There was now a pause. How am I to convey the dramatic character of this interval of silence? The hush of the night worked like a spirit in the vessel, and the silence seemed to be deepened rather than disturbed by the dull, pinion-like beat of the mainsail swinging into the mast, by the occasional creak breaking forth from some slightly strained bulkhead, and by the half-muffled gurgling of some little lift of dark water laving the barque's side. I could witness no temper in the men. Wherever there lay a scowl, it was no more than a part of the creature's make. Their faces were by this time familiar to me, and I could not mistake. Custom had even diminished something of the fierceness, and I may say the hideousness, of the lemon-coloured man, whose corrugated brow and savage eyes had been among the earliest details of this ship to attract my attention on boarding her. Yet with the memory in me of what had just now been enacted—with thoughts in me of two corpses scarcely yet cold sinking, still sinking, at but a little distance from the vessel—these men opposed a horribly formidable array of countenances to the gaze. Their various dyes of complexion were deepened by the lantern light; the grotesque character of their attire seemed to intensify their tragic appearance. Their figures were as motionless as though they were acting a part as statues in a stage representation. At intervals one or another would look to right or left, but in the main their eyes were directed our way, and were chiefly fixed upon Helga.
Jacob stared as though in a dream; Abraham, with his under-jaw hanging loose, appeared to be fascinated by Nakier. I longed to plunge into this silence, so to speak, to expend in speech and questions the emotions which were keeping my heart fiercely beating; but I was held dumb by the notion that this stillness was a part of the solemnities which were to be employed for the protection of our lives.
Punmeamootty re-entered the cuddy holding a book. Nakier took it from him, and, coming round to us, said:
'Look, lady! look, sah! You see dis is de Koran'—I observed that he sometimes saiddeand sometimesthe—'it is our religion. We swear upon it. Look, to make sure!'
I received the volume, and examined it. It was a manuscript, bound in leather, with a flap, and very elegantly ornamented on the sides and back with some sort of devices in gold and colour. The writing was in red, and every page was margined with a finely ruled red line. What tongue it was written in I could not, of course, tell. I have since supposed it was in Arabic; but for us it might as well have been the Talmud as the Koran. I returned the book to Nakier.
'It is allee right, you see, sah,' he exclaimed, showing his wonderfully white teeth in a smile of gentle, respectful congratulation that put a deeper glow into his eyes and gave a new beauty to his handsome features.
'It may be the Koran,' said I. 'I cannot tell. I will take your word.'
He turned to the men, and, with a passionate gesticulation, addressed them; on which they shouted out all as one man:
'Yaas! yaas! Al-Koran! Al-Koran!'—nodding and pointing and writhing and working with excess of Asiatic contortion.
'We are quite content,' said I.
Nakier withdrew to his end of the table, carrying the book with him. He stood erect, blending the grace of a reposing dancer with an air of reserved eagerness and enthusiasm.
'Lady and you, sah!' he exclaimed, while every dusky eye along the table was fixed intently upon him, 'you sabbee why we kill de Capt'n and Misser Jones? Them two bad men—them two wicked, shocking men. They would make we poor Mussulmans sin, and would send we to hell. And why? Dey not care at heart our soul for to save. We came here for work: we gib demdisfor dere money'—he elevated his clenched hands, and then gesticulated as though he pulled and hauled—'not dis, which is Allah's,' striking his breast vehemently; by which, I presume, he signified his spirit or conscience.
A rumbling murmur ran round the table. I should not have supposed the fellows understood the man; but acquiescence was strong in every tawny face, and a universal nod followed when he struck his bosom.
'We not all Malay,' he continued, 'but we are all men, lady. We hab feeling—we hab hunger; we drink and cry and laugh like you all who are white and do not believe in de Prophet. We have killed dose two shocking wicked men, and we are not sorry. No; it is justice!' he added, with a sudden piercing rise in his melodious voice, and a flush of the eye that was emphasized somewhat alarmingly by an unconscious clutch of his hand at the empty sheath strapped to his hip. But his manner instantly softened, and his voice sweetened again, though his behaviour seemed, while it lasted, to exercise an almost electrical influence over his people. They fluttered and swayed to it like ears of wheat brushed by a wind, darting looks at one another and at us. But this ceased on Nakier resuming his former air.
'Dis ship,' said he, 'is boun' to Table Bay. Some of us belong to Cape Town. Allee want to get to Afric, and dem as not belong to Cape Town ship for dere own country. But dis ship must not steer for Cape Town. When we arrive, it is asked, "Where is de Capt'n? Where is Misser Jones?" and we must not tell,' said he, smiling.
'But where do you wish to go, then?' said I, almost oppressed by the sudden simultaneous turning of the men's dark fiery eyes upon me.
'Near to Cape Town,' said he.
'But what do you call near to Cape Town?' I asked.
'Oh, dere will be a river—we find him. We anchor and go ashore and walkee, walkee,' he exclaimed.
Helga gave a little start.
'What you and your mates wants is that we should put ye ashore somewhere?' said Abraham.
'Yaas, dat's so,' called the fellow named Pallunappachelly.
'No, no!' cried Nakier, 'not somewhere, Misser Vise. Near Cape Town, I say. Not too far for we to walkee.'
'But to set ye ashore, anyhow?' exclaimed Abraham.
The man nodded.
'I suppose you know, Nakier,' said I, with a sense of dismay pressing like a weight upon my spirits, 'that this young lady and I wish to return home? The Captain refused to part with us—he insisted on carrying us with him—we have a home to return to. Surely you do not intend that we should make the passage to the Cape in this barque?'
'Who will navigate de ship?' said Nakier.
'Why, Mr. Wise will,' I exclaimed, turning upon the boatman.
'Blowed, then, if I dew!' cried Abraham, recoiling. 'What! along with these—arter what's—'soides, I don't know nothen about longitude.'
'For mercy's sake, man, don't talk like that!' cried I. 'Miss Nielsen and I must be transhipped.'
'So must Oi!' said Abraham.
'And Oi!' hoarsely shouted Jacob.
'What ees it you say?' exclaimed Nakier, smiling.
'Why, that we all of us wish to get aboard another vessel,' said I, 'and leave this barque in your hands to do whatever you like with.'
There was a sharp muttering of 'No, no!' with some fierce shaking of heads on either side the table. Nakier made a commanding gesture and uttered a few words in his own tongue.
'We must not speakee any ship, lady, and you, sah, and you, Misser Vise, and Jacob, my mate. Cannot you tell why?'
'If you're going to keep us here for fear of our peaching,' cried Abraham, 'there's me for wan as is ready to take moy oath that I'll say nothen about what's happened, purwiding you safely set us aboard another wessel.'
Nakier strained his ear, with a puzzled face. The language of Deal was happily unintelligible to him, for which I was exceedingly grateful, since nothing could be more imperilling than such talk as this.
