The Project Gutenberg EBook of My Danish Sweetheart, Volume 3 of 3, by William Clark Russell This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license Title: My Danish Sweetheart, Volume 3 of 3 A Novel Author: William Clark Russell Release Date: November 7, 2012 [EBook #41315] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MY DANISH SWEETHEART V3 *** Produced by Robert Cicconetti, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive) MY DANISH SWEETHEART A Novel BY W. CLARK RUSSELL AUTHOR OF 'THE WRECK OF THE GROSVENOR,' 'THE LIFE OF ADMIRAL LORD COLLINGWOOD,' 'A MARRIAGE AT SEA,' ETC., ETC. IN THREE VOLUMES VOL. III. Methuen & Co. 18, BURY STREET, LONDON, W.C. 1891 [All rights reserved] CONTENTS OF VOL. III. CHAPTER PAGE I. WE SPEAK A SHIP 1 II. I MAKE FREE 34 III. JOPPA IS IN EARNEST 58 IV. A NIGHT OF HORROR 87 V. A CONFERENCE 116 VI. HELGA'S PLOT 146 VII. FIRE! 177 VIII. HOME 221 MY DANISH SWEETHEART. CHAPTER I. WE SPEAK A SHIP. On the afternoon of this same day of Tuesday, October 31, Helga having gone to her cabin, I stepped on deck to smoke a pipe—for my pipe was in my pocket when I ran to the lifeboat, and Captain Bunting had given me a square of tobacco to cut up. We had dined at one. During the course of the meal Helga and I had said but very little, willing that the Captain should have the labour of talking. Nor did he spare us. His tongue, as sailors say, seemed to have been slung in the middle, and it wagged at both ends. His chatter was an infinite variety of nothing; but he spoke with singular enjoyment of the sound of his own voice, with ceaseless reference, besides, in his manner, to Helga, whom he continued silently and self- complacently to regard in a way that rendered her constantly uneasy, and kept her downward-looking and silent. But nothing more at that table was said about our leaving his ship. Indeed, both Helga and I had agreed to drop the subject until an opportunity for our transference should arrive. We might, at all events, be very certain that he would not set us ashore in the Canary Islands; nor did I consider it politic to press him to land us there, for, waiving all consideration of other reasons which might induce him to detain us, it would have been unreasonable to entreat him to go out of his course to oblige us, who were without the means to repay him for his trouble and for loss of time. He withdrew to his cabin after dinner. Helga and I sat over his draughtboard for half an hour; she then went below, and I, as I have already said, on deck, to smoke a pipe. The wind had freshened since noon, and was now blowing a brisk and sparkling breeze out of something to the northward of east; sail had been heaped upon the barque, and when I gained the deck I found her swarming through it under overhanging wings of studdingsail, a broad wake of frost-like foam stretching behind, and many flying fish sparking out of the blue curl from the vessel's cutwater ere the polished round of brine flashed into foam abreast of the fore-rigging. Mr. Jones stumped the deck, having relieved Abraham at noon. The fierce-faced, lemon-coloured creature with withered brow and fiery glances grasped the wheel. As I crouched under the lee of the companion-hatch to light my pipe, I curiously and intently inspected him; strangely enough, finding no hindrance of embarrassment from his staring at me too; which, I take it, was owing to his exceeding ugliness, so that I looked at him as at something out of nature, whose sensibilities were not of a human sort to grieve me with a fancy of vexing them. 'Well, Mr. Jones,' said I, crossing the deck and accosting the shabby figure of the mate as he slouched from one end to another in shambling slippers and in a cap with a broken peak, under which his thimble-shaped nose glowed in the middle of his pale face like—to match the poor creature with an elegant simile—the heart of a daisy, 'this is a very good wind for you, but bad for me, seeing how the ship heads. I want to get home, Mr. Jones. I have now been absent for nearly eleven days, though my start was but for an hour or two's cruise.' 'There's no man at sea,' said he, 'but wants to get home, unless he's got no home to go to. That's my case.' 'Where do you hail from?' 'Whitechapel,' he answered, 'when I'm ashore. I live in a big house; they call it the Sailors' Home. There are no wives to be found there, so that the good of it is to make a man glad to ship.' 'The sea is a hard life,' said I, 'and a very great deal harder than it need be—so Nakier and his men think, I warrant you. There's too much pork goes to the making of the Captain's religious ideas.' 'The pork in this ship,' said he, 'is better than the beef; and what is good enough for English sailors is good enough for Malays.' 'Ay! but the poor fellows' religion is opposed to pork.' 'Don't you let them make you believe it, sir,' he exclaimed. 'Religion! You should hear them swear in English! They want a grievance. That's the nature of everything afore the mast, no matter what be the colour of the hide it's wrapped up in.' 'What sort of sailors are they?' 'Oh, they tumble about; they're monkeys aloft; they're willing enough; I'm bound to say that.' I could instinctively guess that whatever opinions I might offer on the Captain's treatment of his crew would find no echo in him. Poverty must make such a man the creature of any shipmaster he sailed with. 'Have you received orders from Captain Bunting,' I asked, 'to signal and bring-to any homeward ship that may come along?' 'No, sir.' 'We wish to be transhipped, you know, Mr. Jones. We should be sorry to lose the opportunity of a homeward- bounder through the Captain omitting to give you orders, and through his being below and asleep, perhaps, at the time.' 'I can do nothing without his instructions, sir,' he exclaimed, with a singular look that rose to the significance of a half- smile. 