My Danish Sweetheart Volume I Part 7

'Yes. I was talking to him when you were thrown from the wheel. I knew what had happened by the behaviour of the vessel. I ran out, and feared you were lost.'

'What does he counsel?'

'It is still his wish that we should go on putting plenty of sea betwixt us and the land. But do you notice that the gale has gone somewhat into the north? He will be glad to hear it, now that we are no longer scudding. Our drift should put us well clear of the Land's End, and, indeed, I dare say now we are being thrust away at several miles in the hour from the coast. He is very anxious to know if the _Anine_ has taken in water, and wishes me to sound the well. I fear I shall not be able to do this alone.'

'Why should you?' cried I. 'You shall do nothing alone! I cannot credit that you are a girl! Such spirit--such courage--such knowledge of a calling the very last in the wide world that women are likely to understand! Pray let me ask your name?'

'Helga Nielsen,' she answered. 'My father is Peter Nielsen--Captain Peter Nielsen,' she repeated. 'And your name?'

'Hugh Tregarthen,' said I.

'It is sad that you should be here,' said she, 'brought away from your home, suffering all this hards.h.i.+p and peril! You came to save our lives.

G.o.d will bless you, sir. I pray that the good G.o.d may protect and restore you to those you love.'

Spite of the roar of the wind, and the ceaseless cras.h.i.+ng and seething sound of the smiting and colliding seas, I could catch the falter of emotion in her voice as she p.r.o.nounced these words; but then, as you will suppose, we were close together, standing shoulder to shoulder against the binnacle, while we exchanged these sentences.

'There is refreshment in the cabin,' said she, after a pause of a moment or two. 'You need support. This has been a severe night of work for you, sir, from the hour of your putting off to us in the lifeboat.'

I found myself smiling at the motherly tenderness conveyed in the tone of her voice. I longed to have a clear view of her, for it was still like talking in a pitch-dark room; the binnacle-lamp needed tr.i.m.m.i.n.g, its light was feeble, and the sky lay horribly black over the ocean, that was raging, ghastly with pallid glances of sheets of foam under it.

'Let us first sound the well, if possible,' said I, 'for our lives' sake we ought to find out what is happening below!'

By this time we had watched and waited long enough to satisfy ourselves that the barque would do as well as we dared hope with her helm lashed; and it also happened, very fortunately, that her yards were in the right trim for the posture in which she lay, having been pointed to the wind--the fore-yards on one tack, the main-yards on the other--when the gale came on to blow in the bay, and the braces had not since been touched. I walked with the girl to the entrance of the deck-house, the door of which faced forwards. She entered the structure and, while I waited outside, lighted a bull's-eye lamp, with which she rejoined me, and together we went forward to another house built abaft of the galley.

This had been the place in which the crew slept. The carpenter's chest was here, and also the sounding-rod. We then went to the pumps, and while I held the lamp she dropped the rod down the sounding-pipe, drew it up and brought it to the light and examined it, and named the depth of water there was in the hold. I do not recollect the figure, but I remember that, though it was significant, there was nothing greatly to alarm us in it, seeing how heavily and how frequently the barque had been flooded with the seas, and how much of the water might have made its way from above.

I recount this little pa.s.sage in a few lines, yet it forms one of the most sharp-cut of the memories of my adventure. The picture is before me as I write. I see the pair of us as we come to a dead stand, grasping each other for support, while the vessel rolls madly over on the slope of some huge hurtling sea. I see the bright glare from the bull's-eye lamp in the girl's hand, dancing like a will-o'-the-wisp upon the black flood betwixt the rails was.h.i.+ng with the slant of the decks to our knees; I see her dropping the rod down the tube, coolly examining it, declaring its indication, while, to the flash of the lamplight, I catch an instant's glimpse of her face, s.h.i.+ning out white--large-eyed, as it seemed to me--upon the blackness rus.h.i.+ng in thunder athwart the deck.

She led the way into the deck-house. There was a small lantern wildly swinging at a central beam--my companion had lighted it when she procured the bull's-eye lamp--it diffused a good l.u.s.tre, and I could see very plainly. It was just a plain, ordinary, s.h.i.+pboard interior, with three little windows of a side, a short table, lockers on either hand, and a sleeping-berth, or cabin, designed for the captain's use, aft; the companion-hatch, which led to the deck below, was betwixt the after-end of the cabin and the bulkhead of the berth, but the rapid glance I threw around speedily settled, as you may suppose, into a look--a long look--full of curiosity, surprise, and admiration, at the girl.

