JOPPA IS IN EARNEST.
It was about half-past nine when this gale took us, but such was the
force and weight of it, so flattening and shearing was its scythe-like
horizontal sweep, that no sea worth speaking of had risen till ten
o'clock, and then, indeed, it was beginning to run high. All this while
there had been no sound of human voices, but at this hour a command was
delivered above our heads, and going on to the quarter-deck, I dimly
discerned the figures of men hauling upon the forebraces; but they
pulled dumbly; no song broke from them; they were silent as though in
terror. A little later on I knew by the motions of the barque that she
had been brought to the wind and lay hove-to.
That few vessels would better know how to plunge and roll than this old
_Light of the World_ I might have guessed from her behaviour in quiet
weather, when there was nothing but a slight swell to lift her. But I
never could have conjectured how truly prodigious was her skill in the
art of tumbling. She soared and sank as an empty cask might. She took
every hollow with a shock that threatened to rend her bones into
fragments, as though she had been hurled through the air from a mighty
height; and when she swung up an acclivity, the sensation was that of
being violently lifted, as by a balloon or by the grip of an eagle.
Groans and cries rose from her interior as though she had a thousand
miserable, perishing slaves--men, women, and children--locked up in her
hold.
'This,' said I to Helga, 'is worse than the _Anine_.'
'Yet it was blowing harder on that Saturday night than it is now,' she
answered, watching the mad oscillations of the cabin lamp with serene
eyes and a mouth steadfast in expression. 'I have a greater dread of
Captain Bunting's smile,' she continued, 'than of any hurricane that can
blow across the ocean.' She looked at the clock. 'He is certain to
arrive shortly. He is sure to find some excuse to torture me with his
politeness. He will tease me to exchange my cabin. I think I will go to
bed, Hugh.'
There was little temptation to remain up. I put my hand under her arm to
steady the pair of us, and we passed on to the quarter-deck, where I
found the hatch that led to our sleeping quarters shut. We lifted it,
and looked into a blackness profounder than that of a coal-mine. On this
I roared for Punmeamootty. I shouted four or five times at the top of my
lungs, and then some voice bawled from over the rail of the deck above,
'What's wrong down there?' Who it was I could not tell; it was
impossible to distinguish voices amid the hellish clamour of the wind
roaring in the rigging with the sound of a tempest-swept forest. I took
no notice, and bawled again for Punmeamootty, and, after a little, the
poor coloured wretch came out of the darkness into the sheen of the
cabin-light that feebly touched the quarter-deck, crawling on his hands
and knees. He was soaked through, and when he stood up could scarcely
keep his feet. Indeed, forward, the seas were sweeping the decks in
sheets, and each time the vessel lifted her bows the water came roaring
in a fury of foam to the cuddy front.
We were forced to put the hatch on again to keep the sea out of the ship
till Punmeamootty came staggering out of the cuddy with a lantern. Helga
then dropped below with amazing dexterity, and I handed the light down
to her, requesting that she would hang it up and leave it burning, as I
was in no mood to 'turn in' just then, wishing to see more of the
weather before resting, and to smoke a pipe. I put the hatch on and
re-entered the cuddy, followed by Punmeamootty.
'You seem half drowned!' said I.
'A sea knock me down, sah. Is dere danger, sah?'
'I hope not,' I answered. 'Do you feel equal to picking up that mess?'
and I pointed to the broken china and bit of beef, and so on.
He turned a terrified eye upon them, staggering and swaying wildly, and
then, as though he had not heard my question, he exclaimed, 'We all say
dis storm come tro' Capt'n being wicked man! Tankee de Lor'! we hab no
eat pork! Tankee de Lor'! we hab no eat pork!'
He bared his gleaming teeth, as though in the anguish of cold, and shook
his small clenched fist at the skylight. I sat down and lighted a pipe,
and, having been somewhat chilled by waiting out in the wet of the
quarter-deck for Punmeamootty to bring the lantern, I slided and clawed
my way round to Captain Bunting's locker for a bottle of rum that lay
within. As I did this, the companion door opened, and down came the
skipper. The wind and the wet had twisted his whiskers into lines like
lengths of rope. I could have burst into a laugh at the sight of his
singular face, framed in the streaming thatch and flannel ear-protectors
of his sou'-wester. The water poured from his oilskins as he came to a
stand at the end of the table, grabbing it, and looking about him.
