CAPTAIN JOPPA BUNTING.
There were four or five coloured seamen standing near, looking on.
Though I could not have been sure, I guessed them to be Malays by the
somewhat Chinese cast of their features. I had seen such faces once
before, discolouring a huddle of white countenances of European seamen
looking over the side of a ship, anchored in our bay, at the lifeboat I
was in charge of for an hour or two of practice. I also caught the
fierce lemon-coloured creature at the wheel following the Captain, as he
moved about, with his stealthy dusky eyes; but more than this I had not
time to take notice of.
'Abraham,' I exclaimed, approaching him, 'this is a bad business.'
'Ay,' he muttered, drying his lips upon his knuckles. 'There's nothen
to do now but to get home again. I laid out fifteen pound for myself on
this here job, an it's gone, and gone's, too, the money we was to take
up. Oh, Jacob, matey! how came it about? how came it about?' he cried,
in a voice of bitter grief that was without the least hint of temper or
reproach.
'Ye've heard, Abraham,' answered the other, speaking brokenly. 'Gord He
knows how it happened. I'd ha' given ten toimes ower the money we was to
airn that this here mucking job had been yourn instead o' mine, that I
might feel as sorry for ye, Abey, as ye are for me, mate.'
'Is she clean gone?' cried Captain Bunting, looking over the quarter.
'Yes, clean. Nothing but her boat floating, and a few spars. It is spilt
milk, and not to be recovered by tears. You two men will have to go
along with us till we can send the four of you home. Mr. Jones, fill on
your topsail, if you please. Hi! you Pallunappachelly, swab up that wet
there, d'ye hear? Now Moona, now Yong Soon Wat, and you, Shayoo
Saibo--maintopsail-brace, and bear a hand!'
While the topsail-yard was in the act of swinging I observed that
Abraham's countenance suddenly changed. A fit of temper, resembling his
outbreak when the Hamburger had passed us, darkened his face. He rolled
his eyes fiercely, then, plucking off his cap, flung it savagely down
upon the deck, and, while he tumbled and sprawled about in a sort of mad
dance, he bawled at the top of his voice:
'I says it _can't_ be true! What I says is, it's a dream--a blooming,
measly dream! The _Airly Marn_ foundered!' Here he gave his cap a kick
that sent it flying the length of the poop. 'It's a loie, I says. It was
to ha' been seventy-foive pound a man, and there was two gone, whose
shares would ha' been ourn. And where's moy fifteen pound vorth o'
goods? Cuss the hour, I says, that ever we fell in with this barque!'
He raved in this fashion for some minutes, the Captain meanwhile eyeing
him with his head on one side, as though striving to find out whether he
was drunk or mad. He then rushed to the side with an impetuosity that
made me fear he meant to spring overboard, and, looking down for a
moment, he bellowed forth, shaking his clenched fist at the sea:
'Yes, then she _is_ gone, and 'tain't a dream!'
He fetched his thigh a mighty slap, and, wheeling round, stared at us in
the manner of one temporarily bereft of his senses by the apparition of
something he finds horrible.
'These Deal boatmen have excitable natures!' said Captain Joppa Bunting,
addressing me, fixedly smiling, and passing his fingers through a
whisker as he spoke.
'I trust you will bear with the poor fellows,' said I: 'it is a heavy
loss to the men, and a death-blow to big expectations.'
'Temper is excusable occasionally at sea,' observed the Captain; 'but
language I never permit. Yet that unhappy Christian soul ought to be
borne with, as you say, seeing that he is a poor ignorant man very
sorely tried. Abraham Vise, come here!' he called.
'His name is Wise,' said I.
'Wise, come here!' he shouted.
Abraham approached us with a slow, rolling gait, and a face in which
temper was now somewhat clouded by bewilderment.
'Abraham,' said the Captain, looking from him to Jacob, who leaned, wet
through, against the rail with a dogged face and his eyes rooted upon
the deck, 'you have met with one of those severe reverses which happen
entirely for the good of the sufferer, however he may object to take
that view. Depend upon it, my man, that the loss of your lugger is for
some wise purpose.'
Abraham looked at him with an eye whose gaze delivered the word _damn_
as articulately as ever his lips could have uttered the oath.
'You two men were going in that small open boat to Australia,' continued
the Captain, with a paternal air and a nasal voice, and smiling always.
'Do you suppose you would ever have reached that distant coast?'
