It was about half-past nine when this gale took us, but such was the force and weight of it, so flattening and shearing was its scythe-like horizontal sweep, that no sea worth speaking of had risen till ten o'clock, and then, indeed, it was beginning to run high. All this while there had been no sound of human voices, but at this hour a command was delivered above our heads, and going on to the quarter-deck, I dimly discerned the figures of men hauling upon the forebraces; but they pulled dumbly; no song broke from them; they were silent as though in terror. A little later on I knew by the motions of the barque that she had been brought to the wind and lay hove-to.
That few vessels would better know how to plunge and roll than this oldLight of the WorldI might have guessed from her behaviour in quiet weather, when there was nothing but a slight swell to lift her. But I never could have conjectured how truly prodigious was her skill in the art of tumbling. She soared and sank as an empty cask might. She took every hollow with a shock that threatened to rend her bones into fragments, as though she had been hurled through the air from a mighty height; and when she swung up an acclivity, the sensation was that of being violently lifted, as by a balloon or by the grip of an eagle. Groans and cries rose from her interior as though she had a thousand miserable, perishing slaves—men, women, and children—locked up in her hold.
'This,' said I to Helga, 'is worse than theAnine.'
'Yet it was blowing harder on that Saturday night than it is now,' she answered, watching the mad oscillations of the cabin lamp with serene eyes and a mouth steadfast in expression. 'I have a greater dread of Captain Bunting's smile,' she continued, 'than of any hurricane that can blow across the ocean.' She looked at the clock. 'He is certain to arrive shortly. He is sure to find some excuse to torture me with his politeness. He will tease me to exchange my cabin. I think I will go to bed, Hugh.'
There was little temptation to remain up. I put my hand under her arm to steady the pair of us, and we passed on to the quarter-deck, where I found the hatch that led to our sleeping quarters shut. We lifted it, and looked into a blackness profounder than that of a coal-mine. On this I roared for Punmeamootty. I shouted four or five times at the top of my lungs, and then some voice bawled from over the rail of the deck above, 'What's wrong down there?' Who it was I could not tell; it was impossible to distinguish voices amid the hellish clamour of the wind roaring in the rigging with the sound of a tempest-swept forest. I took no notice, and bawled again for Punmeamootty, and, after a little, the poor coloured wretch came out of the darkness into the sheen of the cabin-light that feebly touched the quarter-deck, crawling on his hands and knees. He was soaked through, and when he stood up could scarcely keep his feet. Indeed, forward, the seas were sweeping the decks in sheets, and each time the vessel lifted her bows the water came roaring in a fury of foam to the cuddy front.
We were forced to put the hatch on again to keep the sea out of the ship till Punmeamootty came staggering out of the cuddy with a lantern. Helga then dropped below with amazing dexterity, and I handed the light down to her, requesting that she would hang it up and leave it burning, as I was in no mood to 'turn in' just then, wishing to see more of the weather before resting, and to smoke a pipe. I put the hatch on and re-entered the cuddy, followed by Punmeamootty.
'You seem half drowned!' said I.
'A sea knock me down, sah. Is dere danger, sah?'
'I hope not,' I answered. 'Do you feel equal to picking up that mess?' and I pointed to the broken china and bit of beef, and so on.
He turned a terrified eye upon them, staggering and swaying wildly, and then, as though he had not heard my question, he exclaimed, 'We all say dis storm come tro' Capt'n being wicked man! Tankee de Lor'! we hab no eat pork! Tankee de Lor'! we hab no eat pork!'
He bared his gleaming teeth, as though in the anguish of cold, and shook his small clenched fist at the skylight. I sat down and lighted a pipe, and, having been somewhat chilled by waiting out in the wet of the quarter-deck for Punmeamootty to bring the lantern, I slided and clawed my way round to Captain Bunting's locker for a bottle of rum that lay within. As I did this, the companion door opened, and down came the skipper. The wind and the wet had twisted his whiskers into lines like lengths of rope. I could have burst into a laugh at the sight of his singular face, framed in the streaming thatch and flannel ear-protectors of his sou'-wester. The water poured from his oilskins as he came to a stand at the end of the table, grabbing it, and looking about him.
'What's all that?' cried he, pointing with a fat forefinger to the mess on deck.
This was addressed to Punmeamootty, but I answered, flinging the surliest note I could manage into my voice, which I had to raise into a shout, 'An accident. This is a beast of a ship, sir! No barge could make worse weather of a breeze of wind.'
I let fall the lid of the locker, and sat upon it, poising the bottle of rum, and blowing a great cloud with my pipe.
'Where is Miss Nielsen?' he exclaimed.
'Gone to bed,' I answered. 'Punmeamootty, reach me a glass out of that rack.'
The man, in taking the tumbler, reeled to a violent heel of the deck, and let it fall.
'D—n it!' roared the Captain, 'you clumsy son of a bitch! What more damage is to be done?' His sudden passion made his fixed smile extraordinarily grotesque. 'Get a basket and pick up that stuff, and bear a hand!' he thundered. 'Has Miss Helga a light?'
'Yes,' I answered. 'I have seen to that.'
'But she may fall—she may let the lantern drop!'
'She is a better sailor than you,' I called out; 'she knows how to keep her feet. Punmeamootty! a tumbler, if you please, before you begin picking up that stuff.'
'I must see that Miss Nielsen's lantern is safe,' said the Captain; and he was coming forward as though to pass through the cuddy door. I sprang to my feet and confronted him on widely stretched legs.
'No man,' said I, 'enters Miss Nielsen's sleeping quarters while she and I remain in this ship.'
He stared at me, with twenty emotions working in his face. His countenance then changed. I perceived him glance at the bottle of rum that I held by the neck, and that I was just in the temper to let him have fair between his eyes had he attempted to shove past me. I believe he thought I had been drinking.
'I can assure you,' he exclaimed, with a violent reaching out of his mind, so to speak, in the direction of his regular and familiar blandness, 'that Miss Nielsen's privacy is as sacred to me as to you. Will you go below and see that her light is all right? It is a matter that as much concerns your safety as ours.'
Without answering him, I opened the locker, replaced the bottle, and continuing to puff out great clouds of smoke through the excitement under which I laboured—for I had been prepared for a hand-to-hand struggle with him, and my heart beat fast to the resolution of my temper—I quitted the cuddy, with a loud call to Punmeamootty to follow me and replace the hatch.
Whether the coloured steward put the hatch on, whether, indeed, he followed me as I bade him, I cannot tell. I found the lantern burning bravely and swinging fiercely under the beam, and extinguished it, and lay down completely clothed, with the exception of my boots, shrewdly guessing there would be little sleep for me that night.
