We passed the afternoon in this way. Jacob was forward, sleeping; Thomas's turn at the helm had come round again; and Abraham lay over the lee rail, within grasp of the foresheet, lost in contemplation of the rushing waters.
'Where and when is this experience of ours going to end?' said I to Helga as we sat chatting.
'How fast are we travelling?' she asked.
'Between eight and nine miles an hour,' I answered.
'This has been our speed during the greater part of the day,' she said. 'Your home grows more and more distant, Hugh; but you will return to it.'
'Oh, I fear for neither of us, Helga,' said I. 'Were it not for my mother, I should not be anxious. But it will soon be a week since I left her, and, if she should hear that I was blown away out of the bay in theAnine, she will conclude that I perished in the vessel.'
'We must pray that God will support her and give her strength to await your return,' said she, speaking sadly, with her eyes bent down.
What more could she say? It was one of those passages in life in which one is made to feel that Providence is all in all, when the very instinct of human action in one is arrested, and when there comes upon the spirit a deep pause of waiting for God's will.
I looked at her earnestly as she sat by my side, and found myself dwelling with an almost loverlike pleasure upon the graces of her pale face, the delicacy of her lineaments, the refinement of prettiness that was heightened into something of dignity, maidenly as it was, by the fortitude of spirit her countenance expressed.
'Helga,' said I, 'what will you do when you return to Kolding?'
'I shall have to think,' she answered, with the scarcely perceptible accent of a passing tremor in her voice.
'You have no relatives, your father told me.'
'No; none. A few friends, but no relatives.'
'But your father has a house at Kolding?'
'He rented a house, but it will be no home for me if I cannot afford to maintain it. But let my future bemytrouble, Hugh,' said she gently, looking at me, and always pronouncing my name as a sister might a brother's.
'Oh no!' said I. 'I am under a promise to your father—a promise that his death makes binding as a sacred oath upon me. Your future must bemybusiness. If I carry you home in safety—I mean to my mother's home, Helga—I shall consider that I saved your life; and the life a man rescues it should be his privilege to render as easy and happy as it may lie in his power to make it. You have friends in my mother and me, even though you had not another in the wide world. So, Helga,' said I, taking her hand, 'however our strange rambles may end, you will promise me not to fret over what your future may hold when you get ashore.'
She looked at me with her eyes impassioned with gratitude. Her lips moved, but no word escaped her, and she averted her face to hide her tears.
Poor, brave, gentle little Helga! I spoke but out of my friendship and my sympathy for her, as who would not, situated as I was with her, my companion in distress, now an orphan, desolate, friendless, and poor? Yet I little knew then, heedless and inexperienced as I was in such matters, how pity in the heart of a young man will swiftly sweeten into deeper emotion when the object of it is young and fair and loving, and alone in the world.
The sun went down on a wild scene of troubled, running, foaming waters, darkling into green as they leapt and broke along the western sky, that was of a thunderous, smoky tincture, with a hot, dim, and stormy scarlet which flushed the clouds to the zenith. Yet there had been no increase in the wind during the afternoon. It had settled into a hard breeze, good for outward-bounders, but of a sort to send everything heading north that was not steam scattering east and west, with yards fore-and-aft and tacks complaining.
By this time I had grown very well used to the motion of the lugger, had marked her easy flight from liquid peak into foam-laced valley, the onward buoyant bound again, the steady rush upon the head of the creaming sea, with foam to the line of the bulwark-rail, and the air for an instant snowlike with flying spume, and all the while the inside of the boat as dry as toast. This, I say, I had noticed with increasing admiration of the sea-going qualities of the hearty, bouncing, stalwart little fabric; and I was no longer sensible of the anxiety that had before possessed me when I thought of this undecked lugger struggling with a strong and lumpish sea—a mere yawn upon the water, saving her forecastle—so that a single billow tumbling over the rail must send her to the bottom.
'Small wonder,' said I to Helga, as we sat watching the sunset and marking the behaviour of the boat, 'that these Deal luggers should have the greatest reputation of any 'longshore craft around the English coasts, if they are all like this vessel! Her crew's adventure for Australia is no longer the astonishment I first found it. One might fearlessly sail round the world in such a craft.'
'Yes,' she answered softly in my ear—for surly Thomas sat hard by—'if the men had the qualities of the boat! But how are they to reach Australia without knowing their longitude? And if you were one of the party, would you trust Abraham's latitude? My father taught me navigation; and, though I am far from skilful at it, I know quite enough to feel sure that such a rough observation as Abraham took to day will, every twenty-four hours, make him three or four miles wrong, even in his latitude. Where, then, will theEarly Mornblunder to?'
'Well, they are plainly a sensitive crew,' said I, 'and if we want their goodwill, our business is to carry admiring faces, to find everything right, and say nothing.'
This chat was ended by Abraham joining us.
'Now, lady,' said he, 'when would ye like to tarn in? The forepeak's to be yourn for the night. Name your hour, and whosoever's in it'll have to clear out.'
'I am grateful indeed!' she exclaimed, putting her hand upon his great hairy paw in a pretty, caressing way.
'Abraham,' said I, 'I hope we shall meet again after we have separated. I'll not forget your kindness to Miss Nielsen.'
'Say nothen about it, sir; say nothen about it!' he cried heartily. 'She's a sailor's daughter, for all he warn't an Englishman. Her father lies drownded, Mr. Tregarthen. If he was like his lass he'll have had a good heart, sir, and the sort of countenance one takes to at the first sight o't.' By the rusty light still living in the west I saw him turn his head to look forward and then aft; then lowering his voice into a deep sea growl he exclaimed: 'There's wan thing I should like to say: there's no call for either of ye to take any notice along of old Tommy. His feelings is all right; it's his vays as are wrong. Fact is,' and here he sent another look forward and then aft, 'Tommy's been a disapp'inted man in his marriages. His first vife took to drink, and was always a-combing of his hair with a three-legged stool, as Jack says. His second vife has the heart of a flint, spite of her prowiding him with ten children, fower by her first and six by Tommy. Of course it's got nothen to do withme; but there ain't the loike of Molly Budd—I mean Tommy's vife—in all Deal—ay, ye may say in all Kent—for vickedness. Tommy owned to me wan day that though she'd lost children—ay, and though she'd lost good money tew—he'd never knowed her to shed a tear saving wonst. That was when she went out a-chairing. The master of the house had been in the habit of leaving the beer-key in the cask for th' ale to be sarved out by the hupper servant. Molly Budd was a-cleaning there one day, when down comes word for the key to be drawed out of the cask, and never no more to be left in it. This started Molly. She broke down and cried for a hour. Tommy had some hopes of her on that, but she dried up arterwards, and has never showed any sort of weakness since. But, of course, this is between you and me and the bed-post, Mr. Tregarthen.'
'Oh, certainly!' said I.
'And now about the lady's sleeping,' he continued.
'I was anxious to see her snugly under cover; but she was in trouble to know how I was to get rest. I pointed to the open space under that overhanging ledge of deck which I have before described, and told her that I should find as good a bedroom there as I needed. So after some little discussion it was arranged that she should take possession of the forepeak at nine o'clock, and, meanwhile, Abraham undertook to so bulkhead the opening under the deck with a spare mizenmast-yard and sail as to ensure as much shelter as I should require. I believe he observed Helga's solicitude about me, and proposed this merely to please her: and for the same motive I consented, though I was very unwilling to give the poor honest fellows any unnecessary trouble.
