My Danish Sweetheart Volume II Part 26

'You will give us beef to-day, sah?'

'I think not, and if you throw your allowance overboard you shall have pork again to-morrow.'

'We did not sign your articles for dis,' said the man, who spoke English with a good accent.

'The articles provide for certain food,' answered the Captain, 'and that food is served out to you in very good measure. You will try--you will try to eat this pork; and when I learn that you have everyone of you swallowed one mouthful, you will find me indulgent in other directions, and ready to proceed on the only course which can result in your salvation.'

'You will not give us beef to-day, sah?' said the man, shaking his head.

'Yes; but I must learn first that you have eaten of the pork. I will not insist upon the soup, but the pork you must eat!'

'No, sah!'

'You can go forward!'

'We signed for meat, sah: we cannot work on biscuit!'

'Meat you have, and excellent meat too! It is my business to make Christians of you. This little struggle is natural. You can go forward, I say!'

Helga, catching her breath as though to a sudden hysteric constriction of the throat, cried out, 'Captain, do not starve these men! Give them the food their religion permits them to eat!'

He looked at her for a moment or two in silence. It was hard to guess at his mind under that fixedly smiling countenance, but it seemed to me as though in those few moments of pause there was happening a really bitter conflict of thought in him.

'I know my duty!' he exclaimed. 'I know what my responsibilities are here: what is expected of me!' He reflected again. 'I shall have to render an account for my conduct and human weakness is not forgiven in those who know what is right, and who are in a position to maintain, enforce, and confirm the right.' He paused again, then saying softly to Helga, 'For your sake!' he turned to Nakier. 'This lady wishes that the crew shall have the food their black and wicked superst.i.tions suffer them to eat. Be it so--for to-day. Let the cook go to Mr. Jones's cabin for the key of the harness-cask.'

Without a word, the man rounded upon his heel and went forward.

The Captain gazed at Helga while he pensively pulled his whiskers.

'It is just possible,' said he, 'that you may not be very intimately acquainted with the character of the religion I am endeavouring to correct in those poor dark fellow-creatures of mine.'

'I dare say they are very happy in their belief,' she answered.

He arched his eyebrows and spread his waistcoat, and had fetched a deep breath preparatory to delivering one of his fathoms of tedious commonplace, but his eye was at that instant taken by the clock under the skylight.

'Ha!' he cried, 'I must fetch my s.e.xtant; it is drawing on to noon. I will bring you an instrument, Miss Nielsen; we will shoot the sun together.'

'No, if you please,' she exclaimed.

He entreated a little, but her _no_ was so resolutely p.r.o.nounced that, contenting himself with a bland flourish of his hand, he went below.

'What is to be done?' whispered Helga. 'We shall not be able to induce him to land us at Santa Cruz. Is he mad, do you think?'

'No more than I am,' said I. 'One vocation is not enough for the fellow.

There are others like him in my country of Great Britain. What a sea-captain, to be sure! How well he talks--I mean for a sea-captain! He has a good command of words. I wager he has made more than one rafter echo in his day. And he is sincere too. I saw the struggle in him when you asked that the men should have their bit of beef.'

'How am I to make him understand,' said she, 'that nothing can follow his keeping us here?'

'At all events,' I exclaimed, 'we can do nothing until we sight a s.h.i.+p heading for home.'

'That is true,' she answered.

'We came aboard yesterday,' I continued, 'since when nothing has been sighted, therefore, be the disposition of the man what it will, he could not down to this moment have put us in the way of getting home. But here he comes.'

He rose through the companion hatch, with a s.e.xtant in his hand, and, stepping over to the weather side of the deck, fell to ogling the sun that flamed over the weather-bow.

END OF VOL. II.