head, for how could one grieving as she did swallow food? I filled the pannikin for myself and emptied it, and ate a biscuit and a piece of cheese, which were near my hand in an interstice of the raft, and then lay down near the cot, supporting my head on my elbow. Never did the stars seem so high, so infinitely remote, as they seemed to me that night. I felt as though I had passed into another world that mocked the senses with a few dim semblances of things which a little while before had been real and familiar. The very paring of moon showed small as though looked at through an inverted telescope, and measurelessly remote. I do not know why this should have been, yet once afterwards, in speaking of this experience to a man who, in a voyage to India, had fallen overboard on such another night as this, and swam for three hours, he told me that the stars had seemed to him as to me, and the moon, which to him was nearly full, appeared to have shrunk to the size of the planet Venus.
After awhile the Captain's breathing grew less harsh, and Helga asked me to bring the lamp that she might look at him. His teeth were no longer set, and his eyes as in nature, saving that there was no recognition in them, and I observed that he stared straight into the brilliant glass of magnified flame without winking or averting his gaze. I propped him up, and Helga put the pannikin to his lips, but the fluid ran from the corners of his mouth; upon which I let him rest upon his pillows, softly begging the girl to let God have His way with him.
'He cannot last through the night!' she exclaimed, in a low voice; and the wonderful stillness upon the sea, unvexed by the delicate winnowing of the draught, gathered to my mood an extraordinary emphasis from my being able to hear her light utterances as distinctly as though she whispered in a sickroom.
'You are prepared, Helga?' said I.
'No, no!' she cried, with a little sob. 'Who can be prepared to lose one that is dearly loved? We believe we are prepared—we pray for strength; but when the blow falls it finds us weak and unready. When he is gone, I shall be alone. And, oh! to diehere!'
We sank into silence.
Another hour went by, and I believed I had fallen into a light, troubled doze, less sleepful than a waking daydream, when I heard my name pronounced, and instantly started up.
'What is it?' I cried.
'My father is asking for you,' answered Helga.
I leaned over the cot and felt for his hand, which I took. It was of a deathlike coldness, and moist.
'I am here, Captain Nielsen,' said I.
'If God preserves you,' he exclaimed, very faintly, 'you will keep your word?'
'Be sure of it—be sure of it,' I said, knowing that he referred to what had passed between us about Helga.
'I thank you,' he whispered. 'My sight seems dark; yet is not that the moon down there?'
'Yes, father,' answered the girl.
'Helga,' he said, 'did you not tell me you had brought your mother's likeness with you?'
'It is with us, and her Bible, father.'
'Would to God I could look upon it,' said he, 'for the last time, Helga—for the last time!'
'Where is the parcel?' I asked.
'I have it close beside me,' she answered.
'Open it, Helga!' said I. 'The lamp will reveal the picture.'
Again I lowered the bull's-eye from the masthead, and, while Helga held the picture before her father's face, I threw the light upon it. It was a little oil-painting in an oval gilt frame. I could distinguish no more than the face of a woman—a young face—with a crown of yellow hair upon her head. The sheen of the lamp lay faintly upon the profile of Helga. All else, saving the picture, was in darkness, and the girl looked like a vision upon the blackness behind her, as she knelt with the portrait extended before her father's face.
He addressed her in weak and broken tones in Danish, then turned his head and slightly raised his arm, as though he wished to point to something up in the sky, but was without power of limb to do so. On this Helga withdrew the portrait, and I put down the lamp, first searching the dark line of ocean, now scintillant with stars, before sitting again.
As the moon sank, spite of her diffusing little or no light, a deeper dye seemed to come into the night. The shooting-stars were plentiful, and betokened, as I might hope, continuance of fair weather. Here and there hovered a steam-coloured fragment of cloud. An aspect of almost summer serenity was upon the countenance of the sky, and though there was the weight of the ocean in the swing of the swell, there was peace too in the regularity of its run and in the soundless motion of it as it took us, sloping the raft after the manner of a see-saw.
In a boat, aboard any other contrivance than this raft put together by inexpert hands, I must have felt grateful—deeply thankful to God indeed, for this sweet quietude of air and sea that had followed the roaring conflict of the long hours now passed. But I was without hope, and there can be no thankfulness without that emotion. These were the closing days of October; November was at hand; within an hour this sluggish breathing of air might be storming up into such another hurricane as we were fresh from. And what then? Why, it was impossible to fancy such a thing even, without one's spirits growing heavy as lead, without feeling the presence of death in the chill of the night air.