That it blew at any time as hard as it had when we were aboard theAnine, I cannot say; enough that the dreadful maddened motions of the old vessel made a truly hideous gale of wind of the weather. Again and again she would tumble off the head of a sea and fall headlong into the yawn of water at the base, heeling over as she fell, till you would have believed the line of her masts parallel with the horizon, and strike herself such a mighty blow when she got to the bottom, that you listened, with a thumping heart, for a crackling and a rending noise of timbers to tell you that she was going to pieces like a child's house of cards. It was impossible to sleep; twice I was flung from my bunk, and came very near to breaking a limb. I called to Helga, and found her awake. I asked her how she did; but, silver-clear and keen as her voice was, I could not catch her answer.
It is likely that towards the small hours of the morning I now and again snatched a few minutes of sleep. From one of these brief spells of slumber I was aroused by the blow of a sea that thrilled like an electric shock through every plank and fastening of the vessel, and to my great joy I observed, as I thought, the faint gray of dawn colouring the dim and weeping glass of the scuttle. I immediately pulled on my boots and made for the hatch, but the cover was on and the darkness was as deep as ever it had been at midnight. I considered for a minute how I should make myself heard, and groping my way back to my berth, I took a loose plank, or bunk-board as it is called, from out of the sea-bedstead, and with it succeeded in raising such a thunder in the hollow cover that in a few minutes it was lifted. The homely, flat, ruddy-cheeked face of Jacob, his head clothed in a somewhat tattered yellow sou'-wester, which he had probably borrowed from one of his coloured mates forward, looked down upon me through the glimmering square of the aperture.
'Why, blowed, Mr. Tregarthen,' cried he, 'if Oi didn't think the barque was ashore! But ye'd have had to hammer much louder and much longer before escaping from that rat-trap, if it hadn't been for me a-sheltering of moyself under this 'ere break.'
It was a wild scene indeed to arrive on deck and suddenly view. Furious as was the behaviour of the barque, I could have got no notion of the weight of the surge from her capers. A huge swelling, livid, frothing surface—every billow looking to rear to the height of the maintop, where it was shattered and blown into a snowstorm—a heaven of whirling soot: this, in brief, was the picture. The vessel, however, was undamaged aloft. She was lying hove-to under a band of close-reefed topsail, which glanced like a sheet of foam against the stooping dismal dusk of the sky. None of the dark-skinned crew were visible. Jacob roared in my ear that they had been half wild with fear during the night.
'There's some sort of superstition a-working in them,' he shouted; 'they've been a-praying and a-praying horrible, arter their fashion. Lucky for the ship that she was snugged afore the storm busted. Them poor covies ain't agoing to save their lives when the call comes for them to live or perish.'
'Who has the watch?' said I.
'The mate,' he answered.
I looked at my watch, and was astonished to find that it was after eight. I had believed the hour to be daybreak, but, indeed, it was surprising that any light at all should have had power to sift through that storm-laden sky. Helga at this moment showed in the hatch. I took her hand. She looked pale, but her mouth was firm as she swept the boiling, swollen scene with her gaze, holding the deck with feet that seemed to float above the planks.
'What a night it has been!' she cried. 'This is a bad ship for bad weather. Hour after hour I have been thinking that she was going to pieces!'
I told Jacob to replace the hatch-cover, and the girl and I entered the cuddy, as it was impossible to converse in the open; while, spite of the parallel on which we reeled, the weight of the wind carried an edge as of a Channel January blast in it. In the comparative shelter of the interior we were able to talk, and I told her how I had behaved to the Captain on the previous night.
'Nothing that we can do,' said she, 'can signify while this weather lasts!'
'No, indeed!' I exclaimed. 'We must now pray for the ship to live. Our leaving her is made a twopenny consideration of by this gale.'
She rose to look at the tell-tale compass, and returned to my side with a look of concern and a sad shake of the head.
'This must end our dream of Santa Cruz,' said she.
'It was an idle dream at the best,' I answered.
'Unless it should result in disabling the barque!' she continued. She added, with a little passion, as she looked through the cuddy window on to the quarter-deck: 'I wish all three masts would go overboard!'
'Leaving the hull sound,' said I.
'Yes, yes, leaving the hull sound. I would be content to roll about in this hateful vessel for a whole fortnight, if I could be sure of being taken off at the end. Anything,anythingto terminate this cruel, this ridiculous captivity!'
As these words left her lips, the Captain came down the companion-steps. He paused on seeing us, as though he had supposed the cuddy empty, and was ashamed to be seen in that figure. The dried white salt lay like flour in his eyes, his whiskers were mere rags of wet hair; a large globule of salt water hung at the end of his nose, like a gem worn after the Eastern fashion. He struggled along to where we sat, and extended his hand to Helga. In his most unctuous manner, that contrasted ludicrously with his streaming oilskins, he expressed the hope that she had slept well, lamented the severity of the gale, for her sake, but assured her there was no danger, that the barque was making noble weather of it, and that he expected the wind to moderate before noon. He held her hand while he spoke, despite her visible efforts to withdraw it from his grasp. He then addressed me:
'I have to apologize,' he exclaimed, 'for a little exhibition of temper last night. I employed an expletive which I am happy to think has not escaped me for years. The provocation was great—the anxieties of the gale—the loss of a foretopmast-staysail—the ruined crockery on the deck—a bottle of my valuable cordial-brandy wasted—Punmeamootty's somewhat insolent stupidity: the most pious mind might be reasonably forgiven for venting itself in the language of the forecastle, under the irritation of so many trials! But I offer you my apologies, Mr. Tregarthen, and I hope, sir, that you slept well!'
I answered him coldly and with averted eyes, being now resolved to persevere in my assumption of contemptuous dislike, which I also desired he should believe was animated by a determination to punish him when I got ashore.
He went to his cabin to refresh himself, first taking care to inform us, with a large smile, that he had spent the whole of the night on deck in looking after the vessel, 'whose safety,' he exclaimed, with a significant leer at Helga, 'has been rendered extraordinarily precious to me since Monday last.'
I now told her—for I had forgotten the incident—how our oily friend had whipped out a small oath on the previous night.
'So, then, he has humanized himself to you?' said she, laughing.
'It is the only symptom of sincerity I have observed in him,' I exclaimed.
