'Men,' said I, 'that ship may take us aboard, and in the bustle I may miss the chance of saying what is in my mind. My name is Hugh Tregarthen, as you know, and I live at Tintrenale, which you have likewise heard me say. I came away from home in a hurry to get alongside the ship that this brave girl's father commanded; and as I was then, so am I now, without a single article of value upon me worthy of your acceptance; for, as to my watch, it was my father's, and I must keep it. But if it should please God, men, to bring us all safely to England again, then, no matter when you two may return, whether in twelve months hence or twelve years hence, you will find set apart for you, at the little bank in Tintrenale, a sum of fifty pounds—which you will take as signifying twenty-five pounds from Miss Helga Nielsen, and twenty-five pounds from me.'
'We thank you koindly, sir,' said Jacob.
'Let us get home, first,' said Abraham; 'yet, I thank ye koindly tew, Mr. Tregarthen,' he added, rounding upon me again and extending his rough hand.
I grasped and held it with eyes suffused by the emotion of gratitude which possessed me: then Jacob shook hands with me, and then the poor fellows shook hands with Helga, whose breath I could hear battling with a sob in her throat as she thanked them for her life and for their goodness to her.
But every minute was bringing the ship closer, and now I could think of nothing else. Would she back her topsail and come to a stand? Would she at any moment shift her helm and give us a wide berth? Would she, if she came to a halt, receive Helga and me? These were considerations to excite a passion of anxiety in me. Helga's eyes, with a clear blue gleam in them, were fixed upon the oncoming vessel; but the agitation, the hurry of emotions in her little heart, showed in the trembling of her nostrils and the contraction of her white brow, where a few threads of her pale-gold hair were blowing.
Jacob pulled the Jack out of the locker, and attached it to the long staff or pole, and fell to waving it as before, when the Hamburger hove into view. The ship came along slowly, but without deviating by a hair's breadth from her course, that was on a straight line with the lugger. She was still dim in the blue, windy air, but determinable to a certain extent, and now with the naked vision I could distinguish her as a barque or ship of about the size of theAnine, her hull black and a row of painted ports running along either side. She sat somewhat high upon the water, as though she were half empty or her cargo very light goods; but she was neat aloft—different, indeed, from the Hamburger. Her royals were stowed in streaks of snow upon their yards, but the rest of her canvas was spread, and it showed in soft, fair bosoms of white, and the cloths carried, indeed, an almost yacht-like brilliance as they steadily swung against the steely gray of the atmosphere of the horizon. The ship pitched somewhat heavily as she came, and the foam rose in milky clouds to the hawse-pipes with a regular alternation of the lifting out of the round, wet, black bows, and a flash of sunshine off the streaming timbers. From time to time Jacob flourished his flagstaff, all of us, meanwhile, waiting and watching in silence. Presently, Abraham put his little telescope to his eye, and, after a pause, said:
'She means to heave-to.'
'How can you tell?' I cried.
'I can see some figures a-standing by the weather mainbraces,' said he; 'and every now and again there's a chap, aft, bending his body over the rail to have a look at us.'
His 'longshore observation proved correct. Indeed, your Deal boatman can interpret the intentions of a ship as you are able to read the passions in the human face. When she was within a few of her own lengths of us, the mainsail having previously been hauled up, the yards on the mainmast were swung, and the vessel's way arrested. Her impulse, which appeared to have been very nicely calculated, brought her surging, foaming, and rolling to almost abreast of us, within reach of the fling of a line before she came to a dead stand. I instantly took notice of a crowd of chocolate-visaged men standing on the forecastle, staring at us, with a white man on the cathead, and a man aft on the poop, with a white wideawake and long yellow whiskers.
'Barque ahoy!' bawled Abraham, for the vessel proved to be of that rig, though it was not to have been told by us as she approached head on.
'Hallo!' shouted the man in the white wideawake.
'For God's sake, sir,' shouted Abraham, 'heave us a line, that we may haul alongside! We're in great distress, and there's a couple of parties here as wants to get aboard ye.'
'Heave them a line!' shouted the fellow aft, sending his voice to the forecastle.
'Look out for it!' bawled the white man on the heel of the cathead within the rail.
A line lay ready, as though our want had been foreseen; with sailorly celerity the white man gathered it into fakes, and in a few moments the coils were flying through the air. Jacob caught the rope with the unerring clutch of a boatman, and the three of us, stretching our backs at it, swung the lugger to the vessel's quarter.
'What is it you want?' cried the long-whiskered man, looking down at us over the rail.
'We'll come aboard and tell you, sir,' answered Abraham. 'Jacob, you mind the lugger! Now, Mr. Tregarthen, watch your chance and jump into them channels [meaning the mizzen chains], and I'll stand by to help the lady up to your hands. Ye'll want narve, miss! Can ye do it?'
Helga smiled.
I jumped on to a thwart, planting one foot on the gunwale in readiness. The rolling of the two craft, complicated, so to speak, by the swift jumps of the lugger as compared with the slow stoops of the barque, made the task of boarding ticklish even to me, who had had some experience in gaining the decks of ships in heavy weather. I waited. Up swung the boat, and over came the leaning side of the barque: then I sprang, and successfully, and, instantly turning, waited to catch hold of Helga.
Abraham took her under the arms as though to lift her towards me when the opportunity came.
'I can manage alone—I shall be safer alone!' she exclaimed, giving him a smile and then setting her lips.
She did as I had done—stood on a thwart, securely planting one foot on the gunwale; and even in such a moment as that I could find mind enough to admire the beauty of her figure and the charming grace of her posture as her form floated perpendicularly upon the staggering motions of the lugger.
'Now, Hugh!' she cried, as her outstretched hands were borne up to the level of mine. I caught her. She sprang, and was at my side in a breath.
'Nobly done, Helga,' said I: 'now over the rail with us.'
She stopped to call Abraham with a voice in which I could trace no hurry of breathing: 'Will you please hand me up my little parcel?'
This was done, and a minute later we had gained the poop of the barque.
The man with the long whiskers advanced to the break of the short poop or upper deck as Helga and I ascended the ladder that led to it. He seized the brim of his hat, and, without lifting it, bowed his head as though to the tug he gave, and said with a slightly nasal accent by no means Yankee, but of the kind that is common to the denomination of 'tub-thumpers':
'I suppose you are the two distressed parties the sailor in the lugger called out about?'
'We are, sir,' said I. 'May I take it that you are the captain of this barque?'
'You may,' he responded, with his eyes fixed on Helga. 'Captain Joppa Bunting, master of the barqueLight of the World, from the river Thames for Table Bay, with a small cargoandfor orders. That gives you everything, sir,' said he.
He pulled at his long whiskers with a complacent smile, now contemplating me and now Helga.
'Captain Bunting,' said I, 'this lady and myself are shipwrecked people, very eager indeed to get home. We have met with some hard adventures, and this lady, the daughter of the master of the barqueAnine, has not only undergone the miseries of shipwreck, the hardships of a raft, and some days of wretchedness aboard that open boat alongside: she has been afflicted, besides, by the death of her father.'
'Very sorry indeed to hear it, miss,' said the Captain; 'but let this be your consolation, that every man's earthly father is bound to die at some time or other, but man's Heavenly Father remains with him for ever.'
Helga bowed her head. Language of this kind in the mouth of a plain sea-captain comforted me greatly as a warrant of goodwill and help.