'Sartainly I dew, sir,' cried Abraham hoarsely, with a vehement nod.
'I say _no_, then!' thundered the Captain. '_Two_ of you! Why, I've
fallen in with smaller luggers than yours cruising in the Channel with
eight of a crew.'
'Ay!' shouted Abraham. 'And vy? Only ask yourself the question! 'Cause
they carry men to ship as pilots. But tew can handle a lugger.'
'I say no!' thundered the Captain again. 'What? All the way from the
Chops to Sydney Bay. Who's your navigator?'
'Oy am,' answered Abraham.
The Captain curved his odd, double-lipped mouth into a sneer, that yet
somehow did not disguise or alter his habitual or congenital smile,
while he ran his eye over the boatman's figure.
'You!' he cried, pausing and bursting into a loud laugh; then, resuming
his nasal intonation, he continued. 'Mark you this now. The loss of your
lugger alongside my barque is a miracle wrought by a bountiful Heaven to
extend your existence, which you were deliberately attempting to cut
short by a dreadful act of folly, so dreadful that had you perished by a
like behaviour ashore you would have been buried with a stake through
your middle.'
He turned up his eyes till little more than the whites of them were
visible. Grieved as I was for poor Abraham, I scarcely saved myself from
bursting out laughing, so ludicrous were the shifting emotions which
worked in his face, and so absurd Jacob's fixed stare of astonishment
and wrath.
'Now, men,' continued the Captain, 'you can go forward. What's _your_
name?'
'Jacob Minnikin, sir,' answered the boatman, speaking thickly and with
difficulty.
'Get you to the galley, Jacob Minnikin,' said the Captain, 'and dry your
clothes. The chief mate will show you where to find a couple of spare
bunks in the forecastle. Go and warm yourselves and get something to
eat. You'll be willing to work, I hope, in return for my keeping you
until I can send you home?'
Abraham sullenly mumbled, 'Yes, sir.'
'All right. We may not be long together; but while I have you I shall be
thankful for you. We are a black crew, and the sight of a couple of
white faces forward will do me good. Off you go, now!'
Without another word the two men trudged off the poop; but I could hear
them muttering to each other as they went down the ladder.
Some time before this sail had been trimmed, and the barque was once
again clumsily breaking the seas, making a deal of noisy sputtering at
her cutwater to the stoop of her apple-shaped bows, and rolling and
plunging as though she were contending with the surge of Agulhas or the
Horn. I sent my sight around the ocean, but there was nothing to be
seen. The atmosphere had slightly thickened, and it was blowing fresh,
but the wind was on the quarter, and the mate had found nothing in the
weather to hinder him from showing the mainsail to it again with the
port clew up. But the Captain's talk prevented me from making further
observations at that time.
'Those two men,' said he, 'have very good, honest, substantial,
Scriptural names. Abraham and Jacob,' he smacked his lips. 'I like 'em.
I consider myself fortunate in the name of Joppa,' he continued, looking
from me to Helga. 'I _might_ have been called Robert.'
You would have thought that the smile which accompanied this speech was
designed to point it as a joke, but a moment's observation assured me
that it was a fixed expression.
'I have observed,' he went on, 'that the lower orders are very dull and
tardy in arriving at an appreciation of the misfortunes which befall
them. Those two men, sir, are not in the least degree grateful for the
loss of their lugger, by which, as I told them, their lives have been
undoubtedly preserved.'
'They are poor men,' said Helga, 'and do not know how to be grateful for
the loss of perhaps very nearly all that they have in the world.'
He looked at her smilingly, with a glance down her figure, and
exclaimed, 'I am quite sure that when your poor dear father's barque
sank _you_ did not resent the decree of Heaven.'
Helga held her peace.
'Was she insured, madam?' he asked.
She answered briefly 'Yes,' not choosing to enter into explanations.
He surveyed her thoughtfully, with his head on one side; then,
addressing me, he said:
'The man Abraham, now. I take it he was skipper of the lugger?'
'Yes, he was so,' said I.
'Is it possible that he knows anything of navigation?'
'I fear his acquaintance with that art is small. He can blunder upon the
latitude with the aid of an old quadrant, but he leaves his longitude
to dead reckoning.'
'And yet he was going to Australia!' cried the Captain, tossing his
pale, fleshly hands and upturning his eyes. 'Still, he is a respectable
man?'
'A large-hearted, good man,' cried Helga warmly.