'What's all that?' cried he, pointing with a fat forefinger to the mess
on deck.
This was addressed to Punmeamootty, but I answered, flinging the
surliest note I could manage into my voice, which I had to raise into a
shout, 'An accident. This is a beast of a ship, sir! No barge could make
worse weather of a breeze of wind.'
I let fall the lid of the locker, and sat upon it, poising the bottle
of rum, and blowing a great cloud with my pipe.
'Where is Miss Nielsen?' he exclaimed.
'Gone to bed,' I answered. 'Punmeamootty, reach me a glass out of that
rack.'
The man, in taking the tumbler, reeled to a violent heel of the deck,
and let it fall.
'D--n it!' roared the Captain, 'you clumsy son of a bitch! What more
damage is to be done?' His sudden passion made his fixed smile
extraordinarily grotesque. 'Get a basket and pick up that stuff, and
bear a hand!' he thundered. 'Has Miss Helga a light?'
'Yes,' I answered. 'I have seen to that.'
'But she may fall--she may let the lantern drop!'
'She is a better sailor than you,' I called out; 'she knows how to keep
her feet. Punmeamootty! a tumbler, if you please, before you begin
picking up that stuff.'
'I must see that Miss Nielsen's lantern is safe,' said the Captain; and
he was coming forward as though to pass through the cuddy door. I sprang
to my feet and confronted him on widely stretched legs.
'No man,' said I, 'enters Miss Nielsen's sleeping quarters while she and
I remain in this ship.'
He stared at me, with twenty emotions working in his face. His
countenance then changed. I perceived him glance at the bottle of rum
that I held by the neck, and that I was just in the temper to let him
have fair between his eyes had he attempted to shove past me. I believe
he thought I had been drinking.
'I can assure you,' he exclaimed, with a violent reaching out of his
mind, so to speak, in the direction of his regular and familiar
blandness, 'that Miss Nielsen's privacy is as sacred to me as to you.
Will you go below and see that her light is all right? It is a matter
that as much concerns your safety as ours.'
Without answering him, I opened the locker, replaced the bottle, and
continuing to puff out great clouds of smoke through the excitement
under which I laboured--for I had been prepared for a hand-to-hand
struggle with him, and my heart beat fast to the resolution of my
temper--I quitted the cuddy, with a loud call to Punmeamootty to follow
me and replace the hatch.
Whether the coloured steward put the hatch on, whether, indeed, he
followed me as I bade him, I cannot tell. I found the lantern burning
bravely and swinging fiercely under the beam, and extinguished it, and
lay down completely clothed, with the exception of my boots, shrewdly
guessing there would be little sleep for me that night.
That it blew at any time as hard as it had when we were aboard the
_Anine_, I cannot say; enough that the dreadful maddened motions of the
old vessel made a truly hideous gale of wind of the weather. Again and
again she would tumble off the head of a sea and fall headlong into the
yawn of water at the base, heeling over as she fell, till you would have
believed the line of her masts parallel with the horizon, and strike
herself such a mighty blow when she got to the bottom, that you
listened, with a thumping heart, for a crackling and a rending noise of
timbers to tell you that she was going to pieces like a child's house of
cards. It was impossible to sleep; twice I was flung from my bunk, and
came very near to breaking a limb. I called to Helga, and found her
awake. I asked her how she did; but, silver-clear and keen as her voice
was, I could not catch her answer.