'I'm sure,' said I, 'I may count upon your kindness to receive this lady and me and put us aboard the first homeward-bound ship that we may encounter.'
'Why, of course, it is my duty as a Christian man,' he answered, 'to be of service to all sorrowing persons that I may happen to fall in with. A Deal lugger—as I may presume your little ship to be—is no fit abode for a young lady of sweet-and-twenty——'
He was about to add something, but at that moment Abraham came up the ladder, followed by the white man whom I had noticed standing on the forecastle.
'What can I do for you, my man?' said the Captain, turning to Abraham.
'Whoy, sir, it's loike this——' began Abraham.
'He wants us to give him a spare boom to serve as a mast, sir,' clipped in the other, who, as I presently got to know, was the first mate of the vessel—a sandy-haired, pale-faced man, with the lightest-blue eyes I had ever seen, a little pimple of a nose, which the sun had caught, and which glowed red, in violent contrast with his veal-coloured cheeks. He was dressed in a plain suit of pilot-cloth, with a shovel peaked cap; but the old pair of carpet slippers he wore gave him a down-at-heels look.
'A spare boom!' cried the Captain. 'That's a big order, my lad. Why, the sight of your boat made me think I hadn't got rid of the Downs yet! There's no hovelling to be done down here, is there?'
'They're carrying out the boat to Australia, sir!' said the mate.
The Captain looked hard at Abraham.
'For a consideration, I suppose?' said he.
'Ay, sir, for a consideration, as you say,' responded Abraham, grinning broadly, and clearly very much gratified by the Captain's reception of him.
'Then,' said the Captain, pulling down his whiskers and smiling with an expression of self-complacency not to be conveyed in words, 'I do not for a moment doubt that youarecarrying that lugger to Australia, for my opinion of the Deal boatmen is this: that for a consideration they would carry their immortal souls to the gates of the devil's palace, and then return to their public-houses, get drunk on the money they had received, and roll about bragging how they had bested Old Nick himself! Spare boom for a mast, eh?' he continued, peering into Abraham's face. 'What's your name, my man?'
'Abraham Vise,' answered the boatman, apparently too much astonished as yet to be angry.
'Well, see here, friend Abraham,' said the Captain turning up his eyes and blandly pointing aloft, 'my ship isn't a forest, and spare booms don't grow aboard us. And yet,' said he, once again peering closely into Abraham's face, 'you're evidently a fellow-Christian in distress, and it's my duty to help you! I suppose youarea Christian?'
'Born one!' answered Abraham.
'Then, Mr. Jones,' exclaimed the Captain, 'go round the ship with friend Abraham Vise, and see what's to be come at in the shape of a spare boom. Off with you now! Time's time on the ocean, and I can't keep my tops'l aback all day.'
The two men went off the poop. The Captain asked me my name, then inquired Helga's, and said, 'Mr. Tregarthen, and you, Miss Nielsen, I will ask you to step below. I have a drop of wine in my cabin, and a glass of it can hurt neither of you. Come along, if you please;' and, so saying, he led the way to a little companion-hatch, down which he bundled, with Helga and myself in his wake; and T recollect, as I turned to put my foot upon the first of the steps, that I took notice (with a sort of wonder in me that passed through my mind with the velocity of thought) of the lemon-coloured face of a man standing at the wheel, with such a scowl upon his brow, that looked to be withered by the sun to the aspect of the rind of a rotten orange, and with such a fierce, glaring expression in his dusky eyes, the pupils of which lay like a drop of ink slowly filtering out upon a slip of coloured blotting-paper, that but for the hurry I was in to follow the Captain I must have lingered to glance again and yet again at the strange, fierce, forbidding creature.
We entered a plain little state-cabin, or living-room, filled with the furniture that is commonly to be seen in craft of this sort—a table, lockers, two or three chairs, a swinging tray, a lamp, and the like. The Captain asked us to sit, and disappeared in a berth forward of the state-cabin; but he returned too speedily to suffer Helga and me to exchange words. He put a bottle of marsala upon the table, took the wineglasses from a rack affixed to a beam, and produced from a side-locker a plate of mixed biscuits. He filled the glasses, and, with his singular smile and equally curious bow, drank our healths, adding that he hoped to have the pleasure of speedily transhipping us.
He had removed his wideawake hat, and there was nothing, for the moment, to distract me from a swift but comprehensive survey of him. He had a long hooked nose, small, restless eyes, and hair so plentiful that it curled upon his back. His cheeks were perfectly colourless, and of an unwholesome dinginess, and hung very fat behind his long whiskers, and I found him remarkable for the appearance of his mouth, the upper lip of which was as thick as the lower. He might have passed very well for a London tradesman—a man who had become almost bloodless through long years of serving behind a counter in a dark shop. He had nothing whatever of the sailor in his aspect—I do not mean the theatrical sailor, our old friend of the purple nose and grog-blossomed skin, but of that ordinary every-day mariner whom one may meet with in thousands in the docks of Great Britain. But that, however, which I seemed to find most remarkable in him was his smile. It was the haunting of his countenance by the very spectre of mirth. There was no life, no sincerity in it. Nevertheless, it caused a perpetual play of features more or less defined, informed by an expression which made one instantly perceive that Captain Joppa Bunting had the highest possible opinion of himself.
He asked me for my story, and I gave it him, he, meanwhile, listening to me with his singular smile, and his eyes almost embarrassingly rooted upon my face.
'Ah!' cried he, fetching a deep sigh, 'a noble cause is the lifeboat service. Heaven bless its sublime efforts! and it is gratifying to know that her Majesty the Queen is a patron of the institution. Mr. Tregarthen, your conscience should be very acceptable to you, sir, when you come to consider that but for you this charming young lady must have perished'—he motioned towards Helga with an ungainly inclination of his body.
'I think, Captain,' said I, 'you must put it the other way about—I mean, that but for Miss NielsenImust have perished.'
'Nielsen—Nielsen,' said he, repeating the word. 'That is not an English name, is it?'
'Captain Nielsen was a Dane,' said I.
'But you are not a Dane, madam?' he exclaimed.
'My mother was English,' she answered; 'but I am a Dane, nevertheless.'
'What is the religion of the Danes?' he asked.
'We are a Protestant people,' she answered, while I stared at the man, wondering whether he was perfectly sound in his head, for nothing could seem more malapropos at such a time as this than his questions about, and his references to, religion.
'What is your denomination, madam?' he asked, smiling, with a drag at one long whisker.
'I thought I had made you understand that I was a Protestant,' she answered, with an instant's petulance.
'There are many sorts of Protestants!' he exclaimed.
'Have you not a black crew?' said I, anxious to change the subject, sending a glance in search of Abraham through the window of the little door that led on to the quarter-deck, and that was framed on either hand by a berth or sleeping-room, from one of which the Captain had brought the wine.
'Yes, my crew are black,' said he; 'black here'—he touched his face—'and, I fear, black here'—he put his hand upon his heart. 'But I have some hope of crushing one superstition out of them before we let go our anchor in Table Bay!'
As he said these words a sudden violent shock was to be felt in the cabin, as though, indeed, the ship, as she dropped her stern into the trough, had struck the ground. All this time the vessel had been rolling and plunging somewhat heavily as she lay with her topsail to the mast in the very swing of the sea; but after the uneasy feverish friskings of the lugger, the motion was so long-drawn, so easy, so comfortable, in a word, that I had sat and talked scarcely sensible of it. But the sudden shock could not have been more startling, more seemingly violent, had a big ship driven into us. A loud cry followed. Captain Bunting sprang to his feet; at the same moment there was a hurried tramp and rush of footsteps overhead, and more cries. Captain Bunting ran to the companion-steps, up which he hopped with incredible activity.
