A 'LONGSHORE QUARREL.
We passed the afternoon in this way. Jacob was forward, sleeping;
Thomas's turn at the helm had come round again; and Abraham lay over the
lee rail, within grasp of the foresheet, lost in contemplation of the
rushing waters.
'Where and when is this experience of ours going to end?' said I to
Helga as we sat chatting.
'How fast are we travelling?' she asked.
'Between eight and nine miles an hour,' I answered.
'This has been our speed during the greater part of the day,' she said.
'Your home grows more and more distant, Hugh; but you will return to
it.'
'Oh, I fear for neither of us, Helga,' said I. 'Were it not for my
mother, I should not be anxious. But it will soon be a week since I
left her, and, if she should hear that I was blown away out of the bay
in the _Anine_, she will conclude that I perished in the vessel.'
'We must pray that God will support her and give her strength to await
your return,' said she, speaking sadly, with her eyes bent down.
What more could she say? It was one of those passages in life in which
one is made to feel that Providence is all in all, when the very
instinct of human action in one is arrested, and when there comes upon
the spirit a deep pause of waiting for God's will.
I looked at her earnestly as she sat by my side, and found myself
dwelling with an almost loverlike pleasure upon the graces of her pale
face, the delicacy of her lineaments, the refinement of prettiness that
was heightened into something of dignity, maidenly as it was, by the
fortitude of spirit her countenance expressed.
'Helga,' said I, 'what will you do when you return to Kolding?'
'I shall have to think,' she answered, with the scarcely perceptible
accent of a passing tremor in her voice.
'You have no relatives, your father told me.'
'No; none. A few friends, but no relatives.'
'But your father has a house at Kolding?'
'He rented a house, but it will be no home for me if I cannot afford to
maintain it. But let my future be _my_ trouble, Hugh,' said she gently,
looking at me, and always pronouncing my name as a sister might a
brother's.
'Oh no!' said I. 'I am under a promise to your father--a promise that
his death makes binding as a sacred oath upon me. Your future must be
_my_ business. If I carry you home in safety--I mean to my mother's
home, Helga--I shall consider that I saved your life; and the life a man
rescues it should be his privilege to render as easy and happy as it may
lie in his power to make it. You have friends in my mother and me, even
though you had not another in the wide world. So, Helga,' said I, taking
her hand, 'however our strange rambles may end, you will promise me not
to fret over what your future may hold when you get ashore.'
She looked at me with her eyes impassioned with gratitude. Her lips
moved, but no word escaped her, and she averted her face to hide her
tears.
Poor, brave, gentle little Helga! I spoke but out of my friendship and
my sympathy for her, as who would not, situated as I was with her, my
companion in distress, now an orphan, desolate, friendless, and poor?
Yet I little knew then, heedless and inexperienced as I was in such
matters, how pity in the heart of a young man will swiftly sweeten into
deeper emotion when the object of it is young and fair and loving, and
alone in the world.
The sun went down on a wild scene of troubled, running, foaming waters,
darkling into green as they leapt and broke along the western sky, that
was of a thunderous, smoky tincture, with a hot, dim, and stormy scarlet
which flushed the clouds to the zenith. Yet there had been no increase
in the wind during the afternoon. It had settled into a hard breeze,
good for outward-bounders, but of a sort to send everything heading
north that was not steam scattering east and west, with yards
fore-and-aft and tacks complaining.
By this time I had grown very well used to the motion of the lugger,
had marked her easy flight from liquid peak into foam-laced valley, the
onward buoyant bound again, the steady rush upon the head of the
creaming sea, with foam to the line of the bulwark-rail, and the air for
an instant snowlike with flying spume, and all the while the inside of
the boat as dry as toast. This, I say, I had noticed with increasing
admiration of the sea-going qualities of the hearty, bouncing, stalwart
little fabric; and I was no longer sensible of the anxiety that had
before possessed me when I thought of this undecked lugger struggling
with a strong and lumpish sea--a mere yawn upon the water, saving her
forecastle--so that a single billow tumbling over the rail must send her
to the bottom.
'Small wonder,' said I to Helga, as we sat watching the sunset and
marking the behaviour of the boat, 'that these Deal luggers should have
the greatest reputation of any 'longshore craft around the English
coasts, if they are all like this vessel! Her crew's adventure for
Australia is no longer the astonishment I first found it. One might
fearlessly sail round the world in such a craft.'
