DAWN.
There was refreshment, however, to every sense, beyond language to
express, in the shelter which this deck-house provided after our long
term of exposure to the pouring of the raging gale, into which was put
the further weight of volumes of spray, that swept to the face like
leaden hail, and carried the shriek of the shot of musketry as it slung
past the ear. It was calm in this deck-house; the deafening sounds
without came somewhat muffled here; but the furious motion of the vessel
was startlingly illustrated by the play of the hanging lantern, and the
swing of the illuminated globe was made the wilder and more wonderful by
the calm of the atmosphere in which it oscillated.
'I do not think the sea is breaking over the ship,' said the girl,
gazing at me in a posture of listening. 'It is hard to tell. I feel no
tremble as of the falls of water on the deck.'
'She is battling bravely,' said I; 'but what now would I give for even a
couple of those men of yours who jumped into the lifeboat! It is our
being so few--two of us only, and you a woman--that makes our situation
so hard.'
'I have not the strength of a man,' said she with a smile, and fastening
her soft eyes on my face; 'but you will find I have the heart of one.
Will you come now and see my father?'
I at once rose and followed her. She knocked upon a little door where
the bulkhead partitioned off the inner cabin, and then entered, bidding
me follow her.
A cot swung from the upper deck, and in it sat a man almost upright, his
back supported by bolsters and pillows; a bracket lamp burnt steadily
over a table, upon which lay a book or two, a chart, a few nautical
instruments, and the like. There was no convenience for dressing, and I
guessed that this had been a sort of chart-room which the captain had
chosen to occupy that he might be easily and without delay within hail
or reach of the deck.
He was a striking-looking man, with coal-black hair, parted on one side,
lying very flat upon his head, and curling down upon his back. He wore a
long goat beard and moustaches, and was somewhat grim with several days'
growth of whisker upon his cheeks; his brows were thickly thatched, his
forehead low, his eyes very dark, small, and penetrating. He was of a
deathlike whiteness, and showed, to my fancy, as a man whose days were
numbered. That his disease was something more than rheumatism there was
no need to look at him twice to make sure of. His daughter addressed him
in the Danish tongue, then, recollecting herself, with a half-glance at
me of apology, she exclaimed:
'Father, this is Mr. Hugh Tregarthen, the noble gentleman who commanded
the lifeboat, who risked his life to save ours, and I pray that God of
His love for brave spirits may restore him in safety to those who are
dear to him.'
Captain Nielsen, with a face contracted into a look of pain by emotion,
extended his hand in silence over the edge of his cot. I grasped it in
silence too. It was ice cold. He gazed for awhile, without speech, into
my eyes, and I thought to see him shed tears; then, putting his hand
upon mine in a caressing gesture, and letting it go--for the swing of
the cot would not permit him to retain that posture of holding my hand
for above a moment or two, he exclaimed in a low but quite audible
voice: 'I ask the good and gracious Lord of heaven and earth to bless
you, for _her_ sake--for my Helga's sake--and in the name of those who
have perished, but whom you would have saved!'
'Captain Nielsen,' said I, greatly moved by his manner and looks, 'would
it had pleased Heaven that I should have been of solid use to you and
your men! I grieve to find you in this helpless state. I hope you do not
suffer?'
'While I rest I am without pain,' he answered, and I now observed that
though his accent had a distinctly Scandinavian harshness, such as was
softened in his daughter's speech by the clearness--I may say, by the
melody--of her tones, his English was as purely pronounced as hers. 'But
if I move,' he continued, 'I am in agony. I cannot stand; my legs are
as idle and as helpless as though paralyzed. But now tell me of the
_Anine_, Helga,' he cried, with a look of pathetic eager yearning
entering his face as he addressed her. 'Have you sounded the well?'
'Yes, father.'
'What water, my child?' She told him. 'Ha!' he exclaimed, with a sudden
fretfulness; 'the pump should be manned without delay; but who is there
to work it?'
'We two will, very shortly,' she exclaimed, turning to me: 'we require a
little breathing time. Mr. Tregarthen and I,' said she, still talking
with her soft appealing eyes upon me, 'have strength, or, at all events,
courage enough to give us strength; and he will help me in whatever we
may think needful to save the _Anine_ and our lives.'
'Indeed, yes!' said I.
'Pray sit, both of you,' cried Captain Nielsen; 'pray rest. Helga, have
you seen to the gentleman's comfort? Has he had any refreshment?'
She answered him, and seated herself upon a little locker, inviting me
with a look to sit beside her, for there was no other accommodation in
that cabin than the locker.
'I wish I could persuade your daughter to take some rest,' said I. 'Her
clothes, too, are soaked through!'