'All right!' I said, perceiving that his little blue eyes had witnessed more than I should have deemed them capable of observing in the slender opportunities he had had for employing them. The wind blew the fire out of my pipe, and to save the tobacco I went down to the quarter-deck for the shelter of the bulwarks there. While I puffed I spied Jacob low down in the lee fore-rigging repairing or replacing some chafing-gear upon the swifter-shroud. I had not exchanged a word with this honest boatman since the previous day, and strolled forward to under the lee of the galley to greet him. I asked him if he was comfortable in his new berth. He answered 'Yes;' he was very well satisfied; the Captain had given orders that he was to have a glass of grog every day at noon; the provisions were also very good, and there was no stint. ''Soides,' he called down to me, with his fat, ruddy face framed in the squares of the ratlines, 'three pound a month's good money. There'll be something to take up when I gets home, something that'll loighten the loss o' my eight pound o' goods and clothes, and make the foundering of the Airly Marn easier to think of.' 'You and Abraham, then, have regularly entered yourselves for the round voyage?' 'Ay; the Capt'n put us on the articles this afternoon. He called us to his cabin and talked like a gemman to us. Tain't often as one meets the likes of him at sea. No language—a koind smoile—a thank'ee for whatever a man does, if so be as it's rightly done—a feeling consarn for your morals and your comforts: tell'ee, Mr. Tregarthen, the loikes of Capt'n Buntin' ain't agoin' to be fallen in with every day—leastways, in vessels arter this here pattern, where mostly a man's a dog in the cap'n's opinion, and where the mate's got no other argument than the fust iron belaying-pin he can out with.' 'I am very glad to learn that you are so well satisfied,' said I. 'A pity poor Thomas isn't with you.' 'Pore Tommy! There's nothen in my toime as has made me feel so ordinary as Thomas's drownding. But as to him making hisself happy here——' 'I beg your pardon, sah,' said a voice close beside me. I turned, losing the remainder of Jacob's observations, and perceived the face of Nakier in the galley door, that was within an arm's length of me from where I leaned. His posture was one of hiding, as though to conceal himself from sight of the poop. As I looked, a copper-coloured face, with black, angry eyes flashing under a low forehead as wrinkled as the rind of an old apple, with the temper that worked in the creature, showed behind Nakier's head, and vanished in a breath. I now recollected that when I had first taken up my station under the lee of the galley I had caught the hiss of a swift fiery whispering within the little structure, but it had instantly ceased on my calling to Jacob, and the matter went out of my head as I listened to the boatman in the rigging. 'I beg your pardon, sah! May I speak a word wit you?' 'What is it, Nakier?' I exclaimed, finding a sort of pleasure in the mere contemplation of his handsome face and noble liquid Eastern eyes, dark and luminous like the gleam you will sometimes observe in a midnight sea. 'Are you a sailor, sah?' 'I am not,' I responded. 'Can you tellee me de law of ships?' Here the copper-coloured face came out again, and now hung steadily with its frown over Nakier's shoulder; but both fellows kept all but their heads hidden. 'I know what you mean,' I answered. 'I fear I cannot counsel you.' 'Our Captain would have us starve,' said he; 'he give us meat we must not eat, and on dose days we have only bread and water. Dat is not right?' 'No, indeed,' said I; 'and how little we think it right you may know by what the lady said to-day.' 'Ah! she is good; she is good!' he exclaimed, always speaking very softly, and clasping his long thin fingers with filbert- shaped nails while he upturned his wonderful eyes. 'We are not of de Captain's religion—he sabbe dat when we ship. Is dere law among Englishman to ponish he for trying to make us eat what is forbidden?' 'I wish I knew—I wish I could advise you,' said I, somewhat secretly relieved by hearing this man talk of law; for when I had watched him that morning on the poop I could have sworn that his and his mates' whole theory of justice lay in the blades which rested upon sheaths strapped to their hips. 'One thing you may be sure of, Nakier: Captain Bunting has no right to force food upon you that is forbidden to you by your religion. There must be lawyers in Cape Town who will tell you how to deal with this matter if it is to be dealt with. Meanwhile, try to think of your Captain in this business as——' I significantly tapped my forehead. 'That will help you to patience, and the passage to the Cape is not a long one.' The copper-coloured face behind Nakier violently wagged, the frown deepened, and the little dangerous eyes grew, if possible, more menacing in their expression. 'He is a cruel man,' said Nakier, with a sigh as plaintive as one could imagine in any love-sick Eastern maid: 'but we will be patient; and, sah, I tank you for listening.' The copper-coloured face disappeared. 'You are no sailor, sah!' continued Nakier, smiling and showing as pearl-white a set of teeth as were ever disclosed by the fairest woman's parted lips; 'and yet you have been shipwreck?' I briefly related my lifeboat adventure, and in a few words completed the narrative of the raft and of our deliverance by the lugger. Indeed, it pleased me to talk with him: his accent, his looks, were a sort of realization, in their way, of early boyish dreams of travel; they carried me in fancy to the provinces of the sun; I tasted the ripe aromatic odours of tropic vegetation, there seemed a scent as of the hubble-bubble in the blue and sparkling breeze gushing fair over the rail. He begot in me a score of old yearning imaginations—of the elephant richly castellated, of the gloom of palatial structures dedicated to idols, their domes starry with encrustation of gems and the precious ores. The brief spell was broken by Jacob's gruff, 'longshore voice: 'It don't look, Mr. Tregarthen, as if you and the lady was to git home as fast as ye want to.' 'No,' I replied. 'Do you see anything in sight up there, Jacob?' He spat, and looked leisurely ahead. 'Nothen, sir.' 'I beg pardon, sah!' broke in Nakier's voice. 'Do you sabbe navigation?' 