'Yes,' she answered softly in my ear--for surly Thomas sat hard by--'if
the men had the qualities of the boat! But how are they to reach
Australia without knowing their longitude? And if you were one of the
party, would you trust Abraham's latitude? My father taught me
navigation; and, though I am far from skilful at it, I know quite enough
to feel sure that such a rough observation as Abraham took to day will,
every twenty-four hours, make him three or four miles wrong, even in his
latitude. Where, then, will the _Early Morn_ blunder to?'
'Well, they are plainly a sensitive crew,' said I, 'and if we want their
goodwill, our business is to carry admiring faces, to find everything
right, and say nothing.'
This chat was ended by Abraham joining us.
'Now, lady,' said he, 'when would ye like to tarn in? The forepeak's to
be yourn for the night. Name your hour, and whosoever's in it'll have to
clear out.'
'I am grateful indeed!' she exclaimed, putting her hand upon his great
hairy paw in a pretty, caressing way.
'Abraham,' said I, 'I hope we shall meet again after we have separated.
I'll not forget your kindness to Miss Nielsen.'
'Say nothen about it, sir; say nothen about it!' he cried heartily.
'She's a sailor's daughter, for all he warn't an Englishman. Her father
lies drownded, Mr. Tregarthen. If he was like his lass he'll have had a
good heart, sir, and the sort of countenance one takes to at the first
sight o't.' By the rusty light still living in the west I saw him turn
his head to look forward and then aft; then lowering his voice into a
deep sea growl he exclaimed: 'There's wan thing I should like to say:
there's no call for either of ye to take any notice along of old Tommy.
His feelings is all right; it's his vays as are wrong. Fact is,' and
here he sent another look forward and then aft, 'Tommy's been a
disapp'inted man in his marriages. His first vife took to drink, and was
always a-combing of his hair with a three-legged stool, as Jack says.
His second vife has the heart of a flint, spite of her prowiding him
with ten children, fower by her first and six by Tommy. Of course it's
got nothen to do with _me_; but there ain't the loike of Molly Budd--I
mean Tommy's vife--in all Deal--ay, ye may say in all Kent--for
vickedness. Tommy owned to me wan day that though she'd lost
children--ay, and though she'd lost good money tew--he'd never knowed
her to shed a tear saving wonst. That was when she went out a-chairing.
The master of the house had been in the habit of leaving the beer-key in
the cask for th' ale to be sarved out by the hupper servant. Molly Budd
was a-cleaning there one day, when down comes word for the key to be
drawed out of the cask, and never no more to be left in it. This started
Molly. She broke down and cried for a hour. Tommy had some hopes of her
on that, but she dried up arterwards, and has never showed any sort of
weakness since. But, of course, this is between you and me and the
bed-post, Mr. Tregarthen.'
'Oh, certainly!' said I.
'And now about the lady's sleeping,' he continued.
'I was anxious to see her snugly under cover; but she was in trouble to
know how I was to get rest. I pointed to the open space under that
overhanging ledge of deck which I have before described, and told her
that I should find as good a bedroom there as I needed. So after some
little discussion it was arranged that she should take possession of the
forepeak at nine o'clock, and, meanwhile, Abraham undertook to so
bulkhead the opening under the deck with a spare mizenmast-yard and sail
as to ensure as much shelter as I should require. I believe he observed
Helga's solicitude about me, and proposed this merely to please her: and
for the same motive I consented, though I was very unwilling to give the
poor honest fellows any unnecessary trouble.
When the twilight died out, the night came down very black. A few lean,
windy stars hovered wanly in the dark heights, and no light whatever
fell from the sky; but the atmosphere low down upon the ocean was pale
with the glare of the foam that was plentifully arching from the heads
of the seas, and this vague illumination was in the boat to the degree
that our figures were almost visible one to another. Indeed, a sort of
wave of ghastly sheen would pass through the darkness amid which we sat
each time the lugger buried herself in the foam raised by her shearing
bounds, as though the dim reflection of a giant lantern had been thrown
upon us from on high by some vast shadowy hand searching for what might
be upon the sea.
When nine o'clock arrived, Abraham went forward and routed Thomas out of
the forepeak. The man muttered as he came aft to where we were, but I
was resolved to have no ears for anything he might say at such a time. A
sailor disturbed in his rest, grim, unshorn, scarcely awake, with the
nipping night blast to exchange for his blanket, is proverbially the
sulkiest and most growling of human wretches.
'I will see you to your chamber door, Helga,' said I, laughing.