'I fear the lugger has been driven against the vessel's side!' said Helga.
'Oh, Heaven, yes!' I cried. 'But I trust, for the poor fellows' sake, she is not injured. Let us go on deck!'
We ran up the steps, and the very first object I saw as I passed through the hatch was Jacob's face, purple with the toil of climbing, rising over the rail on the quarter. Abraham and two or three coloured men grasped the poor fellow, and over he floundered on to the deck, streaming wet.
Helga and I ran to the side to see what had happened. There was no need to look long. Directly under the ship's quarter lay the lugger with the water sluicing into her. The whole of one side of her was crushed as though an army of workmen had been hammering at her with choppers. We had scarcely time to glance before she was gone! A sea foamed over and filled her out of hand, and down she went like a stone, with a snap of the line that held her, as though it had been thread, to the lift of the barque from the drowning fabric.
'Gone!' cried I. 'Heaven preserve us! What will our poor friends do?'
Captain Bunting was roaring out in true sea-fashion. He might continue to smile, indeed; but his voice had lost its nasal twang.
'How did this happen?' he bawled. 'Why on earth wasn't the lugger kept fended off? Mr. Jones, jump into that quarter-boat and see if we've received any injury.'
The mate hopped into the boat, and craned over. 'It seems all right with us, sir!' he cried.
'Well, then, how did this happen?' exclaimed the Captain, addressing Jacob, who stood, the very picture of distress and dejection, with the water running away upon the deck from his feet, and draining from his finger-ends as his arms hung up and down as though he stood in a shower-bath.
'I'd gone forward,' answered the poor fellow, 'to slacken away the line that the lugger might drop clear, and then it happened, and that's all I know;' and here he slowly turned his half-drowned, bewildered face upon Abraham, who was staring over the rail down upon the sea where the lugger had sunk, as though rendered motionless by a stroke of paralysis.
'Well, and what'll you do now?' cried Captain Bunting.
'Do? Whoy, chuck myself overboard!' shouted Jacob, apparently quickened into his old vitality by the anguish of sudden realization.
Here Abraham slowly looked round, and then turned and lay against the rail, eyeing us lifelessly.
There were four or five coloured seamen standing near, looking on. Though I could not have been sure, I guessed them to be Malays by the somewhat Chinese cast of their features. I had seen such faces once before, discolouring a huddle of white countenances of European seamen looking over the side of a ship, anchored in our bay, at the lifeboat I was in charge of for an hour or two of practice. I also caught the fierce lemon-coloured creature at the wheel following the Captain, as he moved about, with his stealthy dusky eyes; but more than this I had not time to take notice of.
'Abraham,' I exclaimed, approaching him, 'this is a bad business.'
'Ay,' he muttered, drying his lips upon his knuckles. 'There's nothen to do now but to get home again. I laid out fifteen pound for myself on this here job, an it's gone, and gone's, too, the money we was to take up. Oh, Jacob, matey! how came it about? how came it about?' he cried, in a voice of bitter grief that was without the least hint of temper or reproach.
'Ye've heard, Abraham,' answered the other, speaking brokenly. 'Gord He knows how it happened. I'd ha' given ten toimes ower the money we was to airn that this here mucking job had been yourn instead o' mine, that I might feel as sorry for ye, Abey, as ye are for me, mate.'
'Is she clean gone?' cried Captain Bunting, looking over the quarter. 'Yes, clean. Nothing but her boat floating, and a few spars. It is spilt milk, and not to be recovered by tears. You two men will have to go along with us till we can send the four of you home. Mr. Jones, fill on your topsail, if you please. Hi! you Pallunappachelly, swab up that wet there, d'ye hear? Now Moona, now Yong Soon Wat, and you, Shayoo Saibo—maintopsail-brace, and bear a hand!'
While the topsail-yard was in the act of swinging I observed that Abraham's countenance suddenly changed. A fit of temper, resembling his outbreak when the Hamburger had passed us, darkened his face. He rolled his eyes fiercely, then, plucking off his cap, flung it savagely down upon the deck, and, while he tumbled and sprawled about in a sort of mad dance, he bawled at the top of his voice:
'I says itcan'tbe true! What I says is, it's a dream—a blooming, measly dream! TheAirly Marnfoundered!' Here he gave his cap a kick that sent it flying the length of the poop. 'It's a loie, I says. It was to ha' been seventy-foive pound a man, and there was two gone, whose shares would ha' been ourn. And where's moy fifteen pound vorth o' goods? Cuss the hour, I says, that ever we fell in with this barque!'
He raved in this fashion for some minutes, the Captain meanwhile eyeing him with his head on one side, as though striving to find out whether he was drunk or mad. He then rushed to the side with an impetuosity that made me fear he meant to spring overboard, and, looking down for a moment, he bellowed forth, shaking his clenched fist at the sea:
'Yes, then sheisgone, and 'tain't a dream!'
He fetched his thigh a mighty slap, and, wheeling round, stared at us in the manner of one temporarily bereft of his senses by the apparition of something he finds horrible.
'These Deal boatmen have excitable natures!' said Captain Joppa Bunting, addressing me, fixedly smiling, and passing his fingers through a whisker as he spoke.
'I trust you will bear with the poor fellows,' said I: 'it is a heavy loss to the men, and a death-blow to big expectations.'
'Temper is excusable occasionally at sea,' observed the Captain; 'but language I never permit. Yet that unhappy Christian soul ought to be borne with, as you say, seeing that he is a poor ignorant man very sorely tried. Abraham Vise, come here!' he called.
'His name is Wise,' said I.
'Wise, come here!' he shouted.
Abraham approached us with a slow, rolling gait, and a face in which temper was now somewhat clouded by bewilderment.
'Abraham,' said the Captain, looking from him to Jacob, who leaned, wet through, against the rail with a dogged face and his eyes rooted upon the deck, 'you have met with one of those severe reverses which happen entirely for the good of the sufferer, however he may object to take that view. Depend upon it, my man, that the loss of your lugger is for some wise purpose.'
Abraham looked at him with an eye whose gaze delivered the worddamnas articulately as ever his lips could have uttered the oath.
'You two men were going in that small open boat to Australia,' continued the Captain, with a paternal air and a nasal voice, and smiling always. 'Do you suppose you would ever have reached that distant coast?'
'Sartainly I dew, sir,' cried Abraham hoarsely, with a vehement nod.
'I sayno, then!' thundered the Captain. 'Twoof you! Why, I've fallen in with smaller luggers than yours cruising in the Channel with eight of a crew.'
'Ay!' shouted Abraham. 'And vy? Only ask yourself the question! 'Cause they carry men to ship as pilots. But tew can handle a lugger.'
'I say no!' thundered the Captain again. 'What? All the way from the Chops to Sydney Bay. Who's your navigator?'
'Oy am,' answered Abraham.
The Captain curved his odd, double-lipped mouth into a sneer, that yet somehow did not disguise or alter his habitual or congenital smile, while he ran his eye over the boatman's figure.