When the twilight died out, the night came down very black. A few lean, windy stars hovered wanly in the dark heights, and no light whatever fell from the sky; but the atmosphere low down upon the ocean was pale with the glare of the foam that was plentifully arching from the heads of the seas, and this vague illumination was in the boat to the degree that our figures were almost visible one to another. Indeed, a sort of wave of ghastly sheen would pass through the darkness amid which we sat each time the lugger buried herself in the foam raised by her shearing bounds, as though the dim reflection of a giant lantern had been thrown upon us from on high by some vast shadowy hand searching for what might be upon the sea.
When nine o'clock arrived, Abraham went forward and routed Thomas out of the forepeak. The man muttered as he came aft to where we were, but I was resolved to have no ears for anything he might say at such a time. A sailor disturbed in his rest, grim, unshorn, scarcely awake, with the nipping night blast to exchange for his blanket, is proverbially the sulkiest and most growling of human wretches.
'I will see you to your chamber door, Helga,' said I, laughing. 'Abraham, can you spare the lady this lantern? She will not long need it.'
'She can have it as long as she likes,' he answered. 'Good-night to you, mum, and I hope you'll sleep well, I'm sure. Feared ye'll find the forepeak a bit noisy arter the silence of a big vessel's cabin.'
She made some answer, and I picked up the lantern that had been placed in the bottom of the boat for us to sit round, and, with my companion, went clambering over the thwarts to the hatch.
'It is a dark little hole for you to sleep in, Helga,' said I, holding the lantern over the hatch while I peered down, 'but then—this time last night! Our chances wenowknow, but what were our hopes?'
'We may be even safer this time to-morrow night,' she answered, 'and rapidly making for England, let us pray!'
'Ay, indeed!' said I. 'Well, if you will get below, I will hand you down the light. Good-night, sleep well, and God bless you!'
I grasped and held her hand, then let it go, and she descended, carrying with her the little parcel she had brought with her from the barque.
I gave her the lantern, and returned to smoke a pipe in the bottom of the boat under the shelter of the stern sheets, before crawling to the sail that was to form my bed under the overhanging deck. Thomas, whose watch below it still was, was already resting under the ledge, Abraham steered, and Jacob sat with a pipe in his mouth to leeward. I noticed that one of these men always placed himself within instant reach of the foresheet. Abraham's talk altogether concerned Helga. He asked many questions about her, and got me to tell for the second time the story of her father's death upon the raft. He frequently broke into homely expressions of sympathy, and when I paused, after telling him that the girl was an orphan and without means, he said:
'Beg pardon, Mr. Tregarthen; but might I make so bold as to ask if so be as you're a married man?'
'No,' said I; 'I am single.'
'And is her heart her own, sir, d'ye know?' said he. 'For as like as not there may be some young Danish gent as keeps company with her ashore.'
'I can't tell you that,' said I.
'If so be as her heart's her own,' said he, 'then I think even old Tommy could tell 'ee what's agoing to happen.'
'What do you mean?' I asked.
'Why, of course,' said he, 'you're bound to marry her!'
As she was out of hearing, I could well afford to laugh.
'Well,' said I, 'the sea has been the cause of more wonderful things than that! Any way, if I'm to marry her, you must put me in the way of doing so by sending us home as soon as you can.'
'Oy,' said he, 'that we'll do, and I don't reckon, master, that you'd be dispoged to wait ontil we've returned from Australey, that Tommy and me and Jacob might have the satisfaction of drinking your healths and cutting a caper at your marriage.'
Jacob broke into a short roar that might or might not have denoted a laugh.
'I shall now turn in,' said I, 'for I am sleepy. But first I will see if Miss Nielsen is in want of anything, and bring the lantern aft to you.'
I went forward and looked down the hatch. By stooping, so as to bring my face on a level with the coaming, I could see the girl. She had placed the lantern in her bunk, and was kneeling in prayer. Her mother's picture was placed behind the lantern, where it lay visible to her, and she held the Bible she had brought from the barque; but that she could read it in that light I doubted. I supposed, therefore, that she grasped it for its sacredness as an object and a relic while she prayed, as a Roman Catholic might hold a crucifix.
I cannot express how much I was affected by this simple picture. Not for a million would I have wished her to guess that I watched her; and yet, knowing that she was unconscious I was near, I felt I was no intruder. She had removed her hat: the lantern-light touched her pale hair, and I could see her lips moving as she prayed, with a frequent lifting of her soft eyes. But the beauty, the wonder, the impressiveness of this picture of maidenly devotion came to it from what surrounded it. The little forepeak, dimly irradiated, showed like some fancy of an old painter upon the shadows and lights of whose masterly canvas lies the gloom of time. The strong wind was full of the noise of warring waters, and of its own wild crying; the foam of the surge roared about the lugger's cleaving bows, and to this was to be added the swift leaps, the level poising, the shooting, downward rushes of the little structure upon that wide, dark breast of wind-swept Atlantic.
She rose to her feet, and, stooping always, for her stature exceeded the height of the upper deck, she carefully replaced the Bible and picture in their cover. I withdrew, and, after waiting a minute or two, I approached again and called down to ask if all was well with her. 'Yes, Hugh,' she answered, coming under the hatch with the lantern. 'I have made my bed. It was easily made. Will you take this light? The men may want it, and I shall not need to see down here.'
I grasped the lantern, and told her I would hold it in the hatch that it might light her while she got into her bunk.
'Good-night, Hugh,' said she, and presently called, in her clear, gentle voice, to let me know that she was lying down; on which I took the lantern aft, and, without more ado, crawled under the platform, or raft, as the Deal boatmen called it, crept into a sail, and in a few moments was sound asleep.
And now for three days, incredible as it will appear to those who are acquainted with that part of the sea which the lugger was then traversing, we sighted nothing—nothing, I mean, that provided us with the slenderest opportunity of speaking it. At very long intervals, it would be a little streak of canvas on the starboard or port sea-line, or some smudge of smoke from a steamer whose funnel was below the horizon; nothing more, and these so remote that the dim apparitions were as useless to us as though they had never been.
The wind held northerly, and on the Friday and Saturday it blew freshly, and in those hours Abraham reckoned that theEarly Mornhad done a good two hundred and twenty miles in every day, counting from noon to noon. I was for ever searching the sea, and Helga's gaze was as constant as mine; until the eternal barrenness of the sinuous line of the ocean induced a kind of heart-sickness in me, and I would dismount from the thwart in a passion of vexation and disappointment, asking what had happened that no ship showed? Into what part of the sea had we drifted? Could this veritably be the confines of the Atlantic off the Biscayan coast and waters? or had we been transported by some devil into an unnavigated tract of ocean on the other side of the world?
'There's no want of ships,' Abraham said. 'The cuss of the matter is, we don't fall in with them. S'elp me, if I could only find one to give me a chance, I'd chivey her even if she showed the canvas of aR'yal Jarge.'
'If this goes on you'll have to carry us to Australia,' said I, guessing from my spirits as I spoke that I was carrying an uncommonly long and dismal countenance.
'Hope not,' exclaimed sour Tommy, who was at the helm at this time of conversation. ''Taint that we objects to your company; but where's the grub for five souls a-coming from?'
'Don't say nothen about that,' said Abraham sharply. 'Both the gent and the lady brought their own grub along with them.Thatye know, Tommy, and I allow that ye hain't found their ham bad eating either. They came,' he added, softening as he looked at his mate, 'like a poor man's twins, each with a loaf clapped by the angels on to its back.'