'Abraham, can you spare the lady this lantern? She will not long need
it.'
'She can have it as long as she likes,' he answered. 'Good-night to you,
mum, and I hope you'll sleep well, I'm sure. Feared ye'll find the
forepeak a bit noisy arter the silence of a big vessel's cabin.'
She made some answer, and I picked up the lantern that had been placed
in the bottom of the boat for us to sit round, and, with my companion,
went clambering over the thwarts to the hatch.
'It is a dark little hole for you to sleep in, Helga,' said I, holding
the lantern over the hatch while I peered down, 'but then--this time
last night! Our chances we _now_ know, but what were our hopes?'
'We may be even safer this time to-morrow night,' she answered, 'and
rapidly making for England, let us pray!'
'Ay, indeed!' said I. 'Well, if you will get below, I will hand you down
the light. Good-night, sleep well, and God bless you!'
I grasped and held her hand, then let it go, and she descended, carrying
with her the little parcel she had brought with her from the barque.
I gave her the lantern, and returned to smoke a pipe in the bottom of
the boat under the shelter of the stern sheets, before crawling to the
sail that was to form my bed under the overhanging deck. Thomas, whose
watch below it still was, was already resting under the ledge, Abraham
steered, and Jacob sat with a pipe in his mouth to leeward. I noticed
that one of these men always placed himself within instant reach of the
foresheet. Abraham's talk altogether concerned Helga. He asked many
questions about her, and got me to tell for the second time the story of
her father's death upon the raft. He frequently broke into homely
expressions of sympathy, and when I paused, after telling him that the
girl was an orphan and without means, he said:
'Beg pardon, Mr. Tregarthen; but might I make so bold as to ask if so be
as you're a married man?'
'No,' said I; 'I am single.'
'And is her heart her own, sir, d'ye know?' said he. 'For as like as not
there may be some young Danish gent as keeps company with her ashore.'
'I can't tell you that,' said I.
'If so be as her heart's her own,' said he, 'then I think even old Tommy
could tell 'ee what's agoing to happen.'
'What do you mean?' I asked.
'Why, of course,' said he, 'you're bound to marry her!'
As she was out of hearing, I could well afford to laugh.
'Well,' said I, 'the sea has been the cause of more wonderful things
than that! Any way, if I'm to marry her, you must put me in the way of
doing so by sending us home as soon as you can.'
'Oy,' said he, 'that we'll do, and I don't reckon, master, that you'd
be dispoged to wait ontil we've returned from Australey, that Tommy and
me and Jacob might have the satisfaction of drinking your healths and
cutting a caper at your marriage.'
Jacob broke into a short roar that might or might not have denoted a
laugh.
'I shall now turn in,' said I, 'for I am sleepy. But first I will see if
Miss Nielsen is in want of anything, and bring the lantern aft to you.'
I went forward and looked down the hatch. By stooping, so as to bring my
face on a level with the coaming, I could see the girl. She had placed
the lantern in her bunk, and was kneeling in prayer. Her mother's
picture was placed behind the lantern, where it lay visible to her, and
she held the Bible she had brought from the barque; but that she could
read it in that light I doubted. I supposed, therefore, that she grasped
it for its sacredness as an object and a relic while she prayed, as a
Roman Catholic might hold a crucifix.
I cannot express how much I was affected by this simple picture. Not for
a million would I have wished her to guess that I watched her; and yet,
knowing that she was unconscious I was near, I felt I was no intruder.
She had removed her hat: the lantern-light touched her pale hair, and I
could see her lips moving as she prayed, with a frequent lifting of her
soft eyes. But the beauty, the wonder, the impressiveness of this
picture of maidenly devotion came to it from what surrounded it. The
little forepeak, dimly irradiated, showed like some fancy of an old
painter upon the shadows and lights of whose masterly canvas lies the
gloom of time. The strong wind was full of the noise of warring waters,
and of its own wild crying; the foam of the surge roared about the
lugger's cleaving bows, and to this was to be added the swift leaps, the
level poising, the shooting, downward rushes of the little structure
upon that wide, dark breast of wind-swept Atlantic.
She rose to her feet, and, stooping always, for her stature exceeded the
height of the upper deck, she carefully replaced the Bible and picture
in their cover. I withdrew, and, after waiting a minute or two, I
approached again and called down to ask if all was well with her. 'Yes,
Hugh,' she answered, coming under the hatch with the lantern. 'I have
made my bed. It was easily made. Will you take this light? The men may
want it, and I shall not need to see down here.'