'You!' he cried, pausing and bursting into a loud laugh; then, resuming his nasal intonation, he continued. 'Mark you this now. The loss of your lugger alongside my barque is a miracle wrought by a bountiful Heaven to extend your existence, which you were deliberately attempting to cut short by a dreadful act of folly, so dreadful that had you perished by a like behaviour ashore you would have been buried with a stake through your middle.'
He turned up his eyes till little more than the whites of them were visible. Grieved as I was for poor Abraham, I scarcely saved myself from bursting out laughing, so ludicrous were the shifting emotions which worked in his face, and so absurd Jacob's fixed stare of astonishment and wrath.
'Now, men,' continued the Captain, 'you can go forward. What'syourname?'
'Jacob Minnikin, sir,' answered the boatman, speaking thickly and with difficulty.
'Get you to the galley, Jacob Minnikin,' said the Captain, 'and dry your clothes. The chief mate will show you where to find a couple of spare bunks in the forecastle. Go and warm yourselves and get something to eat. You'll be willing to work, I hope, in return for my keeping you until I can send you home?'
Abraham sullenly mumbled, 'Yes, sir.'
'All right. We may not be long together; but while I have you I shall be thankful for you. We are a black crew, and the sight of a couple of white faces forward will do me good. Off you go, now!'
Without another word the two men trudged off the poop; but I could hear them muttering to each other as they went down the ladder.
Some time before this sail had been trimmed, and the barque was once again clumsily breaking the seas, making a deal of noisy sputtering at her cutwater to the stoop of her apple-shaped bows, and rolling and plunging as though she were contending with the surge of Agulhas or the Horn. I sent my sight around the ocean, but there was nothing to be seen. The atmosphere had slightly thickened, and it was blowing fresh, but the wind was on the quarter, and the mate had found nothing in the weather to hinder him from showing the mainsail to it again with the port clew up. But the Captain's talk prevented me from making further observations at that time.
'Those two men,' said he, 'have very good, honest, substantial, Scriptural names. Abraham and Jacob,' he smacked his lips. 'I like 'em. I consider myself fortunate in the name of Joppa,' he continued, looking from me to Helga. 'Imighthave been called Robert.'
You would have thought that the smile which accompanied this speech was designed to point it as a joke, but a moment's observation assured me that it was a fixed expression.
'I have observed,' he went on, 'that the lower orders are very dull and tardy in arriving at an appreciation of the misfortunes which befall them. Those two men, sir, are not in the least degree grateful for the loss of their lugger, by which, as I told them, their lives have been undoubtedly preserved.'
'They are poor men,' said Helga, 'and do not know how to be grateful for the loss of perhaps very nearly all that they have in the world.'
He looked at her smilingly, with a glance down her figure, and exclaimed, 'I am quite sure that when your poor dear father's barque sankyoudid not resent the decree of Heaven.'
Helga held her peace.
'Was she insured, madam?' he asked.
She answered briefly 'Yes,' not choosing to enter into explanations.
He surveyed her thoughtfully, with his head on one side; then, addressing me, he said:
'The man Abraham, now. I take it he was skipper of the lugger?'
'Yes, he was so,' said I.
'Is it possible that he knows anything of navigation?'
'I fear his acquaintance with that art is small. He can blunder upon the latitude with the aid of an old quadrant, but he leaves his longitude to dead reckoning.'
'And yet he was going to Australia!' cried the Captain, tossing his pale, fleshly hands and upturning his eyes. 'Still, he is a respectable man?'
'A large-hearted, good man,' cried Helga warmly.
He surveyed her again thoughtfully with his head on one side, slowly combing down one whisker, then addressing me:
'I am rather awkwardly situated,' said he. 'Mr. Ephraim Jones and myself are the only two white men aboard this vessel. Jones is an only mate. You know what that means?'
I shook my head in my ignorance, with a glance at Helga.
'Captain Bunting means,' she answered, smiling, 'that only mate is literally the only mate that is carried in a ship.'
He stared at her with lifted eyebrows, and then gave her a bow.
'Right, madam,' said he. 'And when you are married, dear lady, you will take all care, I trust, that your husband shall beyouronly mate.'
She slightly coloured, and as she swayed to the rolling deck I caught sight of her little foot petulantly beating the plank for a moment. It was clear that Captain Bunting was not going to commend himself to her admiration by his wit.
'You were talking about Abraham,' said I.
'No, I was talking about Jones,' he answered, 'and attempting to explain the somewhat unpleasant fix I am in. The man who acted as second mate was the carpenter of the barque, a fellow named Winstanley. I fear he went mad, after we were a day out. Whether he jumped overboard or fell overboard, I cannot say.' He made a wild grimace, as though the recollection shocked him. 'There was nothing for it but to pursue the voyage with my only mate; and I, of course, have to keep watch-and-watch with him—a very great inconvenience to me. I believe Abraham Wise—or Vise, as he calls himself—would excellently fill Winstanley's place.'
'He wants to get home,' said I.
'Yet I might tempt him to remain with me,' said he, smiling. 'There's no melody so alluring to a Deal boatman's ears as the jingling of silver dollars.'
'You will find him thoroughly trustworthy,' said Helga.
'We will wait a little—we will wait a little!' he exclaimed blandly.
'Of course, Captain Bunting,' said I, 'your views in the direction of Abraham will not, I am sure, hinder you from sending Miss Nielsen and myself to England at the very earliest opportunity.' And I found my eye going seawards over the barque's bow as I spoke.
'The very first vessel that comes along you shall be sent aboard of, providing, to be sure, she will receive you.'
I thanked him heartily, and also added, in the most delicate manner I could contrive on the instant, that all expense incurred by his keeping us should be defrayed. He flourished his fat hand.
'That is language to address to the Pharisee, sir—not to the Samaritan.'
All this was exceedingly gratifying. My spirits rose, and I felt in a very good humour with him. He looked at his watch.
'Five o'clock,' said he. 'Mr. Jones,' he called to the mate, who was standing forward at the head of the little poop ladder, 'you can go below and get your supper, then relieve me. Tell Punmeamootty to put some cold beef and pickles on the table. Better let him set the ham on too, and tell the fool that it won't bite him. Punmeamootty can make some coffee, Mr. Jones; or perhaps you drink tea?' said he, turning to Helga. 'Well,both, Mr. Jones,both,' he shouted: 'teaandcoffee. Make a good meal, sir, and then come and relieve me.'
The mate vanished. Captain Bunting drew back by a step or two to cast a look aloft. He then, and with a sailorly eye methought, despite his whiskers and dingy fleshy face and fixed smile, sent a searching glance to windward, following it on with a cautious survey of the horizon. He next took a peep at the compass, and said something to a mahogany-coloured man who had replaced the fierce-looking fellow at the wheel. I observed that when the Captain approached the man stirred uneasily in his shoes, 'twixt which and the foot of his blue dungaree breeches there lay visible the bare, yellow flesh of his ankles.
I said softly and quickly to Helga, 'This is a very extraordinary shipmaster.'
'Something in him repels me,' she answered.
'He is behaving kindly and hospitably, though.'
'Yes, Hugh; still, I shall be glad to leave the barque. What a very strange crew the ship carries! What are they?'
'I will ask him,' said I, and at that moment he rejoined us.
'Captain,' I exclaimed, 'what countrymen are your sailors, pray?'