'I do not,' I answered, struck with a question that recalled Punmeamootty's inquiries that morning. 'But Mr. Vise,' he continued, 'he sabbe navigation?' I shook my head with a slight smile. 'He has some trifling knowledge,' said I. 'Fortunately, there is no occasion to trust to his skill.' 'De sweet young lady sabbe navigation, sah?' 'I will not answer for it!' I exclaimed, looking at him. A sudden fancy in me may have been disclosed by my eyes. His gaze fell, and he drew in his head. Just then I caught sight of Helga at the break of the poop to leeward, looking along the decks. She saw me, and beckoned. As I knocked the ashes out of my pipe, Jacob cried out: 'Blowed if I don't believe that's a steamer's smoke ahead.' 'Ha!' thought I, 'Helga has seen it;' and I at once made for the poop-ladder. It was as I supposed. She had seen the smoke when she came on deck, and instantly looked about for me. It was the merest film, the faintest streak, dim as a filament of spider's web; but it was directly ahead, and it was easy to guess that unless the steamer was heading east or west she must be coming our way, for assuredly, though the Light of the World was sweeping through it at some six or seven knots, we were not going to overhaul a steamer at that pace. A telescope lay in brackets inside the companionway; I fetched and levelled it, but there was nothing more to be seen than the soaring of the thin blue vein of smoke from behind the edge of the sea, where the dark, rich central blue of it went lightening out into a tint of opal. It did not take long, however, to discover, by the hanging of the smoke in the same place, that the steamer was heading directly for us. I put down the glass, and said to Mr. Jones: 'Will you be so good as to call the Captain and tell him that there is a steamer in sight, coming this way?' 'I have no orders to call the Captain merely to report a ship in sight, sir,' he answered. 'That may be,' said I; 'but here is a chance for us to leave this vessel, and the Captain might not thank you to keep him ignorant of the opportunity.' 'I can't help it, sir. My duty here is to obey orders and to do what's expected of me, and no more;' and so saying, he marched shambling aft; yet I will not say that his manner of leaving me was abrupt or offensive. 'There is no time to be lost, Helga,' said I. 'If that steamer is doing ten and we are doing six the joint speed is sixteen knots, and she will be abreast of us and away again quickly. I will report to the Captain myself,' with which I went on to the quarter-deck and passed into the cabin and knocked on the door of Captain Bunting's berth. He immediately cried: 'Who's there?' 'Mr. Tregarthen,' I answered. 'Are you alone?' he called. I told him I was. 'Then pray walk in,' said he. I opened the door and found him lying in his bunk in his shirt-sleeves. Full as I was of the business of the steamer heaving into view, I could yet manage to notice, now that he was under no particular obligation to smile, that his habitual grin when his face was off duty, so to speak, was of the kind that is called sardonic. It was the set of his mouth with the thick curve of its upper lip that made the smile; but his eyes bore not the least part in this expression of mirth. It was a mere stroke of nature in him, however, and, though the congenital grin did not increase his beauty, it left untouched in his countenance the old character of blandness, self-complacency and an air of kindness too. 'What can I do for you, Mr. Tregarthen?' said he, promptly sitting up in his bunk, with a glance around for his coat. 'I must ask your pardon for intruding upon you,' said I; 'there is a steamer's smoke in sight over the bows. Mr. Jones declined to report to you. I venture to do so, and I have also to ask you, Captain Bunting, to signal her to stop that she may receive Miss Nielsen and me.' 'I shall be very willing to transfer you, Mr. Tregarthen,' said he, without more or less significance in his manner than was usual in it; 'but you must not, you really must not, ask me to part in this sort of hurry with your sweet engaging companion.' 'I certainly shall not leave you without her,' said I, breathing quickly. 'Just so,' he exclaimed, 'nor is it my wish that you should. I want you to convert your experience of shipwreck into a little holiday cruise. I hope you are comfortable with me?' 'Perfectly comfortable; but all the same, Miss Nielsen and I desire to return to England, and I must entreat—indeed, Captain Bunting, I must insist upon your signalling the steamer that is rapidly approaching us.' He opened his eyes at the word insist, which I deplored having made use of the moment it had escaped me; but he continued very bland, and his smile, being now vitalized, as when he was at the table or on deck with us, had lost what I had found sardonic in it. 'A captain's powers, Mr. Tregarthen, are considerable,' he exclaimed. 'He is first on board his own ship; his will is the law that governs the vessel; no man aboard but he can insist for an instant. But my desire is for cordial feelings between us. Let us be friends and talk as friends. Pray bear with me. You are in possession of my hopes. Do not add fears to them by your behaviour.' He dropped his head on one side, and surveyed me with an eye that seemed almost wistful. I believed that he meant to keep me talking till the steamer had passed. 'Captain Bunting,' said I, 'I am as fully disposed as you are to be friendly; but I must tell you that, if you decline to transfer us—if, in other words, you force us to proceed on this voyage—you will be acting at your peril. I shall exact reparation, and whatever the law can do for me shall be done. Practically you will be abducting Miss Nielsen, and that, you must know, is a highly punishable offence.' He motioned with both his hands. 'It is no abduction,' said he. 'When you rescue a young lady with your lifeboat from a foundering craft you do not abduct her. I can understand your impatience, and forgive your irritability. Yet I had thought to have some claim upon you for a more generous, for a handsomer interpretation of my wishes. What is the reason of this extreme hurry in you to return home?' 