It is likely that towards the small hours of the morning I now and again
snatched a few minutes of sleep. From one of these brief spells of
slumber I was aroused by the blow of a sea that thrilled like an
electric shock through every plank and fastening of the vessel, and to
my great joy I observed, as I thought, the faint gray of dawn colouring
the dim and weeping glass of the scuttle. I immediately pulled on my
boots and made for the hatch, but the cover was on and the darkness was
as deep as ever it had been at midnight. I considered for a minute how I
should make myself heard, and groping my way back to my berth, I took a
loose plank, or bunk-board as it is called, from out of the
sea-bedstead, and with it succeeded in raising such a thunder in the
hollow cover that in a few minutes it was lifted. The homely, flat,
ruddy-cheeked face of Jacob, his head clothed in a somewhat tattered
yellow sou'-wester, which he had probably borrowed from one of his
coloured mates forward, looked down upon me through the glimmering
square of the aperture.
'Why, blowed, Mr. Tregarthen,' cried he, 'if Oi didn't think the barque
was ashore! But ye'd have had to hammer much louder and much longer
before escaping from that rat-trap, if it hadn't been for me
a-sheltering of moyself under this 'ere break.'
It was a wild scene indeed to arrive on deck and suddenly view. Furious
as was the behaviour of the barque, I could have got no notion of the
weight of the surge from her capers. A huge swelling, livid, frothing
surface--every billow looking to rear to the height of the maintop,
where it was shattered and blown into a snowstorm--a heaven of whirling
soot: this, in brief, was the picture. The vessel, however, was
undamaged aloft. She was lying hove-to under a band of close-reefed
topsail, which glanced like a sheet of foam against the stooping dismal
dusk of the sky. None of the dark-skinned crew were visible. Jacob
roared in my ear that they had been half wild with fear during the
night.
'There's some sort of superstition a-working in them,' he shouted;
'they've been a-praying and a-praying horrible, arter their fashion.
Lucky for the ship that she was snugged afore the storm busted. Them
poor covies ain't agoing to save their lives when the call comes for
them to live or perish.'
'Who has the watch?' said I.
'The mate,' he answered.
I looked at my watch, and was astonished to find that it was after
eight. I had believed the hour to be daybreak, but, indeed, it was
surprising that any light at all should have had power to sift through
that storm-laden sky. Helga at this moment showed in the hatch. I took
her hand. She looked pale, but her mouth was firm as she swept the
boiling, swollen scene with her gaze, holding the deck with feet that
seemed to float above the planks.
'What a night it has been!' she cried. 'This is a bad ship for bad
weather. Hour after hour I have been thinking that she was going to
pieces!'
I told Jacob to replace the hatch-cover, and the girl and I entered the
cuddy, as it was impossible to converse in the open; while, spite of the
parallel on which we reeled, the weight of the wind carried an edge as
of a Channel January blast in it. In the comparative shelter of the
interior we were able to talk, and I told her how I had behaved to the
Captain on the previous night.
'Nothing that we can do,' said she, 'can signify while this weather
lasts!'
'No, indeed!' I exclaimed. 'We must now pray for the ship to live. Our
leaving her is made a twopenny consideration of by this gale.'
She rose to look at the tell-tale compass, and returned to my side with
a look of concern and a sad shake of the head.
'This must end our dream of Santa Cruz,' said she.
'It was an idle dream at the best,' I answered.
'Unless it should result in disabling the barque!' she continued. She
added, with a little passion, as she looked through the cuddy window on
to the quarter-deck: 'I wish all three masts would go overboard!'
'Leaving the hull sound,' said I.
'Yes, yes, leaving the hull sound. I would be content to roll about in
this hateful vessel for a whole fortnight, if I could be sure of being
taken off at the end. Anything, _anything_ to terminate this cruel, this
ridiculous captivity!'
As these words left her lips, the Captain came down the companion-steps.