It was true enough that the provisions which had been removed from the raft would have sufficed Helga and me—well, I dare say, for a whole month, and perhaps six weeks, but for the three of the crew falling to the stock; and therefore I was not concerned by the reflection that we were eating into the poor fellows' slender larder. But, for all that, Thomas's remark touched me closely. I felt that if the three fellows, hearty and sailorly as were Abraham and Jacob—I say, I felt that if these three men were not already weary of us they must soon become so, more particularly if it should happen that they met with no ship to supply them with what they might require; in which case they would have to make for the nearest port, a delay they would attribute to us, and that might set them grumbling in their gizzards, and render us both miserable until we got ashore.
However, I was no necromancer; I could not conjure up ships, and staring at the sea-line did not help us; but I very well recollect that that time of waiting and of expectation and of disappointment lay very heavily upon my spirits. There was something so strange in the desolation of this sea that I became melancholy and imaginative, and I remember that I foreboded a dark issue to my extraordinary adventure with Helga, insomuch that I took to heart a secret conviction I should never again see my mother—nay, that I should never again see my home.
Sunday morning came. I found a fine bright day when I crawled out of my sail under the overhanging ledge. The wind came out of the east in the night, and theEarly Morn, with her sheet aft, was buzzing over the long swell that came flowing and brimming to her side in lines of radiance in the flashing wake of the sun. Jacob was at the tiller, and, on my emerging, he instantly pointed ahead. I jumped on to a thwart, and perceived directly over the bows the leaning, alabaster-like shaft of a ship's canvas.
'How is she steering?' I cried.
'Slap for us,' he answered.
'Come!' I exclaimed with a sudden delight, 'we shall be giving you a farewell shake of the hand at last, I hope. You'll have to signal her,' I went on, looking at the lugger's masthead. 'What colours will you fly to make her know your wants?'
'Ye see that there pole?' exclaimed Thomas, in a grunting voice, pointing with a shovel-ended forefinger to the spare booms along the side of the boat. I nodded. 'Well,' said he, 'I suppose you know what the Jack is?'
'Certainly,' said I.
'Well,' he repeated, 'we seizes the Jack on to that there pole and hangs it over, and if that don't stop 'em it'll be 'cause they have a cargo of wheat aboard, the fumes of which'll have entered their eyes and struck 'em bloind.'
'That's so,' said Jacob, with a nod.
Just then Abraham came from under the deck, and in another moment Helga rose through the little hatch, and they both joined us.
'At last, Helga!' I cried, with a triumphant face, pointing.
She looked with her clear blue eyes for a little while in silence at the approaching vessel, as though to make sure of the direction she was heading in, then, clasping her hands, she exclaimed, drawing a breath like a sigh, 'Yes, at last. Hugh, your home is not so very far off now.'
'What's she loike?' said Abraham, bringing his knuckles out of his eyes and staring.
He went to the locker for a little old-fashioned 'longshore telescope, pointed it, and said, 'A bit of a barque. A furriner.' He peered again, 'A Hamburger,' cried he. 'Look, Tommy!'
The man put the glass to his eye and leaned against the rail, and his mouth lay with a sour curl under the little telescope as he stared through it.
'Yes, a whoite hull and a Hamburger,' said he 'and she's coming along tew. There'll be no time, I allow, to bile the coffee-pot afore she's abreast,' he added, casting a hungry, morose eye towards the little cooking-stove.
'Ye can loight the foire, Tommy,' said Abraham, 'whoilst I signalize her,' saying which he took an English Jack out of that locker in which he kept the soap, towels, and, it seemed to me, pretty well all the crew's little belongings, and, having secured the flag to the end of the pole, he thrust it over the side and fell to motioning with it, continuing to do so until it was impossible to doubt that the people of the little barque had beheld the signal. He then let the pole with the flag flying upon it rest upon the rail, and took hold of the fore-halliards in readiness to let the sail drop.
I awaited the approach of the barque with breathless anxiety. I never questioned for a moment that she would take us aboard, and my thoughts flew ahead to the moment when Helga and I should be safely in her: when we should be looking round and finding a stout little ship under our feet, the lugger with her poor plucky Deal sailors standing away from us to the southward, and the horizon, past which lay the coast of Old England, fair over the bows.
'Shove us close alongside, Jacob,' cried Abraham.
'Shall 'ee hook on, Abraham?' inquired Jacob.
'No call to it,' answered Abraham. 'We'll down lug and hail her. She'll back her tawps'l, and I'll put the parties aboard in the punt.'
'I have left my parcel in the forepeak,' said Helga, and was going for it.
'I'm nimbler than you can be now, Helga,' said I, smiling, and meaning that now she was in her girlish attire she had not my activity.
I jumped forward, and plunged down the hatch, took the parcel out of the bunk, and returned with it, all in such a wild, feverish hurry that one might have supposed the lugger was sinking, and that a moment of time might signify life or death to me. Abraham grinned, but made no remark. Thomas, on his knees before the stove, was sulkily blowing some shavings he had kindled. Jacob, with a wooden face at the tiller, was keeping the bows of theEarly Mornon a line with the oncoming vessel.
The barque was under a full breast of canvas, and was heeling prettily to the pleasant breeze of wind that was gushing brilliantly out of the eastern range of heaven, made glorious by the soaring sun. Her hull sat white as milk upon the dark-blue water, and her canvas rose in squares which resembled mother-of-pearl with the intermixture of shadow and flashing light upon them occasioned by her rolling, so that the cloths looked shot like watered silk or like the inside of an oyster-shell. But it was distance on top of the delight that her coming raised in me which gave her the enchantment I found in her, for, as she approached, her hull lost its snowstormglare and showed somewhat dingily with rusty stains from the scupper-holes. Her canvas, too, lost its symmetry, and exhibited an ill-set pile of cloths, most of the clews straining at a distance from the yardarm sheave holes, and I also took notice of the disfigurement of a stump-foretop-gallant-mast.
'Dirty as a Portugee,' said Abraham; 'yet she's Jarman all the same.'
'I never took kindly to the Jarmans, myself,' said Jacob; 'they're a shoving people, but they arn't clean. Give me the Dutch. What's to beat their cheeses? There's nothing made in England in the cheese line as aquils them Dutch cannon-balls, all pink outside and all cream hin.'
'Do you mean by a Hamburger a Hamburg ship?' asked Helga.
'Yes, lady, that's right,' answered Abraham.
'Then she's bound to Hamburg,' said the girl.
'Ask yourself the question,' answered Abraham—which is the Deal boatmen's way of saying yes.
She looked at me.
'It will be all the same,' said I, interpreting the glance; 'England is but over the way from Hamburg. Let us be homeward-bound, in any case. We have made southing enough, Helga.'
'Tommy!' sung out Abraham, 'give that there Jack another flourish, will ye?'
The man did so, with many strange contortions of his powerful frame, and then put down the pole and returned to the stove.
'There don't seem much life aboard of her,' said Jacob, eying the barque. 'I can only count wan head ower the fo'k'sle rail.'
'Down hellum, Jacob!' bawled Abraham, and as he said the words he let go the fore-halliards, and down came the sail.
The lugger, with nothing showing but her little mizzen, lost way, and rose and fell quietly beam-on to the barque, whose head was directly at us, as though she must cut us down. When she was within a few cables' length of us she slightly shifted her helm and drew out. A man sprang on to her forecastle rail and yelled at us, brandishing his arms in a motioning way, as though in abuse of us for getting into the road. We strained our ears.
'What do 'ee say?' growled Abraham, looking at Helga.
