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 love.'
'By George!' said I, starting and heaving a long sigh, with a look at
the clock, the hands of which were now at nine, 'the road to Kolding
gets longer and longer. But we shall measure it--we shall measure it
yet, Helga!' I quickly added, heartily grieved by the sorrow that
entered her face.
'What a strange dream has all this time been!' she half murmured,
pressing her eyes. 'My father stood by my side last night; I felt his
kiss--oh, Hugh! it was colder than the salt water outside.' She uttered
an exclamation in Danish, with a little passionate shake of the head.
'I hope you are quite comfortable below,' exclaimed a much too familiar
voice, and, looking up, I spied the long whiskers and smiling
countenance of Captain Bunting framed in the open casement of the
skylight.
Helga rallied as if to a shock, and stiffened into marble, motionless,
and with a hardening of her countenance that I should have thought
impossible to the gentle, ingenuous prettiness of her face.
'I fear,' he continued, talking through the skylight, 'that we are in
for some nasty weather; but my barque is stripped and nearly ready for
the affray. I am grieved not to be able to join you, Miss Nielsen. It is
necessary that I should remain on deck. You are partaking of no
refreshment. I will send Punmeamootty to you. Pray give him your
orders.'
His whiskers floated out into the obscurity like two puffs of smoke, and
he called, but in genteel accents, for Helga was now listening, and he
knew it, to Abraham to send Punmeamootty 'to wait upon his guests in the
cabin.' A moment after his whiskers reappeared.
'I have to beg, Miss Nielsen, that you will consider yourself mistress
here. And before you withdraw to rest--and, whatever may happen, pray
slumber securely, for _I_ shall be watching the ship--may I entreat you
to occupy Mr. Jones's berth, which you will find so very much more airy
and comfortable than the dark, confined steerage?'
'I am quite satisfied with my accommodation, thank you,' she answered,
without looking up.
He youthfully wagged his head in reproach of what his manner seemed to
consider no more than an enchanting girlish capriciousness, and adding,
'Well, I entreat you both to make yourselves thoroughly at home,' he
disappeared.
Punmeamootty arrived. He entered soundlessly as a spirit, and with the
gliding movements that one could imagine of a phantom. I said to Helga:
'Abraham's philosophy shall be mine. My temper shall not prevent me from
using our friend's larder. You asked just now what will sicken him. Let
us eat and drink him up! Punmeamootty, when is the gale going to burst?'
'It will not be long, sah,' he answered, showing his teeth.
'Put the best supper you can upon the table. Have you nothing better
than rum to drink?'
'Dere is wine, sah.'
'Yes, and very poor wine too. Have you no brandy?'
'Yes, sah, de Capt'n hab some choice brandy for sickness.'
'Put a bottle of it on the table, Punmeamootty, and be quick, like a
good fellow as you are, to serve the food before this sweet little ship
begins to kick up her heels.'
He showed his teeth again, with a glance at the skylight, following it
on with a short-lived look of deep interest at Helga, then slipped away.
With wonderful nimbleness he had spread the cloth and put ham, salt
beef, biscuit, and such things upon the table.
'Now draw that cork!' said I.
The pop of it brought the whiskers to the open skylight as if by magic.
'Quite right, quite right!' exclaimed the Captain. 'I hope, Miss Helga,
this repast is of _your_ ordering? What have you there, Punmeamootty?'
he suddenly cried with excitement. 'That is brandy, I believe?'
'I ordered it!' I called out in a sullen voice.
'You will handle it tenderly, if you please,' said he, with a trifle of
asperity in his speech. 'It is a fine cordial brandy, and I have but
three bottles of it.'
I returned no answer, and he vanished.
'Upon my word, I believe Abraham is right, after all!' said I, with a
laugh. 'Now, Helga, to punish him, if the road to his sensibility lie
through ham and beef!'
She feigned to eat merely to please me, as I could see. Though I was not
very hungry, I made a great business of sharpening my knife, and fell to
the beef and ham with every appearance of avidity, not doubting that we
should be furtively surveyed from time to time by the Captain, who could
peep at us unseen without trouble as he passed the skylight, and who
could very well overhear the clatter of dishes, the sharpening of my
knife, and my calls to the steward, so silent did the night continue, as
though there rested some great hush of expectancy upon the ocean.