He surveyed her again thoughtfully with his head on one side, slowly
combing down one whisker, then addressing me:
'I am rather awkwardly situated,' said he. 'Mr. Ephraim Jones and myself
are the only two white men aboard this vessel. Jones is an only mate.
You know what that means?'
I shook my head in my ignorance, with a glance at Helga.
'Captain Bunting means,' she answered, smiling, 'that only mate is
literally the only mate that is carried in a ship.'
He stared at her with lifted eyebrows, and then gave her a bow.
'Right, madam,' said he. 'And when you are married, dear lady, you will
take all care, I trust, that your husband shall be _your_ only mate.'
She slightly coloured, and as she swayed to the rolling deck I caught
sight of her little foot petulantly beating the plank for a moment. It
was clear that Captain Bunting was not going to commend himself to her
admiration by his wit.
'You were talking about Abraham,' said I.
'No, I was talking about Jones,' he answered, 'and attempting to explain
the somewhat unpleasant fix I am in. The man who acted as second mate
was the carpenter of the barque, a fellow named Winstanley. I fear he
went mad, after we were a day out. Whether he jumped overboard or fell
overboard, I cannot say.' He made a wild grimace, as though the
recollection shocked him. 'There was nothing for it but to pursue the
voyage with my only mate; and I, of course, have to keep watch-and-watch
with him--a very great inconvenience to me. I believe Abraham Wise--or
Vise, as he calls himself--would excellently fill Winstanley's place.'
'He wants to get home,' said I.
'Yet I might tempt him to remain with me,' said he, smiling. 'There's no
melody so alluring to a Deal boatman's ears as the jingling of silver
dollars.'
'You will find him thoroughly trustworthy,' said Helga.
'We will wait a little--we will wait a little!' he exclaimed blandly.
'Of course, Captain Bunting,' said I, 'your views in the direction of
Abraham will not, I am sure, hinder you from sending Miss Nielsen and
myself to England at the very earliest opportunity.' And I found my eye
going seawards over the barque's bow as I spoke.
'The very first vessel that comes along you shall be sent aboard of,
providing, to be sure, she will receive you.'
I thanked him heartily, and also added, in the most delicate manner I
could contrive on the instant, that all expense incurred by his keeping
us should be defrayed. He flourished his fat hand.
'That is language to address to the Pharisee, sir--not to the
Samaritan.'
All this was exceedingly gratifying. My spirits rose, and I felt in a
very good humour with him. He looked at his watch.
'Five o'clock,' said he. 'Mr. Jones,' he called to the mate, who was
standing forward at the head of the little poop ladder, 'you can go
below and get your supper, then relieve me. Tell Punmeamootty to put
some cold beef and pickles on the table. Better let him set the ham on
too, and tell the fool that it won't bite him. Punmeamootty can make
some coffee, Mr. Jones; or perhaps you drink tea?' said he, turning to
Helga. 'Well, _both_, Mr. Jones, _both_,' he shouted: 'tea _and_ coffee.
Make a good meal, sir, and then come and relieve me.'
The mate vanished. Captain Bunting drew back by a step or two to cast a
look aloft. He then, and with a sailorly eye methought, despite his
whiskers and dingy fleshy face and fixed smile, sent a searching glance
to windward, following it on with a cautious survey of the horizon. He
next took a peep at the compass, and said something to a
mahogany-coloured man who had replaced the fierce-looking fellow at the
wheel. I observed that when the Captain approached the man stirred
uneasily in his shoes, 'twixt which and the foot of his blue dungaree
breeches there lay visible the bare, yellow flesh of his ankles.
I said softly and quickly to Helga, 'This is a very extraordinary
shipmaster.'
'Something in him repels me,' she answered.
'He is behaving kindly and hospitably, though.'
'Yes, Hugh; still, I shall be glad to leave the barque. What a very
strange crew the ship carries! What are they?'
'I will ask him,' said I, and at that moment he rejoined us.
'Captain,' I exclaimed, 'what countrymen are your sailors, pray?'
