HELGA'S PLOT.
Before summoning Helga, I resolved to take a peep at the berths, lest
there should be some sight in one or the other of them too shocking for
her to behold. I was made to think of this by the great bloodstain on
the deck close against the cabin-door. Its true complexion showed in the
daylight. Abraham again backed away on seeing it; but time was precious.
This was an opportunity to make the most of, and pushing open the door,
I peered in. It was as I might have conjectured. The Captain had been
assassinated by twenty strokes of the fellows' knives as he lay in his
bunk asleep. Not one, not half a dozen stabs could have made such a
horror of the bedclothes and the square of carpet on the deck as we
gazed at. It was not an interior fit for Helga to enter.
I looked into the mate's berth, and found it as the man had left it--the
blanket lying as it had been tossed when he arose. There was nothing
frightful here; but our business lay in the Captain's cabin, and, full
of loathing, I re-entered the horrible room and shut the door.
'A piteous sight! a piteous sight, sir!' exclaimed Abraham, looking
about him in a stupefied way, and biting upon his under-lip to moisten
it.
'Now attend!' said I. 'Collect your wits, for our stratagem signifies
life or death to us.'
It took me but a few minutes to communicate Helga's plan. He grasped the
thing with sailorly promptitude, nodding eagerly, with the blood
returning to his cheeks to my hurried whispering; and when I had made an
end and drew back to mark his judgment in his face, he struck his thigh
a mighty blow, but said in a voice cold with resolution, despite his
countenance being all awork with agitation:
'It will do, sir. It can't fail. It is only the getting 'em together;
but it's to be done with a little patience.'
'Now,' said I, 'let us see what is here. Will the poor fellow have had a
revolver?'
But we searched in vain for such a weapon. With hasty, desperate hands,
never knowing but that at the next moment Nakier might enter, or some
probing yellow face stare in upon us through the little window that
overlooked the quarter-deck, we ransacked the lockers, explored a large
black sea-chest, examined the shelves--to no purpose.
'He was too good a Christian man,' said Abraham hoarsely, 'to own a
pistol. Had he been a Nova Scotiaman there'd be veapons enough here to
rig out a regiment of the line vith.'
'It cannot be helped,' said I, keenly disappointed nevertheless, for I
had counted upon finding a revolver, scarcely doubting that a man in
charge of such a ship's company as these coloured fellows formed would
go to sea well armed.
With all haste possible we transferred to the mate's cabin a bag of
charts, a couple of sextants, a chronometer, and other matters of a like
sort, and then with sickened hearts closed the door upon that tragic
interior of the Captain's berth. I looked through the contents of the
bag, and found a large blue-backed chart of South Africa, with marginal
illustrations of the principal ports, harbours and headlands.
'This will do,' said I, and rolling it up, I put it under my arm, and,
accompanied by Abraham, stepped through the cuddy door.
My eye once more as I passed fell upon the dreadful stain ingrained in
the plank of the deck, and observing Punmeamootty speaking with another
man a little forward of the mainmast, I was about to call and order him
to scrape out the odious shocking blotch. But at the same instant it
crossed my mind to let it be: it was a detail to fit into our stratagem,
and I whispered the fancy to Abraham as we quitted the cuddy. I believed
that all this while Helga was below in her cabin, and I was leaning over
the little hatch that led to our quarters to call to her, when she
pronounced my name from the deck overhead, and on looking up I saw her
standing at the brass rail with Nakier.
'Shall Oi go forward an' get my breakfast or keep along with you, Mr.
Tregarthen?' said Abraham.
'Keep with me for a little time,' I answered, and he followed me on to
the poop.
Nakier's fine eyes glowed, and his face was lighted up with an
expression of admiration and pleasure. It was manifest at the first
glance that Helga had not spared her simple pretty arts in conversing
with him.
Her first words to me were:
'Nakier has been talking to me about his native country. Oh, what a
happy land of flowers and birds and a thousand other delights must it
be!' She clasped her hands as though in rapture, and added: 'I shall
hope some of these days to visit that shining country.'
