My Danish Sweetheart Volume II Part 5

He stood up on straddled legs, with the aged instrument at his eye, mopping and mowing at the luminary in the south, and biting hard in his puzzlement and efforts at a piece of tobacco that stood out in his cheeks like a k.n.o.b.

'He's a blazing long time in making height bells, hain't he, to-day!'

said Jacob, addressing Abraham, and referring to the sun.

'He's all right,' answered Abraham, talking with his eye at the little telescope. 'You leave him to me, mate; keep you quiet, and I'll be telling you what o'clock it is presently.'

Helga turned her head to conceal her face, and, indeed, no countenance more comical than Abraham's could be imagined, what with the mastication of his jaws, which kept his ears and the muscles of his forehead moving, and what with the intensity of the screwed-up expression of his closed eye and the slow wagging of his beard, like the tail of a pigeon newly alighted.

'Height bells!' he suddenly roared in a voice of triumph, at the same time whipping out a huge silver watch, at which he stared for some moments, holding the watch out at arm's-length, as though time was not to be very easily read. 'Blowed if it ben't one o'clock at Deal!' he cried. 'Only fancy being able to make or lose time as ye loike. Werry useful ash.o.r.e, sir, that 'ud be, 'ticularly when you've got a bill afalling doo.'

He then seated himself in the stern-sheets, and, producing a small book and a lead pencil from the locker, went to work to calculate his lat.i.tude. It was a very rough, ready, and primitive sort of reckoning.

He eyed the paper with a knowing face, often scratching the hair over his ear and looking up at the sky with counting lips; then, being satisfied, he administered a nod all round, took out his chart, and, having made a mark upon it, exclaimed, while he returned it to the locker, 'There, that job's over till twelve o'clock to-morrow.' This said, he extracted a log-book that already looked as though it had been twice round the world, together with a little penny bottle of ink and a pen, and, with the book open upon his knee, forthwith entered the lat.i.tude (as he made it) in the column ruled for that purpose; but I could not see that he made any attempt even at guessing at his longitude, though I noticed that he wrote down the speed of his little craft, which he obtained--and I dare say as correctly as if he had hove the log--by casting his eye over the side.

'How d'ye spell _Thermoppilly_?' said he, addressing us generally.

I told him.

'Just want to state here that we sighted her, that's all,' said he; 'this here s.p.a.ce with "Remarks" wrote atop has got to be filled up, I suppose? At about wan o'clock this marning,' he exclaimed, speaking very slowly, and writing as he spoke, 'fell in with a raft--how's raft spelt, master?--two r's?' I spelt the word for him.--'Thank'ee! Fell in with a raft, and took off a lady and gent. There, that'll be the noose for twenty-four hours! Now let's go to dinner.'

This mid-day meal was composed of a piece of corned beef, some s.h.i.+p's biscuit and cheese. I might have found a better appet.i.te had there been less wind, and had the boat's head been pointed the other way. All the time now the lugger was swarming through it at the rate of steam. There was already a strong sea running too, the storminess of which we should have felt had we had it on the bow; but our arrowy speeding before it softened the fierceness of its sweeping hurls, and the wind for the same reason came with half the weight it really had, though we must have been reefed down to a mere strip of canvas had we been close-hauled. The sun shone with a dim and windy light out of the sky that was hard with a pie-balding of cloud.

'What is the weather going to prove?' I asked Abraham.

He munched leisurely, with a slow look to windward, and answered, "Tain't going to be worse nor ye see it.'

'Have you a barometer?' said I.

'No,' he answered; 'they're no good. In a boat arter this here pattern, what's the use of knowing what's agoing to come? It's only a-letting go a rope an' you're under bare poles. Marcury's all very well in a big s.h.i.+p, where ye may be taken aback clean out o' the sky, and lose every spar down to the stumps of the lower masts.'

Though I constantly kept a look-out, sending my eyes roaming over either bow past the smooth and foaming curves of seas rus.h.i.+ng ahead of us, I was very sensible, as I have said, that nothing was to be done in such hollow waters as we were now rus.h.i.+ng through, though we should sight a score of homeward-bounders. Yet, spite of the wonderful life that strong northerly wind swept into the ocean, nothing whatever showed during the rest of the day, if I except a single tip of canvas that hovered for about a quarter of an hour some two or three leagues down in the east, like a little wreath of mountain mist. The incessant pouring of the wind past the ear, the shouting and whistling of it as it flashed spray-laden off each foaming peak in chase of us, grew inexpressibly sickening and wearying to me, coming as it did after our long exposure to the fierce weather of the earlier days. The thwarts or lockers brought our heads above the line of the gunwale, and to remedy this I asked leave to drag a spare sail aft into the bottom of the boat, and there Helga and I sat, somewhat sheltered at least, and capable of conversing without being obliged to cry out.

CHAPTER III.

A 'LONGSh.o.r.e QUARREL.

We pa.s.sed the afternoon in this way. Jacob was forward, sleeping; Thomas's turn at the helm had come round again; and Abraham lay over the lee rail, within grasp of the foresheet, lost in contemplation of the rus.h.i.+ng waters.

'Where and when is this experience of ours going to end?' said I to Helga as we sat chatting.

'How fast are we travelling?' she asked.

'Between eight and nine miles an hour,' I answered.

'This has been our speed during the greater part of the day,' she said.

'Your home grows more and more distant, Hugh; but you will return to it.'