He reappeared presently, soaped, shining, and smiling, with dried whiskers floating smoke-like on either hand a purple satin cravat. But the breakfast was to be a poor one that morning. The cook, it seems, could not keep the galley fire alight, and we had to make the best meal we could off a tin of preserved meat and some biscuit and wine-and-water. The Captain was profusely apologetic to Helga, and unctuously ascribed the poverty of the meal to me, who, he said with an air of jocosity, was the cause of half a ham and an excellent piece of beef being rendered unfit for the table. I made no answer to this. Indeed, Helga and I sat like mutes at that table; but the Captain talked abundantly, almost wholly addressing himself to the girl. In truth, it was now easy to see that the unfortunate man was head over ears in love with her. His gaze was a prolonged stare of admiration, and he seemed to find nothing in her behaviour to chill or repel him. On the contrary, the more she kept her eyes downwards bent, the colder and harder grew her face, the more taciturn she was—again and again not vouchsafing even a monosyllabic answer to him—the more he warmed towards her, the more he encroached in his behaviour. If he had any sensibility, it was armour-clad by complacency. I never could have believed that vanity had such power as I here found to sheath so impenetrably the human understanding. 'Well,' thought I to myself, 'all this means a voyage for Helga, if not for me. Assuredly he'll not part with her this side of the Cape, and the fool's hope,' I thought, as I let my eyes rest on the grinning mask of his countenance, 'is that he will have won her long before he reaches the parallel of thirty-four degrees south, though he has to make the most of every calm and of every gale of wind to achieve his end.'
I will not attempt to follow the hours of that day. They were little more than a repetition of our experiences in theAnine. The Captain came and went, but for the most part Helga and I remained in the cabin. The gale somewhat moderated at noon, as the skipper had predicted; but it still blew too hard to make sail on the ship, and she lay hove-to in the trough, sickening me to the inmost recesses of my soul with her extravagant somersaults and prodigious falls and upheavals. Somewhere about half-past four that afternoon, on looking through the cuddy-window, I saw Jacob smoking a pipe in the shelter of the projection of the Captain's and mate's cabins. I thought I would keep him company, and, having cut up a pipe of tobacco for myself, I quitted Helga, who showed a disposition to doze, and joined the boatman.
The wind made a great howling aloft, and the thunderous wash of the breaking waters against the vessel's side put a wild note of storm into the shrieking and hissing and hooting of the rigging. But it was fairly calm in the recess, and we conversed very easily. I asked Jacob, while I pointed over the lee-rail at the huge, dark-green, froth-laced backs of the seas rushing from the ship in headlong race, what would be his thoughts of this weather if he were aboard theEarly Morn.
'Why, the lugger 'ud be doing as well as this here bucket, any way,' said he.
'Captain Bunting,' said I, 'will think that you are not half grateful enough for your deliverance.'
'He is a proper gentleman!' he exclaimed. 'Abraham swears there ain't the likes of him afloat for politeness; but his crew ben't of Abey's mind, I'm afraid. Looks to me as if there's going to be trouble.'
'Anything fresh happened?' I asked.
'It's all along of this matter of sarving out pork to them chaps as won't eat it, Mr. Tregarthen. The mate gave 'em pork again to-day. There ain't no galley fire alight, so it's all the same to them coloured chaps whether it be pork or beef. But it's the principle of it what's a-sticking in their gizzards. Nakier says to me, "It would be allee de same if de water boil," says he, "for it is eider pork or no meat," by which he sinnified that if so be as it was fine weather and the galley fire goin', the men's dinner to-day 'ud be pork or nothen. Now, Mr. Tregarthen, Oi allow that they don't mean to keep all on enduring of this here treatment.'
'What have you noticed to make you suppose this?' said I, with a glance along the deserted decks, dark with sobbing wet, and often shrouded forwards by vast showers of flying spray.
'Well,' he answered, 'all the darkies has been a-sitting below saving the chap at the wheel, there being nothen for them to do on deck. I was in the fok'sle when Nakier comes down and tells the men that it was to be pork again. I couldn't understand him, for he spoke his own language, but guessed what was up when I heerd the hullabaloo his words raised. They all began to sing out together in a sort of screeching voice like the row made by a crowd of women a-quarrelling and a-pulling the hair out of each other's heads up a halley. Some skipped about in their rage as though there was a fiddle going. One chap, him with a face like a decayed lemon, he outs with his knife and falls a-stabbing of the atmosphere; and Oi tell ye, Mr. Tregarthen, when I sawthatI just drawed my legs up into my bunk and tried to make myself as little as possible, with the hope of escaping his hobservation, for damme! thought I, if that there article's agoing to run amuck, as I've heerd tell the likes of him is in the habit of doing, strike me dark, thinks Oi, if I ben't the fust man he'll fall foul on!'
'What was said?' I asked.
'Why, ask yourself the question, sir! What do monkeys say when they start a-yelling. Who's to knowwhatthey said?'
'How do you know, then, that it was the serving out of pork again that excited them?' said I.
'Whoy, that there Nakier told me so arterwards.'
'Ha!' I exclaimed; 'and for how long did they go on shrieking, as you say, and brandishing their knives?'
'It was over wonderful soon,' he answered. 'Nakier looked on whilst they was all a-shouting together, then said something, and it was like blowing the head off a pint o' ale—nothen remained but flatness. They just stood and listened whilst Nakier spouted, and ye should ha' seen 'em a-nodding and a-grimacing, and brandishing their arms and slapping their legs; but they never said nothen; they just took and listened. Tell 'ee, Mr. Tregarthen, the suddenness of it, and the looks of 'em, was something to bring the pusperation out of the pores of a Polar bear.'
'What does Abraham think?' said I.
'Whoy, I dunno how it is, he don't seem to obsarve—appears to find nothen to take to heart. He's growed a bit consequential, being now what the skipper would call a orficer, and though he sleeps forrard his feelings is aft. 'Tis mere growling, he thinks, with the fellows. But there's more 'n that,' said he, striking a match and catching the flame of it in his clasped hand, and lighting his pipe as easily as if there were not a breath of air stirring.
'The lunatic of a Captain has eyes in his head,' said I, thinking aloud rather than conversing. 'Ifhecan't see the mischief his mad notion of conversion is breeding, it is not for me to point it out. In fact, I heartily wish the Malays would seize the barque and sail her to Madeira or the Canaries. Is it not abominable that Miss Nielsen and I should be carried away to the Cape of Good Hope against our will by that long-whiskered rogue?' signifying the Captain by a backward motion of my head at the cabin.
'Abraham was a-telling me about this here traverse. The skipper's gone and fallen in love with the young lady, ain't he?' said Jacob, with a grin overspreading his flat face.
'Yes,' said I, 'and hopes by keeping her aboard to win her heart. The dolt!'
'Dunno aboutdolt, sir!' exclaimed Jacob. 'She's a nice-looking young gal, is Miss Nielsen, and, I allow, just the sort of wife as a shipmaster would live heasy vith.'