'Mostly Malays, with a few Cingalese among them,' he answered. 'I got them on a sudden, and was glad of them, I can tell you. I had shipped an ordinary European crew in the Thames; and in the Downs, where we lay wind-bound for three days, every man-jack of them, saving Mr. Jones and Winstanley, lowered that quarter-boat,' said he, nodding to it, 'one dark night, chucked their traps in and went away for Dover round the South Foreland. I recovered the boat, and was told that there was a crew of Malays lodged at the Sailors' Home at Dover. A vessel from Ceylon that had touched at the Cape and taken in some coloured seamen there had stranded, a night or two before my men ran, somewhere off the South Sand Head. She was completely wrecked, and her crew were brought to Dover. There were eleven of them in all, with a boss or bo's'n or serang, call him what you will—there he is!' He pointed to a dark-skinned fellow on the forecastle. 'Well, to cut the story short, when these fellows heard I was bound to the Cape they were all eager to ship. They offered their services for very little money—very little money indeed,' he added, smiling, 'their object being to get home. I had no idea of being detained in the Downs for a crew, and I had no heart, believe me, to swallow another dose of the British merchant sailor, so I had them brought aboard—and there they are!' he exclaimed, gazing complacently forward and aft, 'but they are black inside and out. They're Mahometans, to a man, and now I'm sorry I shipped them, though I hope to do good—yes,' said he, nodding at me, 'I hope to do good.'
He communicated to this final sentence all the significance that it was in the power of his countenance and manner to bestow; but what he meant I did not trouble myself to inquire. Mr. Jones remained below about ten minutes: he then arrived, and the Captain, who was asking Helga questions about her father's ship, the cause of her loss, and the like, instantly broke off on seeing the mate, and asked us to follow him to the cabin.
The homely interior looked very hospitable, with its table cleanly draped and pleasantly equipped with provisions. The coloured man who apparently acted as steward, and who bore the singular name of Punmeamootty, stood, a dusky shadow, near the cabin-door. In spite of a smoky sunset in the western windy haze, the gloom of the evening in the east was already upon the ocean, and the cabin, as we entered it, showed somewhat darksome to the sight; yet though the figure of the Malay, as I have already said, was no more than a shadow, I could distinctly see his gleaming eyes even from the distance of the companion steps; and I believe had it been much darker still I should have beheld his eyes looking at us from the other end of the cabin.
'Light the lamp, Punmeamootty!' said the Captain. 'Now, let me see,' said he, throwing his wideawake on to a locker; 'at sea we call the last meal supper, Miss Nielsen.'
'Yes, I know that,' she answered.
'Before we go to supper,' he continued, 'you would like to refresh yourself in a cabin. How about accommodating you, Mr. Tregarthen? That cabin is mine,' said he, pointing, 'and the one facing it is Mr. Jones's. There are four gloomy little holes below, one of which was occupied by poor Winstanley, and the others, I fear, are choke full of stores and odds and ends.' He eyed her for a moment meditatively. 'Come,' said he: 'you are a lady, and must be made comfortable, however short your stay with me may be. Mr. Jones will give up his cabin, and go into the steerage!'
'And Mr. Tregarthen?' said Helga.
'Oh, I'll set some of our darkeys after supper to make ready one of the berths below for him.'
'I do not wish to be separated from Mr. Tregarthen,' said Helga.
Captain Bunting looked at her, then at me, then at her left hand, for the coloured steward had now lighted the lamp and we were conversing close to it.
'You are Miss Nielsen?' said the Captain. 'Have I mistaken?'
The blood rose to the girl's cheek.
'No, you have not mistaken,' said I; 'Miss Nielsen and I have now for some days been fellow-sufferers, and, for acquaintance's sake, she wishes her berth to be near mine!'
This I said soothingly, for I thought the skipper's brow looked a little clouded.
'Be it so,' said he, with a bland flourish of both hands: 'meanwhile, madam, such conveniences as my cabin affords are at your service for immediate use.'
She hesitated, but on meeting my eye seemed immediately to catch what was in my mind, and, smiling prettily, she thanked him, and went at once to his cabin.
'The fact is, sir,' said he nasally, dragging at the wristband of his shirt and looking at his nails, 'man at the best is but a very selfish animal, and cruelly neglectful of the comfort and happiness of women. Pardon my frankness: your charming companion has been exposed for several days to the horrors of what was really no better than an open boat. What more natural than that she should wish to adjust her hair and take a peep at herself in a looking-glass? And yet'—here he smiled profoundly—'the suggestion that she should withdraw did not come fromyou.'
'The kindness of your reception of us,' I answered, 'assured me that you would do everything that is necessary.'
'Quite so,' he answered; 'and now, Mr. Tregarthen, I dare say a brush-up will comfort you too. You will find all that you require in Mr. Jones's cabin.'
I thanked him, and at once entered the berth, hardly knowing as yet whether to be amused or astonished by the singular character of this long-whiskered, blandly smiling, and, as I might fairly believe, religious sea-captain.
There was a little window in the berth that looked on to the quarter-deck. On peering through it I spied Abraham and Jacob with their arms buried to the elbow in their breeches' pockets, leaning, with dogged mien, in the true loafing, lounging, 'longshore posture, against the side of the caboose or galley. The whole ship's company seemed to have gathered about them. I counted nine men. There was a rusty tinge in the atmosphere that gave me a tolerable sight of all those people. It was the first dog-watch, when the men would be free to hang about the decks and smoke and talk. The coloured sailors formed a group, in that dull hectic light, to dwell upon the memory—one with a yellow sou'-wester, another with a soldier's forage-cap on his head, a third in a straw hat, along with divers scarecrow-like costumes of dungaree and coarse canvas jumpers—here a jacket resembling an evening-dress coat that had been robbed of its tails, there a pair of flapping skirts, a red wool comforter, half-wellington boots, old shoes, and I know not what besides.
The man that had been pointed out to me as 'boss'—to employ Captain Bunting's term—was addressing the two boatmen as I looked. He was talking in a low voice, and not the slightest growl of his accents reached me. Now and again he would smite his hands and act as though betrayed by temper into a sudden vehement delivery, from which he swiftly recovered himself, so to speak, with an eager look aft at the poop-deck, where, I might suppose, the mate stood watching them, or where, at all events, he would certainly be walking, on the look-out. While he addressed the boatmen, the others stood doggedly looking on, all, apparently, intent upon the countenances of our Deal friends, whose attitude was one of contemptuous inattention.
However, by this time I had refreshed myself with a wash, and now quitted the cabin after a slight look round, in which I took notice of the portrait of a stout lady cut out in black paper and pasted upon a white card, a telescope, a sextant case, a little battery of pipes in a rack over the bunk.
Helga arrived, holding her sealskin hat in her hand. Her amber-coloured hair—for sometimes I would think it of this hue, at others a pale gold, then a very fine delicate yellow—showed with a little roughness in it, as though she were fresh from the blowing of the wind. But had she been an artist she could not have expressed more choiceness in her fashion of neglect. She had heartened and brightened greatly since our rescue from the raft, and, though there were still many traces of her grief and sufferings in her face, there was likewise the promise that she needed but a very short term of good usage from life to bloom into as sweet, modest, and gentle a maiden as a man's heart could wish to hold to itself.
The Captain, motioning us to our places, took his seat at the head of the table with a large air of hospitality in his manner of drawing out his whiskers and inflating his waistcoat. The vessel creaked and groaned noisily as she pitched and rolled, so slanting the table that, but for the rough, well-used fiddles, every article upon it would have speedily tumbled on to the deck. The lamp burned brightly, and almost eclipsed the rusty complexion of daylight that lay upon the glass of the little skylight directly over our heads.