'This is all very clever and happily devised, and well done,' thought I,
stealing a peep at Nakier, who was steadfastly regarding with
undissembled admiration the girl's sweet fresh face, that was faintly
flushed by her enactment; 'but if we three men should be made away
with----' I choked off the hurry of ugly fancies that swarmed on top of
the thought of that dark princely-mannered villain falling in love with
her, and exclaimed:
'Yes, the country of the Malays is a paradise, I believe! Here, Nakier,
is a chart of South Africa.'
We went to the skylight to spread it.
'Now,' said I, 'where is this Mossel Bay that you were speaking about?'
I pored upon the chart in a posture of eager interest. He immediately
pointed to the place with a forefinger as delicately shaped as a
woman's.
'Ha!' said I. 'Yes; that is to the eastward of Agulhas. See,' I
continued, pointing to one of those marginal illustrations I have
referred to, 'here is a picture of the bay. It is a long walk to Cape
Town!' I continued, looking round at Nakier.
'Oh no; plenty coach, plenty horse, plenty ox,' he responded, showing
his teeth and speaking without the least hesitation--a quality of
assurance that made me hopeful, for it was everything indeed that he
should believe us credulous enough to suppose that Mossel Bay was the
destination he had in his mind.
'Here is the picture, Helga!' said I. 'D'ye see it, Abraham? A fine open
roadstead, not to be easily missed by you and Miss Nielsen. There are a
couple of excellent sextants and a good chronometer below, and all
necessary instruments for a safe navigation.'
'Oy, a first-class bay, and no mistake!' exclaimed Abraham.
Bending his squint upon the chart in a musing way, he scored along the
line of coast with his square-cut thumb, as though calculating courses
and distances. Miserable as I felt, I could have burst into a laugh at
the face he put on.
'Oi've long had a notion,' said he, still squinting at the chart, 'of
wisiting these 'ere foreign parts. Oi've heered tell of Cape Town as a
proper city, plenty o' grapes a-knocking about and sherry vines and the
likes of them drinks to be had for the asting, everything A1 and up to
the knocker. But see here, Nakier,' said he, in a wonderfully familiar
and friendly, shipmate-like sort of way. 'Oi'm a pore man, and so is my
mate Jacob. Tell ye what Oi'm a-thinking of: ain't there no chance of
our taking up a few pound for this here run?'
His apparent earnestness must have deceived a subtler eye than ever
Nakier could have brought to bear on him. I uttered a word or two, as
though I would remonstrate.
'You and me, Misser Vise, will speak on dat by-um-bye. We allee want
money, and we get it,' responded Nakier, nodding significantly.
I partly turned away, as though there was nothing in this conversation
to interest me.
'Ye don't know what hovelling is, Nakier, Oi suppose,' said Abraham.
'This here wessel is what we should call a blooming good job down our
way----'
I interrupted him, fearful lest he should overdo his part: 'You might go
forward and get some breakfast now, Abraham. You can relieve me here
when you have finished the meal. Is there anything more you wish to know
that this chart can tell us about, Nakier?'
'No, sah. Now you sabbee where Mossel Bay is, it is allee right.'
Abraham was descending the poop ladder. Under pretence of giving him the
chart to replace in the mate's berth, I whispered, 'Mind you tell Jacob
everything,' and then walked aft with Helga, leaving Nakier to go
forward.
Throughout that morning the weather continued wonderfully brilliant and
quiet. The heavens were a sweep of blue from line to line, and the sun
as hot as we might have thought to find it ten degrees farther south.
But shortly after ten o'clock the weak wind, that had been barely giving
the _Light of the World_ steerage way, entirely failed; the atmosphere
grew stagnant with the dry, parched hollowness that one sometimes
notices before a storm, as though Nature sucked in her cheeks before
expelling her breath through her feverish lips. I put my head into the
skylight to look at the barometer, not knowing but that there might be
dirty weather at the heels of this passing spell of sultry silence; but
the mercury stood high, and the lens-like sharpness of the line of the
horizon along with the high fine-weather blue was as ample a
confirmation of its promise as one could hope to find. By eleven o'clock
the calm was broken by a delicate rippling of wind out of the
north-east--the first fanning of the north-east trade-wind I took it to
be. The yards were trimmed to the change by Abraham, who followed on
with some orders about the foretopmast-studdingsail. I was on deck at
the time, and hearing this, rose hastily and thrust past him, saying
betwixt my teeth, so vexed was I by his want of foresight:
'Keep all fast with your studdingsail gear, you fool! Are we three
Englishmen a line-of-battle ship's company? Think before you bawl out!'