He paused on seeing us, as though he had supposed the cuddy empty, and
was ashamed to be seen in that figure. The dried white salt lay like
flour in his eyes, his whiskers were mere rags of wet hair; a large
globule of salt water hung at the end of his nose, like a gem worn after
the Eastern fashion. He struggled along to where we sat, and extended
his hand to Helga. In his most unctuous manner, that contrasted
ludicrously with his streaming oilskins, he expressed the hope that she
had slept well, lamented the severity of the gale, for her sake, but
assured her there was no danger, that the barque was making noble
weather of it, and that he expected the wind to moderate before noon. He
held her hand while he spoke, despite her visible efforts to withdraw it
from his grasp. He then addressed me:
'I have to apologize,' he exclaimed, 'for a little exhibition of temper
last night. I employed an expletive which I am happy to think has not
escaped me for years. The provocation was great--the anxieties of the
gale--the loss of a foretopmast-staysail--the ruined crockery on the
deck--a bottle of my valuable cordial-brandy wasted--Punmeamootty's
somewhat insolent stupidity: the most pious mind might be reasonably
forgiven for venting itself in the language of the forecastle, under the
irritation of so many trials! But I offer you my apologies, Mr.
Tregarthen, and I hope, sir, that you slept well!'
I answered him coldly and with averted eyes, being now resolved to
persevere in my assumption of contemptuous dislike, which I also desired
he should believe was animated by a determination to punish him when I
got ashore.
He went to his cabin to refresh himself, first taking care to inform us,
with a large smile, that he had spent the whole of the night on deck in
looking after the vessel, 'whose safety,' he exclaimed, with a
significant leer at Helga, 'has been rendered extraordinarily precious
to me since Monday last.'
I now told her--for I had forgotten the incident--how our oily friend
had whipped out a small oath on the previous night.
'So, then, he has humanized himself to you?' said she, laughing.
'It is the only symptom of sincerity I have observed in him,' I
exclaimed.
He reappeared presently, soaped, shining, and smiling, with dried
whiskers floating smoke-like on either hand a purple satin cravat. But
the breakfast was to be a poor one that morning. The cook, it seems,
could not keep the galley fire alight, and we had to make the best meal
we could off a tin of preserved meat and some biscuit and
wine-and-water. The Captain was profusely apologetic to Helga, and
unctuously ascribed the poverty of the meal to me, who, he said with an
air of jocosity, was the cause of half a ham and an excellent piece of
beef being rendered unfit for the table. I made no answer to this.
Indeed, Helga and I sat like mutes at that table; but the Captain talked
abundantly, almost wholly addressing himself to the girl. In truth, it
was now easy to see that the unfortunate man was head over ears in love
with her. His gaze was a prolonged stare of admiration, and he seemed to
find nothing in her behaviour to chill or repel him. On the contrary,
the more she kept her eyes downwards bent, the colder and harder grew
her face, the more taciturn she was--again and again not vouchsafing
even a monosyllabic answer to him--the more he warmed towards her, the
more he encroached in his behaviour. If he had any sensibility, it was
armour-clad by complacency. I never could have believed that vanity had
such power as I here found to sheath so impenetrably the human
understanding. 'Well,' thought I to myself, 'all this means a voyage for
Helga, if not for me. Assuredly he'll not part with her this side of the
Cape, and the fool's hope,' I thought, as I let my eyes rest on the
grinning mask of his countenance, 'is that he will have won her long
before he reaches the parallel of thirty-four degrees south, though he
has to make the most of every calm and of every gale of wind to achieve
his end.'
I will not attempt to follow the hours of that day. They were little
more than a repetition of our experiences in the _Anine_. The Captain
came and went, but for the most part Helga and I remained in the cabin.
The gale somewhat moderated at noon, as the skipper had predicted; but
it still blew too hard to make sail on the ship, and she lay hove-to in
the trough, sickening me to the inmost recesses of my soul with her
extravagant somersaults and prodigious falls and upheavals. Somewhere
about half-past four that afternoon, on looking through the
cuddy-window, I saw Jacob smoking a pipe in the shelter of the
projection of the Captain's and mate's cabins. I thought I would keep
him company, and, having cut up a pipe of tobacco for myself, I quitted
Helga, who showed a disposition to doze, and joined the boatman.
The wind made a great howling aloft, and the thunderous wash of the
breaking waters against the vessel's side put a wild note of storm into
the shrieking and hissing and hooting of the rigging. But it was fairly
calm in the recess, and we conversed very easily. I asked Jacob, while I
pointed over the lee-rail at the huge, dark-green, froth-laced backs of
the seas rushing from the ship in headlong race, what would be his
thoughts of this weather if he were aboard the _Early Morn_.