I grasped the lantern, and told her I would hold it in the hatch that it
might light her while she got into her bunk.
'Good-night, Hugh,' said she, and presently called, in her clear, gentle
voice, to let me know that she was lying down; on which I took the
lantern aft, and, without more ado, crawled under the platform, or raft,
as the Deal boatmen called it, crept into a sail, and in a few moments
was sound asleep.
And now for three days, incredible as it will appear to those who are
acquainted with that part of the sea which the lugger was then
traversing, we sighted nothing--nothing, I mean, that provided us with
the slenderest opportunity of speaking it. At very long intervals, it
would be a little streak of canvas on the starboard or port sea-line, or
some smudge of smoke from a steamer whose funnel was below the horizon;
nothing more, and these so remote that the dim apparitions were as
useless to us as though they had never been.
The wind held northerly, and on the Friday and Saturday it blew freshly,
and in those hours Abraham reckoned that the _Early Morn_ had done a
good two hundred and twenty miles in every day, counting from noon to
noon. I was for ever searching the sea, and Helga's gaze was as constant
as mine; until the eternal barrenness of the sinuous line of the ocean
induced a kind of heart-sickness in me, and I would dismount from the
thwart in a passion of vexation and disappointment, asking what had
happened that no ship showed? Into what part of the sea had we drifted?
Could this veritably be the confines of the Atlantic off the Biscayan
coast and waters? or had we been transported by some devil into an
unnavigated tract of ocean on the other side of the world?
'There's no want of ships,' Abraham said. 'The cuss of the matter is, we
don't fall in with them. S'elp me, if I could only find one to give me a
chance, I'd chivey her even if she showed the canvas of a _R'yal
Jarge_.'
'If this goes on you'll have to carry us to Australia,' said I, guessing
from my spirits as I spoke that I was carrying an uncommonly long and
dismal countenance.
'Hope not,' exclaimed sour Tommy, who was at the helm at this time of
conversation. ''Taint that we objects to your company; but where's the
grub for five souls a-coming from?'
'Don't say nothen about that,' said Abraham sharply. 'Both the gent and
the lady brought their own grub along with them. _That_ ye know, Tommy,
and I allow that ye hain't found their ham bad eating either. They
came,' he added, softening as he looked at his mate, 'like a poor man's
twins, each with a loaf clapped by the angels on to its back.'
It was true enough that the provisions which had been removed from the
raft would have sufficed Helga and me--well, I dare say, for a whole
month, and perhaps six weeks, but for the three of the crew falling to
the stock; and therefore I was not concerned by the reflection that we
were eating into the poor fellows' slender larder. But, for all that,
Thomas's remark touched me closely. I felt that if the three fellows,
hearty and sailorly as were Abraham and Jacob--I say, I felt that if
these three men were not already weary of us they must soon become so,
more particularly if it should happen that they met with no ship to
supply them with what they might require; in which case they would have
to make for the nearest port, a delay they would attribute to us, and
that might set them grumbling in their gizzards, and render us both
miserable until we got ashore.
However, I was no necromancer; I could not conjure up ships, and staring
at the sea-line did not help us; but I very well recollect that that
time of waiting and of expectation and of disappointment lay very
heavily upon my spirits. There was something so strange in the
desolation of this sea that I became melancholy and imaginative, and I
remember that I foreboded a dark issue to my extraordinary adventure
with Helga, insomuch that I took to heart a secret conviction I should
never again see my mother--nay, that I should never again see my home.
Sunday morning came. I found a fine bright day when I crawled out of my
sail under the overhanging ledge. The wind came out of the east in the
night, and the _Early Morn_, with her sheet aft, was buzzing over the
long swell that came flowing and brimming to her side in lines of
radiance in the flashing wake of the sun. Jacob was at the tiller, and,
on my emerging, he instantly pointed ahead. I jumped on to a thwart, and
perceived directly over the bows the leaning, alabaster-like shaft of a
ship's canvas.
'How is she steering?' I cried.
'Slap for us,' he answered.
'Come!' I exclaimed with a sudden delight, 'we shall be giving you a
farewell shake of the hand at last, I hope. You'll have to signal her,'
I went on, looking at the lugger's masthead. 'What colours will you fly
to make her know your wants?'
'Ye see that there pole?' exclaimed Thomas, in a grunting voice,
pointing with a shovel-ended forefinger to the spare booms along the
side of the boat. I nodded. 'Well,' said he, 'I suppose you know what
the Jack is?'