No! for this passage of calm, God forgive me! I could not feel grateful. The coward in me rose strong. I could not bless Heaven for what affected me as a brief pause before a dreadful end, that this very quiet of the night was only to render more lingering, and fuller, therefore, of suffering.
Captain Nielsen began to mutter. I did not need to listen to him for above a minute to gather that he was delirious. I could see the outline of Helga against the stars, bending over the cot. The thought of this heroic girl's distress, of her complicated anguish, rallied me, and I broke in a very passion of self-reproach from the degradation of my dejection. I drew to the cot, and Helga said:
'He is wandering in his mind.' She added, with a note of wailing in her voice, 'Jeg er nu alene! Jeg er nu alene!' by which she signified that she was now alone. I caught the meaning of the sentence from her pronunciation of it, and cried:
'Do not say you are alone, Helga! Besides, your father still lives. Hark! what does he say?'
So far he had been babbling in Danish; now he spoke in English, in a strange voice that sounded as though proceeding from someone at a distance.
'It is so, you see. The storks did not return last spring. There was to be trouble!—there was to be trouble! Ha! here is Pastor Madsen. Else, my beloved Else! here is the good Pastor Madsen. And there, too, is Rector Grönlund. Will he observe us? Else, he is deep in his book. Look!' he cried a little shrilly, pointing with a vehemence that startled me into following the indication of his shadowy glimmering hand directed into the darkness over the sea. 'It is Kolding Latin School—nay, it is Rector Grönlund's parsonage garden. Ah, Rector, you remember me? This is the little Else that your good wife thought the prettiest child in Denmark. And this is Pastor Madsen.'
He paused, then muttered in Danish, and fell silent.
This is a thing easy to recall, but how am I to convey the reality of it? What is there in ink to put before you that wide scene of starlighted gloom, the dusky shapes of swell for ever running noiselessly at us—no sounds save the occasional creaking of the raft as she was swayed—the motionless, black outlines of Helga and myself overhanging the pallid streak of cot—at intervals a low sob breaking from the girl's heart, and the overwhelming sense of present danger, of hopelessness, made blacker yet by the night? And amid all this the crazy babbling of the dying Dane, now in English and now in his native tongue!
It was just upon the stroke of one o'clock in the morning when he died. I had brought my watch to the lamp, when he fetched a sort of groaning breath, of a character that caused me to bend my ear to his lips: and I found that he had ceased to breathe. I continued to listen, and then, to make sure, cast the light of the lamp upon him.
'He has gone!' cried Helga.
'God has taken him,' said I. 'Come to this side, and sit by me!'
She did as I asked, and I took her hand. I knew by her respiration that she was weeping, and I held my peace till her grief should have had some vent. I then spoke of her father, represented that his ailments must in all probability have carried him off almost as swiftly ashore; that he had died a peaceful death, with his daughter beside him, and his wife and home present in a vision to his gaze; and said that, so far from grieving, we should count it a mercy that he had been called away thus easily, for who was to imagine what lay before us—what sufferings, which must have killed him certainly later on?
'His heart broke when his barque sank,' said she. 'I heard it in his cry.'
This might very well have been too.
Never was there so long a night. The moon was behind the sea, and after she was gone the very march of the stars seemed arrested, as though nature had cried 'Halt!' to the universe. Having run the lamp aloft, I resolved to leave it there, possessed now with such a superstitious notion as might well influence a shipwrecked man, that if I lowered it again no vessel would appear. Therefore, to tell the time, I was obliged to strike a match, and whenever I did this I would stare at my watch and put it to my ear and doubt the evidence of my sight, so inexpressibly slow was the passage of those hours.
Helga's sobs ceased. She sat by my side, speaking seldom after we had exhausted our first talk on her coming round to where I was. I wished her to sleep, and told her that I could easily make a couch for her, and that my oilskin would protect her from the dew. I still held her hand as I said this, and I felt the shudder that ran through her when she replied that she could not lie down, that she could not sleep. Perhaps she feared I would disturb her father's body to make a bed for her; and, indeed, there was nothing on the raft, but the poor fellow's cloak and his pillows and blankets, out of which I could have manufactured a bed.