'Oh, I fear for neither of us, Helga,' said I. 'Were it not for my mother, I should not be anxious. But it will soon be a week since I left her, and, if she should hear that I was blown away out of the bay in the _Anine_, she will conclude that I perished in the vessel.'

'We must pray that G.o.d will support her and give her strength to await your return,' said she, speaking sadly, with her eyes bent down.

What more could she say? It was one of those pa.s.sages in life in which one is made to feel that Providence is all in all, when the very instinct of human action in one is arrested, and when there comes upon the spirit a deep pause of waiting for G.o.d's will.

I looked at her earnestly as she sat by my side, and found myself dwelling with an almost loverlike pleasure upon the graces of her pale face, the delicacy of her lineaments, the refinement of prettiness that was heightened into something of dignity, maidenly as it was, by the fort.i.tude of spirit her countenance expressed.

'Helga,' said I, 'what will you do when you return to Kolding?'

'I shall have to think,' she answered, with the scarcely perceptible accent of a pa.s.sing tremor in her voice.

'You have no relatives, your father told me.'

'No; none. A few friends, but no relatives.'

'But your father has a house at Kolding?'

'He rented a house, but it will be no home for me if I cannot afford to maintain it. But let my future be _my_ trouble, Hugh,' said she gently, looking at me, and always p.r.o.nouncing my name as a sister might a brother's.

'Oh no!' said I. 'I am under a promise to your father--a promise that his death makes binding as a sacred oath upon me. Your future must be _my_ business. If I carry you home in safety--I mean to my mother's home, Helga--I shall consider that I saved your life; and the life a man rescues it should be his privilege to render as easy and happy as it may lie in his power to make it. You have friends in my mother and me, even though you had not another in the wide world. So, Helga,' said I, taking her hand, 'however our strange rambles may end, you will promise me not to fret over what your future may hold when you get ash.o.r.e.'

She looked at me with her eyes impa.s.sioned with grat.i.tude. Her lips moved, but no word escaped her, and she averted her face to hide her tears.

Poor, brave, gentle little Helga! I spoke but out of my friends.h.i.+p and my sympathy for her, as who would not, situated as I was with her, my companion in distress, now an orphan, desolate, friendless, and poor?

Yet I little knew then, heedless and inexperienced as I was in such matters, how pity in the heart of a young man will swiftly sweeten into deeper emotion when the object of it is young and fair and loving, and alone in the world.

The sun went down on a wild scene of troubled, running, foaming waters, darkling into green as they leapt and broke along the western sky, that was of a thunderous, smoky tincture, with a hot, dim, and stormy scarlet which flushed the clouds to the zenith. Yet there had been no increase in the wind during the afternoon. It had settled into a hard breeze, good for outward-bounders, but of a sort to send everything heading north that was not steam scattering east and west, with yards fore-and-aft and tacks complaining.

By this time I had grown very well used to the motion of the lugger, had marked her easy flight from liquid peak into foam-laced valley, the onward buoyant bound again, the steady rush upon the head of the creaming sea, with foam to the line of the bulwark-rail, and the air for an instant snowlike with flying spume, and all the while the inside of the boat as dry as toast. This, I say, I had noticed with increasing admiration of the sea-going qualities of the hearty, bouncing, stalwart little fabric; and I was no longer sensible of the anxiety that had before possessed me when I thought of this undecked lugger struggling with a strong and lumpish sea--a mere yawn upon the water, saving her forecastle--so that a single billow tumbling over the rail must send her to the bottom.

'Small wonder,' said I to Helga, as we sat watching the sunset and marking the behaviour of the boat, 'that these Deal luggers should have the greatest reputation of any 'longsh.o.r.e craft around the English coasts, if they are all like this vessel! Her crew's adventure for Australia is no longer the astonishment I first found it. One might fearlessly sail round the world in such a craft.'

'Yes,' she answered softly in my ear--for surly Thomas sat hard by--'if the men had the qualities of the boat! But how are they to reach Australia without knowing their longitude? And if you were one of the party, would you trust Abraham's lat.i.tude? My father taught me navigation; and, though I am far from skilful at it, I know quite enough to feel sure that such a rough observation as Abraham took to day will, every twenty-four hours, make him three or four miles wrong, even in his lat.i.tude. Where, then, will the _Early Morn_ blunder to?'

'Well, they are plainly a sensitive crew,' said I, 'and if we want their goodwill, our business is to carry admiring faces, to find everything right, and say nothing.'

This chat was ended by Abraham joining us.

'Now, lady,' said he, 'when would ye like to tarn in? The forepeak's to be yourn for the night. Name your hour, and whosoever's in it'll have to clear out.'

'I am grateful indeed!' she exclaimed, putting her hand upon his great hairy paw in a pretty, caressing way.

'Abraham,' said I, 'I hope we shall meet again after we have separated.

I'll not forget your kindness to Miss Nielsen.'

'Say nothen about it, sir; say nothen about it!' he cried heartily.

'She's a sailor's daughter, for all he warn't an Englishman. Her father lies drownded, Mr. Tregarthen. If he was like his la.s.s he'll have had a good heart, sir, and the sort of countenance one takes to at the first sight o't.' By the rusty light still living in the west I saw him turn his head to look forward and then aft; then lowering his voice into a deep sea growl he exclaimed: 'There's wan thing I should like to say: there's no call for either of ye to take any notice along of old Tommy.

His feelings is all right; it's his vays as are wrong. Fact is,' and here he sent another look forward and then aft, 'Tommy's been a disapp'inted man in his marriages. His first vife took to drink, and was always a-combing of his hair with a three-legged stool, as Jack says.