'I do not understand him,' she answered.
'Barque ahoy!' roared Abraham.
The man on the forecastle-head fell silent, and watched us over his folded arms.
'Barque ahoy!' yelled Jacob.
The vessel was now showing her length to us. On Jacob shouting, a man came very quietly to the bulwarks near the mizzen rigging and, with sluggish motions, got upon the rail, where he stood, holding on by a backstay, gazing at us lifelessly. The vessel was so close that I could distinguish every feature of the fellow, and I see him now, as I write, with his fur cap and long coat and half-boots, and beard like oakum. The vessel was manifestly steered by a wheel deep behind the deck-house, and neither helm nor helmsman was visible—no living being, indeed, saving the motionless figure on the forecastle head and the equally lifeless figure holding on by the backstay aft.
'Barque ahoy!' thundered Abraham. 'Back your tawps'l, will 'ee? Here's a lady and gent as we wants to put aboard ye; they're in distress. They've bin shipwreckt—they wants to git home. Heave to, for Gord's sake, if so be as you'remen!'
Neither figure showed any indications of vitality.
'What! are they corpses?' cried Abraham.
'No—they're wuss—they're Jarmans!' answered Jacob, spitting fiercely.
On a sudden the fellow who was aft nodded at us, then kissed his hand, solemnly dismounted, and vanished, leaving no one in sight but the man forward, who a minute later disappeared also.
Abraham drew a deep breath, and looked at me. His countenance suddenly changed. His face crimsoned with temper, and with a strange, ungainly, 'longshore plunge he sprang on top of the gunwale, supporting himself by a grip of the burton of the mizzenmast with one hand while he shook his other fist in a very ecstasy of passion at the retreating vessel.
'Call yourselvesmen!' he roared. 'I'll have the law along of ye! It'll bemeas'll report ye! Don't think as I can't spell. HANSA—Hansa. There it is, wrote big as life on your blooming starn! I'll remember ye! You sausage-eaters!—you scow-bankers—you scaramouches!—you varmint! Call yourselvessailors? Only gi' me a chance of getting alongside!'
He continued to rage in this fashion, interlarding his language with words which sent Helga to the boat's side, and held her there with averted face; but, all the same, it was impossible to keep one's gravity. Vexed, maddened, indeed, as I was by the disappointment, it was as much as I could do to hold my countenance. The absurdity lay in this raving at a vessel that had passed swiftly out of hearing, and upon whose deck not a living soul was visible.
Having exhausted all that he was able to think of in the way of abuse, Abraham dismounted, flung his cap into the bottom of the boat, and, drying his brow by passing the whole length of his arm along it, he exclaimed:
'There!—nowI've given 'em something to think of!'
'Why, there was ne'er a soul to hear a word ye said,' exclaimed Thomas, who was still busy at the stove, without looking up.
'See here!' shouted Abraham, rounding upon him with the heat of a man glad of another excuse to quarrel. 'Dorn'tyouhave nothen to say. No sarce fromyou, and so I tells ye! I know all about ye. When did ye pay your rent last, eh? Answer me that!' he sneered.
'Oh, that's it, is it? that's the time o' day, eh?' growled Thomas, looking slowly but fiercely round upon Abraham, and stolidly rising into a menacing posture, that was made wholly ridiculous by the clergyman's coat he wore. 'And what's my rent got to do with you? 'T all events, if Iama bit behoind hand in my rent, moy farder was never locked up for six months.'
'Say for smuggling, Tommy, say for smuggling, or them parties as is a-listening 'll think the ould man did something wrong,' said Jacob.
Helga took me by the arm.
'Hugh, silence them!—they will come to blows.'
'No, no,' said I quickly, in a low voice. 'I know this type of men. There must be much more shouting than this before they double up their fists.'
Still, it was a stupid passage of temper, fit only to be quickly ended.
'Come, Abraham,' I cried, waiting till he had finished roaring out some further offensive question to Thomas, 'let us get sail on the boat and make an end of this. The trial of temper should be mine, not yours. Luck seems against the lady and me; and let me beg of you, as a good fellow and an English seaman, not to frighten Miss Nielsen.'
'What does Tommy want to sarce me for?' said he, still breathing defiance at his mate, out of his large nostrils and blood-red visage.
'What's my rent got to do with you?' shouted the other.
'And what's moy father got to do with you?' bawled Abraham.
'I say, Jacob!' I cried, 'for God's sake let's tail on to the halliards and start afresh. There's no good in all this!'
'Come along, Abey! come along, Tommy!' bawled Jacob. 'Droy up, mates' More'n enough's been said;' and with that he laid hold of the halliards, and, without another word, Abraham and Thomas seized the rope, and the sail was mastheaded.
Abraham went to the tiller, the other two went to work to get breakfast, and now, in a silence that was not a little refreshing after the coarse hoarse clamour of the quarrel, the lugger buzzed onwards afresh.
'We shall be more fortunate next time,' said Helga, looking wistfully at me; and well I knew there was no want of worry in my face; for now there was peace in the boat the infamous cold-blooded indifference of the rogues we had just passed made me feel half mad.
'We might have been starving,' said I; 'we might have been perishing for the want of a drink of water, and still the ruffians would have treated us so.'
'It is but waiting a little longer, Hugh,' said Helga softly.
'Ay, but how much longer, Helga?' said I. 'Must we wait for Cape Town, or perhaps Australia?'
'Mr. Tregarthen—don't let imagination run away with ye!' exclaimed Abraham, in a voice of composure that was not a little astonishing after his recent outbreak; though, having a tolerably intimate knowledge of the 'longshore character, and being very well aware that the words these fellows hurl at one another mean little, and commonly end in nothing—unless the men are drunk—I was not very greatly surprised by the change in our friend. 'There's nothen' that upsets the moind quicker than imagination. I'll gi' ye a yarn. There's an old chap, of the name of Billy Buttress, as crawls about our beach. A little grandson o' his took the glasses out o' his spectacles by way o' amusing hisself. When old Billy puts 'em on to read with, he sings out: "God bless me, Oi'm gone bloind!" and trembling, and all of a clam, as the saying is, he outs with his handkerchief to woipe the glasses, thinking it might be dirt as hindered him from seeing, and then he cries out, "Lor' now, if I an't lost my feeling!" He wasn't to be comforted till they sent for a pint o' ale and showed him that his glasses had been took out. That's imagination, master. Don't you be afeered. We'll be setting ye aboard a homeward-bounder afore long.'
By the time the fellows had got breakfast, the hull of the barque astern was out of sight; nothing showed of her but a little hovering glance of canvas, and the sea-line swept from her to ahead of us in a bare unbroken girdle.
The day slipped away; there were no more disputes; Thomas went to lie down, and, when Jacob took the tiller, Abraham took a little book out of his locker and read it, with his lips moving, holding it out at arms' length, as though it were a daguerreotype that was only discernible in a certain light. I asked him the name of the book.
'The Boible,' said he. 'It's the Sabbath, master, and I always read a chapter of this here book on Sundays.'
Helga started.
'It is Sunday, indeed!' she exclaimed. 'I had forgotten it. How swiftly do the days come round! It was a week last night since we left the bay, and this day week my father was alive—my dear father was alive!'
She opened the parcel and took out the little Bible that had belonged to her mother. I had supposed it was in Danish, but on my taking it from her I found it an English Bible. But then I recollected that her mother had been English. I asked her to read aloud to me, and she did so, pronouncing every word in a clear, sweet voice. I recollect it was a chapter out of the new Testament, and while she read Abraham put down his book to listen, and Jacob leant forward from the tiller with a straining ear.