Helga, who all this while remained silent, seated in her chair, without lifting her eyes to my face or turning her head, said softly, in little more than a whisper, so that only I, who stood at her shoulder, could catch her accents:
'You can see by their faces that they are resolved. All this has been preconcerted. Their plans are formed, and they mean to have their way. We must seem to consent. Let us agree, that they may take the oath, otherwise our lives are not worth more than the Captain's or the mate's.'
Nakier's glowing eyes were upon her, but, though the movements of her lips might have been visible, it would seem to them as though she whispered to herself. The conviction that she was absolutely right in her advice came to me with her words. I needed but to glance at the double line of determined faces to gather that argument, that even hesitation would merely result in speedily enraging the fellows; that they were not to be influenced by the most reasonable of our wishes; that our lives had been spared in order that we should convey them to a place of safety; and this, too, I saw with the help of the illumination supplied by Helga's few words—that, fully believing the girl qualified to navigate the vessel, they might, if we provoked them, destroy the three of us and retain her, counting upon their threats and her situation to achieve their ends.
I said in a hurried aside to the boatmen:
'Not a word now, from either of you! This must be left tome! If you interfere, your blood will be on your own heads!'
Then, addressing Nakier:
'Your demands are these: the barque is to be navigated to some part of the South African coast lying near to Table Bay?'
'Yaas, sah!' he answered, holding up one finger as though counting.
'The spot you wish to arrive at will have to be pointed out on the chart.'
Up went a second finger, followed by another 'Yaas, sah!'
'We are not to communicate with passing ships?'
'Right, sah!' he added, nodding and smiling, and raising a third finger.
'And then?' said I.
'Den,' said he, 'you swear to do dis and we swear by de Koran to be true, and to serve you, and be your friend.'
'And if we refuse?' said I.
'Do not say it!' he cried, sweeping his hands forward as though to repel the idea.
'There must be other conditions!' said I, talking with an air of resolution which, I fear, was but poorly simulated. 'First as to the accommodation?'
'I do not understand!' said Nakier.
'I mean, where are we to live?' I cried.
'Oh, here! oh, here!' he shouted, motioning round the cuddy; 'dis is your room. No man of us come here.'
'And here I stop, tew,' said Abraham. 'No more of your forecastle for me, mates!'
'Nor for me!' rumbled Jacob.
'Do not say so!' exclaimed Helga, turning hastily to address them. 'Be advised. Do not interfere. Let Mr. Tregarthen have his way.'
'And I suppose,' I continued, running my eyes over the rows of faces till they settled on Nakier, 'that we shall be waited upon as usual, and that we shall be as well cared for as when Captain Bunting was alive?'
'Yaas, sah! yaas, sah!' said Nakier demonstratively, and Punmeamootty shouted:
'Me wait allee same upon you and de sweet lady. Me sabbee what you like. Me get dem room ready,' pointing to the mate's and the Captain's cabins.
I shook my head with a shudder, then said softly to Helga, whose gaze was bent on the table:
'Can you suggest anything further for me to say to them?'
'Nothing. Get them to take their oath.'
'Nakier,' I exclaimed, 'we consent to your proposals. Among us we will navigate this ship for you. But first you and your mates will swear by that Koran in which you believe—I suppose itisthe Koran——'
'Oh, yaas, yaas!' he cried, and there was a general chorus of 'yaases.'
'You must swear by that sacred book of yours not to harm us; to be our friends; to serve us and do our bidding as though we were the officers of this ship. Explain this to your men, and let them take the oath in their and your country's fashion, and we shall be satisfied.'
On this he addressed them. I hear now his melodious voice and witness his animated handsome face as he poured forth his rich unintelligible syllables. It was difficult to look at the fellow and not believe that he was some prince of his own nation. There was nothing in his scarecrow clothes to impair the dignity of his mien and the grace of his motions. I could conceive of him as a species of man-serpent capable of fascinating and paralyzing with his marvellous eyes, holding his victim motionless till he should choose to strike. His influence over the others was manifestly supreme, and I had no doubt whatever that the tragedy which had been enacted was his, and wholly his, by the claim of creation and command. While he talked I would here and there mark a dingy face with a look of expostulation in it. The lamp swinging fairly over the table yielded light enough to reveal expressions. When he had ceased there was a little hubbub of voices, a running growl so to speak of discontent. One cried out to him, and then another, and then a third, but in notes of expostulation rather than temper.
Helga, without turning her head, said to me:
'I expect they wish us to swear too. Your bare assurance does not satisfy them.'
The guess seemed a shrewd one, and highly probable, but the men's talk was sheer Hebrew to the four of us. Nakier listened, darting looks from side to side, then suddenly lifted both his hands in the most dramatic posture of denunciation that could be imagined, and hissed some word to them, whereupon every man fell as silent as though he had been shot. He picked up the volume and extended it to the fellow next him.
'Takee, takee,' he cried, speaking that we might understand. 'Lady, and you, sah, Misser Vise and Jacob my mate, this is the Mussulman oath we men now take. I speak not well your language, but dis is my speech in English of what you shall hear.' Then, composing his countenance and turning up his eyes till nothing gleamed but the whites of them in his dark visage, he exclaimed in a profoundly devotional tone and in accents as melodious as singing:
'In de name of Allah de most merciful, and de good Lord of all things, if break dis oath do I, den, O Allah, may I go to hell!'
He paused, then turned to the man who held the volume, who forthwith held the book at arm's length above his head and pronounced in his native tongue what we might suppose the oath that Nakier had essayed to make English of. This done, the book was handed to the next man, and so it went round, all in dead silence, broken only by the strange, wildly solemn accents of the oath-taker, and I noticed that the glittering eyes of Nakier rested upon every man as he swore, as though he constrained him to take the vow by his gaze.
Abraham and his mate looked on with open mouths, breathing deeply. The book came to Nakier. He was about to lift it, paused, and spoke to the fierce-looking fellow that was called Ong-Kew-Ho, who immediately glided out of the cabin—none of these men seemed to walk: the motion of their legs resembled that of skaters. I was wondering what was to happen next, when the fellow who had been stationed at the wheel arrived. Nakier addressed him. Immediately he extended his arms and levelled his forefingers at us as the others had; then elevated the book and recited the oath.
'All this looks very honest,' I whispered to Helga.
Then Nakier took the oath, handed the volume to a man, and said something. Instantly every man's arms were pointed at us, with the index fingers touching, and a minute later all the men, saving Nakier, had quitted the cabin.
'You see, lady, it is allee right,' said he, smiling.
'Yes, we are satisfied,' she exclaimed, rising from her chair; but her eye caught the stain on the deck; an expression of horror worked in her face like a spasm, and she brought her hand to her breast with a half-stifled exclamation.
'When day come,' said Nakier, addressing Helga, 'we look at de chart and find out de place for you to steer we to.'