'Mostly Malays, with a few Cingalese among them,' he answered. 'I got
them on a sudden, and was glad of them, I can tell you. I had shipped an
ordinary European crew in the Thames; and in the Downs, where we lay
wind-bound for three days, every man-jack of them, saving Mr. Jones and
Winstanley, lowered that quarter-boat,' said he, nodding to it, 'one
dark night, chucked their traps in and went away for Dover round the
South Foreland. I recovered the boat, and was told that there was a crew
of Malays lodged at the Sailors' Home at Dover. A vessel from Ceylon
that had touched at the Cape and taken in some coloured seamen there
had stranded, a night or two before my men ran, somewhere off the South
Sand Head. She was completely wrecked, and her crew were brought to
Dover. There were eleven of them in all, with a boss or bo's'n or
serang, call him what you will--there he is!' He pointed to a
dark-skinned fellow on the forecastle. 'Well, to cut the story short,
when these fellows heard I was bound to the Cape they were all eager to
ship. They offered their services for very little money--very little
money indeed,' he added, smiling, 'their object being to get home. I had
no idea of being detained in the Downs for a crew, and I had no heart,
believe me, to swallow another dose of the British merchant sailor, so I
had them brought aboard--and there they are!' he exclaimed, gazing
complacently forward and aft, 'but they are black inside and out.
They're Mahometans, to a man, and now I'm sorry I shipped them, though I
hope to do good--yes,' said he, nodding at me, 'I hope to do good.'
He communicated to this final sentence all the significance that it was
in the power of his countenance and manner to bestow; but what he meant
I did not trouble myself to inquire. Mr. Jones remained below about ten
minutes: he then arrived, and the Captain, who was asking Helga
questions about her father's ship, the cause of her loss, and the like,
instantly broke off on seeing the mate, and asked us to follow him to
the cabin.
The homely interior looked very hospitable, with its table cleanly
draped and pleasantly equipped with provisions. The coloured man who
apparently acted as steward, and who bore the singular name of
Punmeamootty, stood, a dusky shadow, near the cabin-door. In spite of a
smoky sunset in the western windy haze, the gloom of the evening in the
east was already upon the ocean, and the cabin, as we entered it, showed
somewhat darksome to the sight; yet though the figure of the Malay, as I
have already said, was no more than a shadow, I could distinctly see his
gleaming eyes even from the distance of the companion steps; and I
believe had it been much darker still I should have beheld his eyes
looking at us from the other end of the cabin.
'Light the lamp, Punmeamootty!' said the Captain. 'Now, let me see,'
said he, throwing his wideawake on to a locker; 'at sea we call the
last meal supper, Miss Nielsen.'
'Yes, I know that,' she answered.
'Before we go to supper,' he continued, 'you would like to refresh
yourself in a cabin. How about accommodating you, Mr. Tregarthen? That
cabin is mine,' said he, pointing, 'and the one facing it is Mr.
Jones's. There are four gloomy little holes below, one of which was
occupied by poor Winstanley, and the others, I fear, are choke full of
stores and odds and ends.' He eyed her for a moment meditatively.
'Come,' said he: 'you are a lady, and must be made comfortable, however
short your stay with me may be. Mr. Jones will give up his cabin, and go
into the steerage!'
'And Mr. Tregarthen?' said Helga.
'Oh, I'll set some of our darkeys after supper to make ready one of the
berths below for him.'
'I do not wish to be separated from Mr. Tregarthen,' said Helga.
Captain Bunting looked at her, then at me, then at her left hand, for
the coloured steward had now lighted the lamp and we were conversing
close to it.
'You are Miss Nielsen?' said the Captain. 'Have I mistaken?'
The blood rose to the girl's cheek.
'No, you have not mistaken,' said I; 'Miss Nielsen and I have now for
some days been fellow-sufferers, and, for acquaintance's sake, she
wishes her berth to be near mine!'
This I said soothingly, for I thought the skipper's brow looked a little
clouded.
'Be it so,' said he, with a bland flourish of both hands: 'meanwhile,
madam, such conveniences as my cabin affords are at your service for
immediate use.'
She hesitated, but on meeting my eye seemed immediately to catch what
was in my mind, and, smiling prettily, she thanked him, and went at once
to his cabin.
'The fact is, sir,' said he nasally, dragging at the wristband of his
shirt and looking at his nails, 'man at the best is but a very selfish
animal, and cruelly neglectful of the comfort and happiness of women.
Pardon my frankness: your charming companion has been exposed for
several days to the horrors of what was really no better than an open
boat. What more natural than that she should wish to adjust her hair and
take a peep at herself in a looking-glass? And yet'--here he smiled
profoundly--'the suggestion that she should withdraw did not come from
_you_.'
'The kindness of your reception of us,' I answered, 'assured me that you
would do everything that is necessary.'