In this fashion the time passed.
I went to my miserable bed of spare sail under the overhanging deck shortly after nine o'clock that night. This unsheltered opening was truly a cold, windy, miserable bedroom for a man who could not in any way claim that he was used to hardship. Indeed, the wretchedness of the accommodation was as much a cause as any other condition of our situation of my wild, headlong impatience to get away from the lugger and sail for home in a ship that would find me shelter and a bed and room to move in, and those bare conveniences of life which were lacking aboard theEarly Morn.
Well, as I have said, shortly after nine o'clock on that Sunday I bade good-night to Abraham, who was steering the vessel, and entered my sleeping abode, where Jacob was lying rolled up in a blanket, snoring heavily. It was then a dark night, but the wind was scant, and the water smooth, and but little motion of swell in it. I had looked for a star, but there was none to be seen, and then I had looked for a ship's light, but the dusk stood like a wall of blackness within a musket-shot of the lugger's sides—for that was about as far as one could see the dim crawling of the foam to windward and its receding glimmer on the other hand—and there was not the faintest point of green or red or white anywhere visible.
I lay awake for some time: sleep could make but little headway against the battery of snorts and gasps which the Deal boatman, lying close beside me, opposed to it. My mind also was uncommonly active with worry and anxiety. I was dwelling constantly upon my mother, recalling her as I had last seen her by the glow of the fire in her little parlour when I gave her that last kiss and ran out of the house. It is eight days ago, thought I; and it seemed incredible that the time should have thus fled. Then I thought of Helga, the anguish of heart the poor girl had suffered, her heroic acceptance of her fate, her simple piety, her friendlessness and her future.
In this way was my mind occupied when I fell asleep, and I afterwards knew that I must have lain for about an hour wrapped in the heavy slumber that comes to a weary man at sea.
I was awakened by a sound of the crashing and splintering of wood. This was instantly succeeded by a loud and fearful cry, accompanied by the noise of a heavy splash, immediately followed by hoarse shouts. One of the voices I believed was Abraham's, but the blending of the distressed and terrified bawlings rendered them confounding, and scarcely distinguishable. It was pitch dark where I lay. I got on to my knees to crawl out; but some spare sail that Abraham had contrived as a shelter for me had slipped from its position, and obstructed me, and I lay upon my knees wrestling for a few minutes before I could free myself. In this time my belief was that the lugger had been in collision with some black shadow of a ship invisible to the helmsman in the darkness, and that she might be now, even while I kneeled wrestling with the sail, going down under us, with Helga, perhaps, still in the forepeak. This caused me to struggle furiously, and presently I got clear of the blinding and hugging folds of the canvas; but I was almost spent with fear and exertion.
Someone continued to shout, and by the character of his cries I gathered that he was hailing a vessel close to. It was blowing a sharp squall of wind, and raining furiously. The darkness was that of the inside of a mine, and all that I could see was the figure of a boatman leaning over the side and holding the lantern (that was kept burning all night) on a level with the gunwale while he shouted, and then listened, and then shouted again.
'What has happened?' I cried.
The voice of Jacob, though I could not see him, answered, in a tone I shall never forget for the misery and consternation of it:
'The foremast's carried away, and knocked poor old Tommy overboard. He's drownded! he's drownded! He don't make no answer. His painted clothes and boots have took him down as if he was a dipsy lead.'
'Can he swim?' I cried.
'No, sir, no!'
I sprang to where Abraham overhung the rail.
'Will he be lying fouled by the gear over the side, do you think?' I cried to the man.
'No, sir,' answered Abraham: 'he drifted clear. He sung out once as he went astern. What a thing to happen! Can't launch the punt with the lugger a wreck,' he added, talking as though he thought aloud in his misery. 'We'd stand to lose the lugger if we launch the punt.'
'Listen!' shouted Jacob, and he sent his voice in a bull-like roar into the blackness astern: 'Tom-mee!'
There was nothing to be heard but the shrilling of the sharp-edged squall rushing athwart the boat, that now lay beam on to it, and the slashing noise of the deluge of rain, horizontally streaming, and the grinding of the wrecked gear alongside, with frequent sharp slaps of the rising sea against the bends of the lugger, and the fierce snarling of melting heads of waters suddenly and savagely vexed and flashed into spray while curling.
'What is it?' cried the voice of Helga in my ear.
'Ah, thank Heaven, you are safe!' I cried, feeling for her hand and grasping it. 'A dreadful thing has happened. The lugger has been dismasted, and the fall of the spar has knocked the man Thomas overboard.'
'He may be swimming!' she exclaimed.
'No! no! no!' growled Abraham, in a voice hoarse with grief. 'He's gone—he's gone! we shall never see him again.' Then his note suddenly changed. 'Jacob, the raffle alongside must be got in at wonst: let's bear a hand afore the sea jumps aboard. Lady, will you hold the loight? Mr. Tregarthen, we shall want you to help us.'
'Willingly!' I cried.
I remembered at that moment that my oilskin coat lay in the side of the boat close to where I stood. I stooped and felt it, and in a moment I had whipped it over Helga's shoulders, for she was now holding the lantern, and I had her clear in my sight. It would be a godsend to her, I knew, in the wet that was now sluicing past us, and that must speedily have soaked her to the skin, clad as she was.
For the next few minutes all was bustle and hoarse shouts. I see little Helga, now, hanging over the side and swinging the lantern, that its light might touch the wreckage; I see the crystals of rain flashing past the lantern, and blinding the glass of it with wet; I feel again the rush of the fierce squall upon my face, making breathing a labour, while I grab hold of the canvas, and help the men to drag the great, sodden heavy sail into the boat. We worked desperately, and, as I have said, in a few minutes we had got the whole of the sail out of the water; but the mast was too heavy to handle in the blackness, and it was left to float clear of us by the halliards till daylight should come.
We were wet through, and chilled to the heart besides—I speak of myself, at least—not more by the sharp bite of that black, wet squall, than by the horror occasioned by the sudden loss of a man, by the thought of one as familiar to the sight as hourly association could make him, who was just now living and talking, lying cold and still, sinking fathoms deep into the heart of that dark measureless profound on whose surface the lugger—in all probability the tiniest ark at that moment afloat in the oceans she was attempting to traverse—was tumbling.
'Haul aft the mizen sheet, Jacob!' said Abraham in a voice hoarse indeed, but marked with depression also. 'Ye can secure the tiller too. She must loie as she is till we can see what we're about.'
The man went aft with the lantern. He speedily executed Abraham's orders; but by the aid of the dim lantern light I could see him standing motionless in the stern-sheets, as though hearkening and straining his gaze.
'He's gone, Abraham!' he cried suddenly in a rough voice that trembled with emotion. 'There will be never no more to hear of Tommy Budd. Ay, gone dead—drownded for ever!' I heard him mutter, as he picked up the lantern and came with heavy booted legs clambering over the thwarts to us.
'As God's my loife, how sudden it were!' cried Abraham, making his hands meet in a sharp report in the passion of grief with which he clapped them.
It was still raining hard, and the atmosphere was of a midnight blackness; but all the hardness of the squall was gone out of the wind, and it was now blowing a steady breeze, such as we should have been able to expose our whole lugsail to could we have hoisted it. Jacob held the lantern to the mast, or rather to the fragment that remained of it. You must know that a Deal lugger's mast is stepped in what is termed a 'tabernacle'—that is to say, a sort of box, which enables the crew to lower or set up their masts at will. This 'tabernacle' with us stood a little less than two feet above the forepeak deck, and the mast had been broken at some ten feet above it. It showed in very ugly, fang-like points.