'You argue as vilely as Abraham,' said I, looking at him angrily. 'Will you pretend that this Captain is not acting outrageously in detaining the young lady on board his ship—imprisoning her, in short—for that is what it comes to?'
A little look of intelligence gave a new expression to the flat-faced fellow's smile as he respectfully surveyed me.
'Well, sir—I don't blame you, I can't blame you,' he exclaimed. 'I've kep' company myself. I was for five year along with as nice a gal as was ever seen in Deal, a-courting and a-courting, and always too pore to git spliced. I know what the passion of jealousy is. She took up with a corporal of Marines, and, I tell ye, Isuffered. It came roight, then it went wrong again, and it ended in her marrying a measly little slice of a chap, named Billy Tusser, who'd saved a bit out o' sprattin' and hovellin'. Ican'tblame 'ee, sir.'
It was not a matter to pursue with this worthy man, whose small intelligence lay too deep to be worth boring for; so I dropped the subject, and talked afresh of the coloured crew, and continued lingering till I could not have told how long our chat lasted. Though the gale was much less hard than it had blown down from noon, it was still a very violent wind, and the sea as wild as ever it had been, with the shadow of the evening now to add a darker tinge of gloom to the whirl of stooping, sooty heaven, under which every head of surge broke like a flash of ghastly light. The vessel was a strangely desolate picture—not a living creature to be seen forward, the decks half drowned, water sluicing white off the forecastle rim, or blowing up into the wind from off that raised deck in bursts of crystalline smoke, like corkscrew leapings of fine snow to the hurl of a blast roaring across a wintry moor. The black gear curved black with wet: again and again the vessel would pitch into the head sea till the spreading froth made by the massive plunge of her round bows rose to her forecastle rail. I had had enough of the cold and the wet; the cheerless picture of the barque and the ocean, too, was unspeakably depressing, and, with a glance round at the near horizon of broken creaming waters on which nothing showed, I bestowed a nod of farewell on Jacob, and re-entered the cuddy.
Captain Bunting was sitting close to Helga. The light was so weak in this interior that I had to peer a little to make sure that it was the Captain, for the dim figure might well have been the mate's. Helga was at the extreme end of the locker, as though she had uneasily worked her way from his side while they sat; but he had followed, and was now close, and her next and only step to get rid of him must be to rise. He was addressing her very earnestly when I entered; his whiskers floated from his cheeks as he bent towards her. Though the cuddy was charged with the complaining sounds of the labouring fabric, speech was very easy within it, nor was it necessary to raise the voice. Indeed, the interior had the effect of a hush upon my ears, coming as I did fresh from the shriek and thunder of the weather out on deck.
On seeing me the Captain instantly broke off, sat up, and called out:
'Well, and how are things looking on deck?'
Helga rose and went to the little window against the door.
'The weather could not be worse,' I answered, with the air and tone of sullenness I had resolved on. 'Your ship is too old and squab for such a conflict.'
'She is old, but she is a stout ship,' he answered. 'She will be afloat when scores of what you might consider beauties have vanished.'
'I think not,' said I, looking towards Helga, and wondering what the man had been saying to her.
'Let us hope,' he exclaimed, lifting a great pilot coat from the locker and struggling into it, 'that the necessity for your remaining here will not last very much longer. I should have expected handsomer treatment at your hands, Mr. Tregarthen.'
'I do not know what you can find to base such an expectation on,' I cried. 'Your detention of us is cruel, and, as I hope and believe, punishable. But there is no good in discussingthatmatter with you here and now. I have merely to beg that we may be as strangers while we are so unfortunate as to be together in the same ship.'
He drew his sou'-wester down upon his head, surveying me meanwhile; but I witnessed no malevolence in his regard; indeed, I may say, no trace of temper. His enduring smile lay broad with such expansion, indeed, as gave an air of elation to his face.
'No,' said he, wagging his head, while he slipped the elastic band of his sou'-wester behind his whisker; 'we will not live together as strangers, as you desire. Brotherly love is still practicable, and nothing that you can say or do, my young friend, shall dissuade me from cultivating it. That we shall be long together I do not believe,' he added, with a significance that astonished me and sent my eyes askant at Helga, whose back was still upon us. 'Meanwhile, endeavour to be contented. To have content is to have all, and to have all is to be richer than the richest.'
He inclined his sou'-westered head in an odd benedictory, grotesque nod, or bow, and, with a half-pause in his manner as though he would call some speech to Helga, turned on his heel and went on deck.
'What has he been saying, Helga?'
She looked round, and, finding the Captain gone, came to my side and locked her fingers upon my arm. She had drawn to me with a pale face, but the blood flushed her throat and cheeks as she let fall her eyes from mine. I had never before thought her so sweet as she showed at that moment. She was without a hat, and her short fair hair glimmered on her head in the gathering gloom of the evening with a sheen like the glancing of bright amber. My memory gave me a thought full of beauty—a wild caprice of sentiment at such a time:
'The freshness of new hay is on thy hair,And the withdrawing innocence of homeWithin thine eye.'
'The freshness of new hay is on thy hair,And the withdrawing innocence of homeWithin thine eye.'
'What has he been saying to you, Helga?'
'That he loves me,' she answered, now fixing her artless, tender gaze upon me, though her blush lingered.
'A fine time to tell you such a thing! Does that sort of sea-captain wait for a gale of wind to propose to a girl?' I exclaimed, with a sudden irritation of jealousy tingling through me, and I looked at her closely and suspiciously.
'I wanted to be angry, but could not,' said she. 'I hate the man, yet I could not be angry with him. He spoke of his daughter—he did not talk through his nose—he did not cant at all. Is "cant" the right word? I felt sorry; I had not the heart to answer him in rudeness, and to have risen and left him whilst he was speaking would have been rudeness.'
I made a slight effort to disengage my arm from her clasp.
'He told me—no doubt you heard him,' said I—'he told me he believed there would be no necessity to keep me long. He is a clever man—a shrewd man. Well, after this I shall believe in all the proverbs about women.'
'What do you mean?' she exclaimed in a startled voice, letting fall her hands and staring at me.
'What doyoumean?'
'Why, that I am sorry for the man, and hate him.'
'Oh! if you keep sorry long you will soon cease to hate him.'
'No, no!' she cried with a little passion, making as if to clasp my arm afresh, and then shrinking. 'I could not help his coming here and speaking to me.'
'That is true.'
'Why are you angry?'
Her gaze pleaded, her lips twitched, even as she looked at me her blue eyes filled. Her grieved, pretty face, her wistful, tender, tearful face, must have transformed my temper into impassioned pity, into self-reproach, into keen self-resentment, even had there been solid ground for vexation. I took her hand and lifted it to my lips.