He saw his blunder, and, after a leisurely well-acted view of the sea,
as though the weather had raised a debate in his mind, he called out to
the three or four fellows who were clambering aloft to rig the boom out
on the foreyard:
'Never mind about that there stun'-sail! Ye can lay down, moy lads!' and
he bawled to me (who had returned aft), by way, no doubt, of excusing
himself to Nakier, who was on the forecastle, and who appeared to be
keeping a keen look-out upon the ship on his own account, 'There's no
use, Oi think, Mr. Tregarthen, aworriting about stun'-sails ontil this
here breeze hardens. It'll only be keeping the men agoing for no good.'
'Unless we are speedy,' I whispered to Helga, as we stood within earshot
of the helmsman, 'that man Abraham will ruin us. Think of the fellow
piling canvas at such a time! What a curse is consequentiality when out
of season! Here is a poor, miserable Deal boatman with the privilege of
ordering a few black men about, and he doesn't know how to make enough
of his rights.'
From time to time I would gaze mechanically round the sea in search of a
ship, but with no notion of finding encouragement in the gleam of a sail
or in the shadowing of a steamer's smoke. My hope lay in a very
different direction. But custom is strangely strong on shipboard, and I
continued to look, though I was without the wish to see.
Shortly before noon I fetched the two sextants, one of which I gave to
Abraham and the other to Helga. The boatman seemed hardly to know what
to do with the instrument; it was a new, very handsome sextant,
sparkling with brass and details of telescope, coloured glass, and the
like, and bore as little resemblance to the aged, time-eaten quadrant
that had gone down with the _Early Morn_ as to the cross-staff of the
ancient mariner. I marked him putting it to his eye, and then fumbling
with it, and, noticing several fellows forward, Nakier among them,
attentively watching us, I called to him softly:
'Keep it at your eye, man! Let them believe that you thoroughly
understand it!'
'Roight ye are,' he answered, putting the instrument to his face; 'but
who the blazes is agoing to bring the sun into the middle o' such a
muddle o' hornamentation as this here?'
The attention of the men, however, was in reality fixed upon Helga. She
stood at the rail within full view of them, and there was, indeed,
novelty enough in the sight to account for their staring, apart from the
hope they had of her as the one that was to navigate their ship to the
coast on which, as I took it, they meant to wreck her. Her well-fitting
dress of dark serge showed no signs of wear as yet. No posture that she
might have artfully adopted could so happily express the charms of her
figure as this, when she turned her face sunwards, with the shining
sextant raised to her eye. The delicate pale gold of her short hair was
the right sort of tint to fascinate the dusky gaze that was fastened
upon her. In her conversations with me she had made little or nothing of
her knowledge of navigation, but it was easy to see in an instant's
glance that she was a practised hand in the art of coaxing the sun's
limb to the sip of the sea-line.
I spied Nakier forward watching her with an air of breathless interest.
He and the rest of them might have doubted her capacity, knowing of it
only from such off-hand talk as Punmeamootty had been able to collect
and repeat from the cabin table. But now she was justifying their
expectations, and by this time the whole of the crew--ten of them, with
Jacob in the waist and a Malay at the wheel--were staring as one man;
the cook from the door of his galley, Nakier on the forecastle swinging
off from a rope, the rest of them in groups here and there.
'It is eight bells,' cried Helga in her clear voice, accentuated, as it
always was, with a faint harshness of Scandinavian articulation.
'Height bells!' roared Abraham, though it might have been midnight to
him, so far as the indications of _his_ sextant went.
'Eight bell!' piped the melodious voice of Nakier, like a belated echo
of Helga's cry; and the chimes floated along the quiet decks.
I told Abraham to go below to the mate's cabin, and bring materials of
ink, paper, log-book, and so forth, to enable Helga to work out the
sights; also the chronometer and the Nautical Almanack. This was a part
of our plot; otherwise, as you may suppose, the chronometer was not a
thing to be carried here and there, least of all by such hands as
Abraham's. The men were now passing in and out of the galley, conveying
their dinner of smoking beef and ship's 'duff' into the forecastle. They
talked eagerly, and with a gratulatory tone. That Helga had been able to
find out what o'clock it was by the sextant, was the fullest warranty of
her sufficiency as a navigator the poor wretches' ignorant souls could
have demanded.