'You surely do not require me to repeat my answer to that question!' I exclaimed, curbing my temper with an effort. 'To be sure. You are concerned for your poor dear mother. Come, Mr. Tregarthen, suppose we send news of your safety by this steamer you have reported!' His face beamed. 'Let me see—your home is—your home is——' he scratched his head. I viewed him without speaking. 'Ah, I have it—Tintrenale!' He spelt it twice or thrice. 'Hugh Tregarthen, Tintrenale. Come, the steamer shall report your safety, and then your mind will be at ease.' 'I am to understand that you refuse to transfer us?' 'Nay, never interpret the mind of another harshly. You know my wishes: every hour renders them dearer and dearer to me.' Under all this blandness I could now perceive a spirit of resolution that was clearly no more to be influenced by me than his ship's side was to be kicked out by a blow of my foot. I turned to leave the cabin. 'If you are going on deck, will you have the kindness to send Mr. Jones to me?' said he. I pulled the door to, and regained the poop. 'The Captain wants you,' I called to Mr. Jones, who immediately left the deck. Helga came to me. 'He refuses to tranship us,' said I. 'He dare not!' she cried, turning pale. 'The man, all smiles and blandness, says no, with as steady a thrust of his meaning as though it were a boarding-pike. We have to determine either to jump overboard or to remain with him.' She clasped her hands. Her courage seemed to fail her; her eyes shone brilliant with the alarm that filled her. 'Can nothing be done? Is it possible that we are so entirely in his power? Could we not call upon the crew to help us?' A sob arrested her broken exclamations. I stood looking at the approaching steamer, wrestling with my mind for some idea to make known our situation to her as she passed, but to no purpose. Why, though she should thrash through it within earshot of us, what meaning could I hope to convey in the brief cry I might have time to deliver? I cannot express the rage, the bitterness, the mortification, the sense, too, of the startling absurdity of our position, which fumed in my brain as I stood silently gazing at the steamer, with Helga at my side, white, straining her eyes at me, swiftly breathing. In the short time during which I had been below, the approaching vessel had shaped herself upon the sea, and was growing large with a rapidity that expressed her an ocean mail-boat. Already with the naked sight I could catch the glint of the sun upon the gilt device at her stemhead, and sharp flashes of the reflection of light in some many-windowed deck structure broke from her, end-on as she was, to her slow stately swaying, as though she were firing guns. The Captain remained below. A few minutes after Mr. Jones had gone to him, he—that is, the mate—came on to the poop bearing a great black board, which he rested upon the deck. 'Captain Bunting's compliments, Mr. Tregarthen,' said he, 'and he'll be glad to know if this message is satisfactory to you?' Upon the board were written, in chalk, in very visible, decipherable characters, like the letters of print, the following words: HUGH TREGARTHEN, OF TINTRENALE, BLOWN OUT OF BAY NIGHT OCTOBER 21ST, IS SAFE ON BOARD THIS SHIP, 'LIGHT OF THE WORLD,' BUNTING, MASTER, TO CAPE TOWN. PLEASE REPORT. 'That will do,' said I coldly, and resumed my place at the rail. Helga said, in a low voice: 'What is the object of that board?' 'They will read the writing aboard the steamer,' I answered, 'make a note of it, report it, and my mother will get to hear of it and know that I am alive.' 'But how will she get to hear of it?' 'Oh, the message is certain to find its way into the shipping papers, and there will be twenty people at Tintrenale to hear of it and repeat it to her.' 'It is a good idea, Hugh,' said she. 'It is a message to rest her heart. It may reach her, too, as quickly as you yourself could if we went on board that steamer. It was clever of you to think of it.' 'It was the Captain's suggestion!' I exclaimed. 'It is a good idea!' she repeated, with something of life coming into her blanched, dismayed face; 'you will feel a little happier. I shall feel happier too. I have grieved to think your mother may suppose you drowned. Now, in a few days she will know that you are well.' 'Yes, it is a good idea,' said I, with my eyes gloomily fastened upon the steamer; 'but is it not monstrous that we should be imprisoned in this fashion? That fellow below has no right to detain us. If it should cost me five years of my income, I'll punish him. It is his admiration for you that makes him reckless—but what does the rascal hope? He talked of his willingness to transfer me, providing you remained.' 'Oh, but you would not leave me with him, Hugh!' she cried, grasping my arm. 'Leave you, Helga! No, indeed. But I made one great blunder in my chat with him this morning. He asked me if there was anything between us—meaning were we sweethearts—and I said no. I should have answered yes; I should have told him we were betrothed; then perhaps he would have been willing to let us leave him.' She returned no answer. I looked at her, and saw an expression in her face that told me I had said too much. The corners of her little mouth twitched, she slightly glanced at me, and tried to smile on observing that I was regarding her, then made a step from my side as though to get a better view of the steamer. 'She's a fine big ship,' exclaimed Mr. Jones, who had quietly drawn close to me; 'a Cape boat. In six days' time she'll be snug in dock. When I was first going to sea I laughed at steam. Now I should be glad if there was nothing else afloat.' My impulse was to draw away, but my temper had somewhat cooled, and was now allowing me to exercise my common-sense again. If I was to be kept aboard this ship, it could serve no sort of end to make an enemy of Mr. Jones. 'Yes,' said I, 'she is coming along in fine style—a mail-steamer apparently. Why will not the Captain signal her? Surely she would receive us!' 'Not a doubt of it,' he answered, almost maliciously; 'but the Captain knows his own business, sir.' 