Had I been sure that he was dead, I should have slipped the body overboard while it remained dark, so that Helga should not have been able to see what I did; but I had not the courage to bury him merely because I believed he was dead, because he lay there motionless; and I was constantly thinking how I should manage when the dawn came—how I was so to deal with the body as to shock and pain poor Helga as little as possible.
As we sat side by side, I felt a small pressure of her shoulder against my arm, and supposed that she had fallen asleep, but, on my whispering, she immediately answered. Dead tired I knew the brave girl must be, but sleep could not visit eyes whose gaze I might readily guess was again and again directed at the faint pale figure of the cot.
The light air shifted into the north-west at about three o'clock in the morning, and blew a small breeze which extinguished the star-flakes that here and there rode upon the swell, and raised a noise of tinkling, rippling waters along the sides of the raft. I guessed this new direction of the wind by my observation of a bright greenish star which had hung in the wake of the moon, and was now low in the west. This light breeze kindled a little hope in me, and I would rise again and again to peer into the quarter whence it blew, in the expectation of spying some pale shadow of ship. Once Helga, giving a start, exclaimed:
'Hush! I seem to hear the throb of a steamer's engines!'
We both stood up hand in hand, for the sway of the raft made a danger of it as a platform, and I listened with strained hearing. It might have been a steamer, but there was no blotch of darkness upon the obscurity the sea-line round to denote her, nor any gleam of lantern. Yet for nearly a quarter of an hour did we listen, in a torment of attention, and then resumed our seats side by side.
The dawn broke at last, dispelling, as it seemed to my weary despairing imagination, a long month of perpetual night. The cold gray was slow and stealthy, and was a tedious time in brightening into the silver and rose of sunrise. My first act was to sweep the sea for a ship, and I then went to the cot and looked at the face upon the pillows in it. If I had never seen death before, I might have known it now. I turned to the girl.
'Helga,' said I gently, 'you can guess what my duty is—for your sake, and for mine, and for his too.'
I looked earnestly at her as I spoke: she was deadly pale, haggard, her eyes red and inflamed with weeping, and her expression one of exquisite touching sorrow and mourning. But the sweetness of her young countenance was dominant even in that supreme time, and, blending with the visible signs of misery in her looks, raised the mere prettiness of her features into a sad beauty that impressed me as a spiritual rather than as a physical revelation.
'Yes, I know what must be done,' she answered. 'Let me kiss him first.'
She approached the cot, knelt by it, and put her lips to her father's: then raising her clasped hands above her head, and looking upwards, she cried out: 'Jeg er faderlös! Gud hjelpe mig!'
I stood apart waiting, scarcely able to draw my breath for the pity and sorrow that tightened my throat. It is impossible to imagine the plaintive wailing note her voice had as she uttered those Danish words: 'I am fatherless! God help me!' She then hid her face in her hands, and remained kneeling and praying.
After a few minutes she arose, kissed again the white face, and seated herself with her back upon the cot.
No one could have named to me a more painful, a more distasteful piece of work than the having to handle the body of this poor Danish captain, and launch him into that fathomless grave upon whose surface we lay. First I had to remove the ropes which formed our little bulwark, that I might slide the cot overboard; then with some ends of line I laced the figure in the cot, that it should not float away out of it when launched. The work kept me close to the body, and, thin and white as he was, yet he looked so lifelike, wore an expression so remonstrant, that my horror was sensibly tinctured with a feeling of guilt, as though instead of burying him I was about to drown him.
I made all despatch possible for Helga's sake, but came to a pause, when the cot was ready, to look about me for a sinker. There was nothing that I could see but the jars, and, as they contained our little stock of spirits and fresh water, they were altogether too precious to send to the bottom. I could do no more than hope that the canvas would speedily grow saturated, then fill and sink; and, putting my hands to the cot, I dragged it to the edge of the raft, and went round to the head and pushed.
It was midway over the side, when a huge black rat sprang from among the blankets out through the lacing, and disappeared under the hatch-cover. I had no doubt it was the same rat that had leapt from my shoulder aboard the barque. If it had terrified me there, you will guess the shock it caused me now! I uttered some cry in the momentary consternation raised in me by this beastly apparition of life flashing, so to speak, out of the very figure and stirlessness of death, and Helga looked and called to know what was the matter.
'Nothing, nothing,' I replied. 'Turn your eyes from me, Helga!'