Nakier remained on the forecastle, watching us. I summoned him with the
motion of my forefinger, and he came rapidly gliding to the poop.
'I wish you to remain here,' said I, 'while Miss Nielsen calculates the
barque's position, that you may be able to tell the rest of the men they
are in friendly hands, and that we look for the same friendly behaviour
from you all.'
He answered with a motion of his hand, that was as expressive as a
Frenchman's gesture.
'It would have been more convenient for the lady,' I continued, 'to have
made her calculations in the Captain's cabin, but----' I looked him full
in the face. He did not seem to understand. 'That berth is not fit for
her to enter.'
'Ha!' he exclaimed, 'dat shall be put right. I have forgot.'
'By-and-bye. No hurry now. Tell Punmeamootty to bring us our dinner
here. Miss Nielsen does not care to use the cuddy. She is a young
lady--impressionable--you understand me, Nakier? When all is made
straight the feeling will pass with her. But for the present----'
I broke off as Abraham arrived, bringing with him the articles I had
despatched him to procure.
'Whose trick at the wheel is it?' I asked the boatman carelessly. 'It is
noon, and that man yonder has been at the helm since ten.'
'It'll be Jacob's, sir. Oi allow he's waiting to finish his dinner.'
'No, no,' said I, 'that's not true ship's discipline. Fair must be fair
aboard us,' and with some demonstration of warmth in my manner, I went
to the poop rail and bawled for Jacob to come aft. The man promptly
made his appearance, and the moment he had gripped the spokes of the
wheel the ginger-coloured fellow who had been steering fled along the
decks for his dinner, fleet as a hare with hunger. Abraham, with pencil
and paper in hand, leaned upon the companion-cover while he pretended to
be lost in calculating. Nakier and I stood looking on at Helga, who was
seated on one side the skylight, the lid of which, being closed and
lying flat, provided her with a table on which stood the chronometer,
the volumes, the charts, and the other appliances she needed. She knew
exactly what to do, and worked out her problems with a busy face and the
blue of her eyes sweetened into violet by the shadow of her lashes.
Deeply worried, miserably anxious as I was, on the eve of a project the
failure of which was bound to signify an inhuman butchery of the three
of us by the dark-skinned creatures we designed to betray, I could still
find heart for admiration of the wonderful heroism of this girl. She was
actively to share in our enterprise, and if failure followed, her doom
might be even more fearful than ours; yet had her face been of marble
carved into an incomparable counterfeit of a girl's countenance intent
on a bit of arithmetic and nothing more, its passionlessness, its
marvellous freedom from all expression of agitation, could not have been
completer.
When she had completed her reckoning, she opened the chart which bore
Captain Bunting's 'prickings,' as it is termed, and with rules and
pencil continued the line to the situation of the ship at noon.
'That is where we are at this moment,' she exclaimed, pointing to the
chart.
Nakier, with looks of astonishment and delight, peered.
'What d'ye make it, miss?' called Abraham.
She gave him the latitude--what it was has wholly escaped me.
'Roight,' he shouted, tearing up his bit of paper.
'Take these things below, Abraham,' said I, 'and then get your dinner.
When you have done, come aft and take charge of the barque for half an
hour. Miss Nielsen wishes to go to her cabin, and I am no sailor to be
left alone with this craft.'
'Send Punmeamootty here with something for us to eat, if you please,
Nakier.'
He made a soft salaaming bow, and quitted us with shining eyes and a
highly pleased face. Presently the steward approached us with some cold
salt beef, biscuit, and a bottle of wine. He spread a cloth upon the
skylight, and then brought a couple of chairs from the cabin. While he
was doing this I slipped into the mate's berth and took a tract-chart of
the world from the bag and returned with it. I opened and pretended to
examine it with anxious attention, speaking in an aside to Helga in a
grumbling, doubting voice, and with a shake of my head, while
Punmeamootty stood by waiting to learn if we had further orders. I told
him we should require nothing more, and then, rolling up the chart,
feigned to attack the repast before us. But as to _eating_!--not for ten
times the value of this _Light of the World_ and her cargo could I have
swallowed a morsel. Helga munched a biscuit and drank a little wine,
eyeing me collectedly, with often a smile when my glance went to her.