'Where's your flag-locker?' cried I. 'Show it me, and I'll accept the responsibility of hoisting the ensign half-mast high!' 'Not without the Captain's orders, Mr. Tregarthen,' said he. 'The Captain!' I exclaimed. 'He has nothing to do with me. He's your master, not mine!' 'He's master of this ship, sir; and the master of a ship is the master of everything aboard of her!' Helga softly called to me. I went to her. 'Do not reason with him!' she whispered. 'Let the people in that steamer read the message, and we can afford to be patient—for a little,' she added. 'For a little!' I rejoined. 'But how long will that little make? Is it to stretch from here to Table Bay?' But by this time the steamer was on the lee bow, and when abreast would be within a few cables' length of us. I thought to myself, 'Shall I spring upon the rail and hail her in God's name, wave my hands to her to stop, and take my chance of her people hearing the few words I should have time to bawl?' Then, with the velocity of thought, I reflected that the mate would be certain to hinder any such attempt on my part, to the length, I dare say, of laying hands upon me and pulling me off the rail, so that I might subject myself to what would prove but little short of an outrage, while I should likewise forfeit the opportunity of getting the message delivered; for there was no man on the poop to hold up the board but the mate, and if the mate was busy with me the board must remain hidden. All this I thought, and while I thought the steamer was sweeping past us at a speed of some twelve or thirteen knots, with Mr. Jones standing something forward of the mizzen-rigging, holding up the board at arm's-length. The picture of that rushing metal fabric was full of glittering beauty. Her tall promenade deck, draped with white awnings, out of which the black column of her funnel forked leaning, was crowded with passengers, male and female. Dresses of white, pink, green—the ladies of South Africa, I believe, go very radiantly clad—fluttered and rippled to the sweep of the strong breeze raised by the steamer's progress. Those who walked came to a stand to survey us, and a dozen binocular glasses were pointed. High above, on the white canvas bridge, the mate in charge of the ship was reading the handwriting on the black board through a telescope that flashed like silver in his hands. Beside him, twinkling in buttons and lace, stood the commander of the steamer, as I might suppose. The sun was in the south-west sky; his reddening brilliance beat full upon the ship that was thundering by faster than a hurricane could have blown the Light of the World along; and the glass in her line of portholes seemed to stream in fire as though the tall black iron sides were veritably belted with flame. There were stars of gold in her bright-yellow masts and a writhing of glowing light all about the giltwork with which her quarters were glorified. She rolled softly, and every inclination was like the twist of a kaleidoscope for tints. How mean did the little barque look at that instant! how squalid her poor old stumpy decks with their embellishment of rude scuttle-butt, of grimy caboose, of squab long-boat, not to mention the choice humanities of her forecastle, the copper-coloured scarecrows who had dropped the various jobs they were upon to stare with their sloe-like eyes at the passing show! She had not swept past abreast by more than her own length when the twinkling commander on the bridge flourished his arm. 'And about time, too!' cried Mr. Jones, lowering the board and leaning it against the rail. 'They must be poor hands at spelling aboard that ship to keep me holding up that board as if I were a topsail-yard proper to set a whole sail upon!' 'Have they read the message, do you think, Mr. Jones?' cried Helga. 'Oh, yes, yes, miss,' he answered. He ran in an awkward sprawl to the skylight, where the telescope lay, pointed it, and exclaimed, 'See for yourself, miss!' She levelled the glass with the ease and precision of an old sailor. 'Yes,' she called to me, while she held the telescope to her eye; 'the man in the jacket and buttons is writing in what looks to be a pocket-book; the other bends over him as though to see that the words are correct. I am satisfied!' and, putting the glass down, she returned to me. The steamer was now astern of us, showing but little more than the breadth of her, rapidly growing toy-like as she swept onwards, with an oil-smooth wake spreading fan-shaped from her counter, and the white foam curving with the dazzle of sifted snow from either side the iron tooth of her shearing stem. My heart ached with the yearning for home as I followed her. At that moment eight bells was struck forward, and almost immediately Abraham came aft to relieve Mr. Jones, who, after saying a word or two to the boatman, picked up the board and went below. 'There's a hopportunity lost, Mr. Tregarthen,' exclaimed Abraham, looking at the receding steamer; 'not that me and Jacob ain't satisfied, but there's ne'er a doubt that wessel 'ud ha' taken you and the lady, if so be as Capt'n Bunting had asted her.' 'We are kept here against our will,' said I. 'What the man means to do I don't know, but what he can do I now see. Unless I can get those black fellows to back the topsail and put us aboard the next ship when she comes along, here we must stop until it is the Captain's pleasure to release us.' 'But what does he want along of ye?' inquired Abraham, in a low, hoarse voice, with a glance at the open skylight. I looked at Helga, and then said bluntly—for I had some dim hope of this boatman and his mate being able to help us, and the plain truth must therefore be given to them: 'The long and short of it is, Abraham, the Captain greatly admires Miss Nielsen—he has fallen in love with her, in short—and so you have it.' Helga looked and listened without any air of embarrassment, as though the reference were of general instead of individual interest. 'But he hain't fallen in love with you, sir? Why do he want to keep ye both, then? Couldn't he have sent you aboard?' 'You astonish me!' I cried. 'Do you suppose I would leave this lady alone in the vessel?' 