'Two rotten masts for such a voyage as this!' cried Jacob, with a savage note in his voice. ''Tis old Thompson's work. Would he was in Tommy's place! S'elp me! I'd give half the airnings of this voyage for the chance to drown him!' By which I might gather that he referred to the boat-builder who had supplied the masts.
'No use in standing in this drizzle, men,' said I. 'It's a bad job, but there's nothing to be done for the present, Abraham. There's shelter to be got under this deck, here. Have you another lantern?'
'What for?' asked Abraham, in the voice of a man utterly broken down.
'Why, to show,' said I, 'lest we should be run into. Here we are stationary, you know, and who's to see us as we lie?'
'And a blooming good job if wewasrun into!' returned Abraham. 'Blarst me if I couldn't chuck moyself overboard!'
'Nonsense!' cried I, alarmed by his tone rather than by his words. 'Let us get under shelter! Here, Jacob, give me the light! Now, Helga, crawl in first and show us the road. Abraham, in with you! Jacob, take this lantern, will you, and get one of those jars of spirits you took off the raft, and a mug and some cold water! Abraham will be the better for a dram, and so will you.'
The jar was procured, and each man took a hearty drink. I, too, found comfort in a dram, but I could not induce Helga to put the mug to her lips. The four of us crouched under the overhanging deck—there was no height, and, indeed, no breadth for an easier posture. We set the lantern in our midst—I had no more to say about showing the light—and in this dim irradiation we gazed at one another. Abraham's countenance looked of a ghostly white. Jacob, with mournful gestures, filled a pipe, and his melancholy visage resembled some grotesque face beheld in a dream as he opened the lantern and thrust his nose, with a large raindrop hanging at the end of it, close to the flame to light the tobacco.
'To think that I should have had a row with him only this marning!' growled Abraham, hugging his knees. 'What roight had I to go and sarce him about his rent? Will any man tell me,' said he, slowly looking round, 'that poor old Tommy's heart warn't in the roight place? Oi hope not, Oi hope not—Oi couldn't abear to hear it said. He was a man as had had to struggle hard for his bread, like others along of us, and disappointment and want and marriage had tarned his blood hacid. Oi've known him to pass three days without biting a crust. The wery bed on which he lay was took from him. Yet he bore up, and without th'help o' drink, and I says that to the pore chap's credit.'
He paused.
'At bottom,' exclaimed Jacob, sucking hard at his inch of sooty clay, 'Tommy was aman. He once saved my loife. You remember, Abey, that job I had along with him when we was a-towing down on the quarter of a big light Spaniard?'
'I remember, I remember,' grunted Abraham.
'The boat sheered,' continued Jacob, addressing me, 'and got agin the steamer's screw, and the stroke of the blade cut the boat roight in halves. They chucked us a loife-buoy. Poor old Tommy got hold of it and heads for me, who were drowning some fadoms off. He clutched me by the hair just in toime, and held me till we was picked up. And nowhe'sgone dead and we shall never see him no more.'
'Tommy Budd,' exclaimed Abraham, 'was that sort of man that he never took a pint himself without asking a chap to have a glass tew, if so be as he had the valley of it on him. There was no smarter man fore and aft the beach in steering a galley-punt. There was scarce a regatta but what he was fust.'
'He was a upright man,' said Jacob, observing that Abraham had paused; 'and never mere upright than when he warn't sober, which proves how true his instincts was. When his darter got married to young darkey Dick, as Tommy didn't think a sootable match, he walks into the room of the public-house where the company was dancing and enjoying themselves, kicked the whole blooming party out into the road, then sits down, and calls for a glass himself. Of course he'd had a drop too much. But the drink only improved his nat'ral disloike of the wedding. Pore Tommy! Abey, pass along that jar!'
In this fashion these plain, simple-hearted souls of boatmen continued for sometime, with now and again an interlude in the direction of the spirit-jar, to bewail the loss of their unhappy shipmate. Our situation, however, was of a sort that would not suffer the shock caused by the man Thomas's death to be very lasting. Here we were in what was little better than an open boat of eighteen tons, lying dismasted, and entirely helpless, amid the solitude of a black midnight in the Atlantic Ocean, with nothing but an already wounded mast to depend upon when daybreak should come to enable us to set it up, and the lugger's slender crew less by one able hand!
It was still a thick and drizzling night, with a plentiful sobbing of water alongside; but theEarly Morn, under her little mizzen and with her bows almost head to sea, rose and fell quietly. By this time the men had pretty well exhausted their lamentations over Thomas. I therefore ventured to change the subject.
'Now there are but two of you,' said I, 'I suppose you'll up with your mast to-morrow morning and make for home?'
'No fear!' answered Abraham, speaking with briskness out of the drams he had swallowed. 'We're agoing to Australey, and if so be as another of us ain't taken we'llgitthere.'
'But surely you'll not continue this voyage with the outfit you now have?' said I.
'Well,' said he, 'we shall have to "fish" the mast that's sprung and try and make it sarve till we falls in with a wessel as'll give us a sound spar to take the mast's place. Anyhow, we shall keep all on.'
'Ay, we shall keep all on,' said Jacob: 'no use coming all this way to tarn back again. Why, Gor' bless me! what 'ud be said of us?'
'But, surely,' said Helga, 'two of you'll not be able to manage this big boat?'
'Lord love 'ee, yes, lady,' cried Abraham. 'Mind ye, if we was out a-pleasuring I should want to get home; but there's money to take up at the end of this ramble, and Jacob and me means to airn it.'
Thus speaking, he crawled out to have a look at the weather, and was a moment later followed by Jacob, and presently I could hear them both earnestly consulting on what was to be done when the morning came, and how they were to manage afterwards, now that Thomas was gone.
The light of the lantern lay upon Helga's face as she sat close beside me on the spare sail that had formed my rough couch.
'What further experiences are we to pass through?' said I.
'Little you guessed what was before you when you came off to us in the lifeboat, Hugh!' said she, gazing gently at me with eyes which seemed black in the dull light.
'These two boatmen,' said I, 'are very good fellows, but there is a pig-headedness about them that does not improve our distress. Their resolution to proceed might appear as a wonderful stroke of courage to a landsman's mind, but to a sailor it could signify nothing more than the rankest foolhardiness. A plague upon their heroism! A little timidity would mean common-sense, and then to-morrow morning we should be heading for home. But I fear you are wet through, Helga.'
'No, your oilskin has kept me dry,' she answered.
'No need for you to stay here,' said I. 'Why not return to the forepeak and finish out the night?'
'I would rather remain with you.'
'Ay, Helga, but you must spare no pains to fortify yourself with rest and food. Who knows what the future may be holding for us—how heavily the pair of us may yet be tried? These experiences, so far, may prove but a few links of a chain whose end is still a long way off.'
She put her hand on the back of mine, and tenderly stroked it.
'Hugh,' said she, 'remember our plain friend Abraham's advice: do not let imagination run away with you. The spirit that brought you to the side of theAninein the black and dreadful night is still your own. Cheer up! All will be well with you yet. What makes me say this? I cannot tell, if it be not the conviction that God will not leave unwatched one whose trials have been brought about by an act of noble courage and of beautiful resolution.'