'Forgive me; we have been much together. Our association and your father's dying words make me think of you as mine until—until—the long and short of it is, Helga, I am jealous!'
An expression of delight entered and vanished from her face. She stood thoughtfully looking down on the deck. Just then Punmeamootty entered to prepare the table for supper, and Helga again went to the cabin window and stood looking out, lightly, with unconscious ease and grace, swaying to the stormy heave of the deck, with her hands clasped behind her in a posture of meditation.
The gale broke on the morning of Thursday, November 2. The compacted heaven of cloud scattered in swelling cream-coloured masses; the sun shone out of the wide lakes of moist blue, and the sea turned from the cold and sickly gray of the stormy hours into a rich sapphire, with a high swell and a plentiful chasing of foaming billows. By four o'clock in the afternoon the ocean had smoothed down into a tropical expanse of quietly rising and falling waters, with the hot sun sliding westwards and the barque stemming the sea afresh under all cloths which could be piled upon her, the wind a small breeze, about west, and the sea-line a flawless girdle.
The evening that followed was one of quiet beauty. There was a young moon overhead, with power enough to drop a little trickling of silver into the dark sea under her; the clouds had vanished, and the stars shone brightly with a very abundant showering of meteoric lights above the trucks of the silent swaying masts.
As we paced the deck the Captain joined us. Short of going to our respective cabins, there was no means of getting rid of him; so we continued to patrol the planks, with him at Helga's side, talking, talking—oh, Heaven! how he talked! His manner was distressingly caressing. Helga kept hold of my arm, and meanwhile I, true to that posture I had maintained for the past three days, listened or sent my thoughts elsewhere, rarely speaking. In the course of his ceaseless chatter he struck upon the subject of his crew and their victuals, and told us he was sorry that we were not present when Nakier and two other coloured men came aft into the cuddy after he had taken sights and gone below.
'I am certain,' he exclaimed, smiting his leg, 'that I have made them reflective! I believe I could not mistake. Nakier in particular listened with attention, and looked at his mates with an expression as though conviction were being slowly borne in upon him.'
I pricked up my ears at this, for here was a matter that had been causing me some anxious thought, and I broke away from my sullen, resentful behaviour to question him.
'What brought the men aft?'
'The same tiresome story,' he answered, speaking loudly, and seemingly forgetful of or indifferent to the pair of yellow ears which, I might warrant him, were thirstily listening at the helm. 'They ask for beef, for beef, for nothing but beef, and I say yes—beef one day, pork another; beef for your bodies and pork for your souls. I shall conquer them; and what a triumph it will be! Though I should make no further progress with them, yet I could never feel too grateful for a decisive victory over a gross imbecile superstition that, like a shutter, though it be one of many, helps to keep out the light.'
He then went on to tell us what he had said, how he had reasoned, and I shall not soon forget the unctuous, self-satisfied chuckle which broke from the folds of his throat as he paused before asking Helga what she thought ofthatas an example of pure logic. I listened, wondering that a man who could talk as he did could be crazy enough to attempt so perilous an experiment as the attempting to win his crew over to his own views of religion by as dangerous an insult as his fanatical mind could have lighted upon. It was the more incomprehensible to me in that the fellow had started upon his crude missionary scheme when there were but two whites in the ship to eleven believers in the Prophet.
I waited until his having to fetch breath enabled me to put in a word. I then briefly and quietly related what had passed in the forecastle as described to me by Jacob Minnikin.
'And what then, Mr. Tregarthen?' said he, and I seemed to catch a sneer threading, so to speak, his bland utterance: the moon gave but little light, as I have said, and I could not see his face. 'When a man starts on the work of converting, he must not be afraid.'
'Your men have knives—they are devils, so I have heard, when aroused—youmay not be afraid, but you have no right to provoke peril for us,' I said.
'The coxswain of a lifeboat should have a stout heart,' he exclaimed. 'Miss Nielsen, do not be alarmed by your courageous friend's apprehension. My duty is exceedingly simple. I must do what is right. Right is divinely protected;' and I saw by the pose of his head that he cast his eyes up at the sky.
I nudged Helga as a hint not to speak, just breathlessly whispering, 'He is not to be reasoned with.'
It was a little before ten o'clock that night when the girl retired to her cabin. The Captain, addressing her in a simpering, loverlike voice, had importuned her to change her cabin. She needed to grow fretful before her determined refusals silenced him. He entered his berth when she had gone, and I took my pipe to enjoy a quiet smoke on deck. After the uproar of the past three days, the serenity of the night was exquisitely soothing. The moon shone in a curl of silver; the canvas soared in pallid visible spaces starwards; there was a pleasant rippling sound of gently stirred waters alongside, and the soft westerly night-wind fanned the cheek with the warmth of an infant's breath. The decks ran darkling forwards; the shadow of the courses flung a dye that was deeper than the gloom of the hour betwixt the rails, and nothing stirred save the low-lying stars which slipped up and down past the forecastle rail under the crescent of the foresail as the barque curtseyed.
Nevertheless, though I could not see the men, I heard a delicate sound of voices proceeding from the block of darkness where the forecastle front lay. Mr. Jones had charge of the watch, and, on my stepping aft to the wheel, I found Jacob grasping the spokes, having relieved the helm at four bells—ten o'clock. He was not to be accosted while on that duty; and my dislike of the mate had not been lessened by the few words which had passed between us since the day when the Cape steamer had gone by, and by my observation of his fawning behaviour to the Captain. I briefly exclaimed that it was a fine night, received some careless, drowsy answer from him, and, with pipe betwixt my lips, lounged lonely on the lee side of the deck, often overhanging the rail, and viewing the sea-glow as it crept by, with my mind full of Helga, of my home, of our experiences so far, and of what might lie before us.
I was startled out of a fit of musing by the forecastle bell ringing five. The clear, keen chimes floated like an echo from the sea, and I caught a faint reverberation of them in the hollow canvas. It was half-past ten. I knocked the ashes out of my pipe, and, going on to the quarter-deck, dropped through the hatch.
The lantern swinging in the corridor betwixt the berths was burning. I lightly called to Helga to know if all was well with her, but she was silent, and, as I might suppose, asleep. I put out the light, as my custom now was, and, partially unclothing myself in the dark, got into my bunk and lay for a little watching the dance of a phantom star or two in the dim black round of the scuttle close against my head, sleepily wondering how long this sort of life was to continue, what time was to pass, and how much was to happen before I should be restored to the comfort of my own snug bedroom at home; and thus musing, too drowsy perhaps for melancholy, I fell asleep.