'Certainly,' said I.
'Well,' he repeated, 'we seizes the Jack on to that there pole and hangs
it over, and if that don't stop 'em it'll be 'cause they have a cargo of
wheat aboard, the fumes of which'll have entered their eyes and struck
'em bloind.'
'That's so,' said Jacob, with a nod.
Just then Abraham came from under the deck, and in another moment Helga
rose through the little hatch, and they both joined us.
'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-fashioned 'longshore 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 glass 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 ship 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 gushing 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
flashing light upon them occasioned by her rolling, so that the cloths
looked shot like watered silk or like the inside of an oyster-shell. 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-balls, all pink outside and all cream hin.'
'Do you mean by a Hamburger a Hamburg ship?' 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 hellum, 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 shifted her helm and drew out. A man sprang on
to her forecastle rail and yelled at us, brandishing 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 oakum. 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 shipwreckt--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,
'longshore 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 passion 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 fashion, 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 passed 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 passing 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.'
'Say for smuggling, Tommy, say for smuggling, or them parties as is
a-listening 'll think the ould man did something wrong,' said Jacob.
Helga took me by the arm.
'Hugh, silence them!--they will come to blows.'
'No, no,' said I quickly, in a low voice. 'I know this type of men.
There must be much more shouting than this before they double up their
fists.'
Still, it was a stupid passage of temper, fit only to be quickly ended.
'Come, Abraham,' I cried, waiting till he had finished roaring out some
further offensive question to Thomas, 'let us get sail on the boat and
make an end of this. The trial of temper should be mine, not yours. Luck
seems against the lady and me; and let me beg of you, as a good fellow
and an English seaman, not to frighten Miss Nielsen.'
'What does Tommy want to sarce me for?' said he, still breathing
defiance at his mate, out of his large nostrils and blood-red visage.
'What's my rent got to do with you?' shouted the other.
'And what's moy father got to do with you?' bawled Abraham.
'I say, Jacob!' I cried, 'for God's sake let's tail on to the halliards
and start afresh. There's no good in all this!'
'Come along, Abey! come along, Tommy!' bawled Jacob. 'Droy up, mates'
More'n enough's been said;' and with that he laid hold of the halliards,
and, without another word, Abraham and Thomas seized the rope, and the
sail was mastheaded.
Abraham went to the tiller, the other two went to work to get breakfast,
and now, in a silence that was not a little refreshing after the coarse
hoarse clamour of the quarrel, the lugger buzzed onwards afresh.
'We shall be more fortunate next time,' said Helga, looking wistfully at
me; and well I knew there was no want of worry in my face; for now there
was peace in the boat the infamous cold-blooded indifference of the
rogues we had just passed made me feel half mad.
'We might have been starving,' said I; 'we might have been perishing
for the want of a drink of water, and still the ruffians would have
treated us so.'
'It is but waiting a little longer, Hugh,' said Helga softly.
'Ay, but how much longer, Helga?' said I. 'Must we wait for Cape Town,
or perhaps Australia?'
'Mr. Tregarthen--don't let imagination run away with ye!' exclaimed
Abraham, in a voice of composure that was not a little astonishing after
his recent outbreak; though, having a tolerably intimate knowledge of
the 'longshore character, and being very well aware that the words these
fellows hurl at one another mean little, and commonly end in
nothing--unless the men are drunk--I was not very greatly surprised by
the change in our friend. 'There's nothen' that upsets the moind quicker
than imagination. I'll gi' ye a yarn. There's an old chap, of the name
of Billy Buttress, as crawls about our beach. A little grandson o' his
took the glasses out o' his spectacles by way o' amusing hisself. When
old Billy puts 'em on to read with, he sings out: "God bless me, Oi'm
gone bloind!" and trembling, and all of a clam, as the saying is, he
outs with his handkerchief to woipe the glasses, thinking it might be
dirt as hindered him from seeing, and then he cries out, "Lor' now, if I
an't lost my feeling!" He wasn't to be comforted till they sent for a
pint o' ale and showed him that his glasses had been took out. That's
imagination, master. Don't you be afeered. We'll be setting ye aboard a
homeward-bounder afore long.'
By the time the fellows had got breakfast, the hull of the barque astern
was out of sight; nothing showed of her but a little hovering glance of
canvas, and the sea-line swept from her to ahead of us in a bare
unbroken girdle.