'Quite so,' he answered; 'and now, Mr. Tregarthen, I dare say a brush-up
will comfort you too. You will find all that you require in Mr. Jones's
cabin.'
I thanked him, and at once entered the berth, hardly knowing as yet
whether to be amused or astonished by the singular character of this
long-whiskered, blandly smiling, and, as I might fairly believe,
religious sea-captain.
There was a little window in the berth that looked on to the
quarter-deck. On peering through it I spied Abraham and Jacob with their
arms buried to the elbow in their breeches' pockets, leaning, with
dogged mien, in the true loafing, lounging, 'longshore posture, against
the side of the caboose or galley. The whole ship's company seemed to
have gathered about them. I counted nine men. There was a rusty tinge in
the atmosphere that gave me a tolerable sight of all those people. It
was the first dog-watch, when the men would be free to hang about the
decks and smoke and talk. The coloured sailors formed a group, in that
dull hectic light, to dwell upon the memory--one with a yellow
sou'-wester, another with a soldier's forage-cap on his head, a third in
a straw hat, along with divers scarecrow-like costumes of dungaree and
coarse canvas jumpers--here a jacket resembling an evening-dress coat
that had been robbed of its tails, there a pair of flapping skirts, a
red wool comforter, half-wellington boots, old shoes, and I know not
what besides.
The man that had been pointed out to me as 'boss'--to employ Captain
Bunting's term--was addressing the two boatmen as I looked. He was
talking in a low voice, and not the slightest growl of his accents
reached me. Now and again he would smite his hands and act as though
betrayed by temper into a sudden vehement delivery, from which he
swiftly recovered himself, so to speak, with an eager look aft at the
poop-deck, where, I might suppose, the mate stood watching them, or
where, at all events, he would certainly be walking, on the look-out.
While he addressed the boatmen, the others stood doggedly looking on,
all, apparently, intent upon the countenances of our Deal friends, whose
attitude was one of contemptuous inattention.
However, by this time I had refreshed myself with a wash, and now
quitted the cabin after a slight look round, in which I took notice of
the portrait of a stout lady cut out in black paper and pasted upon a
white card, a telescope, a sextant case, a little battery of pipes in a
rack over the bunk.
Helga arrived, holding her sealskin hat in her hand. Her amber-coloured
hair--for sometimes I would think it of this hue, at others a pale gold,
then a very fine delicate yellow--showed with a little roughness in it,
as though she were fresh from the blowing of the wind. But had she been
an artist she could not have expressed more choiceness in her fashion of
neglect. She had heartened and brightened greatly since our rescue from
the raft, and, though there were still many traces of her grief and
sufferings in her face, there was likewise the promise that she needed
but a very short term of good usage from life to bloom into as sweet,
modest, and gentle a maiden as a man's heart could wish to hold to
itself.
The Captain, motioning us to our places, took his seat at the head of
the table with a large air of hospitality in his manner of drawing out
his whiskers and inflating his waistcoat. The vessel creaked and groaned
noisily as she pitched and rolled, so slanting the table that, but for
the rough, well-used fiddles, every article upon it would have speedily
tumbled on to the deck. The lamp burned brightly, and almost eclipsed
the rusty complexion of daylight that lay upon the glass of the little
skylight directly over our heads.
Punmeamootty waited nimbly upon us, though my immediate impression was
that his alacrity was not a little animated by fear and dislike. As the
Captain sat smilingly recommending the ham that he was carving--dwelling
much upon it, and talking of the pig as an animal on the whole more
serviceable to man than the cow--I caught the coloured steward watching
him as he stood some little distance away upon the skipper's left, with
his dusky shining eyes in the corner of their sockets. It reminded me of
the look I had observed the fierce-looking fellow at the wheel fasten
upon the Captain. It was as though the fellow cursed him with his dusky
gaze. Yet there was nothing forbidding in his face, despite his
ugliness. His skin was of the colour of the yolk of an egg, and he had a
coarse heavy nose, which made me suspect a Dutch hand in the man's
creation. His hair was coal black, long, and lank, after the Chinese
pattern. It would have been hard to guess his age from such a mask of a
face as he carried; but the few bristles on his upper lip suggested
youth, and I dare say I was right in thinking him about two-and-twenty.
The Captain talked freely; sometimes he omitted his nasal twang; but his
conversation was threaded with pious reflections, and I took notice of a
tendency in the man to sermonize, as though little in the most familiar
talk could occur out of which a salutary moral was not to be squeezed.