'Why, p'raps not,' he answered; 'but, still, 'tain't as if you was a lady, one of her own sex, as was hacting companion to her. Oi don't mean to say that one man's as good as another; but I don't see no call for you to keep all on in this here wessel.' 'What am I to understand you to mean?' cried I. 'That Miss Nielsen is to be left without a protector in the company of a fellow like Captain Bunting?' 'But if he's willing to be her protector, sir, ain't it all right?' he inquired. 'Has not your head been turned?' said Helga warmly, with a flushed face. He looked stupidly from one to the other of us with a slow gaze and a mind labouring to master the difficulty he could not understand. 'Sorry if I've said anything to offend ye, miss,' said he; 'this here Capt'n's an honourable man, Oi allow, and he's evidently on the look-out for a wife. All I says is, what's the good of his keeping Mr. Tregarthen away from his home when he's willing to take his place?' 'But he must not take his place!' exclaimed Helga, with glowing eyes, in which I looked to see a tear presently. 'I would drown myself if I were to be left here alone!' A slow smile animated the leathern countenance of Abraham. 'Then, mum, asking your pardon, all Oi can say is, Mr. Tregarthen should ha' put it differently. When there's wan there's no call for tew, and there being wan already, then, of course, it's the Capt'n's duty to send ye both home as soon as he can.' 'If Captain Bunting persists,' said I, not choosing to follow the line of Abraham's reasoning, 'what is my remedy? You Deal boatmen have the reputation of knowing the law pretty well. First, has he the right to carry us with him against our wishes?' 'There's never much question of right along with sea captains,' he answered. 'My 'sperience is that what the master of a wessel chooses to do he will do, and the rights of it somehow seems to come out of his doing of it.' 'But have we no remedy?' said I. 'Ask yourself the question!' he answered. 'Where's the remedy to be found?' and here he sent his eyes roaming over the sea and up aloft and along the decks. 'Of all Job's comforters!' I exclaimed. 'If I was you,' he continued, apparently not understanding my remark, and sending another cautious look at the open skylight, with a further subduing of his voice, 'what Oi'd do is this: Oi'd just enjoy myself at this 'ere gemman's expense, eat his wittles and drink his rum—and I'm bound to say this, that a better drop o' rum than he keeps in that there locker of his isn't to be met with afloat or ashore—I say Oi'd drink and eat at his expense, and keep my spirits as joyful as sarcumstances might permit, but taking care to let him know every day, oy, and p'raps twice a day—say at breakfast and at supper—that the lady and me wants to get home; and this Oi'd dew till we got to port, and then Oi'd bring an action agin him and sail home on the damages, with a few pound to the good.' He had barely ceased, when he turned sharply round and marched aft, and as he did so the Captain mounted the poop ladder, exclaiming: 'What very enjoyable weather, to be sure! Mr. Jones informs me that the message was duly noted. Now, Miss Nielsen, we may take it that our friend Mr. Tregarthen's mind is perfectly at ease.' CHAPTER II. I MAKE FREE. It was four o'clock when the steamer passed, and, half an hour later, she was out of sight, so rapid was the combined pace of the vessels. Her name was large upon her stern had we chosen to read it, but the mate was too busy with his board and I with my temper to note the letters, and Helga did not think of doing so, and thus it was that the steamer passed away and none of us knew more about her than that she was a Cape Union mail-liner bound to England with now a message, meant for my mother, on board. The Captain hung about us, and was all blandness, courtesy, and admiration when he addressed Helga or directed his eyes at her. On his first joining us she said quickly, pointing to the steamer that was still in sight: 'Why have you suffered us to lose that opportunity?' 'Mr. Tregarthen's and your company,' he answered, 'makes me so happy that I cannot bear to part with you yet!' Her little nostrils enlarged, her blue eyes glittered, her breast quickly rose and fell. 'You called yourself a Samaritan yesterday!' she exclaimed, with all the scorn her tender soul was capable of, and her pensive, pretty face could express. 'Is this the way in which Samaritans usually behave?' He viewed her as though she were a picture that cannot be held in a new position without disclosing a fresh grace. 'You are too good and kind to be cruel,' said he, regarding her with deepening admiration, as it seemed to me. 'The Samaritan played his part fairly well yesterday, I believe?' He blandly bowed to her with a countenance of exquisite self-complacency. 'He is still on board, my dear young lady, with a character in essentials unchanged, merely enlarged.' Here he spread his fingers upon his breast, and expanded his waistcoat, looking at her in a very knowing sort of way, with his head on one side. 'Now that we have sent our message home, there is no hurry. Our little cruise,' he exclaimed, pointing over the bow, 'is almost entirely tropical, and there is no reason at all why we should not find it delightful!' I caught Helga's eye, and exhorted her by a glance to keep silent. She fixed her gaze upon the deck, with a lip lightly curled by disgust, and I stepped aft under a pretence to look at the compass, with so much more contempt and anger than I could hold between my teeth that I dared not speak. The breeze slackened as the sun sank, and at supper, as the Captain persisted in calling the last meal, the ocean fell calm and the old broad-bowed barque rolled sleepily, but with much creaking of her rheumatic bones, upon a long- drawn polished swell flowing out of the north-east. Her canvas beat the masts and fetched reports out of the tall spars that penetrated the little cuddy like discharges of musketry. For a long while the Captain gave Helga and me no opportunity for a quiet talk. At table he was more effusive than he had been, distressingly importunate in his attentions to the girl, to whom he would address himself in tones of loverlike coaxing if she happened to say No to his entreaties to her to drink a little wine, to try a slice of ham, and the like. He begged us to make ourselves thoroughly at home; his coloured cook, he said, was not a first-rate hand, but if Miss Helga ever had a fancy, she need but name it, and it would go very hard with the cook if he failed to humour her. 