My Danish Sweetheart Volume II Part 1

My Danish Sweetheart.

Volume 2.

by William Clark Russell.

CHAPTER I.

THE 'EARLY MORN.'

I told my story, and the three fellows listened attentively. Their eyes glowed in the lamplight as they stared at me. The weak wind raised a pleasant buzzing noise at the cut.w.a.ter, and the lugger stole in floating launches through the gloom over the long invisible heave of the Atlantic swell.

'Ah!' said the helmsman, when I had made an end, 'we heerd of that there Tintrenale lifeboat job when we was at Penzance. An' so you was her c.o.xswain?'

'Were the people of the boat drowned?' cried I eagerly. 'Can you give me any news of them?'

'No, sir,' he answered; 'there was no particulars to hand when we sailed. All that we larnt was that a lifeboat had been stove alongside a vessel in Tintrenale Bay; and little wonder, tew, says I to my mates when I heerd it. Never remember the like of such a night as that there.'

'What was the name of the Dane again?' said one of the fellows seated opposite me, as he lighted a short clay pipe by the flame of a match that he dexterously s.h.i.+elded from the wind in his hand as though his fist was a lantern.

'The _Anine_,' I answered.

'A bit of a black barque, warn't she?' he continued. 'Capt'n with small eyes and a beard like a goat! Why, yes! it'll be that there barque, Tommy, that slipped two year ago. Pigsears Hall and Stickenup Adams and me had a nice little job along with her.'

'You are quite right,' said Helga, in a low voice; 'I was on board the vessel at the time. The captain was my father.'

'Oh, indeed, mum!' said the fellow who steered. 'An' he's gone dead!

Poor old gentleman!'

'What is this boat?' said I, desiring to cut this sort of sympathy short.

'The _Airly Marn_,' said the helmsman.

'The _Early Morn_! And from what part of the coast, pray?'

'Why, ye might see, I think, sir, that she hails from Deal,' he answered. 'There's nothen resembling the likes of her coming from elsewhere that I knows of.'

'And what are you doing down in this part of the ocean?'

'Why,' said he, after spitting over the stern and pa.s.sing his hand along his mouth, 'we're agoing to Australey.'

'Going _where_?' I cried, believing I had not correctly heard him, while Helga started from her drooping posture and turned to look at me.

'To Sydney, New South Wales, which is in Australey,' he exclaimed.

'In this small open boat?'

'This small open boat!' echoed one of the others. 'The _Airly Marn's_ eighteen ton, and if she ben't big enough and good enough to carry three men to Australey there's nothen afloat as is going to show her how to do it!'

By the light shed by the dimly burning lantern, where it stood in the bottom of the boat, I endeavoured to gather from their faces whether they spoke seriously, or whether, indeed, they were under the influence of earlier drams of liquor than the dose they had swallowed from our jar.

'Are you in earnest, men?' said I.

'Airnest!' cried the man at the tiller in a voice of astonishment, as though he wondered at my wonder. 'Why, to be sure we are! What's wrong with us that we shouldn't be agoing to Australey?'

I glanced at the short length of dark fabric, and up at the black square of lugsail.

'What is taking you to Australia in a Deal lugger?' said I.

The man styled Abraham by his mates answered: 'We're a-carrying this here craft out on a job for the gent that's bought her. There was three of us an' a boy, but the boy took sick at Penzance, and we came away without him.'

He paused. The man sitting next him continued in a deep voice:

'A gent as lives in Lunnon took this here _Airly Marn_ over for a debt.

Well, when he got her he didn't know what to do with her. There was no good a-leaving her to pine away on the beach, so he tarns to and puts her up to auction. Well, there was ne'er a bid.'

'Ne'er a bid!' echoed the man who was steering.

'Ne'er a bid, I says,' continued the other, 'and whoy? First of all, there ain't no money in Deal; and next, the days of these luggers is nombered. Well, this here gent was called upon by an Australian friend who, gitting to hear of the _Airly Marn_, says he's a-willing to buy her _for_ a sum. What that sum might be I'm not here _for_ to know.'

'Fifty pound, I allow,' said the man named Tommy. 'Some says she was guv away. I've heerd speak of thirty pound. But fifty's what I call it.'

'Call it fifty!' exclaimed the fellow who steered.

'Well,' continued the first speaker, whose voice was peculiarly harsh, 'this here gent, having purchased the _Airly Marn_, comes down to Deal, and gives out that he wants some men to carry her to Sydney. The matter was tarned over. How much would he give? Well, he'd give two hundred an'

fifty pound, and them as undertook the job might make what shares they chose of the money. I was for making six shares. Abraham there says no, fower's enough. Tommy says three an' a boy. That's seventy-five pound a man, and twenty-five pound for the boy; but the boy being took sick, his share becomes ourn.'

'And you think seventy-five pound apiece pay enough for as risky an undertaking as was ever heard of?' cried I.

'Wish it were already aimed,' said Abraham. 'Pay enough? Oy, and good monney, tew, in such times as these.'

'How far are we from the English coast?' asked Helga.

The man called Jacob, after a little silence, answered: 'Why, I dare say the Land's End'll be about a hundred an' eighty mile off.'

'It would not take long to return!' she exclaimed. 'Will you not land us?'

'What! on the English coast, mum?' he cried.

I saw him peering earnestly at us, as though he would gather our condition by our attire.

'It's a long way back,' continued he; 'and supposing the wind,' he added, looking up at the sky, 'should head us?'

'If the gent would make it worth us men's while----' broke in Tommy.

'No, no!' exclaimed Abraham, 'we don't want to make nothen out of a fellow-creature's distress. We've saved ye, and that's a good job. Next thing we've got to do is to put ye aboard the first homeward bound vessel we falls in with. I'm for keeping all on. s.h.i.+ps is plentiful hereabout, and ye'll not be kept awaiting. But to up h.e.l.lum for the English coast again----' I saw his head wag vehemently against the stars. 'It's a long way to Australey, master, and ne'er a man of us touches a penny-piece till we gits there.'

I sat considering a little. My immediate impulse was to offer the fellows a reward to land us. Then I thought--no! They may ask too much, and, indeed, whatever they might expect must prove too much for me, to whom five pounds was a considerable sum, though, as I have told you, my mother's slender income was enough for us both. Besides, the money these men might ask would be far more fitly devoted to Helga, who had lost all save what she stood in--who was without a friend in England except myself and mother, who had been left by her father without a farthing saving some pitiful sum of insurance-money, which she would not get for many a long day, and who, brave heart! would, therefore, need my mother's purse to refurnish her wardrobe and embark her for her Danish home, if, indeed, there would _now_ be a home for her at Kolding.