Punmeamootty waited nimbly upon us, though my immediate impression was that his alacrity was not a little animated by fear and dislike. As the Captain sat smilingly recommending the ham that he was carving—dwelling much upon it, and talking of the pig as an animal on the whole more serviceable to man than the cow—I caught the coloured steward watching him as he stood some little distance away upon the skipper's left, with his dusky shining eyes in the corner of their sockets. It reminded me of the look I had observed the fierce-looking fellow at the wheel fasten upon the Captain. It was as though the fellow cursed him with his dusky gaze. Yet there was nothing forbidding in his face, despite his ugliness. His skin was of the colour of the yolk of an egg, and he had a coarse heavy nose, which made me suspect a Dutch hand in the man's creation. His hair was coal black, long, and lank, after the Chinese pattern. It would have been hard to guess his age from such a mask of a face as he carried; but the few bristles on his upper lip suggested youth, and I dare say I was right in thinking him about two-and-twenty.
The Captain talked freely; sometimes he omitted his nasal twang; but his conversation was threaded with pious reflections, and I took notice of a tendency in the man to sermonize, as though little in the most familiar talk could occur out of which a salutary moral was not to be squeezed. He seemed to be very well pleased to have us on board, not perhaps so much because our company was a break as because it provided him with an opportunity to philosophize, and to air his sentiments. I shall not be thought very grateful for thus speaking of a man who had rescued us from a trying and distressful situation, and who was entertaining us kindly, and, I may say, bountifully; but my desire is to give you the truth—to describe exactly as best I can what I saw and suffered in this strange passage of my life, and the portrait I am attempting of Captain Joppa Bunting is as the eyes of my head, and of my mind too, beheld him.
As I looked at him sitting at the table, of a veal-like complexion in that light, blandly gesticulating with his fat hands, expressing himself with a nasal gravity that was at times diverting with the smile that accompanied it, it seemed difficult to believe that he was a merchant captain, the master of as commonplace an old ocean waggon as ever crushed a sea with a round bow. I asked him how long he had followed the life, and he astonished me by answering that he was now forty-four, and that he had been apprenticed to the sea at the age of twelve.
'You will have seen a very great deal in that time, Captain,' said I.
'I believe there is no wonder of the Lord visible upon the face of the deep which I have not viewed,' he responded. 'There is no part of the world which I have not visited. I have coasted the Antarctic zone of ice in a whaler, and I have been becalmed for seventeen weeks right off, with thirty miles of motion only in those seventeen weeks, upon the parallel of one degree north.'
On this I observed that Helga eyed him with interest, yet I seemed to be sensible, too, of an expression of recoil in her face, if I may thus express what I do not know how better to define.
'You have worn wonderfully well,' said I.
'I have taken care of myself,' he answered, smiling.
'Is this your ship, sir?'
'I have a large interest in her,' he replied. 'I am very well content to follow the sea. The sense of being watched over is comforting, and often exhilarating; but I wish,' he exclaimed, with a solemn wagging of his head, 'that the obligation to make money in this life was less, much less, than it is.'
'It is the only life in which we shall require money,' said Helga.
'True, madam,' said he, with an apparently careless but puzzling glance at her; 'but let me tell you that the obligation of money-making soils the soul. I am not surprised that the godliest of the good men of old took up their abode in caves, were satisfied with roots for dinner, and were as happy in a sheep's-skin as a dandy in a costume by Poole. I defy a man to practise virtue and make money too. Punmeamootty, put some wine into the lady's glass!'
Helga declined. The Malay was moving swiftly to execute the order, but stopped dead on her saying no, and with insensible and mouse-like movements regained his former post, where he stood watching the Captain as before.
'Yes,' said I, 'this world would be a pleasant one if we could manage without money.'
'For myself,' said he, casting his eyes over the table, 'I could do very well with a crust of bread and a glass of water; but I have a daughter, Judith Ruby, and I have to work for her.'
This brought a little expression of sympathy into Helga's face.
'Is she your only daughter, Captain Bunting?' she asked.
'My only daughter,' he answered, with a momentary softening of his voice. 'I wish I had her here!' said he. 'You would find her, Miss Nielsen, a good, kind, religious girl. She is lonely in her home when I am away. I am a widower. My dear wife fell asleep six years ago.'
He sighed, but he was smiling too as he did so.
The windows of the skylight had now turned into gleaming ebony against the darkness of the evening outside, and reflected the white table-cloth and the sparkling glass and our figures as though it were a black polished mirror over our heads. I had taken notice of a sharper inclination in the heel of the barque when she rolled to leeward, and, though I was no sailor, yet my ears, accustomed to the noises of the coast, had caught a keener edge in the hum of the wind outside, a more fretful hiss in the stroke of every sea smiting the bends. An order was delivered from the deck above us and shortly afterwards, a singular sound of howling arose, accompanied with the slatting and flapping of canvas.
'Mr. Jones is taking the mainsail off her,' said the Captain, 'but the glass is very steady. We shall have a fine night,' he added, smiling at Helga.
'Is that strange wailing noise made by the crew?' she asked.
'It is, madam. The Malays are scarcely to be called nightingales. They are pulling at the ropes, and they sing as they pull. It is a habit among sailors—but you do not require me to tell you that.'
'I believe there is very little in seamanship, Captain Bunting,' said I, 'that even you, with your long experience, could teach Miss Nielsen.'
She looked somewhat wistfully at me, as though she would discourage any references to her.
'Indeed!' he exclaimed. 'I should like to hear your nautical accomplishments.'
'It was my humour to assist my father when at sea,' she said, with her eyes fixed on the table.
'Now, what can you do?' said he, watching her. 'Pray tell me? A knowledge of the sea among your sex is so rare that a sailor could never value it too greatly in a lady.'
'Let me answer for Miss Nielsen, Captain,' I exclaimed carelessly, with a glance at the Malay steward, whose gaze, like the Captain's, was also directed at Helga. 'She can put a ship about, she can steer, she can loose a jib, and run aloft as nimbly as the smartest sailor; she can stand a watch and work a ship in it, and she can take sights and give you a vessel's place on the chart—within a mile shall I say, Helga?'
He looked at me on my pronouncing the word 'Helga.' I do not know that I had before called the girl thus familiarly in his presence.
'You are joking, Mr. Tregarthen!' said he.
A little smile of appeal to me parted Helga's lips.
'No, no,' said I, 'I am not joking. It is all true. She is the most heroical of girls, besides. We owe our preservation to her courage and knowledge. Helga, may God bless you, and grant us a safe and speedy return to a home where, if the dear heart in it is still beating, we shall meet with a sweet welcome, be sure.'
'But you must not be in a hurry to return home,' exclaimed the Captain, turning his smiling countenance to Helga; 'you must give me time to tempt you to remain on boardThe Light of the World. Your qualifications as a sailor should make you an excellent mate, and you will tell me how much a month you will take to serve in that capacity?'
I observed the same look of recoil in her face that I had before seen in it. A woman's instincts, thought I, are often amazingly keen in the interpretation of men's minds. Or is she merely nervous and sensitive with a gentle, pretty modesty and bashfulness which render direct allusions to her after this pattern distressing? For my part, I could find no more than what the French call badinage in the Captain's speech, with nothing to render it significant outside the bare meaning of the words in his looks or manner.