She immediately resumed her former posture, covering her face with her hands. The next moment I had thrust the cot fair into the sea, and it slid off to a distance of twice or thrice its own length, and lay rising and falling, to all appearances buoyant as the raft itself. I knew it would sink so soon as the canvas and blankets were soaked, yet that might take a little while in doing, and dreading lest Helga should look—for you will readily conceive how dreadful would be to the girl that sight of her father afloat in the square of canvas, his face showing clearly through the lacing of rope—I went to her, and put my arm round her, and so, but without speaking, obliged her to keep her face away. I gathered from her passiveness that she understood me. When I glanced again, the cot was in the act of sinking; in a few beats of the heart it vanished, and all was blank ocean to the heavens—a prospect of little flashful and feathering ripples, but glorious as molten and sparkling silver in the east under the soaring sun.
I withdrew my hand from Helga's shoulder. She then looked, and sighed heavily, but no more tears flowed. I believe she had wept her heart dry!
'In what words am I to thank you for your kindness and sympathy?' said she. 'My father and my mother are looking down upon us, and they will bless you.'
'We must count on being saved, Helga,' said I, forcing a cheerful note into my voice. 'You will see Kolding again, and I shall hope to see it too, by your side.' And, with the idea of diverting her mind from her grief, I told her of my promise to her father, and how happy it would make me to accompany her to Denmark.
'I have been too much of a home bird,' said I. 'You will provide me with a good excuse for a ramble, Helga; but first you shall meet my dear old mother, and spend some time with us. I am to save your life, you know. I am here for that purpose;' and so I continued to talk to her, now and again coaxing a light sorrowful smile to her lips; but it was easy to know where her heart was; all the while she was sending glances at the sea close to the raft, where she might guess the cot had sunk, and twice I overheard her whisper to herself that same passionate, grieving sentence she had uttered when she kissed her father's dead face: 'Jeg er faderlös! Gud hjelpe mig!'
The morning stole away. Very soon after I had buried the Captain I lowered the lamp, and sent the Danish flag we had brought with us to the head of the little mast, where it blew out bravely, and promised to boldly court any passing eye that might be too distant to catch a sight of our flat platform of raft. I then got breakfast, and induced Helga to eat and drink. Somehow, whether it was because of the sick complaining Captain, with his depressing menace of death, being gone, or because of the glad sunshine, the high marbling of the heavens, full of fine weather, and the quiet of the sea, with its placid heave of swell and its twinkling of prismatic ripples, my heart felt somewhat light, my burden of despondency was easier to carry, was less crushing to my spirits. What to hope for I did not know. I needed no special wisdom to guess that if we were not speedily delivered from this raft we were as certainly doomed as though we had clung to the barque and gone down in her. Yet spite of this there was a stirring of hope in me. It seemed impossible but that some ship must pass us before the day was gone. How far we had blown to the southward and westward during the gale I could not have told, but I might be sure we were not very distant from the mouth of the English Channel, and therefore in the fair way of vessels inward and outward bound, more particularly of steamers heading for Portuguese and Mediterranean ports.
But hour after hour passed, and nothing hove into view. The sun went floating from his meridian into the west, and still the horizon remained a blank, near, heaving line, with the sky whitening to the ocean rim. Again and again Helga sought the boundary, as I did. Side by side we would stand, she holding by my arm, and together we gazed, slowly sweeping the deep.
'It is strange!' she once said, after a long and thirsty look. 'We are not in the middle of the ocean. Not even the smoke of a steamer!'
'Our horizon is narrow,' answered I. 'Does it exceed three miles? I should say not, save when the swell lifts us, and then, perhaps, we may see four. Four miles of sea!' I cried. 'There may be a dozen ships within three leagues of us, all of them easily within sight from the maintop of theAnine, were she afloat. But what, short of a straight course for the raft, could bring this speck of timber on which we stand into view? This is the sort of situation to make one understand what is signified by the immensity of the ocean.'
She shivered and clasped her hands.
'That I—that we,' she exclaimed, speaking slowly and almost under her breath, 'should have brought you to this pass, Mr. Tregarthen! It was our fate by rights—but it ought not to be yours!'
'You asked me to call you Helga,' said I; 'and you must give me my Christian name.'
'What is it?' she asked.
'Hugh.'
'It is a pretty name. If we are spared, it will be sweet to my memory while I have life!'