I filled a bumper of brandy-and-water, and exclaimed in a loud voice:
'Here's to our speedy release, Helga! But if that is not to happen, then
here's to the safest and swiftest passage this crazy old bucket is
capable of making. And here's to proceedings hereafter to be taken!'
The coloured steward stood looking on with a grin of wonder.
'Capital brandy, this, Punmeamootty!' I sang out in accents that might
have been heard upon the forecastle. 'Another drop, if you please! Thank
you! I will help myself.'
A mere drop it was, for I had had enough; but I took care by my posture
to persuade an eye surveying me from above that I was not sparing the
bottle.
'You may clear away, Punmeamootty; and if you can find a cigar I shall
feel obliged by your bringing it to me.'
'Well, and how are we getting on?' exclaimed the Captain, bending his
head into the skylight.
'We have supped, thank you,' I answered haughtily and coldly.
'Punmeamootty, a cigar, if you please!'
The Captain's head vanished.
'Me no sabbee where the Capt'n him keep his cigar,' said Punmeamootty.
'Ransack his cabin!' said I loudly.
The fellow shook his head, but there was enjoyment in his grin, with an
expression of elation in his eyes that borrowed a quality of fierceness
from the singularly keen gleam which irradiated their dusky depths. I
was about to speak, when Helga raised her hand.
'Hark!' she cried.
I bent my ear, and caught a sound resembling the low moan of surf heard
at a distance.
'More than a capful of wind goes to the making of that noise,' said I.
A bright flash of lightning dazzled upon the skylight and eclipsed the
cabin-lamp with its blinding bluish glare. A small shock of thunder
followed. I heard the Captain cry out an order; the next minute the
skylight was hastily closed and a tarpaulin thrown over it.
'Bring me my oilskins, Punmeamootty!' shouted the Captain down the
companionway. The man ran on deck with the things.
'Can that be rain?' cried Helga.
Rain it was indeed! a very avalanche of wet, charged with immense
hailstones. The roar of the smoking discharge upon the planks was
absolutely deafening. It lasted about a couple of minutes, then ceased
with startling suddenness, and you heard nothing but the surf-like
moaning that had now gathered a deeper and a more thrilling note,
mingled with the wild sobbing in the scuppers, and a melancholy hissing
of wet as the water on the quarter-deck splashed from side to side to
the light rolling of the barque. Yet fully another five minutes passed
in quiet, while the growling of the thunder of the still distant
storm-swept sea waxed fiercer and fiercer. It was as though one stood at
the mouth of a tunnel and listened to the growing rattling and rumbling
of a long train of goods waggons approaching in tow of a panting
locomotive.
Then in a breath the wind smote the barque, and down she leaned to it.
So amazingly violent was the angle, I do most truthfully believe that
for the space of some twenty or thirty seconds the barque lay completely
on her beam ends, as much so as if she were bilged high and dry upon a
shoal, and there was a dreadful noise of water pouring in upon her deck
from over the submerged lee main-deck rail.
Helga was to windward, and the table supported her, but the chair upon
which I was seated broke away with me, and I fell sprawling upon my back
amid a whole raffle of the contents of the table, which Punmeamootty had
not yet removed. The full mess of it came headlong about me with a
mighty smash; the beef, the ham, the bottle of brandy, now shivered into
a thousand pieces, the jam pots, the biscuits, the knives and forks--all
these things I lay in the midst of, and such was the heel of the deck
that I could not stir a limb. Helga shrieked.
I cried out:
'I am not hurt; I'll rise when I can.' Someone was hoarsely bawling from
the poop; but whatever the meaning of the yell might have been, it was
immediately followed by a loud report resembling the blast of a
twenty-four-pounder gun. 'There goes a sail!' I shouted. The vessel
found life on being relieved of the canvas, whatever it was; there was a
gradual recovery of her hull, and presently she was on a level keel,
driving smoothly as a sleigh over a level plain of snow, but with such
an infernal bellowing and hooting and ear-piercing whistling of wind
accompanying her that there is nothing I can imagine to liken it to.
I waited awhile, and then, bidding Helga stay where she was, went on to
the quarter-deck; but all betwixt the rails was of a pitch darkness,
with a sort of hoariness in the blackness on either hand outside, rising
from the foam, of which the ocean was now one vast field. I mounted the
poop-ladder, but was blinded in a moment by the violence of the wind,
that was full of wet, and was glad to regain the cabin; for I could be
of no use, and there was no question to be asked nor answer to be caught
at such a time.