His bearing was still full of Eastern grace and courtesy. No expression entered his face to deform its beauty; yet somehow I seemed sensible of a subtle spirit or quality of command in the fellow, as though he was now disguising his sense of power and possession with difficulty. It was clear that he looked to Helga mainly, if not wholly, for what was to be done for them.
'You shall point out the spot you have in your mind,' said she.
'You sabbee navigation, sweet lady?'
'Among us,' she answered, with a motion of her hand that comprehended the two boatmen and myself, 'we shall be able to do all you require.'
He made a sort of salaam to her, and said, looking at Abraham: 'Who keep de watch?'
'Whose watch on deck is it?' I asked.
'The starboard's—moine,' answered Abraham, with an uneasy shuffling of his feet.
'Allee right, Mr. Vise; allee right! It is veree fine night. I go now to sleep,' said Nakier; and he went in his sliding, spirit-like fashion to the cuddy-door, and vanished in the blackness on the quarter-deck.
The four of us stood grouped at the head of that little table, staring at one another. Now that the coloured crew were gone, a sense of the unreality of what had happened possessed me. It was like starting from a nightmare, with the reason in one slowly dominating the horror raised by the hideous phantasmagoria of sleep.
'We must not seem to be standing here as though we were planning and plotting,' exclaimed Helga. 'Dark figures out in that shadow there are watching us.'
'That's right enough, miss,' said Abraham; 'but what's to be done?'
'Here stands a man,' cried Jacob hotly, striking his breast, 'as dorn't mean for to be carried to the Cape in a bloomin' wessel full o' bloody savages; and that's speaking straight!'
'Hush!' cried I. 'Soften those leather lungs of yours, will you?'
'Ain't there no firearms knocking about?' said Abraham.
'I hope not,' said Helga; 'we shall be able to manage without firearms!'
'What is in your mind?'
'An idea not yet formed,' she answered. 'Give me time to think. I believe that not only are our lives to be saved, but the vessel too!'
'Ha!' cried Abraham, with a thirsty look. 'It needs a sailor's lass to get such a fancy as that into her head! I'm a Cockney if I don't seem to see a salwage job here!'
But Jacob was staring at us gloomily.
'What I says is this,' he exclaimed, addressing us with his fists clenched: 'Here be three Englishmen and a gal with the heart of two men in her'—'Softly,' I interposed—'with the heart of two men in her,' he continued, with a shake of his fist; 'and what's forward? He-leven wisps of coloured yarn! He-leven heffigies with backbones separately to be broke like this!' He crooked his knee, and made as if he were breaking a stick across it. 'Are we,' he cried, with the blood mounting to his face and an expression of wrath sparkling in his eyes, 'are we fower—three men and a young lady—to quietly sit down and wait to be murdered? or are we to handle 'em as if they was a pack of apes, to be swept below and smothered under hatches as a breeze o' wind 'ud blow a coil of smoke along?'
'Lower your voice, man!' I whispered. 'What do you want?—to court the death that you bolted aloft to escape?'
'What's to prevent us,' he continued, muffling his tone, though the fierceness of his temper hissed in every breath he expelled—'what's to prevent us a-doing this? More than the watch are below; three or fower may be on deck. Ain't the scuttle forrards to be clapped down over the forecastle, where they lie safe as if they was at the bottom of a well a hundred foot deep? Ain't that to be done? And if the three or fower that's knocking about on deck aren't to be handled by us three men—good-noight!'
He rounded his back upon us in sheer contempt of passion.
'We may do better than that,' said Helga.
'You're for supposing that they ain't going to keep a bright look-out, mate,' said Abraham. 'See here! What good's to be done, these here hands you'll find equal to,' smiting first his left, then his right knuckles; 'but s'elp me Moses I'm not here to be killed. Them chaps are born knife-stickers. Touch one, and you're groaning at your length on deck, with a mortal wound in your witals. And if what we do ain't complete—if so be they're wan too many for us—and it's eleven to three, rememberthat, mate—what's to happen? Ask yourself the question! For the lady's sake, I'm for caution.'
'We must not remain debating here,' said I. 'They believe us sincere. There are eyes watching us, as Miss Nielsen says. This holding a council is not going to reassure them. If you object to keeping a look-out, Abraham, I'll take charge.'
'I will keep you company,' said Helga.
'No, no!' cried Abraham. 'It's moy watch, and Oi'll keep it.'
He went clumsily, and with a bewildered manner, to the companion-steps.
'I'll remain along wi' ye, Abey,' said Jacob. 'Arter what I saw, as I stood at the wheel—the poor chap's cry—the way they chucked him overboard——' He buried his eyes in his coat-sleeve. 'The cussed murderers!' he exclaimed, lifting his face, and looking savagely around.
'Come!' cried Abraham, 'if yemeanto come! What's your temper agoing to do for us?'
'I'll relieve you at four o'clock,' said I, looking at the timepiece, the hands of which stood at a quarter before two.
The men went on deck, and turning down the lamp—for the revelation of the light served as a violent irritant to the nerves on top of the fancy of the secret, fiery-eyed observation of us without—I seated myself beside Helga on a locker to whisper and to think.
The girl and I had passed through some evil, dark, and dangerous hours since we first came together in that furious Saturday night's gale; but never was the worst of them all comparable to this middle-watch through which we sat, for hard upon two hours of it, in gloom, in the ocean silence that lay upon the barque, imagining the movement of dark shapes in the blackness that came like a wall to the cabin-door, and the gleam of swiftly receding eyes peering at us through the cabin skylight. Regularly through the stillness sounded the combined tread of Abraham and his mate, over our heads, with sometimes a halt that almost startled the ear, while we could clearly catch the grumbling growling of their conversation as they passed the skylight on their way to and fro.
Yet, strangely enough—I am speaking for myself—the horror of the double assassination did not lie upon my spirit with the deadening weight I should have imagined as the effect of so shocking, sudden, and bloody a tragedy. That which might have been acute horror was subdued into little more than a dull and sickening consternation by perception of our own peril. Yet I would look at those berths lying on either side the cuddy front, as though from either one or the other of them the figure of the Captain or his mate must stalk! The stain upon the cabin-deck lay black as ink against the Captain's door. To think thatthatwas all of him his barque now contained!
We sat whispering about the unhappy creature and his wretched subordinate; then our talk went to other matters. I told Helga we need not question that the intention of the crew was to cast the vessel away upon some part of the South African coast, near enough to Cape Town to enable them to trudge the distance, but too remote from civilization for the movements of the barque to be witnessed. That was their resolution, I said: I would swear to it as though it had been revealed to me. That they would never suffer us three men to land alive we might be as sure as that they had slaughtered Bunting and his mate.
'Their oath counts for nothing, you think?' said she.
I answered, 'Nothing: they would value their lives above their oath. Not likely they would suffer us to testify to their crime.' Under the serpent-fair exterior of Nakier lay as passionless a capacity of murder as ever formed the mechanical instinct of any deadly beast or reptile.