I was awakened by someone beating heavily upon the bulkhead of the next-door cabin.
'Mr. Tregarthen! Mr. Tregarthen!' roared a voice; then thump! thump! went the blows of a massive fist or handspike. 'For Gor' a'mighty's sake wake up and turn out!—there's murder a-doing! Which is your cabin?'
I recognised the voice of Abraham, disguised as it was by horror and by the panting of his breath.
The exclamation,There's murder a-doing!collected my wits in a flash, and I was wide awake and conscious of the man's meaning ere he had fairly delivered himself of his cry.
'I am here—I will be with you!' I shouted, and, without pausing further to attire myself, dropped from my bunk and made with outstretched hands for the door, which I felt for and opened.
It was pitch dark in this passage betwixt the cabins, without even the dim gleam the porthole in the berth offered to the eye to rest on.
'Where are you, Abraham?' I cried.
'Here, sir!' he exclaimed, almost in my ear, and, lifting my hand, I touched him.
'The crew's up!' he cried. 'They've killed the mate, and by this time, I allow, the Capt'n's done for.'
'Where's Jacob?'
'Gor' He only knows, sir!'
'Are you armed? Do you grip anything?'
'Nothen, nothen. I run without stopping to arm myself. I'll tell ye about it—but it's awful to be a-talking in this here blackness with murder happening close by.'
He still panted as from heavy recent exertion, and his voice faltered as though he were sinking from a wound.
'What is it?' cried the clear voice of Helga from her berth.
'Open your door!' I said, knowing that it was her practice to shoot the bolt. 'All is darkness here. Let us in—dress yourself by feeling for your clothes—the Malays have risen upon the Captain and mate—it may be our turn next, and we must make a stand in your cabin. Hush!'
In the interval of her quitting her bunk to open the door, I strained my ears. Nothing was to be heard save near and distant noises rising out of the vessel as she heeled on the long westerly swell. But then we were deep down, with two decks for any noise made on the poop to penetrate.
'The door is open,' said Helga.
I had one hand on Abraham's arm, and, feeling with the other, I guided him into Helga's berth, the position of which, as he had never before been in this part of the vessel, he could not have guessed. I then closed the door and bolted it.
'Dress yourself quickly, Helga!' said I, talking to her in the mine-like blindness of this interior that was untouched by the star or two that danced in her cabin window as in mine.
'Tell me what has happened!' she exclaimed.
'Speak, Abraham!' said I.
'Lor'! but Oi don't seem able to talk without a light,' he answered. 'Ain't there no lantern here? If there's a lantern, I've got three or four loocifers in my pocket.'
'Hist!' I cried. 'I hear footsteps.'
We held our breath: all was still. Some sound had fallen upon my ear. It resembled the slapping of planks with naked feet to my fancy, that had been terrified by Abraham's sudden horrible report, before there was time for my muscles and nerves to harden into full waking strength.
'What d'ye hear?' hoarsely whispered Abraham.
'It was imagination. Helga, can we light the lantern?'
She answered 'Yes'—she was ready.
'Strike a match, Abraham, that I may see where the lantern hangs!' said I.
He did so, holding the flame in his fist. I opened the door, whipped out, took down the lantern and darted in again, bolting the door anew with a thrill of fear following upon the haste I had made through imagination of one of those yellow-skins crouching outside with naked knife in hand. I swiftly lighted the lantern, and placed it in Helga's bunk. Abraham was of an ashen paleness, and I knew my own cheeks to be bloodless.
'Ought we to fear the crew?' cried Helga. 'We have not wronged them. They will not wantourlives.'
'Dorn't trust 'em, dorn't trust 'em!' exclaimed Abraham. 'Ain't there nothen here to sarve as weapons?' he added, rolling his eyes around the cabin.
'What is the story? Tell it now, man, tell it!' I cried, in a voice vehement with nerves.
He answered, speaking low, very hastily and hoarsely: 'Oi'd gone below at eight bells. Oi found Nakier haranguing some of the men as was in the fok'sle; but he broke off when he see me. Oi smoked a pipe, and then tarned in and slep' for an hour or so; then awoke and spied five or six of the chaps a-whispering together up in a corner of the fok'sle. They often looked moy way, but there worn't loight enough to let 'em know that my eyes was open, and I lay secretly a-watching 'em, smelling mischief. Then a couple of 'em went on deck, and the rest lay down. Nothen happened for some time. Meanwhile Oi lay woide awake, listening and watching. 'Twas about seven bells, Oi reckon, when someone—Oi think it was Nakier—calls softly down through the hatch, and instantly all the fellows, who as I could ha' swore was sound asleep, dropped from their hammocks like one man, and the fok'sle was empty. I looked round to make sure that it were empty, then sneaks up and looks aft with my chin no higher than the coaming. I heered a loud shriek, and a cry of "O God! O God! Help! help!" and now, guessing what was happening, and believing that the tastin' of blood would drive them fellows mad, and that Oi should be the next if Jacob worn't already gone, him being at the wheel, as I might calculate by his not being forrard, Oi took and run, and here Oi am.'
He passed the back of his hand over his brow, following the action with a fling of his fingers from the wrist; and, indeed, it was now to be seen that his face streamed with sweat.
'Do you believe they have murdered the Captain?' cried Helga.
'I dorn't doubt it—Ican'tdoubt it. There seemed two gangs of 'em. Oi run for my life, and yet I see two gangs,' answered Abraham.
'Horrible!' exclaimed the girl, looking at me with fixed eyes, yet she seemed more shocked than frightened.
'Did not I foresee this?' I exclaimed. 'Where were your senses, man—youwho lived amongst them, ate and drank with them? It would be bad enough if they were white men; but how stands our case, do you think, in a ship seized by savages who have been made to hate us for our creed and for the colour of our skins?'
'Hark!' cried Helga.
We strained our hearing, but nothing was audible to me saving my heart, that beat loud in my ears.
'I thought I heard the sound of a splash,' she said.
'If they should ha' done for my mate, Jacob!' cried Abraham. 'As the Lord's good, 'twill be too hard. Fust wan, then another, and now nowt but me left of our little company as left Deal but a day or tew ago, as it seems when Oi looks back.'
'Are we to perish here like poisoned rats in a hole?' said I. 'If they clap the hatch-cover on, what's to become of us?'
'Who among them can navigate the ship?' asked Helga.
'Ne'er a one,' replied Abraham; 'thatI can tell 'ee from recollecting of the questions Nakier's asted me from toime to toime.'
'But if the body of them should come below,' cried I, 'and force that door—as easily done as blowing out that light there—are we to be butchered with empty hands, looking at them without a lift of our arms, unless it be to implore mercy? Here are two of us—Englishmen! Are we to be struck down as if we were women?'
