My Danish Sweetheart Volume II Part 7

'At last, Helga!' I cried, with a triumphant face, pointing.

She looked with her clear blue eyes for a little while in silence at the approaching vessel, as though to make sure of the direction she was heading in, then, clasping her hands, she exclaimed, drawing a breath like a sigh, 'Yes, at last. Hugh, your home is not so very far off now.'

'What's she loike?' said Abraham, bringing his knuckles out of his eyes and staring.

He went to the locker for a little old-fas.h.i.+oned 'longsh.o.r.e telescope, pointed it, and said, 'A bit of a barque. A furriner.' He peered again, 'A Hamburger,' cried he. 'Look, Tommy!'

The man put the gla.s.s to his eye and leaned against the rail, and his mouth lay with a sour curl under the little telescope as he stared through it.

'Yes, a whoite hull and a Hamburger,' said he 'and she's coming along tew. There'll be no time, I allow, to bile the coffee-pot afore she's abreast,' he added, casting a hungry, morose eye towards the little cooking-stove.

'Ye can loight the foire, Tommy,' said Abraham, 'whoilst I signalize her,' saying which he took an English Jack out of that locker in which he kept the soap, towels, and, it seemed to me, pretty well all the crew's little belongings, and, having secured the flag to the end of the pole, he thrust it over the side and fell to motioning with it, continuing to do so until it was impossible to doubt that the people of the little barque had beheld the signal. He then let the pole with the flag flying upon it rest upon the rail, and took hold of the fore-halliards in readiness to let the sail drop.

I awaited the approach of the barque with breathless anxiety. I never questioned for a moment that she would take us aboard, and my thoughts flew ahead to the moment when Helga and I should be safely in her: when we should be looking round and finding a stout little s.h.i.+p under our feet, the lugger with her poor plucky Deal sailors standing away from us to the southward, and the horizon, past which lay the coast of Old England, fair over the bows.

'Shove us close alongside, Jacob,' cried Abraham.

'Shall 'ee hook on, Abraham?' inquired Jacob.

'No call to it,' answered Abraham. 'We'll down lug and hail her. She'll back her tawps'l, and I'll put the parties aboard in the punt.'

'I have left my parcel in the forepeak,' said Helga, and was going for it.

'I'm nimbler than you can be now, Helga,' said I, smiling, and meaning that now she was in her girlish attire she had not my activity.

I jumped forward, and plunged down the hatch, took the parcel out of the bunk, and returned with it, all in such a wild, feverish hurry that one might have supposed the lugger was sinking, and that a moment of time might signify life or death to me. Abraham grinned, but made no remark.

Thomas, on his knees before the stove, was sulkily blowing some shavings he had kindled. Jacob, with a wooden face at the tiller, was keeping the bows of the _Early Morn_ on a line with the oncoming vessel.

The barque was under a full breast of canvas, and was heeling prettily to the pleasant breeze of wind that was gus.h.i.+ng brilliantly out of the eastern range of heaven, made glorious by the soaring sun. Her hull sat white as milk upon the dark-blue water, and her canvas rose in squares which resembled mother-of-pearl with the intermixture of shadow and flas.h.i.+ng light upon them occasioned by her rolling, so that the cloths looked shot like watered silk or like the inside of an oyster-sh.e.l.l. But it was distance on top of the delight that her coming raised in me which gave her the enchantment I found in her, for, as she approached, her hull lost its snowstormglare and showed somewhat dingily with rusty stains from the scupper-holes. Her canvas, too, lost its symmetry, and exhibited an ill-set pile of cloths, most of the clews straining at a distance from the yardarm sheave holes, and I also took notice of the disfigurement of a stump-foretop-gallant-mast.

'Dirty as a Portugee,' said Abraham; 'yet she's Jarman all the same.'

'I never took kindly to the Jarmans, myself,' said Jacob; 'they're a shoving people, but they arn't clean. Give me the Dutch. What's to beat their cheeses? There's nothing made in England in the cheese line as aquils them Dutch cannon-b.a.l.l.s, all pink outside and all cream hin.'

'Do you mean by a Hamburger a Hamburg s.h.i.+p?' asked Helga.

'Yes, lady, that's right,' answered Abraham.

'Then she's bound to Hamburg,' said the girl.

'Ask yourself the question,' answered Abraham--which is the Deal boatmen's way of saying yes.

She looked at me.

'It will be all the same,' said I, interpreting the glance; 'England is but over the way from Hamburg. Let us be homeward-bound, in any case. We have made southing enough, Helga.'