'We are not a yacht,' said he, pulling a whisker and looking around, 'but, most fortunately, gaudy mirrors and handsome carpets and the ginger-bread ornamentations of the pleasure craft need never form any portion of human happiness at sea. The sun looks as brightly down upon the Light of the World as upon the most stately ship afloat, the ocean breeze will taste as sweetly over my bulwark-rails as on the bridge of the gallantest man-of-war that flies the crimson cross;' and thus he went on vapouring as usual in fathoms of commonplace, yet with a bland underlying insistence always upon our being his guests, upon our remaining with him and being happy, as though, indeed, we had cheerfully consented to stop, and were looking forward with great enjoyment to the voyage. I was as cold and distant as I could well be, answered him in monosyllables, ate as if with aversion, and as though I constrained myself to devour merely to keep body and soul together. But he did not seem to heed my manner in the least; I could swear, indeed, that he did not observe it. He was wholly engrossed in contemplation of Helga, and in the enjoyment of enlarging his waistcoat, and delivering, more or less through his nose, with a fixed smile and somewhat leering eye, the dull, trivial, insipid contents of his mind. He asked the girl to play draughts with him when Punmeamootty had cleared the table. On her declining, he fetched from his cabin the volume of Jeremy Taylor—it was that divine's 'Holy Living and Dying,' I think—and asked permission to read a few pages aloud. She could not refuse, and I see that extraordinary shipmaster now, standing under the lamp, holding the portly volume up with both hands, smiling upon the page, pausing at intervals to look over the top of the book at the girl with a nod to serve as a point of admiration, and reading nasally without the faintest inflection, so that at a little distance his delivery must have sounded like a continuous groan. He then begged her to read to him. 'What greater treat could we have,' said he, looking at me, 'than to hear the rich, noble, impressive words of this great Bishop pronounced by the charming lips of Miss Helga Nielsen?' But she curtly refused; and, after hovering about her for another half-hour, during which I could notice a growing air in him that was a distinct intimation, in its way, of his entire satisfaction with the progress he was making, he withdrew to his cabin. Helga looked at me with weariness and dismay, and moistened her lips. 'This is worse than the raft,' said I. 'It is so bad,' she exclaimed, 'that I feel persuaded it cannot last.' 'Let us go on deck. If we linger here he may rejoin us. How tragical it all is one may know by the humour of it.' We went softly to the companion-steps, and I recollect that I looked over my shoulder to see if he was following us— than which I can recall no better proof of my perfect recognition of our helplessness. The new moon had followed the sun, and the planet would not be showing by night for two or three days; but in the south, and over our mastheads, the sky was richly spangled with stars, which burnt in one or two dyes of glory, and very sharply, whence, from recollection of a like sight at home, I supposed that hard weather was at hand. There was some little lightning, of a delicate shade of violet, in the north-east, which, indeed, would have been no noticeable thing down in this part of the world but for the mountainous heaping of cloud it revealed, a black sullen mass stretching along the sea-line in that quarter, and putting a hue as of ink into the dusk which swept in glittering obscurity to the shadow of it. There was a great deal of greenish fire in the sea, and it broadened and shrank in wide spaces in the lift of the noiseless running swell as though the rays of a tinted lantern were cast upon the water. The dew was plentiful, and lay along the rails and upon the skylight, crisp as frost in the starshine. It was Abraham's watch, and I spied his figure flitting cumbrously in the neighbourhood of the wheel, at which stood the shape of some coloured man, motionless as though carved in ebony, faintly touched by the sheen of the binnacle lamp. I was in no humour to converse with the boatman. His stupid talk that afternoon in response to my questions had vexed me, and I was still angry with the fool, as I chose to think him, spite of the claims he had upon my kindness and gratitude. I put Helga's hand under my arm, and we quietly patrolled the deck to leeward. Our conversation wholly concerned our position—it would only tease you to repeat it. There was nothing to suggest, no plan to propose; for think, advise, scheme as we might, it could only come to this: that if the Captain declined to part with us, then, unless the men took our side and insisted on putting us aboard a passing ship, we must stop. But if the crew took our side, it would be mutiny with them; and bewilderingly disagreeable as our situation was, preposterously and ridiculously wretched as it was, yet assuredly it was not to be mended by a revolt among those dusky skins forward. Yet the fancy of stirring up the Malays to befriend us was in my mind as I walked with the girl. 'God forbid,' said I, 'that I should have a hand in it; yet, for all that, I believe it is to be done. I had a short talk with Nakier to-day, and there was that in his questions and his manner which persuades me that the train is ready, and nothing wanting but the spark.' 'A mutiny is a terrible thing at sea,' said she; 'and what would men like the crew of this ship stop at?' 'Ay, nothing more terrible, Helga. But are we to be carried to the Cape?' 