She did not answer him, and by way of changing the subject, being also weary of sitting at that table, for we had finished the meal some time, though the Malay continued to look on, as though waiting for the order to clear away, I pulled out my watch.
'A quarter to seven,' I exclaimed. 'You will not wish to be late to-night, Helga. You require a good long sleep. By this time to-morrow we may have shifted our quarters; but we shall always gratefully remember Captain Bunting's goodness.'
'That reminds me,' said he, 'your cabins must be got ready. Punmeamootty, go forward and tell Nakier to send a couple of hands aft to clear out two of the berths below. No! tell Nakier I want him, and then come aft and clear the table.'
The man, gliding softly but moving swiftly, passed through the door that led on to the quarter-deck.
'I wish I could tempt you, Miss Nielsen,' continued the Captain, 'to take Mr. Jones's cabin. You will be so very much more comfortable there.'
'I would rather be near Mr. Tregarthen, thank you,' she answered.
'You are a fortunate man to be so favoured!' he exclaimed, smiling at me. 'However, every convenience that my cabin can supply shall be placed at Miss Nielsen's disposal. Alas! now, if my dear Judith were here! She would improve, by many womanly suggestions, my humble attempts as a Samaritan. Our proper business in this world, Mr. Tregarthen, is to do good to one another. But the difficulty,' he exclaimed with a sweep of his hand, 'is to doallthe good that can be done! Now, for instance, I am at a loss. How am I to supply Miss Nielsen's needs?'
'They are of the simplest—are not they, Helga?' said I.
'Quite the simplest, Captain Bunting,' she answered, and then, looking at him anxiously, she added: 'My one great desire now is to get to England. I have been the cause of taking Mr. Tregarthen from his mother, and I shall not feel happy until they are together again!'
'Charity forbid,' exclaimed the Captain, 'that I should question for an instant the heroism of Mr. Tregarthen's behaviour! But,' said he, slightly lowering his voice and stooping his smiling face at her, so to say, 'when your brave friend put off in the lifeboat he did not, I may take it, know that you were on board?'
'But Iwason board,' she answered quickly: 'and he has saved my life, and I wish him to return to his mother, who may believe him drowned and be mourning him as dead!'
At that moment the man whom the Captain styled Nakier entered the little cuddy, followed by the steward. He made a singular gesture, a sort of salaam, bowing his head and whipping both hands to his brow, but with something of defiance in the celerity of the gesture. He was the man whom I had seen haranguing the two boatmen. He had a large, fine intelligent eye, liquid and luminous, despite the Asiatic duskiness of its pupil; his features were regular and almost handsome: an aquiline nose, thin and well chiselled at the nostrils, a square brow, small ears decorated with thick gold hoops, and teeth as though formed of china. The expression of his face was mild and even prepossessing, his complexion a light yellow. He bore in his hand what had apparently been a soldier's foraging cap, and was dressed in an old pilot jacket, a red shirt, and a pair of canvas breeches held by a belt, to which was attached a sheath containing a knife lying tight against his hip. He took me and Helga in with a rapid roll of his handsome eyes, then looked straight at the Captain in a posture of attention, with a little contraction of the brow.
'I want a couple of the berths below cleared out at once,' said the Captain. 'Goh Syn Koh seems one of the smartest among you. Send him. Also send Mow Lauree. He can make a bed, I hope? He is making a bed for himself! Bear a hand and clear this table, Punmeamootty, so as to be able to assist. You'll superintend the work, Nakier. See all clean and comfortable.'
'Yaas, sah,' said the man.
He was going.
'Stop!' exclaimed the Captain, smiling all the time he continued to talk. 'Did you eat your dinner to-day!'
'No, sah.'
'What has become of it?'
'Overboard, sah,' answered the man, preserving his slight frown.
'Overboard! As good a mess of pork and peasoup as was ever served out to a ship's company. Overboard! For the third time! If it happens again——' he checked himself with a glance at Helga: 'if it happens again,' he went on, speaking with an air of concern, 'I shall be obliged to stop the beef.'
'We cannot eat pork, sah—we are Mussulmans——' he was proceeding.
The Captain silenced him with a bland motion of the hand.
'Send the men aft, Nakier,' said he, with a small increase of nasal twang in his utterance, 'and see that the cleaning and the clearance out is thorough.'
He gave him a hard, significant nod, and the man marched out, directing an eager look at me as he wheeled round, as though for my sympathy.
Punmeamootty was clearing the table with much ill-dissembled agitation in the hurry of his movements: his swift glances went from the Captain to me, and then to Helga. They were like the flashing of a stiletto, keen as the darting blue gleam of the blade, and they would be as murderous, too, I thought, if the man could execute his wishes with his eyes. I believed the Captain would now make some signal to leave the table, but he continued to sit on.
'Did you observe that man just now?' said he, addressing Helga. She answered 'Yes.' 'Handsome, do you think?' said he.
'He had a mild, pleasant face,' she answered.
'His name,' said he, 'is Vanjoor Nakier. He is boss of the native crew, and I allow him to act as a sort of boatswain. It is hard to reconcile so agreeable a countenance with the horrible and awful belief which must make him for ever and ever a lost soul, if he is not won over in plenty of time for repentance, for prayer and mortification.'
'You seem to have the fellows' names very pat,' said I. 'Are you acquainted with the Malay tongue?'
'Ah!' cried he, with a shake of the head; 'I wish I were. I might then prove a true missionary to the poor benighted fellows. Yet I shall hope to have broken heavily into their deplorable and degraded superstitions before I dismiss them at Cape Town.'
I caught sight of the shadowy form of the steward lurking abaft the companion-steps, where he seemed busy with some plates and a basket.
'It is your hope,' said I, 'to convert the Mussulmans?'
'It is my hope, indeed,' he answered; 'and, pray, what honester hope should possess a man?'
'It is an admirable desire,' said I, 'but a little dangerous perhaps.'
'Why?' asked he.
'Well,' said I, 'I am no traveller. I have seen nothing of the world, but I have read, and I have always gathered from books of voyages, that there is no class of men more bigoted in their faith and more treacherous in their conduct than Malay seamen.'
'Hush!' cried Helga, putting her finger to her lips and looking in the direction of the steward.
The Captain turned in his chair.
'Are you there, Punmeamootty?'
'Yes, sah;' and his figure came swiftly gliding into the light.
'Go below and help the others! They should be at work by this time.'
The man went out on to the quarter-deck, where, close against the cuddy front, lay the little hatch that conducted to the steerage.
'You are quite right,' exclaimed the Captain, lying back and expanding his waistcoat. 'Malay seamen are, undoubtedly, treacherous. In fact, treachery is part and parcel of the Malay character. It is the people of that nation who run amuck, you know.'
'What is that?' inquired Helga.
'A fellow falls crazy,' answered the Captain, smiling, 'whips out a weapon called a creese, and stabs and kills as many as he can encounter as he flies through the streets.'
'They are a people to live on good terms with,' said Helga, looking at me.
'They are a people,' said the Captain, nasally accentuating his words, 'who are to be brought to a knowledge of the Light; and, in proportion as the effort is dangerous, so should the worker glory in his task.'
He gazed at Helga, as though seeking her approval of this sentiment. But she was looking at me with an expression of anxiety in her blue eyes.
'I gather,' said I, with curiosity stimulated by thought of the girl's and my situation aboard this homely little barque, with her singular skipper and wild, dark crew—'I gather, Captain Bunting, from what has passed, that the blow you are now levelling at these fellows' superstitions—as you call them—is aimed at their diet?'