'His eye,' I said, 'will never be off us.' Even as we whispered, his gaze, or that of another subtle as himself, might be upon us. He was the one to fear; and this carried me into asking, 'What is to be done?'
Yet, before the hands of the clock were upon the hour of four, we knew what was to be done. It was wholly Helga's scheme. Her brain had planned it all; but it was not until she spoke and delivered her plot bit by bit that I understood the reason of her silence while I had been feverishly whispering my fears, talking of the Captain, of Nakier, of the treachery of the Malay and Cingalese miscreants, and asking, as one might think aloud, 'What is to be done?'
We went on deck at four; it was the darkest hour of the night, but very quiet. I bade Abraham and the other man go forward and turn in, as had heretofore been their custom.
'Not a word!' I cried, in swift response to the first of Jacob's remonstrance. 'I cannot speak here. There are thirsty ears at the wheel. We have planned that long before this time to-morrow the barque shall be our own, with nothing more for you to do than to calculate the value of the salvage. I'll find an early chance to explain—but not here! notnow! Forward with you both; for our lives depend upon the fellows believing that we have confidence in them.'
This I spoke as rapidly as intelligibility would permit, and, with Helga, drew away from them, moving towards the wheel. They hung as though staring and deliberating a few moments, then, without a word, went forward.
I spoke pleasantly to the fellow at the helm—what man it was I could not see—said that the vessel's course was the right navigation for the South African coast, and so forth. He answered me throatily, with a note of satisfaction in his thick speech, and then Helga and I fell to quietly pacing the deck.
We took great care to speak low; so nimble and ghostly were the movements of this coloured crew, that it was impossible to tell where a man might be lying listening and hidden. Twice I beheld the flitting of a shadow in the obscurity round about the mainmast, and all the while I walked I was again and again casting a look behind me.
It seemed an eternity ere the cold gray of the dawn hovered in the east. The first sight the bleak and desolate light revealed was a patch of dark crimson abreast of the companion, close against the rail, marking the spot where the unhappy mate had been stabbed. The barque stole glimmering out to the daylight, lifting her ashen canvas with a gloom about the deck where the forecastle ended, as though the blackness of the night had been something tangible, and the lingering shadows betwixt the rails fragments and tatters of it. I swept the sea-line. The ocean was a gray desert floating in thin lines of swell which made it resemble a vast carpet stirred by a draught of wind. But the small breeze of the previous evening was still with us, and the broad bows of the vessel broke the water into wrinkles fine-drawn as piano-wire, as she swam forwards, slowly rolling.
Three of the crew sat squatting like Lascars against the long-boat. I called, and they instantly sprang to their feet and came aft.
'Get scrapers,' said I, 'and work that stain out of the deck as fast as you can move your arms.'
They sprang forwards, returned with the necessary tools, and in a minute were on their knees scraping violently. With a dreadful feeling of sickness of heart I rejoined Helga at the other end of the deck.
The sun rose: the morning was to be a bright one; the heavens went, in a clear tropic blue, into the south and west, and in the north-east the clouds, like a scattering of frosted silver, hung high and motionless—mere pearly feathers or vapour, to be presently absorbed. Helga went below, to her cabin under the deck. When I asked her if she did not feel timid at the idea of penetrating those gloomy depths alone, she smiled, and, merely saying, 'You have called me brave, but you do not believe me so!' she left me.
It was shortly after seven o'clock that I spied Nakier standing in the galley-door, talking to someone within. I called to him: he immediately knocked the ashes out of his pipe, and slipping the inch of sooty clay into his breast, approached me. His salute was full of respect, and he surveyed me with eyes so gentle and so cordial, that one looked to see the engaging tenderness of his heart overflowing his face in smiles. So much for appearances! The most poisonous-fanged rogue of them all in that barque, full of coloured wretches made miscreants and murderers of by Captain Joppa Bunting's theories of conversion, might have passed to every eye as one of the very few sweet-souled men in this great world of wrong-headed humanity!
'Send Abraham to me,' said I, in the civilest manner I could command. 'It is his watch below, but I desire his presence and help while I overhaul the Captain's cabin for charts, for instruments of navigation, and so forth.'
He sought to veil, by drooping his lids, the keen glance he shot at me.
'Yaas, I send Misser Vise to you, sah,' said he; 'but first I would like to speakee about dat place we sail to. We have agree, and we ask you,' he continued with a smile that put an expression of coaxing into his handsome face, 'to agree allee same with us to sail for Mossel Bay. It is a very good bay, and it have a nice little town.'
'Yes,' said I; 'and when we get there, what do you mean to do with the ship?'
'Oh, we allee go ashore,' he answered.
He then asked me if I knew where Mossel Bay was. I answered that I had never heard of the place, but that if it was down on the charts we should undoubtedly be able to carry the barque to it. I then again requested him to send Abraham aft, that he and I and the young lady might examine the contents of the Captain's cabin, ascertain the situation of the ship when observations were last taken, and confer as to the course to be steered. I thought he hesitated for an instant, but, with true Malay swiftness of resolution that scarcely gave me time to note the hang of the mind in him, he exclaimed: 'I will send Misser Vise, sah,' and went forward.
In a few minutes Abraham arrived. He was speedily followed by Jacob, who hung about in the waist, looking wistfully aft. He, however, was to be talked to afterwards, for the policy of the three of us was to keep as separate as possible, coming together only under such excuse as I had now invented. The men who formed the watch on deck were 'loafing about,' to use the expressive vulgarism, one lounging against the bulwark-rail with another talking to him; here a fellow squatting like a Hindoo blowing a cloud, there a couple patrolling ten feet of deck, their arms folded upon their breasts. There was no gesticulation, no excitement, nothing of the swift fierce whispered conversation significant with the flashing of the askant glance that had been noticeable down to the dusk of the previous evening. Nakier paced the weather-side of the forecastle. I never once caught him looking our way, yet I couldfeelthat the fellow had us in his eye as fully as though his stare was a level one.
'Abraham,' said I, 'I have sent for you under the pretence of helping me to overhaul the dead skipper's stock of nautical appliances. My real motive is to create an opportunity to acquaint you with the plot Miss Nielsen and I settled between us while we were in the cuddy. Don't look knowing, man! Put on as honest and stupid a Deal beach air as you can manufacture.'
I called to Nakier.
'The barque will want watching. Step aft and keep a look-out while we are below, will you?' and, followed by Abraham, I entered the cuddy.
Before summoning Helga, I resolved to take a peep at the berths, lest there should be some sight in one or the other of them too shocking for her to behold. I was made to think of this by the great bloodstain on the deck close against the cabin-door. Its true complexion showed in the daylight. Abraham again backed away on seeing it; but time was precious. This was an opportunity to make the most of, and pushing open the door, I peered in. It was as I might have conjectured. The Captain had been assassinated by twenty strokes of the fellows' knives as he lay in his bunk asleep. Not one, not half a dozen stabs could have made such a horror of the bedclothes and the square of carpet on the deck as we gazed at. It was not an interior fit for Helga to enter.
