My Danish Sweetheart Volume III Part 9

He still panted as from heavy recent exertion, and his voice faltered as though he were sinking from a wound.

'What is it?' cried the clear voice of Helga from her berth.

'Open your door!' I said, knowing that it was her practice to shoot the bolt. 'All is darkness here. Let us in--dress yourself by feeling for your clothes--the Malays have risen upon the Captain and mate--it may be our turn next, and we must make a stand in your cabin. Hus.h.!.+'

In the interval of her quitting her bunk to open the door, I strained my ears. Nothing was to be heard save near and distant noises rising out of the vessel as she heeled on the long westerly swell. But then we were deep down, with two decks for any noise made on the p.o.o.p to penetrate.

'The door is open,' said Helga.

I had one hand on Abraham's arm, and, feeling with the other, I guided him into Helga's berth, the position of which, as he had never before been in this part of the vessel, he could not have guessed. I then closed the door and bolted it.

'Dress yourself quickly, Helga!' said I, talking to her in the mine-like blindness of this interior that was untouched by the star or two that danced in her cabin window as in mine.

'Tell me what has happened!' she exclaimed.

'Speak, Abraham!' said I.

'Lor'! but Oi don't seem able to talk without a light,' he answered.

'Ain't there no lantern here? If there's a lantern, I've got three or four loocifers in my pocket.'

'Hist!' I cried. 'I hear footsteps.'

We held our breath: all was still. Some sound had fallen upon my ear. It resembled the slapping of planks with naked feet to my fancy, that had been terrified by Abraham's sudden horrible report, before there was time for my muscles and nerves to harden into full waking strength.

'What d'ye hear?' hoa.r.s.ely whispered Abraham.

'It was imagination. Helga, can we light the lantern?'

She answered 'Yes'--she was ready.

'Strike a match, Abraham, that I may see where the lantern hangs!' said I.

He did so, holding the flame in his fist. I opened the door, whipped out, took down the lantern and darted in again, bolting the door anew with a thrill of fear following upon the haste I had made through imagination of one of those yellow-skins crouching outside with naked knife in hand. I swiftly lighted the lantern, and placed it in Helga's bunk. Abraham was of an ashen paleness, and I knew my own cheeks to be bloodless.

'Ought we to fear the crew?' cried Helga. 'We have not wronged them.

They will not want _our_ lives.'

'Dorn't trust 'em, dorn't trust 'em!' exclaimed Abraham. 'Ain't there nothen here to sarve as weapons?' he added, rolling his eyes around the cabin.

'What is the story? Tell it now, man, tell it!' I cried, in a voice vehement with nerves.

He answered, speaking low, very hastily and hoa.r.s.ely: 'Oi'd gone below at eight bells. Oi found Nakier haranguing some of the men as was in the fok'sle; but he broke off when he see me. Oi smoked a pipe, and then tarned in and slep' for an hour or so; then awoke and spied five or six of the chaps a-whispering together up in a corner of the fok'sle. They often looked moy way, but there worn't loight enough to let 'em know that my eyes was open, and I lay secretly a-watching 'em, smelling mischief. Then a couple of 'em went on deck, and the rest lay down.

Nothen happened for some time. Meanwhile Oi lay woide awake, listening and watching. 'Twas about seven bells, Oi reckon, when someone--Oi think it was Nakier--calls softly down through the hatch, and instantly all the fellows, who as I could ha' swore was sound asleep, dropped from their hammocks like one man, and the fok'sle was empty. I looked round to make sure that it were empty, then sneaks up and looks aft with my chin no higher than the coaming. I heered a loud shriek, and a cry of "O G.o.d! O G.o.d! Help! help!" and now, guessing what was happening, and believing that the tastin' of blood would drive them fellows mad, and that Oi should be the next if Jacob worn't already gone, him being at the wheel, as I might calculate by his not being forrard, Oi took and run, and here Oi am.'

He pa.s.sed the back of his hand over his brow, following the action with a fling of his fingers from the wrist; and, indeed, it was now to be seen that his face streamed with sweat.

'Do you believe they have murdered the Captain?' cried Helga.

'I dorn't doubt it--I _can't_ doubt it. There seemed two gangs of 'em.

Oi run for my life, and yet I see two gangs,' answered Abraham.

'Horrible!' exclaimed the girl, looking at me with fixed eyes, yet she seemed more shocked than frightened.

'Did not I foresee this?' I exclaimed. 'Where were your senses, man--_you_ who lived amongst them, ate and drank with them? It would be bad enough if they were white men; but how stands our case, do you think, in a s.h.i.+p seized by savages who have been made to hate us for our creed and for the colour of our skins?'

'Hark!' cried Helga.

We strained our hearing, but nothing was audible to me saving my heart, that beat loud in my ears.

'I thought I heard the sound of a splash,' she said.

'If they should ha' done for my mate, Jacob!' cried Abraham. 'As the Lord's good, 'twill be too hard. Fust wan, then another, and now nowt but me left of our little company as left Deal but a day or tew ago, as it seems when Oi looks back.'

'Are we to perish here like poisoned rats in a hole?' said I. 'If they clap the hatch-cover on, what's to become of us?'

'Who among them can navigate the s.h.i.+p?' asked Helga.

'Ne'er a one,' replied Abraham; '_that_ I can tell 'ee from recollecting of the questions Nakier's asted me from toime to toime.'

'But if the body of them should come below,' cried I, 'and force that door--as easily done as blowing out that light there--are we to be butchered with empty hands, looking at them without a lift of our arms, unless it be to implore mercy? Here are two of us--Englishmen! Are we to be struck down as if we were women?'

'There are three of us!' said Helga.

'What are our weapons?' I exclaimed, wildly sweeping the little hole of a cabin with my eyes. 'They have their knives!'

'Give me the handling of 'em one arter the other,' said Abraham, fetching a deep breath and then spitting on his hands, 'and I'll take the whole 'leven whilst ye both sit down and look on. But all of them at wanst--all dronk with rage and snapping round a man as if he was a sheep and they wolves!'--he breathed deeply again, slowly shaking his head.

'The planks in that bunk are loose,' said I, 'but what can we do with boards?'

'I will go on deck!' suddenly exclaimed Helga.

'You?' cried I. 'No, indeed! You will remain here. There must be two of us for them to deal with before the third can be come at!'

'I will go on deck!' she repeated. 'I have less cause to fear them than you. They know that I am acquainted with navigation--they have always looked at me with kindness in their faces. Let me go and talk to them!'

She made a step to the door--I gripped her arm, and brought her to my side and held her.

'What is to be done is for us two men to do!' said I. 'We must think, and we must wait.'

'Let me go!' she cried. 'They will listen to me, and I shall be able to make terms. Unless there be a navigator among them, what can they do with the s.h.i.+p in this great ocean?' She struggled, crying again: 'Let me go to them, Hugh!'

'Dorn't you do nothen of the sort, sir!' exclaimed Abraham. 'What'd happen? They'd tarn to and lock her up until they'd made an end of you and me, and then she'd be left alone aboard this wessel--alone, I mean, with eleven yaller savages. Gor' preserve us! If you let go of her, sir, _Oi_ shall have to stop the road.'

There was something of deliberateness in his speech: his English spirit was coming back with the weakening of the horror that had filled him when he first came rus.h.i.+ng below.

Someone knocked lightly on the door. At the same instant my eye was taken by the glance of lamp or candle flame in the opening in the bulkhead overlooking the narrow pa.s.sage.

'Hus.h.!.+' cried I.