'Why, the lugger 'ud be doing as well as this here bucket, any way,'
said he.
'Captain Bunting,' said I, 'will think that you are not half grateful
enough for your deliverance.'
'He is a proper gentleman!' he exclaimed. 'Abraham swears there ain't
the likes of him afloat for politeness; but his crew ben't of Abey's
mind, I'm afraid. Looks to me as if there's going to be trouble.'
'Anything fresh happened?' I asked.
'It's all along of this matter of sarving out pork to them chaps as
won't eat it, Mr. Tregarthen. The mate gave 'em pork again to-day. There
ain't no galley fire alight, so it's all the same to them coloured chaps
whether it be pork or beef. But it's the principle of it what's
a-sticking in their gizzards. Nakier says to me, "It would be allee de
same if de water boil," says he, "for it is eider pork or no meat," by
which he sinnified that if so be as it was fine weather and the galley
fire goin', the men's dinner to-day 'ud be pork or nothen. Now, Mr.
Tregarthen, Oi allow that they don't mean to keep all on enduring of
this here treatment.'
'What have you noticed to make you suppose this?' said I, with a glance
along the deserted decks, dark with sobbing wet, and often shrouded
forwards by vast showers of flying spray.
'Well,' he answered, 'all the darkies has been a-sitting below saving
the chap at the wheel, there being nothen for them to do on deck. I was
in the fok'sle when Nakier comes down and tells the men that it was to
be pork again. I couldn't understand him, for he spoke his own language,
but guessed what was up when I heerd the hullabaloo his words raised.
They all began to sing out together in a sort of screeching voice like
the row made by a crowd of women a-quarrelling and a-pulling the hair
out of each other's heads up a halley. Some skipped about in their rage
as though there was a fiddle going. One chap, him with a face like a
decayed lemon, he outs with his knife and falls a-stabbing of the
atmosphere; and Oi tell ye, Mr. Tregarthen, when I saw _that_ I just
drawed my legs up into my bunk and tried to make myself as little as
possible, with the hope of escaping his hobservation, for damme! thought
I, if that there article's agoing to run amuck, as I've heerd tell the
likes of him is in the habit of doing, strike me dark, thinks Oi, if I
ben't the fust man he'll fall foul on!'
'What was said?' I asked.
'Why, ask yourself the question, sir! What do monkeys say when they
start a-yelling. Who's to know _what_ they said?'
'How do you know, then, that it was the serving out of pork again that
excited them?' said I.
'Whoy, that there Nakier told me so arterwards.'
'Ha!' I exclaimed; 'and for how long did they go on shrieking, as you
say, and brandishing their knives?'
'It was over wonderful soon,' he answered. 'Nakier looked on whilst they
was all a-shouting together, then said something, and it was like
blowing the head off a pint o' ale--nothen remained but flatness. They
just stood and listened whilst Nakier spouted, and ye should ha' seen
'em a-nodding and a-grimacing, and brandishing their arms and slapping
their legs; but they never said nothen; they just took and listened.
Tell 'ee, Mr. Tregarthen, the suddenness of it, and the looks of 'em,
was something to bring the pusperation out of the pores of a Polar
bear.'
'What does Abraham think?' said I.
'Whoy, I dunno how it is, he don't seem to obsarve--appears to find
nothen to take to heart. He's growed a bit consequential, being now what
the skipper would call a orficer, and though he sleeps forrard his
feelings is aft. 'Tis mere growling, he thinks, with the fellows. But
there's more 'n that,' said he, striking a match and catching the flame
of it in his clasped hand, and lighting his pipe as easily as if there
were not a breath of air stirring.
'The lunatic of a Captain has eyes in his head,' said I, thinking aloud
rather than conversing. 'If _he_ can't see the mischief his mad notion
of conversion is breeding, it is not for me to point it out. In fact, I
heartily wish the Malays would seize the barque and sail her to Madeira
or the Canaries. Is it not abominable that Miss Nielsen and I should be
carried away to the Cape of Good Hope against our will by that
long-whiskered rogue?' signifying the Captain by a backward motion of my
head at the cabin.