I looked into the mate's berth, and found it as the man had left it—the blanket lying as it had been tossed when he arose. There was nothing frightful here; but our business lay in the Captain's cabin, and, full of loathing, I re-entered the horrible room and shut the door.
'A piteous sight! a piteous sight, sir!' exclaimed Abraham, looking about him in a stupefied way, and biting upon his under-lip to moisten it.
'Now attend!' said I. 'Collect your wits, for our stratagem signifies life or death to us.'
It took me but a few minutes to communicate Helga's plan. He grasped the thing with sailorly promptitude, nodding eagerly, with the blood returning to his cheeks to my hurried whispering; and when I had made an end and drew back to mark his judgment in his face, he struck his thigh a mighty blow, but said in a voice cold with resolution, despite his countenance being all awork with agitation:
'It will do, sir. It can't fail. It is only the getting 'em together; but it's to be done with a little patience.'
'Now,' said I, 'let us see what is here. Will the poor fellow have had a revolver?'
But we searched in vain for such a weapon. With hasty, desperate hands, never knowing but that at the next moment Nakier might enter, or some probing yellow face stare in upon us through the little window that overlooked the quarter-deck, we ransacked the lockers, explored a large black sea-chest, examined the shelves—to no purpose.
'He was too good a Christian man,' said Abraham hoarsely, 'to own a pistol. Had he been a Nova Scotiaman there'd be veapons enough here to rig out a regiment of the line vith.'
'It cannot be helped,' said I, keenly disappointed nevertheless, for I had counted upon finding a revolver, scarcely doubting that a man in charge of such a ship's company as these coloured fellows formed would go to sea well armed.
With all haste possible we transferred to the mate's cabin a bag of charts, a couple of sextants, a chronometer, and other matters of a like sort, and then with sickened hearts closed the door upon that tragic interior of the Captain's berth. I looked through the contents of the bag, and found a large blue-backed chart of South Africa, with marginal illustrations of the principal ports, harbours and headlands.
'This will do,' said I, and rolling it up, I put it under my arm, and, accompanied by Abraham, stepped through the cuddy door.
My eye once more as I passed fell upon the dreadful stain ingrained in the plank of the deck, and observing Punmeamootty speaking with another man a little forward of the mainmast, I was about to call and order him to scrape out the odious shocking blotch. But at the same instant it crossed my mind to let it be: it was a detail to fit into our stratagem, and I whispered the fancy to Abraham as we quitted the cuddy. I believed that all this while Helga was below in her cabin, and I was leaning over the little hatch that led to our quarters to call to her, when she pronounced my name from the deck overhead, and on looking up I saw her standing at the brass rail with Nakier.
'Shall Oi go forward an' get my breakfast or keep along with you, Mr. Tregarthen?' said Abraham.
'Keep with me for a little time,' I answered, and he followed me on to the poop.
Nakier's fine eyes glowed, and his face was lighted up with an expression of admiration and pleasure. It was manifest at the first glance that Helga had not spared her simple pretty arts in conversing with him.
Her first words to me were:
'Nakier has been talking to me about his native country. Oh, what a happy land of flowers and birds and a thousand other delights must it be!' She clasped her hands as though in rapture, and added: 'I shall hope some of these days to visit that shining country.'
'This is all very clever and happily devised, and well done,' thought I, stealing a peep at Nakier, who was steadfastly regarding with undissembled admiration the girl's sweet fresh face, that was faintly flushed by her enactment; 'but if we three men should be made away with——' I choked off the hurry of ugly fancies that swarmed on top of the thought of that dark princely-mannered villain falling in love with her, and exclaimed:
'Yes, the country of the Malays is a paradise, I believe! Here, Nakier, is a chart of South Africa.'
We went to the skylight to spread it.
'Now,' said I, 'where is this Mossel Bay that you were speaking about?'
I pored upon the chart in a posture of eager interest. He immediately pointed to the place with a forefinger as delicately shaped as a woman's.
'Ha!' said I. 'Yes; that is to the eastward of Agulhas. See,' I continued, pointing to one of those marginal illustrations I have referred to, 'here is a picture of the bay. It is a long walk to Cape Town!' I continued, looking round at Nakier.
'Oh no; plenty coach, plenty horse, plenty ox,' he responded, showing his teeth and speaking without the least hesitation—a quality of assurance that made me hopeful, for it was everything indeed that he should believe us credulous enough to suppose that Mossel Bay was the destination he had in his mind.
'Here is the picture, Helga!' said I. 'D'ye see it, Abraham? A fine open roadstead, not to be easily missed by you and Miss Nielsen. There are a couple of excellent sextants and a good chronometer below, and all necessary instruments for a safe navigation.'
'Oy, a first-class bay, and no mistake!' exclaimed Abraham.
Bending his squint upon the chart in a musing way, he scored along the line of coast with his square-cut thumb, as though calculating courses and distances. Miserable as I felt, I could have burst into a laugh at the face he put on.
'Oi've long had a notion,' said he, still squinting at the chart, 'of wisiting these 'ere foreign parts. Oi've heered tell of Cape Town as a proper city, plenty o' grapes a-knocking about and sherry vines and the likes of them drinks to be had for the asting, everything A1 and up to the knocker. But see here, Nakier,' said he, in a wonderfully familiar and friendly, shipmate-like sort of way. 'Oi'm a pore man, and so is my mate Jacob. Tell ye what Oi'm a-thinking of: ain't there no chance of our taking up a few pound for this here run?'
His apparent earnestness must have deceived a subtler eye than ever Nakier could have brought to bear on him. I uttered a word or two, as though I would remonstrate.
'You and me, Misser Vise, will speak on dat by-um-bye. We allee want money, and we get it,' responded Nakier, nodding significantly.
I partly turned away, as though there was nothing in this conversation to interest me.
'Ye don't know what hovelling is, Nakier, Oi suppose,' said Abraham. 'This here wessel is what we should call a blooming good job down our way——'
I interrupted him, fearful lest he should overdo his part: 'You might go forward and get some breakfast now, Abraham. You can relieve me here when you have finished the meal. Is there anything more you wish to know that this chart can tell us about, Nakier?'
'No, sah. Now you sabbee where Mossel Bay is, it is allee right.'
Abraham was descending the poop ladder. Under pretence of giving him the chart to replace in the mate's berth, I whispered, 'Mind you tell Jacob everything,' and then walked aft with Helga, leaving Nakier to go forward.