She continued to caress my hand as she spoke—an unconscious gesture in her, as I perceived—maybe it was a habit of her affectionate heart, and I could figure her thus caressing her father's hand, or the hand of a dear friend. Her soft eyes were upon my face as she addressed me, and there was light enough to enable me to distinguish a little encouraging smile full of sweetness upon her lips.
If ever strength is to be given to a man in a time of bitter anxiety and peril, the inspiration of spirit must surely come from such a little woman as this. I felt the influence of her manner and of her presence.
'You have a fine spirit, Helga,' said I. 'Your name should be Nelson instead of Nielsen. The blood of nothing short of the greatest of English captains should be in your veins.'
She laughed softly and answered, 'No, no! I am a Dane first. Let me be an English girl next.'
Well, I again endeavoured to persuade her to withdraw to her bunk, but she begged hard to remain with me, and so for a long while we continued to sit and talk. Her speaking of herself as a Dane first and an Englishwoman afterwards, started her on the subject of her home and childhood, and once again she talked of Kolding and of her mother, and of the time she had spent in London, and of an English school she had been put to. I could overhear the rumbling of the two fellows' voices outside. By-and-by I crawled out and found the rain had ceased; but it was pitch dark, and blowing a cold wind. Jacob had lighted the fire in the stove. His figure showed in the ruddy glare as he squatted toasting his hands. I returned to Helga, and presently Abraham arrived to ask us if we would have a drop of hot coffee. This was a real luxury at such a time. We gratefully took a mugful, and with the help of it made a midnight meal off a biscuit and a little tinned meat.
How we scraped through those long, dark, wet hours I will not pretend to describe. Towards the morning Helga fell asleep by my side on the sail upon which we were crouching, but for my part I could get no rest, nor, indeed, did I strive or wish for rest. One thing coming on top of another had rendered me unusually nervous, and all the while I was thinking that our next experience might be the feeling some great shearing stem of a sailing-ship or steamer striking into the lugger and drowning the lot of us before we could well realize what had happened. I was only easy in my mind when the boatmen carried the lantern out from under the overhanging deck for some purpose or other.
It came at last, however, to my being able no longer to conceal my apprehensions, and then, after some talk and a bit of hearty 'pooh-poohing' on the part of Abraham, he consented to secure the light to the stump of the mast.
This might have been at about half-past three o'clock in the morning, when the night was blacker than it had been at any previous hour: and then a very strange thing followed. I had returned to my shelter, and was sitting lost in thought, for Helga was now sleeping. The two boatmen were in the open, but what they were about I could not tell you. I was sunk deep in gloomy thought, as I have said, when on a sudden I heard a sound of loud bawling. I went out as quickly as my knees would carry me, and the first thing I saw was the green light of a ship glimmering faintly as a glowworm out in the darkness abeam. I knew her to be a sailing-ship, for she showed no masthead-light, but there was not the dimmest outline to be seen of her. Her canvas threw no pallor upon the midnight wall of atmosphere. But for that fluctuating green light, showing so illusively that one needed to look a little on one side of it to catch it, the ocean would have been as bare as the heavens, so far as the sight went. One after the other the two boatmen continued to shout, 'Ship ahoy!' in hearty, roaring voices, which they sent flying through the arches of their hands; but the light went sliding on, and in a few minutes the screen in which it was hung eclipsed it, and it was all blackness again, look where one would.
There was nothing to be said about this to the men. I crept back to Helga, who had been awakened by the hoarse shouts.
'Some sailing-vessel has passed us,' said I, in answer to her inquiry, 'as we may know by the green light; but how near or far I cannot tell. Yet it is more likely than not, Helga, that but for my begging Abraham to keep a light showing, that same ship might have run us down.'
We conversed awhile about the vessel and our chances, and then her voice grew languid again with drowsiness, and she fell asleep.
Somewhile before dawn the rain ceased, the sky brightened, and here and there a star showed. I had been out overhanging the gunwale with Abraham, and listening to him as he talked about his mate Thomas, and how the children were to manage now that the poor fellow was taken, when the gray of the dawn rose floating into the sky off the black rim of the sea.
In a short time the daylight was abroad, with the pink of the coming sun swiftly growing in glory among the clouds in the east. Jacob sat sleeping in the bottom of the boat, squatting Lascar fashion—a huddle of coat and angular knees and bowed head. I got upon a thwart and sent a long thirsty look round.
'By Heaven, Abraham!' I cried, 'nothingin sight, as I live to say it! What, in the name of hope, has come to the sea?'
'We're agoing to have a fine day, I'm thankful to say,' he answered, turning up his eyes. 'But, Lord! what a wreck the lugger looks!'
The poor fellow was as haggard as though he had risen from a sick-bed, and this sudden gauntness or elongation of countenance was not a little heightened by a small powdering of the crystals of salt lying white under the hollow of each eye, where the brine that had been swept up by the squall had lodged and dried.
'Hi, Jacob!' he cried; 'rouse up, matey! Day's broke, and there's work to be done.'
Jacob staggered to his feet with many contortions and grimaces.
'Chock-a-block with rheumatics,' he growled; 'that's how the sea sarves a man. They said it 'ud get warmer the furder we drawed down this way; but if this be what they callswarm, give me the scissors and thumbscrews of a Janivary gale in the Jarman Ocean.' He gazed slowly around him, and fixed his eyes on the stump of the mast. 'Afore we begin, Abraham,' said he, 'I must have a drop of hot corffee.'
'Right,' answered the other; 'a quarter of an hour isn't going to make any difference.'
A fire was kindled, a kettle of water boiled, and, Helga now arriving, the four of us sat, every one with a mug of the comforting, steaming beverage in hand, while the two boatmen settled the procedure of strengthening the wounded spar by 'fishing it,' as it is termed, and of making sail afresh.
The first business of the men was to get the broken mast out of the water. Helga helped, and worked with as much dexterity as though she had been bred to the calling of the Deal waterman. The mast in breaking had been shortened by ten feet, and was therefore hardly as useful a spar to step as the bowsprit. It was laid along the thwarts in the side, and we went to work to strengthen the mast that had been sprung in the Channel by laying pieces of wood over the fractured part, and securely binding them by turn upon turn of rope. This, at sea, they call 'fishing a spar.' Jacob shook his head as he looked at the mast when we had made an end of the repairs, but said nothing. When the mast was stepped, we hoisted the sail with a reef in it to ease the strain. Abraham went to the tiller, the boat's head was put to a south-west course, and once again the little fabric was pushing through it, rolling in a long-drawn way upon a sudden swell that had risen while we worked, with a frequent little vicious shake of white waters off her bow, as though the combing of the small seas irritated her.
The wind was about east, of a November coldness, and it blew somewhat lightly till a little before ten o'clock in the morning, when it came along freshening in a gust which heeled the boat sharply, and brought a wild, anxious look into Abraham's eyes as he gazed at the mast. The horizon slightly thickened to some film of mist which overlay the windward junction of heaven and water, and the sky then took a windy face, with dim breaks of blue betwixt long streaks of hard vapour, under which there nimbly sailed, here and there, a wreath of light-yellow scud. The sea rapidly became sloppy—an uncomfortable tumble of billows occasioned by the lateral run of the swell—and the boat's gait grew so staggering, such a sense of internal dislocation was induced by her brisk, jerky wobbling—now to windward, now to leeward, now by the stern, now by the head, then all the motions happening together, as it were, followed by a sickly, leaning slide down some slope of rounded water—that for the first time in my life I felt positively seasick, and was not a little thankful for the relief I obtained from a nip of poor Captain Nielsen's brandy out of one of the few jars which had been taken from the raft, and which still remained full.