'What a heart beats in you!' I cried gently, for it was impossible to
know but that some wriggling, nimble-heeled coloured skin had slipped
into the cabin, and was hanging motionless close under us, with his ear
at the skylight. 'But it is not too late even yet to reconsider. I can
do without you.'
'Not so well as with me.'
'But if we fail----'
'We shan't fail.'
'If we fail,' I continued, 'they may spare you as not apparently in the
plot, and they will spare you the more readily, and use you well too,
since they must be helpless without you to navigate them.'
'Hush!' she whispered. 'The stratagem will be the surer for my presence.
And what is the danger? There can be none if we manage as we have
arranged.'
'When d'ye reckon on starting on this here job, Mr. Tregarthen?' called
Jacob from the wheel.
I shook my fist as a hint to him to hold his tongue. I waited a few
minutes, during which I pretended to be busy with my knife and fork. The
yellow-faced cook stood in the galley door smoking: there were two
fellows beyond him conversing close against the forecastle hatch. The
rest of the seamen were below at their dinner. I now opened the chart;
Helga came round to my side, and the pair of us fell to pointing and
motioning with our hands over the chart as though we were warmly
discussing a difficulty. I raised my voice and shook my head,
exclaiming: 'No, no! Any sailor will tell you that the prevailing gales
off Agulhas are from the east'ard;' and continued in this fashion,
delivering meaningless sentences, always very noisily, and with a great
deal of gesticulation, while Helga acted a like part. The three fellows
forward watched us steadfastly.
Just then Abraham rose out of the forecastle hatch and approached the
poop in a strolling, rolling gait, carelessly filling his pipe as he
came, and sending the true 'longshore leisurely look at the sea from
side to side. A couple of fellows followed him out of the hatch, entered
the galley for a light, as I supposed, and emerged smoking. Helga and I
still feigned to be wrangling. Then Abraham joined us, and after
listening a minute or two, raised his voice with a wrangling note in it
also.
'Come, Helga,' I whispered; 'this fooling has lasted long enough. Now
for it, and may God shield us! Abraham, stand by, my lad! Keep your eye
forward!'
I had courted a few occasions of peril in my time, and knew what it was
to have death close alongside of me for hour after hour; but then my
blood was up, there was human life to be saved, and, outside that
consideration, there was small opportunity for thought. It was otherwise
now, and I own that my heart felt cold as stone as I advanced to the
forecastle with Helga. I prayed that my cheeks would not betray my
inward perturbation. I did not greatly fear for the girl. Though we
should fail, I believed her life would be saved, horrible as the
conditions of preservation _might_ prove to her. It was otherwise with
me. Let but a suspicion of my intention enter the minds of the men, and
I knew that in the space of a pulse or two I must be a corpse pierced by
every knife in that vessel's forecastle.
As I approached the hatch that led to the quarters of the crew, Nakier
came out of it. I suppose that the fellows who had been watching us
called down to him, and that he came up to gather what the discussion on
the poop might be about. He looked astonished by our presence in that
forepart of the ship, and there was a mingling of puzzlement and of
cunning in his eyes as he ran them over us.
'I cannot satisfy myself that Mossel Bay is a safe and easy destination
for this vessel.'
'It was settle, sah,' he exclaimed quickly.
'There are more accessible ports on the South African coast. What are
the views of your crew?'
'Dey are all of my 'pinion, sah.'
'The matter has not been discussed in their presence. Why do you wish to
carry us round Agulhas? Besides, do not you know that there are ships of
war at Simon's Bay, and that there is every chance of our falling in
with one of her Majesty's cruisers off that line of coast you wish us to
sail round?'
By this time the few men on deck gathered about us, and were listening
eagerly with their necks stretched and their eyes, like blots of ink
upon ovals of yellow satin, but fire-touched, steadfast upon me.