Throughout that morning the weather continued wonderfully brilliant and quiet. The heavens were a sweep of blue from line to line, and the sun as hot as we might have thought to find it ten degrees farther south. But shortly after ten o'clock the weak wind, that had been barely giving theLight of the Worldsteerage way, entirely failed; the atmosphere grew stagnant with the dry, parched hollowness that one sometimes notices before a storm, as though Nature sucked in her cheeks before expelling her breath through her feverish lips. I put my head into the skylight to look at the barometer, not knowing but that there might be dirty weather at the heels of this passing spell of sultry silence; but the mercury stood high, and the lens-like sharpness of the line of the horizon along with the high fine-weather blue was as ample a confirmation of its promise as one could hope to find. By eleven o'clock the calm was broken by a delicate rippling of wind out of the north-east—the first fanning of the north-east trade-wind I took it to be. The yards were trimmed to the change by Abraham, who followed on with some orders about the foretopmast-studdingsail. I was on deck at the time, and hearing this, rose hastily and thrust past him, saying betwixt my teeth, so vexed was I by his want of foresight:
'Keep all fast with your studdingsail gear, you fool! Are we three Englishmen a line-of-battle ship's company? Think before you bawl out!'
He saw his blunder, and, after a leisurely well-acted view of the sea, as though the weather had raised a debate in his mind, he called out to the three or four fellows who were clambering aloft to rig the boom out on the foreyard:
'Never mind about that there stun'-sail! Ye can lay down, moy lads!' and he bawled to me (who had returned aft), by way, no doubt, of excusing himself to Nakier, who was on the forecastle, and who appeared to be keeping a keen look-out upon the ship on his own account, 'There's no use, Oi think, Mr. Tregarthen, aworriting about stun'-sails ontil this here breeze hardens. It'll only be keeping the men agoing for no good.'
'Unless we are speedy,' I whispered to Helga, as we stood within earshot of the helmsman, 'that man Abraham will ruin us. Think of the fellow piling canvas at such a time! What a curse is consequentiality when out of season! Here is a poor, miserable Deal boatman with the privilege of ordering a few black men about, and he doesn't know how to make enough of his rights.'
From time to time I would gaze mechanically round the sea in search of a ship, but with no notion of finding encouragement in the gleam of a sail or in the shadowing of a steamer's smoke. My hope lay in a very different direction. But custom is strangely strong on shipboard, and I continued to look, though I was without the wish to see.
Shortly before noon I fetched the two sextants, one of which I gave to Abraham and the other to Helga. The boatman seemed hardly to know what to do with the instrument; it was a new, very handsome sextant, sparkling with brass and details of telescope, coloured glass, and the like, and bore as little resemblance to the aged, time-eaten quadrant that had gone down with theEarly Mornas to the cross-staff of the ancient mariner. I marked him putting it to his eye, and then fumbling with it, and, noticing several fellows forward, Nakier among them, attentively watching us, I called to him softly:
'Keep it at your eye, man! Let them believe that you thoroughly understand it!'
'Roight ye are,' he answered, putting the instrument to his face; 'but who the blazes is agoing to bring the sun into the middle o' such a muddle o' hornamentation as this here?'
The attention of the men, however, was in reality fixed upon Helga. She stood at the rail within full view of them, and there was, indeed, novelty enough in the sight to account for their staring, apart from the hope they had of her as the one that was to navigate their ship to the coast on which, as I took it, they meant to wreck her. Her well-fitting dress of dark serge showed no signs of wear as yet. No posture that she might have artfully adopted could so happily express the charms of her figure as this, when she turned her face sunwards, with the shining sextant raised to her eye. The delicate pale gold of her short hair was the right sort of tint to fascinate the dusky gaze that was fastened upon her. In her conversations with me she had made little or nothing of her knowledge of navigation, but it was easy to see in an instant's glance that she was a practised hand in the art of coaxing the sun's limb to the sip of the sea-line.
I spied Nakier forward watching her with an air of breathless interest. He and the rest of them might have doubted her capacity, knowing of it only from such off-hand talk as Punmeamootty had been able to collect and repeat from the cabin table. But now she was justifying their expectations, and by this time the whole of the crew—ten of them, with Jacob in the waist and a Malay at the wheel—were staring as one man; the cook from the door of his galley, Nakier on the forecastle swinging off from a rope, the rest of them in groups here and there.
'It is eight bells,' cried Helga in her clear voice, accentuated, as it always was, with a faint harshness of Scandinavian articulation.
'Height bells!' roared Abraham, though it might have been midnight to him, so far as the indications ofhissextant went.
'Eight bell!' piped the melodious voice of Nakier, like a belated echo of Helga's cry; and the chimes floated along the quiet decks.
I told Abraham to go below to the mate's cabin, and bring materials of ink, paper, log-book, and so forth, to enable Helga to work out the sights; also the chronometer and the Nautical Almanack. This was a part of our plot; otherwise, as you may suppose, the chronometer was not a thing to be carried here and there, least of all by such hands as Abraham's. The men were now passing in and out of the galley, conveying their dinner of smoking beef and ship's 'duff' into the forecastle. They talked eagerly, and with a gratulatory tone. That Helga had been able to find out what o'clock it was by the sextant, was the fullest warranty of her sufficiency as a navigator the poor wretches' ignorant souls could have demanded.
Nakier remained on the forecastle, watching us. I summoned him with the motion of my forefinger, and he came rapidly gliding to the poop.
'I wish you to remain here,' said I, 'while Miss Nielsen calculates the barque's position, that you may be able to tell the rest of the men they are in friendly hands, and that we look for the same friendly behaviour from you all.'
He answered with a motion of his hand, that was as expressive as a Frenchman's gesture.
'It would have been more convenient for the lady,' I continued, 'to have made her calculations in the Captain's cabin, but——' I looked him full in the face. He did not seem to understand. 'That berth is not fit for her to enter.'
'Ha!' he exclaimed, 'dat shall be put right. I have forgot.'
'By-and-bye. No hurry now. Tell Punmeamootty to bring us our dinner here. Miss Nielsen does not care to use the cuddy. She is a young lady—impressionable—you understand me, Nakier? When all is made straight the feeling will pass with her. But for the present——'
I broke off as Abraham arrived, bringing with him the articles I had despatched him to procure.
'Whose trick at the wheel is it?' I asked the boatman carelessly. 'It is noon, and that man yonder has been at the helm since ten.'
'It'll be Jacob's, sir. Oi allow he's waiting to finish his dinner.'
'No, no,' said I, 'that's not true ship's discipline. Fair must be fair aboard us,' and with some demonstration of warmth in my manner, I went to the poop rail and bawled for Jacob to come aft. The man promptly made his appearance, and the moment he had gripped the spokes of the wheel the ginger-coloured fellow who had been steering fled along the decks for his dinner, fleet as a hare with hunger. Abraham, with pencil and paper in hand, leaned upon the companion-cover while he pretended to be lost in calculating. Nakier and I stood looking on at Helga, who was seated on one side the skylight, the lid of which, being closed and lying flat, provided her with a table on which stood the chronometer, the volumes, the charts, and the other appliances she needed. She knew exactly what to do, and worked out her problems with a busy face and the blue of her eyes sweetened into violet by the shadow of her lashes. Deeply worried, miserably anxious as I was, on the eve of a project the failure of which was bound to signify an inhuman butchery of the three of us by the dark-skinned creatures we designed to betray, I could still find heart for admiration of the wonderful heroism of this girl. She was actively to share in our enterprise, and if failure followed, her doom might be even more fearful than ours; yet had her face been of marble carved into an incomparable counterfeit of a girl's countenance intent on a bit of arithmetic and nothing more, its passionlessness, its marvellous freedom from all expression of agitation, could not have been completer.