'There are three of us!' said Helga.
'What are our weapons?' I exclaimed, wildly sweeping the little hole of a cabin with my eyes. 'They have their knives!'
'Give me the handling of 'em one arter the other,' said Abraham, fetching a deep breath and then spitting on his hands, 'and I'll take the whole 'leven whilst ye both sit down and look on. But all of them at wanst—all dronk with rage and snapping round a man as if he was a sheep and they wolves!'—he breathed deeply again, slowly shaking his head.
'The planks in that bunk are loose,' said I, 'but what can we do with boards?'
'I will go on deck!' suddenly exclaimed Helga.
'You?' cried I. 'No, indeed! You will remain here. There must be two of us for them to deal with before the third can be come at!'
'I will go on deck!' she repeated. 'I have less cause to fear them than you. They know that I am acquainted with navigation—they have always looked at me with kindness in their faces. Let me go and talk to them!'
She made a step to the door—I gripped her arm, and brought her to my side and held her.
'What is to be done is for us two men to do!' said I. 'We must think, and we must wait.'
'Let me go!' she cried. 'They will listen to me, and I shall be able to make terms. Unless there be a navigator among them, what can they do with the ship in this great ocean?' She struggled, crying again: 'Let me go to them, Hugh!'
'Dorn't you do nothen of the sort, sir!' exclaimed Abraham. 'What'd happen? They'd tarn to and lock her up until they'd made an end of you and me, and then she'd be left alone aboard this wessel—alone, I mean, with eleven yaller savages. Gor' preserve us! If you let go of her, sir,Oishall have to stop the road.'
There was something of deliberateness in his speech: his English spirit was coming back with the weakening of the horror that had filled him when he first came rushing below.
Someone knocked lightly on the door. At the same instant my eye was taken by the glance of lamp or candle flame in the opening in the bulkhead overlooking the narrow passage.
'Hush!' cried I.
The knock was repeated. It was a very soft tapping, as though made by a timid knuckle.
'Who is there?' I shouted, gathering myself together with a resolution to leap upon the first dark throat that showed; for I believed this soft knocking—this soundless approach—a Malay ruse, and my veins tingled with the madness that enters the blood of a man in the supreme moment whose expiry means life or death to him.
'It is me, master! Open, master! It is allee right!'
'That's Nakier!' exclaimed Abraham.
'Who is it?' I cried.
'Me, sah—Nakier. It is allee right, I say. Do not fear. Our work is done. We wish to speakee with you, and be friend.'
'How many of you are there outside?' I called.
'No man but Nakier,' he answered.
'How are we to know that?' bawled Abraham. 'The most of you have naked feet. A whole army of ye might sneak aft, and no one guess it.'
'I swear Nakier is alone. Lady, you shall trust Nakier. Our work is done; it is allee right, I say. See, you tink I am not alone: you are afraid of my knife; go a leetle way back—I trow my knife to you.'
We recoiled to the bulkhead, and Abraham roared 'Heave!' The knife fell upon the deck close to my feet. I pounced upon it as a cat upon a mouse, but dropped it with a cry. 'Oh, God, it is bloody!'
'Give it me!' exclaimed Abraham, in a hoarse shout; 'it'll be bloodier yet, now I've got it, if that there Nakier's a-playing false.'
Grasping it in his right hand, he slipped back the bolt, and opened the door. The sensations of a lifetime of wild experiences might have been concentrated in that one instant. I had heard and read so much about the treachery of the Malay that when Abraham flung open the little cabin door I was prepared for a rush of dusky shapes, and to find myself grappling—but not for life, since death I knew to be certain, armed as every creature of them was with the deadly blade of the sailor's sheath knife. Instead—in the corridor, immediately abreast of our cabin, holding a bull's-eye lamp in his hand, stood Nakier, who on seeing us put the light on the deck, and saluted us by bringing both hands to his brow. Abraham put his head out.
'There ain't nobody here but Nakier!' he cried.
'What have you done?' I exclaimed, looking at the man, who in the combined light showed plainly, and whose handsome features had the modest look, the prepossessing air, I had found when my gaze first rested on him in this ship.
'The Captain is kill—Pallunappachelly, he kill him. The mate is kill—with this han'.' He held up his arm.
'Where's moy mate?' thundered Abraham.
'No man touch him. Jacob, he allee right. Two only.' He held up two fingers. 'The Captain and Misser Jones. They treat us like dog, and we bite like dog,' he added, showing his teeth, but with nothing whatever of fierceness or wildness in his grin.
'What do you want?' I repeated.
'We wantchee you come speak with us. We allee swear on de Koran not to hurt you, but to serve you, and you serve we.'
I stood staring, not knowing how to act.
'He is to be trusted,' said Helga.
'But the others?' I said.
'They can do nothing without us.'
'Withoutoneof us. But the others!'
'We may trust them,' she repeated, with an accent of conviction.
Nakier's eyes, gleaming in the lantern-light, were bent upon us as we whispered. He perceived my irresolution, and, once again putting down the bull's-eye lamp on the deck, he clasped and extended his hands in a posture of impassioned entreaty.
'We allee swear we no hurt you!' he cried in a voice of soft entreaty that was absolutely sweet with the melody of its tones; 'dat beautiful young lady—oh! I would kill here,' he cried, gesticulating as though he would stab his heart, 'before dat good, kind, clever lady be harm. Oh, you may trust us! We hab done our work. Mr. Wise, he be Capt'n; you be gentleman—passengaire; you live upstair and be very much comfortable. De beautiful young lady, she conduct dis ship to Afric. Oh, no, no, no! you are allee safe. My men shall trow down dere knives upon de table when you come, and we swear on de Koran to be your friend, and you be friend to we.'
'Let's go along with him, Mr. Tregarthen,' said Abraham. 'Nakier, I shall stick to this here knife. Where's moy mate Jacob? If 'ere a man of ye's hurted him——'
'It is no time to threaten,' I whispered angrily, shoving past him. 'Come, Helga! Nakier, pick up that bull's-eye and lead the way, and, Abraham, follow with that lantern, will you?'
In silence we gained the hatch. It lay open. Nakier sprang through it, and, one after the other, we ascended. The wind had fallen scantier since I was on deck last, and though the loftier canvas was asleep, silent as carved marble, and spreading in spectral wanness under the bright stars, there was no weight in the wind to hold steady the heavy folds of the fore and main courses, which swung in and out with the dull sound of distant artillery as the barque leaned from side to side. The cuddy lamp was brightly burning, and the first glance I sent through the open door showed me the whole of the crew, as I for the instant supposed—though I afterwards found that one of them was at the wheel—standing at the table, ranged on either hand of it, all as motionless as a company of soldiers drawn up on parade. Every dark face was turned our way, and never was shipboard picture more startling and impressive than this one of stirless figures, dusky fiery eyes, knitted brows, most of the countenances hideous, but all various in their ugliness. Their caps and queer headgear lay in a heap upon the table. Nakier entered and paused, with a look to us to follow. Helga was fearlessly pressing forwards. I caught her by the hand and cried to Nakier:
'Those men are all armed.'