He seemed to be very well pleased to have us on board, not perhaps so
much because our company was a break as because it provided him with an
opportunity to philosophize, and to air his sentiments. I shall not be
thought very grateful for thus speaking of a man who had rescued us from
a trying and distressful situation, and who was entertaining us kindly,
and, I may say, bountifully; but my desire is to give you the truth--to
describe exactly as best I can what I saw and suffered in this strange
passage of my life, and the portrait I am attempting of Captain Joppa
Bunting is as the eyes of my head, and of my mind too, beheld him.
As I looked at him sitting at the table, of a veal-like complexion in
that light, blandly gesticulating with his fat hands, expressing himself
with a nasal gravity that was at times diverting with the smile that
accompanied it, it seemed difficult to believe that he was a merchant
captain, the master of as commonplace an old ocean waggon as ever
crushed a sea with a round bow. I asked him how long he had followed the
life, and he astonished me by answering that he was now forty-four, and
that he had been apprenticed to the sea at the age of twelve.
'You will have seen a very great deal in that time, Captain,' said I.
'I believe there is no wonder of the Lord visible upon the face of the
deep which I have not viewed,' he responded. 'There is no part of the
world which I have not visited. I have coasted the Antarctic zone of ice
in a whaler, and I have been becalmed for seventeen weeks right off,
with thirty miles of motion only in those seventeen weeks, upon the
parallel of one degree north.'
On this I observed that Helga eyed him with interest, yet I seemed to be
sensible, too, of an expression of recoil in her face, if I may thus
express what I do not know how better to define.
'You have worn wonderfully well,' said I.
'I have taken care of myself,' he answered, smiling.
'Is this your ship, sir?'
'I have a large interest in her,' he replied. 'I am very well content to
follow the sea. The sense of being watched over is comforting, and often
exhilarating; but I wish,' he exclaimed, with a solemn wagging of his
head, 'that the obligation to make money in this life was less, much
less, than it is.'
'It is the only life in which we shall require money,' said Helga.
'True, madam,' said he, with an apparently careless but puzzling glance
at her; 'but let me tell you that the obligation of money-making soils
the soul. I am not surprised that the godliest of the good men of old
took up their abode in caves, were satisfied with roots for dinner, and
were as happy in a sheep's-skin as a dandy in a costume by Poole. I defy
a man to practise virtue and make money too. Punmeamootty, put some wine
into the lady's glass!'
Helga declined. The Malay was moving swiftly to execute the order, but
stopped dead on her saying no, and with insensible and mouse-like
movements regained his former post, where he stood watching the Captain
as before.
'Yes,' said I, 'this world would be a pleasant one if we could manage
without money.'
'For myself,' said he, casting his eyes over the table, 'I could do very
well with a crust of bread and a glass of water; but I have a daughter,
Judith Ruby, and I have to work for her.'
This brought a little expression of sympathy into Helga's face.
'Is she your only daughter, Captain Bunting?' she asked.
'My only daughter,' he answered, with a momentary softening of his
voice. 'I wish I had her here!' said he. 'You would find her, Miss
Nielsen, a good, kind, religious girl. She is lonely in her home when I
am away. I am a widower. My dear wife fell asleep six years ago.'
He sighed, but he was smiling too as he did so.
The windows of the skylight had now turned into gleaming ebony against
the darkness of the evening outside, and reflected the white table-cloth
and the sparkling glass and our figures as though it were a black
polished mirror over our heads. I had taken notice of a sharper
inclination in the heel of the barque when she rolled to leeward, and,
though I was no sailor, yet my ears, accustomed to the noises of the
coast, had caught a keener edge in the hum of the wind outside, a more
fretful hiss in the stroke of every sea smiting the bends. An order was
delivered from the deck above us and shortly afterwards, a singular
sound of howling arose, accompanied with the slatting and flapping of
canvas.
'Mr. Jones is taking the mainsail off her,' said the Captain, 'but the
glass is very steady. We shall have a fine night,' he added, smiling at
Helga.
'Is that strange wailing noise made by the crew?' she asked.
'It is, madam. The Malays are scarcely to be called nightingales. They
are pulling at the ropes, and they sing as they pull. It is a habit
among sailors--but you do not require me to tell you that.'