She said this with an exquisite artlessness, with an expression of wonderful sweetness and gentleness in her eyes, which were bravely fastened upon me, and then, suddenly catching up my hand, put her lips to it and pressed it to her heart, letting it fall as she turned her face upon the water on that side of the raft where her father's body had sunk.
My spirits, which remained tolerably buoyant while the sun stood high, sank as he declined. The prospect of another long night upon the raft, and of all that might happen in a night, was insupportable. I had securely bound the planks together, as I believed, but the constant play of the swell was sure to tell after a time. One of the ligatures might chafe through, and in a minute the whole fabric scatter under our feet like the staves of a stove boat, and leave us no more than a plank to hold on by in the midst of this great sea which all day long had been without ships. I often bitterly deplored I had not brought a sail from the barque, for the air that hung steady all day blew landwards, and there was no weight in it to have carried away the flimsiest fabric we could have erected. A sail would have given us a drift—perhaps have put us in the way of sighting a vessel, and in any case it would have mitigated the intolerable sense of helpless imprisonment which came to one with thoughts of the raft floating without an inch of way upon her, overhanging all day long, as it might have seemed, that very spot of waters in which Helga's father had found his grave.
Shortly before sundown Helga sighted a sail in the south-west. It was the merest shaft of pearl gleaming above the ocean rim, and visible to us only when the quiet heave of the sea threw us up. It was no more than a vessel's topmost canvas, and before the sun was gone the dim starlike sheen of those cloths had faded out into the atmosphere.
'You must get some rest to-night, Helga,' said I. 'Your keeping awake will not save us if we are to be drowned, and if we are to be saved then sleep will keep you in strength. It is the after-consequences of this sort of exposure and mental distress which are to be dreaded.'
'Shall I be able to sleep on this little rickety platform?' she exclaimed, running her eyes, glowing dark against the faint scarlet in the west, over the raft. 'It brings one so dreadfully near to the surface of the sea. The coldness of the very grave itself seems to come out of it.'
'You talk like a girl now that you are dressed as one, Helga. The hearty young sailor-lad that I met aboard theAninewould have found nothing more than a raft and salt water in this business, and would have "planked" it here as comfortably as in his cabin bunk.'
'It did not please you to see me in boy's clothes,' said she.
'You made a very charming boy, Helga; but I like you best as you are.'
'No stranger should have seen me dressed so,' she exclaimed in a tone of voice that made me figure a little flush in her cheeks, though there was nothing to be seen in that way by the twilight which had drawn around us. 'I did not care what the mates and the crew thought, but I could not have guessed——' she stammered and went on: 'when I saw in the bay what the weather was likely to prove, I determined to keep my boy's dress on, more particularly after that wretched man, Damm, went away with the others, for then theAninewould be very short-handed for what might happen; and how could I have been of use in this attire?' and she took hold of her dress and looked down it.
'I have heard before,' said I, 'of girls doing sailors' work, but not for love of it. In the old songs and stories they are represented as going to sea chiefly in pursuit of absconding sweethearts.'
'You think me unwomanly for acting the part of a sailor?' said she.
'I think of you, Helga,' said I, taking her by the hand, 'as a girl with the heart of a lioness. But if I once contrive to land you safely at Kolding, you will not go to sea again, I hope?'
She sighed, without replying.
There was nothing but her father's cloak and my oilskins to make a couch for her with. When I pressed her to take some rest, she entreated softly that I would allow her to go on talking and sitting—that she was sleepless—that it lightened her heart to talk with me—that there were many hours of darkness yet before us—and that before she consented to lie down we must arrange to keep watch, since I needed rest too.
I was willing, indeed, to keep her at my side talking. The dread of the loneliness which I knew would come off the wide, dark sea into my brain when she was silent and asleep, and when there would be nothing but the stars and the cold and ghastly gleam of the ebony breast on which we lay, to look at, was strong upon me. I mastheaded the bull's-eye lamp, and spread the poor Danish Captain's cloak, and we seated ourselves upon it, and for a long two hours we talked together, in which time she gave me her life's history, and I chatted to her about myself. I listened to her with interest and admiration. Her voice was pure, with a quality of plaintive sweetness in it, and now and again she would utter a sentence in Danish, then translate it. It might be that the girlish nature I now found in her was accentuated to my appreciation by the memory of her boyish attire, by her appearance when on board the barque, the work she did there and the sort of roughness one associates with the trade of the sea, whether true of the individual or not; but, as I thought, never had I been in the company of any woman whose conversation and behaviour were so engaging, with their qualities of delicacy, purity, simplicity, and candour, as Helga's.