'Abraham was a-telling me about this here traverse. The skipper's gone
and fallen in love with the young lady, ain't he?' said Jacob, with a
grin overspreading his flat face.
'Yes,' said I, 'and hopes by keeping her aboard to win her heart. The
dolt!'
'Dunno about _dolt_, sir!' exclaimed Jacob. 'She's a nice-looking young
gal, is Miss Nielsen, and, I allow, just the sort of wife as a
shipmaster would live heasy vith.'
'You argue as vilely as Abraham,' said I, looking at him angrily. 'Will
you pretend that this Captain is not acting outrageously in detaining
the young lady on board his ship--imprisoning her, in short--for that is
what it comes to?'
A little look of intelligence gave a new expression to the flat-faced
fellow's smile as he respectfully surveyed me.
'Well, sir--I don't blame you, I can't blame you,' he exclaimed. 'I've
kep' company myself. I was for five year along with as nice a gal as was
ever seen in Deal, a-courting and a-courting, and always too pore to git
spliced. I know what the passion of jealousy is. She took up with a
corporal of Marines, and, I tell ye, I _suffered_. It came roight, then
it went wrong again, and it ended in her marrying a measly little slice
of a chap, named Billy Tusser, who'd saved a bit out o' sprattin' and
hovellin'. I _can't_ blame 'ee, sir.'
It was not a matter to pursue with this worthy man, whose small
intelligence lay too deep to be worth boring for; so I dropped the
subject, and talked afresh of the coloured crew, and continued lingering
till I could not have told how long our chat lasted. Though the gale was
much less hard than it had blown down from noon, it was still a very
violent wind, and the sea as wild as ever it had been, with the shadow
of the evening now to add a darker tinge of gloom to the whirl of
stooping, sooty heaven, under which every head of surge broke like a
flash of ghastly light. The vessel was a strangely desolate picture--not
a living creature to be seen forward, the decks half drowned, water
sluicing white off the forecastle rim, or blowing up into the wind from
off that raised deck in bursts of crystalline smoke, like corkscrew
leapings of fine snow to the hurl of a blast roaring across a wintry
moor. The black gear curved black with wet: again and again the vessel
would pitch into the head sea till the spreading froth made by the
massive plunge of her round bows rose to her forecastle rail. I had had
enough of the cold and the wet; the cheerless picture of the barque and
the ocean, too, was unspeakably depressing, and, with a glance round at
the near horizon of broken creaming waters on which nothing showed, I
bestowed a nod of farewell on Jacob, and re-entered the cuddy.
Captain Bunting was sitting close to Helga. The light was so weak in
this interior that I had to peer a little to make sure that it was the
Captain, for the dim figure might well have been the mate's. Helga was
at the extreme end of the locker, as though she had uneasily worked her
way from his side while they sat; but he had followed, and was now
close, and her next and only step to get rid of him must be to rise. He
was addressing her very earnestly when I entered; his whiskers floated
from his cheeks as he bent towards her. Though the cuddy was charged
with the complaining sounds of the labouring fabric, speech was very
easy within it, nor was it necessary to raise the voice. Indeed, the
interior had the effect of a hush upon my ears, coming as I did fresh
from the shriek and thunder of the weather out on deck.
On seeing me the Captain instantly broke off, sat up, and called out:
'Well, and how are things looking on deck?'
Helga rose and went to the little window against the door.
'The weather could not be worse,' I answered, with the air and tone of
sullenness I had resolved on. 'Your ship is too old and squab for such a
conflict.'
'She is old, but she is a stout ship,' he answered. 'She will be afloat
when scores of what you might consider beauties have vanished.'
'I think not,' said I, looking towards Helga, and wondering what the man
had been saying to her.