'The Captain has no intention of putting into Santa Cruz,' said she. 'That we may be sure of. But does the fellow intend that you shall pass week after week with no other apparel than what you stand up in?' I was interrupted by Abraham sending a hurricane shout into the blackness forward for some hands to clew up the fore and main royals, and for others to lay aft and haul down the gaff-topsail. 'It's agoing to blow to-night, Mr. Tregarthen,' he called across to me. 'Yes; and you may see where it is coming from, too,' I replied, not knowing till then that he had observed us. In a few moments the silence that had hung upon the vessel, with nothing to disturb it but an occasional sob of water and the beating of canvas hollowing into the mast to the roll of the fabric, was broken by the strange howling noises raised by the coloured seamen as they hauled upon the gear. 'Get them sails furled, my lads!' bawled Abraham; 'and the rest of ye lay aft and take this 'ere mizzen off her.' 'It is wonderful that the fellows should understand the man,' said I. 'There's the Captain!' exclaimed Helga, instantly halting, and then recoiling in a way that dragged me a pace back with her. He rose through the companion-hatch, his outline vaguely visible in the dim radiance sifting through the cabin skylight. Abraham addressed him. 'Quite right, Wise, very wise of you, Wise!' he exclaimed. 'There is a marked fall in the barometer, and I perceive lightning in the north-east, with a deal of rugged cloud down there.' His shadowy form stepped to the binnacle, into which he peered a moment. 'I think, Wise,' said he—and, to use a Paddyism, I could see the man's fixed and singular smile in the oiliness of his accents—'that you cannot do better than go forward and rouse up all hands. I can rely best upon my crew when the weather is quiet.' Abraham trudged forward, and a minute later I heard him thumping heavily on the fore hatch, topping the blows with a boatswain's hoarse roar of 'All hands shorten sail!' 'The Captain's politeness,' I said, 'will end in making that Deal boatman sit at his feet.' 'He is afraid of his crew, perhaps,' answered Helga, 'and is behaving so as to make sure that the two men will stand by him should difficulties come.' 'It was a bad blow that sunk the fellows' lugger. We might have sighted that steamer of to-day and be now homeward bound at the rate of fourteen knots an hour.' 'And it is all my fault!' she cried, in tones impassioned by regret and temper. 'But for me, Hugh——' I silenced her by taking her hand as it lay in my arm and pressing it. She drew closer to me, with a movement caressing but wistful too, though finely and tenderly simple. I did not doubt that the Captain perceived us; nevertheless, he hung near the wheel, never coming farther forward than the companion-hatch, while we kept at the other end of the little poop, where the shadow of the port-wing of mainsail lay heavy. Shortly after Abraham had summoned the men, the decks were alive with sliding and gliding shapes, and the stillness of the ocean night was clamorous with parrot-like cries. The lightning had ceased, but the darkness was fast deepening, and overhead the stars were beginning to languish in the projected dimness of the growing mass of cloud that, now that there was no play of violet fire upon it, was indistinguishable in its own dumb, brooding obscurity. 'Whatever is to come will happen on a sudden,' said I. We neither of us cared to keep the deck now that the Captain had arrived, and descending the ladder, we entered the cabin. Under other conditions I should have been willing, and indeed anxious, to assist the crew, but now I was resolved not to touch a rope, to maintain and present as sullen a front as I could contrive, to hold apart with Helga, to mark my resentment by my behavior, and so, perhaps—but God knows I had no hope of it—to intimidate the fellow into releasing us by obliging him to understand that he had already gone a very great deal too far. There was much noise on deck; Mr. Jones was bawling from the forecastle, and Abraham from the waist, and the songs of the Malays might easily have passed for the cries of people writhing in pain. Apparently the Captain was alarmed by the indications of the glass and the look of the weather in the north-east, and was denuding his little ship as speedily as might be. His own voice began to sound now, and, though it was perfectly distinguishable, there was nothing nasal, bland, or greasy about it. On the contrary, his roars seemed to proceed from a pair of honest sealungs, as though what was nautical in him had been worked up by the appearance of the weather, and was proving too strong for the soapy exterior of his habitual manner. 'He can be natural when he forgets himself,' said I. 'It is quite possible that he swears at times,' said Helga. 'One touch of nature in the fellow would make me feel almost comfortable,' I exclaimed. 'He is not a true sailor: he never could be natural for any length of time,' said Helga. The pattering of the naked feet of the crew was like the noise of a shower of rain. Helga seemed to be able to follow what was being done, as though she were on deck directing the crew. They have furled this sail—they are reefing that sail—now they are hauling down such and such a jib—now they are stowing the mainsail, she would say, giving the canvas its proper names, and looking at me with a little smile in her liquid blue eyes, as though the interest in the sailors' work made her forget our troubles. 'Be as nautical as you like with me,' said I. 'I love to hear you pronounce the strange, uncouth language of the sea; but guard your lips before the Captain. The more sailorly you are, the more he will admire you.' 'What would make him hate me?' she exclaimed, with the light of the smile going out of her eyes, and her white brow contracting. 'How is he to be sickened?' 'Oh, what can you do? What can a pretty girl do that will not heighten the passion of a man who has fallen in love with her?' 'Call me pretty if you will,' said she, with a maidenly droop of her eyelids; 'but do not speak of me as a girl with whom anybody has fallen in l...