Some while before noon it was blowing a fresh breeze, with a somewhat steadier sea; but the rolling and plunging of the lugger continued sharp and exceedingly uncomfortable. To still further help the mast—Abraham having gone into the forepeak to get a little sleep—Helga and I, at the request of Jacob, who was steering, tied a second reef in the sail: though, had the spar been sound, the lugger would have easily borne the whole of her canvas.
'If that mast goes, what is to be done?' said I to Jacob.
'Whoy,' he answered, 'we shall have to make shift with the remains of the mast that went overboard last night.'
'But what sail will you be able to hoist on that shortened height?'
'Enough to keep us slowly blowing along,' he answered, 'till we falls in with a wessel as will help us to the sort o' spar as 'll sarve.'
'Considering the barrenness of the sea we have been sailing through,' said I, 'the look-out seems a poor one, if we're to depend upon passing assistance.'
'Mr. Tregarthen,' said he, fixing his eyes upon my face, 'I'm an older man nor you, and therefore I takes the liberty of telling ye this: that neither ashore nor at sea do things fall out in the fashion as is hanticipated. That's what the Hi-talian organ-grinder discovered. He conceived that if he could get hold of a big monkey he'd do a good trade; so he buys the biggest he could meet with—a chap pretty nigh as big as himself. What happened? When them parties was met with a week arterwards, it was the monkey that was a-turning the handle, while the horgan-grinder was doing the dancing.'
'The public wouldn't know the difference,' said Helga.
'True for you, lady,' answered Jacob, with an approving nod and a smile of admiration. 'But Mr. Tregarthen here'll find out that I'm speaking the Lard's truth when I says that human hanticipation always works out contrariwise.'
'I heartily hope it may do so in our case!' I exclaimed, vexed by the irrationality, as it seemed to me, of this homely boatman's philosophic views.
'About toime for Abraham to take soights, ain't it?' said he.
I went to the hatch and called to Abraham, who in a few minutes arrived, and, with sleepy eyes, fell to groping after the sun with his old quadrant. While he was thus occupied, Helga touched me lightly on the shoulder and pointed astern. I peered an instant, and then said:
'I see it! A sail!—at the wrong end of the sea again, of course! AnotherThermopylæ, maybe, to thunder past us with no further recognition of our wants than a wagging head over the rail, with a finger at its nose.'
'It's height bells!' cried Abraham; and he sat down to his rough calculations.
Jacob looked soberly over his shoulder at the distant tiny space of white canvas.
'If there's business to be done with her,' said he, 'we must steer to keep her head right at our starn. What course'll she be taking?'
'She appears to be coming directly at us,' answered Helga.
'Why not lower your sail, heave the lugger to, and fly a distress signal?' said I.
I had scarcely uttered the words when the boat violently jumped a sea; a crash followed, and the next instant the sail, with half of the fished mast, was overboard, with the lugger rapidly swinging, head to sea, to the drag of the wreckage.
I was not a little startled by the sudden cracking of the mast, that was like the report of a gun, and the splash of the sail overboard, and the rapid slewing of the boat.
Helga quietly said in my ear, 'Nothing better could have happened. We are now indeed a wreck for that ship astern to sight, and she is sure to speak to us.'
Abraham flung down his log-book with a sudden roaring out of I know not what 'longshore profanities, and Jacob, letting go the helm, went scrambling forwards over the thwarts, heaping sea-blessings, as he sprawled, upon the eyes and limbs of the boat-builder who had supplied the lugger with spars. The three of us went to work, and Helga helped us as best she could, to get the sail in; but the sea that was now running was large compared to what it had been during the night, and the task was extraordinarily laborious and distressful. Indeed, how long it took us to drag that great lugsail full of water over the rail was to be told by the ship astern, for when I had leisure to look for her I found her risen to her hull, and coming along, as it seemed to me, dead for us, heeling sharply away from the fresh wind, but rolling heavily too on the swell, and pitching with the regularity of a swing in motion.
Helga and I threw ourselves upon a thwart, to take breath. The boatmen stood looking at the approaching vessel.
'She'll not miss seeing us, any way,' said Abraham.
'I'm for letting the lugger loie as she is,' exclaimed Jacob: 'they'll see the mess we're in, and back their taws'l.'
'You will signal to her, I hope?' said I.
'Ay,' answered Abraham; 'we'll gi' 'em a flourish of the Jack presently, though there'll be little need, for if our condition ain't going to stop 'em there's nothen in a colour to do it.'
'Abraham,' said I, 'you and Jacob will not, I am sure, think us ungrateful if I say that I have made up my mind—and I am sure Miss Nielsen will agree—that I have made up my mind, Abraham, to leave your lugger for that ship, outward-bound as I can see she is, if she will receive us.'
'Well, sir,' answered Abraham mildly, 'you and the lady are your own masters, and, of course, you'll do as you please.'
'It is no longer right,' I continued, 'that we should go on in this fashion, eating you out of your little floating house and home; nor is it reasonable that we should keep you deprived of the comfort of your forepeak. We owe you our lives, and, God knows, we are grateful! But our gratitude must not take the form of compelling you to go on maintaining us.'
Abraham took a slow look at the ship.
'Well, sir,' said he, 'down to this hour the odds have been so heavy agin your exchanging this craft for a homeward-bounder that I really haven't the heart to recommend ye to wait a little longer. It's but an oncomfortable life for the likes of you and the lady—she having to loie in a little bit of a coal-black room, forrads, as may be all very good for us men, but werry bad and hard for her; and you having to tarn in under that there opening, into which there's no vartue in sailcloth to keep the draughts from blowing. I dorn't doubt ye'll be happier aboard a craft where you'll have room to stretch your legs in, a proper table to sit down to for your meals, and a cabin where you'll loie snug. 'Sides, tain't, after all, as if she wasn't agoing to give ye the same chances of getting home as theAirly Marndew. Only hope she'll receive ye.'
'Bound to it,' rumbled Jacob, 'if so be as her cap'n's aman.'
I turned to Helga.
'Do I decide wisely?'
'Yes, Hugh,' she answered. 'I hate to think of you lying in that cold space there throughout the nights. The two poor fellows,' she added softly, 'are generous, kind, large-hearted men, and I shrink from the thought of the mad adventure they have engaged in. But,' said she, with a little smile and a faint touch of colour in her cheeks, as though she spoke reluctantly, 'theEarly Mornis very uncomfortable.'
'All we have now to pray for is that the captain of that vessel will take us on board,' said I, fixing my eyes on the ship, that was yet too distant for the naked sight to make anything of. 'I suppose, Abraham,' I spoke out, turning to the man, 'that you will request them to give you a boom for a spare mast?'
'Vy, ask yourself the question, sir,' he answered.
'But suppose they have no spare booms, and are unable to accommodate you?'
'Then,' said he, 'we must up with that there stick,' pointing with his square thumb to the mast that had carried away on the previous night, 'and blow along till we meets with something thatwillaccommodate us.'
'But, honestly, men—are you in earnest in your resolution to pursue this voyage to Australia? You two—the crew now half the working strength you started with—a big boat of eighteen tons to handle, and——' I was on the point of referring to the slenderness of his skill as a navigator, but, happily, snapped my lips in time to silence the words.
Abraham eyed me a moment, then gave me a huge, emphatic nod, and, without remark, turned his back upon me in 'longshore fashion, and leisurely looked around the ocean line.