'Just so,' he answered. 'I am trying to compel them to eat pork. Who knows that before the equator be crossed I may not have excited a real love for pork among them? That would be a great work, sir. It will sap one of the most contemptible of their superstitions, and provide me with a little crevice for the insertion of the wedge of truth.'
'I believe pork,' said I, 'is not so much a question of religion as a question of health with these poor dark creatures, bred in hot latitudes.'
'Pork enters largely into their faith,' he answered.
'So far, you have not been very successful, I think?'
'No. You heard what Vanjoor Nakier said. The wasteful wretches have for the third time cast their allowance overboard. Only think, Miss Nielsen, of wilfully throwing over the rail as much hearty excellent food—honest salt pork and very fair peasoup—as would keep a poor family at home in dinners for a week!'
'What do they eat instead?' she asked.
'Why, on pork days, biscuit, I suppose. There is nothing else.'
'You give them beef every other day?' said I.
'Beef and duff,' he answered; 'but I shall stop that. Famine may help me in dealing with their superstitions.'
It was not for me, partaking, as Helga and I were, of this man's hospitality, using his ship, dependent upon him, indeed, for my speedy return home with Helga—it was not for me, I say, at this early time at all events, to remonstrate with him, to tell him that, exalted as he might consider his motives, they were urging him into a very barbarous, cruel behaviour; but, as I sat looking at him, my emotion, spite of his claims upon my kindness, was one of hearty disgust, with deeper feelings working in me besides, when I considered that, if our evil fortune forced us to remain for any length of time on boardThe Light of the World, we might find his theory of conversion making his ship a theatre for as bad a tragedy as was ever enacted upon the high seas.
On a sudden he looked up at a little timepiece that was ticking against a beam just over his head.
'Have you any acquaintance with the sea, Mr. Tregarthen?' he asked.
'Merely a boating acquaintance,' I replied.
'Can you stand a watch?'
'I could keep a look-out,' said I, a little dismayed by these questions, 'but I am utterly ignorant of the handling of a ship.'
He looked reflectively at Helga, then at me, pulling down first one whisker, then the other, while his thick lips lay broad in a smile under his long hooked nose.
'Oh, well' said he, 'Abraham Wise will do.' He went to the cuddy door and called 'Forward there!'
'Yaas, sah,' came a thick Africander-like note out of the forecastle obscurity.
'Ask Abraham Wise to step aft.'
He resumed his seat, and in a few minutes Abraham arrived. Helga instantly rose and gave him her hand with a sweet cordial smile that was full of her gratification at the sight of him. For my part, it did my heart good to see him. After the tallowy countenance and odd talk of the Captain and the primrose complexions and scowling glances of his Malays, there was real refreshment to the spirits to be got out of the homely English face and English 'longshore garb of the boatman, with the man's suggestions, besides, of the English Channel and of home.
'And how is Jacob?' said I.
'Oh, he's a-feeling a little better, sir. A good bit down, of course, as we both are. 'Taint realizable evennow.'
'Do you refer to the loss of your lugger?' said Captain Bunting.
'Ay, sir, to theAirly Marn,' answered Abraham, confronting him, and gazing at him with a steadfastness that slightly increased his squint.
'But surely, my good fellow,' cried the Captain, 'you had plenty of time, I hope, to feel thoroughly grateful for your preservation from the dreadful fate which lay before you had Providence suffered you to continue your voyage?'
'Oi dunno about dreadful fate,' answered Abraham: 'all I can say is, I should be blooming glad if that thereAirly Marnwas afloat again, or if so be as we'd never fallen in with this hereLight of the World.'
'It is as I told you, you perceive,' exclaimed the Captain, smiling and addressing Helga and me in his blandest manner: 'as we descend the social scale, recognition of signal and providential mercies grows feebler and feebler, until it dies out—possibly before it gets down to Deal boatmen. I want a word with you, Abraham Wise. But first, how have you been treated forward?'
'Oh, werry well indeed, sir,' he answered. 'The mate showed us where to tarn in when the time comes round, and I dessay we'll manage to git along all right till we gets clear of ye.'
'What have you had to eat?'
'The mate gave us a little bit o' pork for to be biled, but ye've got a black cook forrads as seemed to Jacob and me to take the dressing of that there meat werry ill.'
The Captain seemed to motion the matter aside with his hand, and said:
'My vessel is without a second mate; I mean, a man qualified to take charge of the deck when Mr. Jones and I are below. Now, I am thinking that you would do very well for that post.'
'I'd rather go home, sir,' said Abraham.
'Ay,' said the Captain, complacently surveying him, 'but while you are with me, you know, you must be prepared to do your bit. I find happiness in assisting a suffering man. But,' added he nasally, 'in this world we must give and take. You eat my meat and sleep in what I think I may fairly term my bedroom. What pay do I exact? Simply the use of your eyes and limbs.'
He glanced with a very self-satisfied expression at Helga. It seemed, indeed, that most of his talk now wasather when not directlytoher. She had come round to my side of the table after leaving Abraham, and giving her my chair, I stood listening, with my hand on the back of it.
'I'm quite willing to tarn to,' said Abraham, 'while I'm along with ye, sir. I ain't afeared of work. I dorn't want no man's grub nor shelter for nothen.'
'Quite right,' said the Captain; 'those are respectable sentiments. Of course, if you accept my offer I will pay you, give you the wages that Winstanley had—four pounds a month for the round voyage.'
Abraham scratched the back of his head and looked at me. This proposal evidently put a new complexion upon the matter to his mind.
'You can handle a ship, I presume?' continued the Captain.
'Whoy, yes,' answered Abraham with a grin of wonder at the question: 'if I ain't been poiloting long enough to know that sort o' work, ye shall call me a Malay.'
'I should not require a knowledge of navigation in you,' said the Captain.
Abraham responded with a bob of the head, then scratching at his back hair afresh, said:
'I must ask leave to tarn the matter over. I should like to talk with my mate along o' this.'
'I'll put him on the articles, too, if he likes, at the current wages,' said the Captain. 'However, think over it. You can let me know to-morrow. But I shall expect you to take charge during the middle watch.'
'That I'll willingly dew, sir,' answered Abraham. 'But how about them Ceylon chaps and Malays forrads? Dew they understand sea tarms?'
'Perfectly well,' answered the Captain, 'or how should I and Mr. Jones get along, think you?'
'Well,' exclaimed Abraham: 'I han't had much to say to 'em as yet. One chap's been talking a good deal this evening, and I allow he's got a grievance, as most sailors has. There's some sort o' difficulty: I allow it lies in the eating; but a man wants practice to follow noicely what them there sort o' coloured covies has to say.'
'Well,' exclaimed the Captain, with another bland wave of the hand in dismissal of the subject, 'we understand each other, at all events, my lad.'
He went to the locker from which he had extracted the biscuits, produced a bottle of rum, and filled a wineglass.
'Neat or with water?' said he, smiling.
'I've pretty nigh had enough water for to-day, sir,' answered Abraham, grinning too, and looking very well pleased at this act of attention. 'Here's to you, sir, I'm sure, and wishing you a prosperous woyage. Mr. Tregarthen, your health, sir, and yourn, miss, and may ye both soon get home and find everything comfortable and roight.' He drained the glass with a smack of his lips. 'As pretty a little drop o' rum as I've had this many a day,' said he.