It was such another night as had passed, saving that the ocean swell had the softness of the long hours of fine weather in its volume, whereas on the previous night it still breathed as in memory of the fierce conflict that was over.
A little after midnight there was a red scar of moon in the west, and the hour was a very dark one, spite of the silver showering of the plentiful stars. I had made for Helga the best sort of couch it was in my power to manufacture, and at this time she lay upon it sleeping deeply, as I knew by the regularity of her respiration. The sense of loneliness I dreaded had been upon me since she lay down and left me to the solitary contemplation of our situation. A small wind blew out of the north-west, and there was much slopping noise of waters under my feet amid the crevices of the clumsily framed raft. I had promised Helga to call her at three, but without intending to keep my word if she slept, and I sat near her head, her pale face glimmering out of the darkness as though spectrally self-luminous, and for ever I was turning my eyes about the sea and directing my gaze at the little masthead lantern to know that it was burning.
Happening to bend my gaze down upon the raft, into some interstice close against where the hatch-cover was secured, I spied what, for the moment, I might have supposed a pair of glow-worms, minute, but defined enough. Then I believed there was a little pool of water there, and that it reflected a couple of stars. A moment after I guessed what it was, and in a very frenzy of the superstition that had been stirring in me, and in many directions of thought influencing me from the moment of my leaving the barque, I had my hand upon the great rat—for that was what it was—and sent it flying overboard. I remember the wild squeak of the thing as I hurled it—you would have supposed it the cry of a distant gull. There was a little fire in the water, and I could see where it swam, and all very quietly I seized hold of a loose plank and, waiting till it had come near, I hit it, and kept on hitting it, till I might be sure it was drowned.
Some little noise I may have made: Helga spoke in her sleep, but did not wake. You will smile at my mentioning this trifling passage; you would laugh could I make you understand the emotion of relief, the sense of exultant happiness, that possessed me when I had drowned this rat. When I look back and recall this little detail of my experiences, I never doubt that the overwhelming spirit of the loneliness of that ocean night lay upon me in a sort of craziness. I thought of the rat as an evil spirit, a something horribly ominous to us, a menace of suffering and of dreadful death while it stayed with us. God knows why I should have thus thought; but the imagination of the shipwrecked is quickly diseased, and the moods which a man will afterwards look back upon with shame and grief and astonishment are, while they are present, to him as fruitful of terrible imaginings as ever made the walls of a madhouse ring with maniac laughter.
It might have been some half-hour after this—the silly excitement of the incident having passed out of my mind—that I fell into a doze. Nature was well-nigh exhausted in me, yet I did not wish to sleep. In proportion, however, as the workings of my brain were stealthily quieted by the slumberous feelings stealing over me, so the soothing influences without operated: the cradling of the raft, the hushing and subduing gaze of the stars, the soft whispering of the wind.
I was awakened by a rude shock, followed by a hoarse bawling cry. There was a second shock of a sort to smartly bring my wits together, attended with several shouts, such as—'What is it? What have ye run us into? Why, stroike me silly, if it ain't a raft!'
I sprang to my feet, and found the bows of a little vessel overhanging us. Small as I might know her to be, she yet loomed tall and black, and even seemed to tower over us, so low-seated were we. She lined her proportions against the starry sky, and I made out that she had hooked herself to us by running her bowsprit through the stays which supported our mast.
My first thought was for Helga, but she was rising even as I looked, and the next moment was at my side.
'For God's sake!' I cried, 'lower away your sail, or your stem will grind this raft to pieces! We are two—a girl and a man—shipwrecked people. I implore you to help us to get on board you!'
A lantern was held over the side, and the face of the man who held it showed out to the touch of the lustre like a picture in acamera obscura. The rays of the lantern streamed fairly upon us, and the man roared out:
'Ay! it's a raft, Jacob, and there are two of 'em, and one a gal. Chuck the man a rope's-end and he'll haul the raft alongside.'
'Look out!' shouted another voice from the after-part of the little vessel, and some coils of rope fell at my feet.
I instantly seized the line, and, Helga catching hold too, we strained our united weight at it, and the raft swung alongside the craft at the moment that she lowered her sail.