'I do not agree with Mr. Tregarthen, Nakier,' said Helga. 'I believe
there is nothing to fear from our sailing round the Cape. He speaks of
the heavy seas of the Southern Ocean, and of strong easterly winds. It
is not so.'
'No, no,' he cried, with a passionate motion of the head; 'no easter
wind dis time ob year. All fine-wedder sailing; beautiful smooth sea,
allee same as now.'
'Now, see here,' said I, with a note of imperativeness in my speech. 'I
have a right to express an opinion on this matter, and my contention is,
that it is ridiculous to sail round to Mossel Bay, when you may get
ashore for your walk to Cape Town on this side of the stormy headland of
Agulhas.'
The fellow's eyes sparkled with irritation and mischief as he looked at
me.
'Abraham and his mate are both of my way of thinking,' I went on. 'The
lady, on the other hand, has no objection to Mossel Bay. Here we are,
then, undecided as yet. Do you follow me?' He nodded his head sideways,
as much as to say, 'Go on!' 'The four of us, however, will agree to
this. The chart gives you a view of South Africa. Let all hands
assemble, saving those two men aft there, who are willing to abide by
your decision. Let me show them this chart and explain my ideas to them.
If after I have been heard, you and your men still insist upon our
carrying this vessel to Mossel Bay, it shall be done.'
'Where can we lay the chart?' said Helga.
'Is there a table in your forecastle?' I asked, sending a look at the
little hatch which yawned close by.
'Yaas, sah,' answered Nakier, glancing from Helga to the cuddy, as if he
could not understand us.
I met his eyes with a shake of my head, as though I could read his
thoughts, and, approaching him by a stride, whispered: 'Not in the
cuddy. You know why. I must have her by my side if we are to fairly
argue this difficulty.'
'I can easily descend,' said Helga, stepping to the forecastle hatch to
look down. 'I want to see the men's quarters, Nakier. I am as much a
sailor as any of you, and have slept in a hammock.'
The man's gaze glowed with the admiration I had noticed in it when she
worked out the navigation problems. Had he been the subtlest-witted of
his race, what could he have witnessed in this desire of the girl and me
to enter the forecastle to excite his suspicion? The other poor dusky
fools, standing by with tawny, orange, or primrose faces, wrinkled their
repellent masks with sailor-like grins of expectation; for whatever be
the colour of Jack's skin at sea, the least excitement, the least
divergement from the miserable monotony of his life, is a delight to
him.
'Shall I go first?' said I.
Helga uttered a clear laugh. 'I should be ashamed,' she answered, 'not
to be able to enter a ship's forecastle without help;' and so saying,
she put her little foot upon the first of the pieces of wood nailed
against the bulkhead and serving as steps, and descended. I followed,
bidding Nakier, as I entered the hatch, to order every mother's son of
his crew to attend, since it was a question for all hands, and their
decision was to be final.
It was a time of emotions and sensations, and memory recalls but little
more. I remember that one after another, in response to Nakier's call,
the men who were on deck dropped below, till the forecastle was full of
dusky, grotesquely attired shapes. The daylight streamed down through
the oblong yawn of hatch. The flame of a slush-lamp charged the interior
with an atmosphere of greasy smoke. Some bunks went on either hand, and
a few hammocks dangled from the upper deck. There was a square table
fixed to the stout after-bulkhead that divided this compartment from the
hold. The men seemed to be without other wearing apparel than that they
stood up in. I saw no sea-chests, no bags, merely here and there a shoe,
a cap, a sou'-wester, an oilskin smock dangling at a nail. The murmur of
the water, broken by the stealthily sliding stem, penetrated the
stillness with a subdued sound of hissing like the swift respiration of
the men, who gathered about Helga and me as we stood at the table with
the chart open before us. Hard by the table was a stove, the chimney of
which, in a zigzag, pierced the deck, showing its head well out of the
way, close against the hollow under the top-gallant forecastle, where
the windlass was.