When she had completed her reckoning, she opened the chart which bore Captain Bunting's 'prickings,' as it is termed, and with rules and pencil continued the line to the situation of the ship at noon.
'That is where we are at this moment,' she exclaimed, pointing to the chart.
Nakier, with looks of astonishment and delight, peered.
'What d'ye make it, miss?' called Abraham.
She gave him the latitude—what it was has wholly escaped me.
'Roight,' he shouted, tearing up his bit of paper.
'Take these things below, Abraham,' said I, 'and then get your dinner. When you have done, come aft and take charge of the barque for half an hour. Miss Nielsen wishes to go to her cabin, and I am no sailor to be left alone with this craft.'
'Send Punmeamootty here with something for us to eat, if you please, Nakier.'
He made a soft salaaming bow, and quitted us with shining eyes and a highly pleased face. Presently the steward approached us with some cold salt beef, biscuit, and a bottle of wine. He spread a cloth upon the skylight, and then brought a couple of chairs from the cabin. While he was doing this I slipped into the mate's berth and took a tract-chart of the world from the bag and returned with it. I opened and pretended to examine it with anxious attention, speaking in an aside to Helga in a grumbling, doubting voice, and with a shake of my head, while Punmeamootty stood by waiting to learn if we had further orders. I told him we should require nothing more, and then, rolling up the chart, feigned to attack the repast before us. But as toeating!—not for ten times the value of thisLight of the Worldand her cargo could I have swallowed a morsel. Helga munched a biscuit and drank a little wine, eyeing me collectedly, with often a smile when my glance went to her.
'What a heart beats in you!' I cried gently, for it was impossible to know but that some wriggling, nimble-heeled coloured skin had slipped into the cabin, and was hanging motionless close under us, with his ear at the skylight. 'But it is not too late even yet to reconsider. I can do without you.'
'Not so well as with me.'
'But if we fail——'
'We shan't fail.'
'If we fail,' I continued, 'they may spare you as not apparently in the plot, and they will spare you the more readily, and use you well too, since they must be helpless without you to navigate them.'
'Hush!' she whispered. 'The stratagem will be the surer for my presence. And what is the danger? There can be none if we manage as we have arranged.'
'When d'ye reckon on starting on this here job, Mr. Tregarthen?' called Jacob from the wheel.
I shook my fist as a hint to him to hold his tongue. I waited a few minutes, during which I pretended to be busy with my knife and fork. The yellow-faced cook stood in the galley door smoking: there were two fellows beyond him conversing close against the forecastle hatch. The rest of the seamen were below at their dinner. I now opened the chart; Helga came round to my side, and the pair of us fell to pointing and motioning with our hands over the chart as though we were warmly discussing a difficulty. I raised my voice and shook my head, exclaiming: 'No, no! Any sailor will tell you that the prevailing gales off Agulhas are from the east'ard;' and continued in this fashion, delivering meaningless sentences, always very noisily, and with a great deal of gesticulation, while Helga acted a like part. The three fellows forward watched us steadfastly.
Just then Abraham rose out of the forecastle hatch and approached the poop in a strolling, rolling gait, carelessly filling his pipe as he came, and sending the true 'longshore leisurely look at the sea from side to side. A couple of fellows followed him out of the hatch, entered the galley for a light, as I supposed, and emerged smoking. Helga and I still feigned to be wrangling. Then Abraham joined us, and after listening a minute or two, raised his voice with a wrangling note in it also.
'Come, Helga,' I whispered; 'this fooling has lasted long enough. Now for it, and may God shield us! Abraham, stand by, my lad! Keep your eye forward!'
I had courted a few occasions of peril in my time, and knew what it was to have death close alongside of me for hour after hour; but then my blood was up, there was human life to be saved, and, outside that consideration, there was small opportunity for thought. It was otherwise now, and I own that my heart felt cold as stone as I advanced to the forecastle with Helga. I prayed that my cheeks would not betray my inward perturbation. I did not greatly fear for the girl. Though we should fail, I believed her life would be saved, horrible as the conditions of preservationmightprove to her. It was otherwise with me. Let but a suspicion of my intention enter the minds of the men, and I knew that in the space of a pulse or two I must be a corpse pierced by every knife in that vessel's forecastle.
As I approached the hatch that led to the quarters of the crew, Nakier came out of it. I suppose that the fellows who had been watching us called down to him, and that he came up to gather what the discussion on the poop might be about. He looked astonished by our presence in that forepart of the ship, and there was a mingling of puzzlement and of cunning in his eyes as he ran them over us.
'I cannot satisfy myself that Mossel Bay is a safe and easy destination for this vessel.'
'It was settle, sah,' he exclaimed quickly.
'There are more accessible ports on the South African coast. What are the views of your crew?'
'Dey are all of my 'pinion, sah.'
'The matter has not been discussed in their presence. Why do you wish to carry us round Agulhas? Besides, do not you know that there are ships of war at Simon's Bay, and that there is every chance of our falling in with one of her Majesty's cruisers off that line of coast you wish us to sail round?'
By this time the few men on deck gathered about us, and were listening eagerly with their necks stretched and their eyes, like blots of ink upon ovals of yellow satin, but fire-touched, steadfast upon me.
'I do not agree with Mr. Tregarthen, Nakier,' said Helga. 'I believe there is nothing to fear from our sailing round the Cape. He speaks of the heavy seas of the Southern Ocean, and of strong easterly winds. It is not so.'
'No, no,' he cried, with a passionate motion of the head; 'no easter wind dis time ob year. All fine-wedder sailing; beautiful smooth sea, allee same as now.'
'Now, see here,' said I, with a note of imperativeness in my speech. 'I have a right to express an opinion on this matter, and my contention is, that it is ridiculous to sail round to Mossel Bay, when you may get ashore for your walk to Cape Town on this side of the stormy headland of Agulhas.'
The fellow's eyes sparkled with irritation and mischief as he looked at me.
'Abraham and his mate are both of my way of thinking,' I went on. 'The lady, on the other hand, has no objection to Mossel Bay. Here we are, then, undecided as yet. Do you follow me?' He nodded his head sideways, as much as to say, 'Go on!' 'The four of us, however, will agree to this. The chart gives you a view of South Africa. Let all hands assemble, saving those two men aft there, who are willing to abide by your decision. Let me show them this chart and explain my ideas to them. If after I have been heard, you and your men still insist upon our carrying this vessel to Mossel Bay, it shall be done.'