'Let us hope,' he exclaimed, lifting a great pilot coat from the locker
and struggling into it, 'that the necessity for your remaining here will
not last very much longer. I should have expected handsomer treatment at
your hands, Mr. Tregarthen.'
'I do not know what you can find to base such an expectation on,' I
cried. 'Your detention of us is cruel, and, as I hope and believe,
punishable. But there is no good in discussing _that_ matter with you
here and now. I have merely to beg that we may be as strangers while we
are so unfortunate as to be together in the same ship.'
He drew his sou'-wester down upon his head, surveying me meanwhile; but
I witnessed no malevolence in his regard; indeed, I may say, no trace
of temper. His enduring smile lay broad with such expansion, indeed, as
gave an air of elation to his face.
'No,' said he, wagging his head, while he slipped the elastic band of
his sou'-wester behind his whisker; 'we will not live together as
strangers, as you desire. Brotherly love is still practicable, and
nothing that you can say or do, my young friend, shall dissuade me from
cultivating it. That we shall be long together I do not believe,' he
added, with a significance that astonished me and sent my eyes askant at
Helga, whose back was still upon us. 'Meanwhile, endeavour to be
contented. To have content is to have all, and to have all is to be
richer than the richest.'
He inclined his sou'-westered head in an odd benedictory, grotesque nod,
or bow, and, with a half-pause in his manner as though he would call
some speech to Helga, turned on his heel and went on deck.
'What has he been saying, Helga?'
She looked round, and, finding the Captain gone, came to my side and
locked her fingers upon my arm. She had drawn to me with a pale face,
but the blood flushed her throat and cheeks as she let fall her eyes
from mine. I had never before thought her so sweet as she showed at that
moment. She was without a hat, and her short fair hair glimmered on her
head in the gathering gloom of the evening with a sheen like the
glancing of bright amber. My memory gave me a thought full of beauty--a
wild caprice of sentiment at such a time:
'The freshness of new hay is on thy hair,
And the withdrawing innocence of home
Within thine eye.'
'What has he been saying to you, Helga?'
'That he loves me,' she answered, now fixing her artless, tender gaze
upon me, though her blush lingered.
'A fine time to tell you such a thing! Does that sort of sea-captain
wait for a gale of wind to propose to a girl?' I exclaimed, with a
sudden irritation of jealousy tingling through me, and I looked at her
closely and suspiciously.
'I wanted to be angry, but could not,' said she. 'I hate the man, yet I
could not be angry with him. He spoke of his daughter--he did not talk
through his nose--he did not cant at all. Is "cant" the right word? I
felt sorry; I had not the heart to answer him in rudeness, and to have
risen and left him whilst he was speaking would have been rudeness.'
I made a slight effort to disengage my arm from her clasp.
'He told me--no doubt you heard him,' said I--'he told me he believed
there would be no necessity to keep me long. He is a clever man--a
shrewd man. Well, after this I shall believe in all the proverbs about
women.'
'What do you mean?' she exclaimed in a startled voice, letting fall her
hands and staring at me.
'What do _you_ mean?'
'Why, that I am sorry for the man, and hate him.'
'Oh! if you keep sorry long you will soon cease to hate him.'
'No, no!' she cried with a little passion, making as if to clasp my arm
afresh, and then shrinking. 'I could not help his coming here and
speaking to me.'
'That is true.'
'Why are you angry?'
Her gaze pleaded, her lips twitched, even as she looked at me her blue
eyes filled. Her grieved, pretty face, her wistful, tender, tearful
face, must have transformed my temper into impassioned pity, into
self-reproach, into keen self-resentment, even had there been solid
ground for vexation. I took her hand and lifted it to my lips.
'Forgive me; we have been much together. Our association and your
father's dying words make me think of you as mine until--until--the long
and short of it is, Helga, I am jealous!'
An expression of delight entered and vanished from her face. She stood
thoughtfully looking down on the deck. Just then Punmeamootty entered to
prepare the table for supper, and Helga again went to the cabin window
and stood looking out, lightly, with unconscious ease and grace, swaying
to the stormy heave of the deck, with her hands clasped behind her in a
posture of meditation.