'Catch hold of the lady's hands!' I shouted.
In a moment she was dragged over the side. I handed up the little parcel, containing her mother's picture and Bible, and followed easily, scrambling over the low rail.
The man who grasped the lantern held it aloft to survey us, and I saw the dusky glimmer of two other faces past him.
'This is a queer start!' said he. 'How long have you been knocking about here?'
'You shall have the yarn presently,' said I; 'but before the raft goes adrift, it's well you should know that she is pretty handsomely stocked with provisions—all worth bringing aboard.'
'Right!' he cried. 'Jacob, take this here lantern and jump over the side, and hand up what ye find.'
All this had happened too suddenly to suffer me as yet to be sensible of what came little short of a miraculous deliverance; for had the craft been a vessel of burthen, or had there been any weight in the soft night air still blowing, she would have sheared through us as we lay asleep, and scattered the raft and drowned us out of hand—nay, before we could have cried 'O God!' we should have been suffocating in the water.
I believed her at first a fishing-boat. She was lugger-rigged and open, with a little forecastle in her bows, as I had noticed while the lantern dangled in the hand of the man who surveyed us. Yet, had she been a line-of-battle ship, she could not, as a refuge and a means of deliverance after the horror and peril of that flat platform of raft, have filled me with more joy and thanksgiving.
'The worst is over, Helga!' I cried, as I seized the girl's cold and trembling hand. 'Here is a brave little vessel to carry us home, and you will see Kolding again, after all!'
She made some answer, which her emotion rendered scarcely intelligible. Her being suddenly awakened by the shock of the collision, her alarm on seeing what might have passed in the gloom as a tall, black mass of bow crushing into the raft; then the swiftness of our entry into the lugger, and the sensations which would follow on her perception of our escape from a terrible death—all this, combined with what she had gone through, was too much for the brave little creature; she could scarcely whisper; and, as I have said, her hand was cold as frost, and trembled like an aged person's, as I gently brought her to one of the thwarts.
By this time I had made out that the boat carried only three of a crew. One of them, holding the lantern, had sprung on to the raft, and was busy in handing up to the others whatever he could lay his hands upon. They did not spend many minutes over this business. Indeed, I was astonished by their despatch. The fellow on the raft worked like one who was very used to rummaging, and, as I knew afterwards by observing what he had taken, it was certain not a single crevice escaped him.
'That's all,' I heard him shout. 'There's naught left that I can find, unless so be as the parties have snugged any valuables away.'
'No!' I cried, 'there are no valuables, no money—nothing but food and drink.'
'Come aboard, Jacob, arter ye've chucked up what's loose for firewood.'
Presently the lantern flashed as it was passed across the rail, and the figure of the man followed.
'Shove her clear!' was bawled, and shortly afterwards, 'Up foresail!'
The dark square of sail mounted, and one of the men came aft to the helm. Nothing was said until the sheet had been hauled aft, and the little craft was softly rippling along over the smooth folds of the swell, communicating a sensation so buoyant, so vital after the flat mechanical swaying and slanting of the inert raft, that the mere feeling of it to me was as potent in virtue as some life-giving dram.
The other two men came out of the bows and seated themselves, placing the lighted lantern in the midst of us, and so we sat staring at one another.
'Men,' said I, 'you have rescued us from a horrible situation. I thank you for my life, and I thank you for this lady's life.'
'How long have ye been washing about, sir?' said the man at the helm.
'Since Monday night,' said I.
'A bad job!' said he; 'but you'll have had it foine since Monday night. Anyone perish aboard your raft?'
'One,' I answered quickly. 'And now I'll tell you my story. But first I must ask for a drop of spirits out of one of those jars you have transhipped. A sudden change of this sort tries a man to the soul.'
'Ay, you're right,' growled one of the others. 'I know what it is to be plucked by the hair o' the head out of the hopen jaws of Death, and the sort of feelings what comes arter the plucking job's o'er. Which'll be the particler jar, sir?'
'Any one of them,' said I.
He explored with the lantern, found a little jar of brandy, and the glass, or rather I should say the pannikin, went round. I coaxed Helga into taking a sup; yet she continued silent at my side, as one still dazed and incapable of mastering what had happened. Indeed, with her woman's apparel, you might have believed that she had re-equipped herself with her woman's nature.