She stood before me dressed as a sailor lad, in a suit of pilot cloth and a red silk handkerchief round her throat; but her first act on entering was to remove her cloth cap, that was streaming wet, and throw it down upon the table; and thus she stood with her eyes fixed on me, as mine were on her, each of us surveying the other. Her hair was cut short, and was rough and plentiful, without remains of any sort of fas.h.i.+on in the wearing of it--nay, indeed, it was unparted. It was very fair hair, and as pale as amber in the lamplight. Her eyebrows were of a darker colour, and very perfectly arched, as though pencilled. It was impossible to guess the hue of her eyes by that light: they seemed of a very dark blue, such as might prove violet in the suns.h.i.+ne, soft and liquid, and of an expression, even in that hour of peril, of the horror of tempest, of the prospect of death, indeed, that might make one readily suppose her of a nature both sweet and merry. There was no sign of exposure to the weather upon her face; she was white with the paleness of fatigue and emotion. Her cheeks were plump, her mouth small, the under-lip a little pouted, and her teeth pearl-like and very regular. Even by the light in which I now surveyed her, I never for a moment could have mistaken her for a lad. There was nothing in her garb to neutralize for an instant the suggestions of her s.e.x.

'I will take you to my father,' said she; 'but you must first eat and drink.'

I could not have told how exhausted I was until I sank down upon a locker and rested my arms upon the table. I was too wearied to ask the questions that I should have put to her at another time, and could do no more than watch her, with a sort of dull wonder at her nimbleness, and the spirit and resolution of her movements as she lifted the lid of the locker and produced a case-bottle of Hollands, some cold meat, and a tin of white biscuits.

'We have no bread,' said she, smiling; 'we obtained some loaves off the Isle of Wight, but the last was eaten yesterday.'

She took a tumbler from a rack and mixed a draught of the Hollands with some water which she got from a filter fixed to a stanchion, and extended the gla.s.s.

'Pray let me follow you!' said I. She shook her head. 'Yes!' I cried; 'G.o.d knows you should need some such tonic more than I!'

I induced her to drink, and then took the gla.s.s and emptied it. A second dram warmed and heartened me. I was without appet.i.te, but was willing to eat for the sake of such strength as might come from a meal. The girl made herself a sandwich of biscuit and meat, and we fell to. And so we sat facing each other, eating, staring at each other; the pair of us all the while hearkening with all our ears to the roaring noises outside, to the straining sounds within the s.h.i.+p, and feeling--I speak of myself--with every nerve tense as a fiddlestring, the desperate slants and falls and uprisals of the deck or platform upon which our feet rested.

CHAPTER V.

DAWN.

There was refreshment, however, to every sense, beyond language to express, in the shelter which this deck-house provided after our long term of exposure to the pouring of the raging gale, into which was put the further weight of volumes of spray, that swept to the face like leaden hail, and carried the shriek of the shot of musketry as it slung past the ear. It was calm in this deck-house; the deafening sounds without came somewhat m.u.f.fled here; but the furious motion of the vessel was startlingly ill.u.s.trated by the play of the hanging lantern, and the swing of the illuminated globe was made the wilder and more wonderful by the calm of the atmosphere in which it oscillated.

'I do not think the sea is breaking over the s.h.i.+p,' said the girl, gazing at me in a posture of listening. 'It is hard to tell. I feel no tremble as of the falls of water on the deck.'

'She is battling bravely,' said I; 'but what now would I give for even a couple of those men of yours who jumped into the lifeboat! It is our being so few--two of us only, and you a woman--that makes our situation so hard.'

'I have not the strength of a man,' said she with a smile, and fastening her soft eyes on my face; 'but you will find I have the heart of one.

Will you come now and see my father?'

I at once rose and followed her. She knocked upon a little door where the bulkhead part.i.tioned off the inner cabin, and then entered, bidding me follow her.

A cot swung from the upper deck, and in it sat a man almost upright, his back supported by bolsters and pillows; a bracket lamp burnt steadily over a table, upon which lay a book or two, a chart, a few nautical instruments, and the like. There was no convenience for dressing, and I guessed that this had been a sort of chart-room which the captain had chosen to occupy that he might be easily and without delay within hail or reach of the deck.

He was a striking-looking man, with coal-black hair, parted on one side, lying very flat upon his head, and curling down upon his back. He wore a long goat beard and moustaches, and was somewhat grim with several days'

growth of whisker upon his cheeks; his brows were thickly thatched, his forehead low, his eyes very dark, small, and penetrating. He was of a deathlike whiteness, and showed, to my fancy, as a man whose days were numbered. That his disease was something more than rheumatism there was no need to look at him twice to make sure of. His daughter addressed him in the Danish tongue, then, recollecting herself, with a half-glance at me of apology, she exclaimed:

'Father, this is Mr. Hugh Tregarthen, the n.o.ble gentleman who commanded the lifeboat, who risked his life to save ours, and I pray that G.o.d of His love for brave spirits may restore him in safety to those who are dear to him.'