'Where can we lay the chart?' said Helga.
'Is there a table in your forecastle?' I asked, sending a look at the little hatch which yawned close by.
'Yaas, sah,' answered Nakier, glancing from Helga to the cuddy, as if he could not understand us.
I met his eyes with a shake of my head, as though I could read his thoughts, and, approaching him by a stride, whispered: 'Not in the cuddy. You know why. I must have her by my side if we are to fairly argue this difficulty.'
'I can easily descend,' said Helga, stepping to the forecastle hatch to look down. 'I want to see the men's quarters, Nakier. I am as much a sailor as any of you, and have slept in a hammock.'
The man's gaze glowed with the admiration I had noticed in it when she worked out the navigation problems. Had he been the subtlest-witted of his race, what could he have witnessed in this desire of the girl and me to enter the forecastle to excite his suspicion? The other poor dusky fools, standing by with tawny, orange, or primrose faces, wrinkled their repellent masks with sailor-like grins of expectation; for whatever be the colour of Jack's skin at sea, the least excitement, the least divergement from the miserable monotony of his life, is a delight to him.
'Shall I go first?' said I.
Helga uttered a clear laugh. 'I should be ashamed,' she answered, 'not to be able to enter a ship's forecastle without help;' and so saying, she put her little foot upon the first of the pieces of wood nailed against the bulkhead and serving as steps, and descended. I followed, bidding Nakier, as I entered the hatch, to order every mother's son of his crew to attend, since it was a question for all hands, and their decision was to be final.
It was a time of emotions and sensations, and memory recalls but little more. I remember that one after another, in response to Nakier's call, the men who were on deck dropped below, till the forecastle was full of dusky, grotesquely attired shapes. The daylight streamed down through the oblong yawn of hatch. The flame of a slush-lamp charged the interior with an atmosphere of greasy smoke. Some bunks went on either hand, and a few hammocks dangled from the upper deck. There was a square table fixed to the stout after-bulkhead that divided this compartment from the hold. The men seemed to be without other wearing apparel than that they stood up in. I saw no sea-chests, no bags, merely here and there a shoe, a cap, a sou'-wester, an oilskin smock dangling at a nail. The murmur of the water, broken by the stealthily sliding stem, penetrated the stillness with a subdued sound of hissing like the swift respiration of the men, who gathered about Helga and me as we stood at the table with the chart open before us. Hard by the table was a stove, the chimney of which, in a zigzag, pierced the deck, showing its head well out of the way, close against the hollow under the top-gallant forecastle, where the windlass was.
Pressing my forefinger upon the chart, the curling corners of which were held down by Nakier on the one hand and Helga on the other, I fell to explaining my views, as I chose to call them, meanwhile looking round to observe that all hands of the Malays and Cingalese were present—for the creatures had a trick of coming and going like shadows. I bade them all listen, looking into one face after another, and I can see them now, shouldering one another and eagerly bending forwards—a strange, gloomy huddle of discoloured countenances flashful with eyes, and of many expressions. Some of them barely understood English, apart from the plain sea-going terms, and these frowned down upon the chart, or at me, in their effort to understand my meaning. Upon every man's left hip was strapped the inevitable sheath-knife of the sailor, accessible in a twist of the wrist, and my breath for a little while grew laboured, while I cursed myself for not having acted upon the first motion of my mind after Nakier had laid the capful of naked blades at Helga's feet.
'See here, now!' I exclaimed, addressing the men generally: 'judge of the time and leagues we might be able to save by making for St. Helena Bay, or say Saldanha Bay, instead of Mossel Bay. Here is Simon's Town, and in this bight, as all of you know, lie several of her Majesty's ships. Figure a cruiser requiring us to bring to, and sending a boat aboard us. What then?'
The few of the fellows who understood me breathed hard and looked at Nakier. One of them, with a Dutch accent, exclaimed:
'Boss! how far it be from Saldanha Bay to Cape Town?'
Nakier said something almost fiercely to him in his native tongue. The man responded in a dialect that certainly, to my ear, did not resemble Nakier's—but this might have been owing to the swinish thickness of his utterance—and, having spoken, he thrust one of his mates aside to get nearer to the table, and, putting his grimy thumb on the part of the chart where Simon's Bay was marked, he stared at Nakier, nodding with a vehemence that seemed a sort of fury in him—immediately afterwards rounding upon the others, and gesticulating with his hand to his neck, clearly signifying a halter.
'No, no!' cried Nakier.
'How far?—how far, boss?' shouted the other, addressing me.
'I cannot tell,' said I, 'without a pair of compasses. I forgot to bring those measuring instruments with me. I will fetch them—I will be back among you in a few minutes.'
Helga, with a well-acted start and look of alarm, said: 'You must not leave me alone here! Let me fetch the box!'
'Very good,' said I.
She lightly gained the deck, but even while she was making for the hatch I was covering her retreat by noisily talking and demonstratively pointing, so that every man's attention was fixed upon me.
I held the corner of the chart, which Helga had pinned down with her fingers, while I spoke; the chart was stiff, and had not been often used, and when you let go it rolled itself up into a funnel. I perceived that my reference to the British ships of war at Simon's Bay had taken a hold upon the imagination of a few of the fellows, and while I seemed to wait for Helga I made the most of this by asking the men if they could tell me what vessels were on that station, if they knew how often and in what direction they cruised, and then I said:
'Suppose on our arrival at Mossel Bay we find an English frigate or corvette there? Men, have you thought of that? It is not because I am innocent of the blood of the Captain and the mate who were assassinated last night that I wish to be boarded by a lieutenant and a dozen English sailors from a man-of-war on our arrival, wherever it may be, or on the high seas. Can I be sure of proving my innocence if I am charged with having had a hand in this crime?' I cried, looking defiantly at Nakier, and raising my voice. 'Would you come forward and say that you and your men were guilty, and that I and the lady and the two Englishmen were innocent? You know you would not!' I thundered, heavily striking the chart a thump with my clenched fist. 'Why, then, do you want to sail past this Simon's Bay? Is not this side of the coast safer, freer from the risks of falling in with a ship of war, and nearer by many miles to Cape Town than Mossel Bay?'
'How much near?—how much near, boss?' cried the man who had already asked this question.
'Here!' said I. 'Hold down this corner of the chart, will you, while I call to Mr. Wise to bring me the box of instruments? Miss Nielsen cannot find the things. Wise put the box away, and knows where it is.'
I left the table and stood under the hatch a moment to address a word to Nakier in that wild mad spirit of defiance that will often in the timidest mock at peril in the most terrible instant of it.
'Make your men understand,' I cried, 'that if we fall in with a man-of-war, every soul of them stands to be hanged by the neck until he is dead!'
As I said these words I sprang, caught the coaming of the hatch, gained the deck with another bound, and the next instant the slide of the hatch was swept in a roar through its grooves by the powerful hands of the two Deal boatmen.