'I believe there is very little in seamanship, Captain Bunting,' said I,
'that even you, with your long experience, could teach Miss Nielsen.'
She looked somewhat wistfully at me, as though she would discourage any
references to her.
'Indeed!' he exclaimed. 'I should like to hear your nautical
accomplishments.'
'It was my humour to assist my father when at sea,' she said, with her
eyes fixed on the table.
'Now, what can you do?' said he, watching her. 'Pray tell me? A
knowledge of the sea among your sex is so rare that a sailor could never
value it too greatly in a lady.'
'Let me answer for Miss Nielsen, Captain,' I exclaimed carelessly, with
a glance at the Malay steward, whose gaze, like the Captain's, was also
directed at Helga. 'She can put a ship about, she can steer, she can
loose a jib, and run aloft as nimbly as the smartest sailor; she can
stand a watch and work a ship in it, and she can take sights and give
you a vessel's place on the chart--within a mile shall I say, Helga?'
He looked at me on my pronouncing the word 'Helga.' I do not know that I
had before called the girl thus familiarly in his presence.
'You are joking, Mr. Tregarthen!' said he.
A little smile of appeal to me parted Helga's lips.
'No, no,' said I, 'I am not joking. It is all true. She is the most
heroical of girls, besides. We owe our preservation to her courage and
knowledge. Helga, may God bless you, and grant us a safe and speedy
return to a home where, if the dear heart in it is still beating, we
shall meet with a sweet welcome, be sure.'
'But you must not be in a hurry to return home,' exclaimed the Captain,
turning his smiling countenance to Helga; 'you must give me time to
tempt you to remain on board _The Light of the World_. Your
qualifications as a sailor should make you an excellent mate, and you
will tell me how much a month you will take to serve in that capacity?'
I observed the same look of recoil in her face that I had before seen in
it. A woman's instincts, thought I, are often amazingly keen in the
interpretation of men's minds. Or is she merely nervous and sensitive
with a gentle, pretty modesty and bashfulness which render direct
allusions to her after this pattern distressing? For my part, I could
find no more than what the French call badinage in the Captain's speech,
with nothing to render it significant outside the bare meaning of the
words in his looks or manner.
She did not answer him, and by way of changing the subject, being also
weary of sitting at that table, for we had finished the meal some time,
though the Malay continued to look on, as though waiting for the order
to clear away, I pulled out my watch.
'A quarter to seven,' I exclaimed. 'You will not wish to be late
to-night, Helga. You require a good long sleep. By this time to-morrow
we may have shifted our quarters; but we shall always gratefully
remember Captain Bunting's goodness.'
'That reminds me,' said he, 'your cabins must be got ready.
Punmeamootty, go forward and tell Nakier to send a couple of hands aft
to clear out two of the berths below. No! tell Nakier I want him, and
then come aft and clear the table.'
The man, gliding softly but moving swiftly, passed through the door that
led on to the quarter-deck.
'I wish I could tempt you, Miss Nielsen,' continued the Captain, 'to
take Mr. Jones's cabin. You will be so very much more comfortable
there.'
'I would rather be near Mr. Tregarthen, thank you,' she answered.
'You are a fortunate man to be so favoured!' he exclaimed, smiling at
me. 'However, every convenience that my cabin can supply shall be placed
at Miss Nielsen's disposal. Alas! now, if my dear Judith were here! She
would improve, by many womanly suggestions, my humble attempts as a
Samaritan. Our proper business in this world, Mr. Tregarthen, is to do
good to one another. But the difficulty,' he exclaimed with a sweep of
his hand, 'is to do _all_ the good that can be done! Now, for instance,
I am at a loss. How am I to supply Miss Nielsen's needs?'
'They are of the simplest--are not they, Helga?' said I.
'Quite the simplest, Captain Bunting,' she answered, and then, looking
at him anxiously, she added: 'My one great desire now is to get to
England. I have been the cause of taking Mr. Tregarthen from his mother,
and I shall not feel happy until they are together again!'
'Charity forbid,' exclaimed the Captain, 'that I should question for an
instant the heroism of Mr. Tregarthen's behaviour! But,' said he,
slightly lowering his voice and stooping his smiling face at her, so to
say, 'when your brave friend put off in the lifeboat he did not, I may
take it, know that you were on board?'
'But I _was_ on board,' she answered quickly: 'and he has saved my life,
and I wish him to return to his mother, who may believe him drowned and
be mourning him as dead!'