Captain Nielsen, with a face contracted into a look of pain by emotion, extended his hand in silence over the edge of his cot. I grasped it in silence too. It was ice cold. He gazed for awhile, without speech, into my eyes, and I thought to see him shed tears; then, putting his hand upon mine in a caressing gesture, and letting it go--for the swing of the cot would not permit him to retain that posture of holding my hand for above a moment or two, he exclaimed in a low but quite audible voice: 'I ask the good and gracious Lord of heaven and earth to bless you, for _her_ sake--for my Helga's sake--and in the name of those who have perished, but whom you would have saved!'

'Captain Nielsen,' said I, greatly moved by his manner and looks, 'would it had pleased Heaven that I should have been of solid use to you and your men! I grieve to find you in this helpless state. I hope you do not suffer?'

'While I rest I am without pain,' he answered, and I now observed that though his accent had a distinctly Scandinavian harshness, such as was softened in his daughter's speech by the clearness--I may say, by the melody--of her tones, his English was as purely p.r.o.nounced as hers. 'But if I move,' he continued, 'I am in agony. I cannot stand; my legs are as idle and as helpless as though paralyzed. But now tell me of the _Anine_, Helga,' he cried, with a look of pathetic eager yearning entering his face as he addressed her. 'Have you sounded the well?'

'Yes, father.'

'What water, my child?' She told him. 'Ha!' he exclaimed, with a sudden fretfulness; 'the pump should be manned without delay; but who is there to work it?'

'We two will, very shortly,' she exclaimed, turning to me: 'we require a little breathing time. Mr. Tregarthen and I,' said she, still talking with her soft appealing eyes upon me, 'have strength, or, at all events, courage enough to give us strength; and he will help me in whatever we may think needful to save the _Anine_ and our lives.'

'Indeed, yes!' said I.

'Pray sit, both of you,' cried Captain Nielsen; 'pray rest. Helga, have you seen to the gentleman's comfort? Has he had any refreshment?'

She answered him, and seated herself upon a little locker, inviting me with a look to sit beside her, for there was no other accommodation in that cabin than the locker.

'I wish I could persuade your daughter to take some rest,' said I. 'Her clothes, too, are soaked through!'

'It is salt water,' said Captain Nielsen; 'it will not harm her. She is very used to salt water, sir;' and then he addressed his daughter in Danish. The resemblance of some words he used to our English made me suppose he spoke about her resting.

'The pumps must be worked,' said she, looking at me; 'we must keep the barque afloat first of all, Mr. Tregarthen. How trifling is want of sleep, how insignificant the discomfort of damp clothes, at such a time as this!'

She opened her jacket and drew a silver watch from her pocket, and then took a bottle of medicine and a winegla.s.s from a small circular tray swinging by thin chains near the cot, and gave her father a dose. He began now to question us, occasionally in his hurry and eagerness speaking in the Danish language. He asked about the masts--if they were sound, if any sails had been split, if the _Anine_ had met with any injury apart from the loss of her two boats, of which he had evidently been informed by his daughter. A flush of temper came into his white cheeks when he talked of his men. He called the carpenter Damm a villain, said that had he had his way the barque never would have brought up in that bay, that Damm had carried her there, as he now believed, as much out of spite as out of recklessness, hoping no doubt that the _Anine_ would go ash.o.r.e, but of course taking it for granted that the crew would be rescued. He shook his fist as he p.r.o.nounced the carpenter's name, and then groaned aloud with anguish to some movement of his limbs brought about by his agitation. He lay quiet a little and grew calm, and talked, with his thin fingers on his breast. He informed me that the _Anine_ was his s.h.i.+p, that he had spent some hundreds of pounds in equipping her for this voyage, that he had some risk in the cargo, and that, in a word, all that he was worth in the wide world was in this fabric, now heavily and often madly labouring, unwatched, amid the blackness of the night of hurricane.

'Your daughter and I must endeavour to preserve her for you,' said I.

'May the blessed G.o.d grant it!' he cried. 'And how good and heroic are you to speak thus!' said he, looking at me. 'Surely your great Nelson was right when he called us Danes the brothers of the English. Brothers in affection may our countries ever be! We have given you a sweet Princess--that is a debt it will tax your people's generosity to repay.'