He rounded upon them, and uttered some swift feverish sentence in his native tongue. In a moment every man whipped out his knife from the sheath in which it lay buried at the hip, and placed it upon the table. Nakier again spoke, pronouncing the words with a passionate gesture, on which Punmeamootty gathered the knives into one of the caps and handed them to Nakier, who brought the cap to Helga and placed it at her feet. On his doing this, Abraham threw the blood-stained knife he held into the cap.
It was at that moment we were startled by a cry of 'Below there!'
'Whoy, it's Jacob!' roared Abraham, and stepping backwards and looking straight up, he shouted, 'Jacob, ahoy! Where are ye, mate?'
'Up in the maintop, pretty nigh dead,' came down the leather-lunged response from the silence up above.
'Thank God you're alive!' cried Abraham. 'It's all roight now—it's all roight now.'
'Who's agoing to make me believe it?' cried Jacob.
I stared up, and fancied I could just perceive the black knob of his head projected over the rim of the top.
'You can come down, Jacob,' I cried. 'All danger, I hope, is over.'
'Danger over?' he bawled. 'Whoy, they've killed the mate and chucked him overboard, and if I hadn't taken to my heels and jumped aloft they'd have killed me.'
'No, no—not true; not true, sah!' shrieked Nakier. 'Come down, Jacob! It is allee right!'
'Where's the Captain?' cried Jacob.
'Him overboard!' answered Nakier. 'It is allee right, I say!'
A shudder ran through me as I glanced at the cabin which the Captain had occupied. I cannot express how the horror of this sudden, shocking, bloody tragedy was heightened by Nakier's cool and easy acceptance of the deed, as though the two men whom he and his had slain were less to his sympathies than had they been a couple of fowls whose necks had been wrung.
'Pray come down, Jacob!' said Helga, sending her voice clear as a bell into the silent towering heights. 'You, as well as Abraham, are to be known as an Englishman.'
This little scornful stroke, which was extremely happy in that it was unintelligible to Nakier and the others, had the desired effect.
'Why, if it is all right, then I suppose itbeall right,' I heard Jacob say, and a few moments after his figure, with 'longshore clumsiness, came slowly down the rigging.
As he sprang from the bulwark rail on to the deck, he whipped off his cap and dashed it down on to the planks, and with the utmost agitation of voice and manner danced around his cap as he vociferated while he flourished his fist at Abraham:
'Now, what did Oi say? All along Oi've been a-telling ye that that there pork job was agoing to get our throats cut. Whoy didn't ye stop it? Whoy didn't ye tell the Capt'n what you seed and knowed? Froight! Whoy, I moight ha' died in that there top and rolled overboards, and what yarn was ye going to give my missis as to my hending, if so be as ever ye got ashore at Deal agin?'
He continued to shout after this fashion, meanwhile tumbling and reeling about his cap as though it were a mark for him upon the theatre of this deck on which to act his part. But though it appeared a very ecstasy of rage in him, the outbreak seemed wholly due to revulsion of feeling. Nakier stood motionlessly eyeing him; the others also remained at table, all preserving their sentinel postures. At last the fellow made an end, put his cap on, and was silent, breathing hard.
'Will you come in, sah? Will you enter, lady? Misser Wise, it is allee right. Come along, Jacob, my mate!'
Thus saying, Nakier re-entered the cuddy, and the four of us followed him. There was a dark stain on the bare plank close against the coaming or ledge of the door of the Captain's cabin. It was the short, wild, startled sideways spring which Abraham gave that caused me to look at it. The very soul within me seemed to shrink at the sight.
Nakier exclaimed, 'It is easy to scrape out,' motioning with his little delicately-shaped hand as though he scraped. He then addressed one of the fellows at the table, who nodded, sweeping the air with his arm as he did so.
It now occurred to me, with the marvellous swiftness of thought, that the cap containing the men's knives still lay upon the deck where Nakier had lodged it at Helga's feet, and the instant motion of my mind was to return to the quarter-deck, pick the cap up, and heave it over the rail. But I reflected that not only might an act of this sort enrage the crew by losing them their knives—it would also imply profound distrust on our part. I also considered that, if they designed to kill us, they would be able to manage that business very well without their knives—for there was the carpenter's tool-chest forward, which would supply them with plenty of deadly weapons, not to mention the cabin knives, which Punmeamootty had charge of, and of which several were at all times to be found in the galley. All this passed through my mind in the space that a man might count five in, so amazing is the velocity of imagination; and my resolution was formed in this matter even while I continued to measure the few steps which separated the table from the cuddy door.
Nakier went to the head of the table, and, putting his hand upon the Captain's chair, exclaimed, bowing with inimitable grace to Helga as he spoke:
'Will de sweet mees sit here?'
She passed along the little file of five men and took the chair. I do not know whether she had seen that mark on the deck I have spoken of. She was of a deathlike whiteness, but her eyes shone spiritedly as she ran them over the coloured faces of the queer figures erect on either hand the table, and never at any time since the hour when the dawn showed me her pretty face aboard theAnine, apparelled as she then was as a boy, had I observed more composure and resolution in her countenance.
I stood close beside her, and Abraham and his mate were on her right. Nakier went on gliding feet to the fore-end of the table and said something to the men. What language he expressed himself in I did not then, and still do not, know. The effect of his speech was to cause the whole of them to extend their arms towards us with the forefingers of both hands together. The posture, for the moment, was absolutely as though to Nakier's command they had simultaneously levelled firearms at us! Jacob fell back a step with a growl of alarm.
'What is all this, Nakier?' I called out.
'It is to say we are all your brodders, sah. It is my country sign of friendship.'
Their hands fell to their sides, but immediately afterwards Nakier spoke again to them, whereupon every man levelled his forefingers, as before, at Helga. Again Nakier spoke, and Punmeamootty left the cuddy.
'I wish he'd talk English,' exclaimed Abraham, wiping his forehead. 'Who's to know what's agoing to happen?'
'It is allee right, Misser Wise,' said Nakier, with a soft smile, half of reproach, half of encouragement. 'Punmeamootty hab gone to fetch de Koran for we to swear to be true and not harm you.'