'Tommy!' sung out Abraham, 'give that there Jack another flourish, will ye?'

The man did so, with many strange contortions of his powerful frame, and then put down the pole and returned to the stove.

'There don't seem much life aboard of her,' said Jacob, eying the barque. 'I can only count wan head ower the fo'k'sle rail.'

'Down h.e.l.lum, Jacob!' bawled Abraham, and as he said the words he let go the fore-halliards, and down came the sail.

The lugger, with nothing showing but her little mizzen, lost way, and rose and fell quietly beam-on to the barque, whose head was directly at us, as though she must cut us down. When she was within a few cables'

length of us she slightly s.h.i.+fted her helm and drew out. A man sprang on to her forecastle rail and yelled at us, brandis.h.i.+ng his arms in a motioning way, as though in abuse of us for getting into the road. We strained our ears.

'What do 'ee say?' growled Abraham, looking at Helga.

'I do not understand him,' she answered.

'Barque ahoy!' roared Abraham.

The man on the forecastle-head fell silent, and watched us over his folded arms.

'Barque ahoy!' yelled Jacob.

The vessel was now showing her length to us. On Jacob shouting, a man came very quietly to the bulwarks near the mizzen rigging and, with sluggish motions, got upon the rail, where he stood, holding on by a backstay, gazing at us lifelessly. The vessel was so close that I could distinguish every feature of the fellow, and I see him now, as I write, with his fur cap and long coat and half-boots, and beard like oak.u.m. The vessel was manifestly steered by a wheel deep behind the deck-house, and neither helm nor helmsman was visible--no living being, indeed, saving the motionless figure on the forecastle head and the equally lifeless figure holding on by the backstay aft.

'Barque ahoy!' thundered Abraham. 'Back your tawps'l, will 'ee? Here's a lady and gent as we wants to put aboard ye; they're in distress. They've bin s.h.i.+pwreckt--they wants to git home. Heave to, for Gord's sake, if so be as you're _men_!'

Neither figure showed any indications of vitality.

'What! are they corpses?' cried Abraham.

'No--they're wuss--they're Jarmans!' answered Jacob, spitting fiercely.

On a sudden the fellow who was aft nodded at us, then kissed his hand, solemnly dismounted, and vanished, leaving no one in sight but the man forward, who a minute later disappeared also.

Abraham drew a deep breath, and looked at me. His countenance suddenly changed. His face crimsoned with temper, and with a strange, ungainly, 'longsh.o.r.e plunge he sprang on top of the gunwale, supporting himself by a grip of the burton of the mizzenmast with one hand while he shook his other fist in a very ecstasy of pa.s.sion at the retreating vessel.

'Call yourselves _men_!' he roared. 'I'll have the law along of ye!

It'll be _me_ as'll report ye! Don't think as I can't spell.

HANSA--_Hansa_. There it is, wrote big as life on your blooming starn!

I'll remember ye! You sausage-eaters!--you scow-bankers--you scaramouches!--you varmint! Call yourselves _sailors_? Only gi' me a chance of getting alongside!'

He continued to rage in this fas.h.i.+on, interlarding his language with words which sent Helga to the boat's side, and held her there with averted face; but, all the same, it was impossible to keep one's gravity. Vexed, maddened, indeed, as I was by the disappointment, it was as much as I could do to hold my countenance. The absurdity lay in this raving at a vessel that had pa.s.sed swiftly out of hearing, and upon whose deck not a living soul was visible.

Having exhausted all that he was able to think of in the way of abuse, Abraham dismounted, flung his cap into the bottom of the boat, and, drying his brow by pa.s.sing the whole length of his arm along it, he exclaimed:

'There!--_now_ I've given 'em something to think of!'

'Why, there was ne'er a soul to hear a word ye said,' exclaimed Thomas, who was still busy at the stove, without looking up.

'See here!' shouted Abraham, rounding upon him with the heat of a man glad of another excuse to quarrel. 'Dorn't _you_ have nothen to say. No sarce from _you_, and so I tells ye! I know all about ye. When did ye pay your rent last, eh? Answer me that!' he sneered.

'Oh, that's it, is it? that's the time o' day, eh?' growled Thomas, looking slowly but fiercely round upon Abraham, and stolidly rising into a menacing posture, that was made wholly ridiculous by the clergyman's coat he wore. 'And what's my rent got to do with you? 'T all events, if I _am_ a bit behoind hand in my rent, moy farder was never locked up for six months.'