Pressing my forefinger upon the chart, the curling corners of which were
held down by Nakier on the one hand and Helga on the other, I fell to
explaining my views, as I chose to call them, meanwhile looking round to
observe that all hands of the Malays and Cingalese were present--for the
creatures had a trick of coming and going like shadows. I bade them all
listen, looking into one face after another, and I can see them now,
shouldering one another and eagerly bending forwards--a strange, gloomy
huddle of discoloured countenances flashful with eyes, and of many
expressions. Some of them barely understood English, apart from the
plain sea-going terms, and these frowned down upon the chart, or at me,
in their effort to understand my meaning. Upon every man's left hip was
strapped the inevitable sheath-knife of the sailor, accessible in a
twist of the wrist, and my breath for a little while grew laboured,
while I cursed myself for not having acted upon the first motion of my
mind after Nakier had laid the capful of naked blades at Helga's feet.
'See here, now!' I exclaimed, addressing the men generally: 'judge of
the time and leagues we might be able to save by making for St. Helena
Bay, or say Saldanha Bay, instead of Mossel Bay. Here is Simon's Town,
and in this bight, as all of you know, lie several of her Majesty's
ships. Figure a cruiser requiring us to bring to, and sending a boat
aboard us. What then?'
The few of the fellows who understood me breathed hard and looked at
Nakier. One of them, with a Dutch accent, exclaimed:
'Boss! how far it be from Saldanha Bay to Cape Town?'
Nakier said something almost fiercely to him in his native tongue. The
man responded in a dialect that certainly, to my ear, did not resemble
Nakier's--but this might have been owing to the swinish thickness of his
utterance--and, having spoken, he thrust one of his mates aside to get
nearer to the table, and, putting his grimy thumb on the part of the
chart where Simon's Bay was marked, he stared at Nakier, nodding with a
vehemence that seemed a sort of fury in him--immediately afterwards
rounding upon the others, and gesticulating with his hand to his neck,
clearly signifying a halter.
'No, no!' cried Nakier.
'How far?--how far, boss?' shouted the other, addressing me.
'I cannot tell,' said I, 'without a pair of compasses. I forgot to bring
those measuring instruments with me. I will fetch them--I will be back
among you in a few minutes.'
Helga, with a well-acted start and look of alarm, said: 'You must not
leave me alone here! Let me fetch the box!'
'Very good,' said I.
She lightly gained the deck, but even while she was making for the hatch
I was covering her retreat by noisily talking and demonstratively
pointing, so that every man's attention was fixed upon me.
I held the corner of the chart, which Helga had pinned down with her
fingers, while I spoke; the chart was stiff, and had not been often
used, and when you let go it rolled itself up into a funnel. I perceived
that my reference to the British ships of war at Simon's Bay had taken
a hold upon the imagination of a few of the fellows, and while I seemed
to wait for Helga I made the most of this by asking the men if they
could tell me what vessels were on that station, if they knew how often
and in what direction they cruised, and then I said:
'Suppose on our arrival at Mossel Bay we find an English frigate or
corvette there? Men, have you thought of that? It is not because I am
innocent of the blood of the Captain and the mate who were assassinated
last night that I wish to be boarded by a lieutenant and a dozen English
sailors from a man-of-war on our arrival, wherever it may be, or on the
high seas. Can I be sure of proving my innocence if I am charged with
having had a hand in this crime?' I cried, looking defiantly at Nakier,
and raising my voice. 'Would you come forward and say that you and your
men were guilty, and that I and the lady and the two Englishmen were
innocent? You know you would not!' I thundered, heavily striking the
chart a thump with my clenched fist. 'Why, then, do you want to sail
past this Simon's Bay? Is not this side of the coast safer, freer from
the risks of falling in with a ship of war, and nearer by many miles to
Cape Town than Mossel Bay?'
'How much near?--how much near, boss?' cried the man who had already
asked this question.
'Here!' said I. 'Hold down this corner of the chart, will you, while I
call to Mr. Wise to bring me the box of instruments? Miss Nielsen cannot
find the things. Wise put the box away, and knows where it is.'
I left the table and stood under the hatch a moment to address a word to
Nakier in that wild mad spirit of defiance that will often in the
timidest mock at peril in the most terrible instant of it.
'Make your men understand,' I cried, 'that if we fall in with a
man-of-war, every soul of them stands to be hanged by the neck until he
is dead!'
As I said these words I sprang, caught the coaming of the hatch, gained
the deck with another bound, and the next instant the slide of the hatch
was swept in a roar through its grooves by the powerful hands of the two
Deal boatmen.