'It is salt water,' said Captain Nielsen; 'it will not harm her. She is
very used to salt water, sir;' and then he addressed his daughter in
Danish. The resemblance of some words he used to our English made me
suppose he spoke about her resting.
'The pumps must be worked,' said she, looking at me; 'we must keep the
barque afloat first of all, Mr. Tregarthen. How trifling is want of
sleep, how insignificant the discomfort of damp clothes, at such a time
as this!'
She opened her jacket and drew a silver watch from her pocket, and then
took a bottle of medicine and a wineglass from a small circular tray
swinging by thin chains near the cot, and gave her father a dose. He
began now to question us, occasionally in his hurry and eagerness
speaking in the Danish language. He asked about the masts--if they were
sound, if any sails had been split, if the _Anine_ had met with any
injury apart from the loss of her two boats, of which he had evidently
been informed by his daughter. A flush of temper came into his white
cheeks when he talked of his men. He called the carpenter Damm a
villain, said that had he had his way the barque never would have
brought up in that bay, that Damm had carried her there, as he now
believed, as much out of spite as out of recklessness, hoping no doubt
that the _Anine_ would go ashore, but of course taking it for granted
that the crew would be rescued. He shook his fist as he pronounced the
carpenter's name, and then groaned aloud with anguish to some movement
of his limbs brought about by his agitation. He lay quiet a little and
grew calm, and talked, with his thin fingers on his breast. He informed
me that the _Anine_ was his ship, that he had spent some hundreds of
pounds in equipping her for this voyage, that he had some risk in the
cargo, and that, in a word, all that he was worth in the wide world was
in this fabric, now heavily and often madly labouring, unwatched, amid
the blackness of the night of hurricane.
'Your daughter and I must endeavour to preserve her for you,' said I.
'May the blessed God grant it!' he cried. 'And how good and heroic are
you to speak thus!' said he, looking at me. 'Surely your great Nelson
was right when he called us Danes the brothers of the English. Brothers
in affection may our countries ever be! We have given you a sweet
Princess--that is a debt it will tax your people's generosity to repay.'
The smile that lighted up his face as he spoke made me see a resemblance
in him to his daughter. It was like throwing a light upon a picture. He
was now looking at her with an expression full of tenderness and
concern.
'Mr.--Mr.----' he began.
'Tregarthen,' said his daughter.
'Ay, Mr. Tregarthen,' he continued, 'will wonder that a girl should be
clad as you are, Helga. Were you ever in Denmark, sir?'
'Never,' I replied.
'You will not suppose, I hope,' said he, with another soft, engaging
smile that was pathetic also with the meaning it took from his white
face, 'that Helga's attire is the costume of Danish ladies?'
'Oh no,' said I. 'I see how it is. Indeed, Miss Nielsen explained. The
dress is a whim. And then it is a very convenient shipboard dress. But
she should not be suffered to do the rough work of a sailor. Will you
believe, Captain Nielsen, that she went out upon the bowsprit, and cut
adrift or loosed the staysail there when your barque was on her
beam-ends in the trough of the sea?'
He nodded with emphasis, and said, 'That is nothing. Helga has been to
sea with me now for six years running. It is her delight to dress
herself in boy's clothes--ay, and to go aloft and do the work of a
seaman. It has hardened and spoilt her hands, but it has left her face
fair to see. She is a good girl; she loves her poor father; she is
motherless, Mr. Tregarthen. Were my dear wife alive, Helga would not be
here. She is my only child;' and he made as if to extend his arms to
her, but immediately crossed his hands, again addressing her in Danish
as though he blessed her.
I could perceive the spirit in her struggling with the weakness that
this talk induced. She conquered her emotions with a glance at me that
was one almost of pride, as though she would bid me observe that she was
mistress of herself, and said, changing the subject, but not abruptly,
'Father, do you think the vessel can struggle on without being watched
or helped from the deck?'
'What can be done?' he cried. 'The helm is securely lashed hard a-lee?'
She nodded. 'What can be done?' he repeated. 'Your standing at the wheel
would be of no use. What is the trim of the yards?'
'They lie as they were braced up in the bay,' she responded.
'I have been in ships,' said he, 'that always managed best when left
alone in hard weather of this kind. There was the old _Dannebrog_,' he
went on, with his eyes seeming to glisten to some sudden stir of happy
memory in him. 'Twice when I was in her--once in the Baltic, once in the
South Atlantic--we met with gales: well, perhaps not such a gale as
this; but it blew very fiercely, Mr. Tregarthen. The captain, my old
friend Sorensen, knew her as he knew his wife. He pointed the yards,
lashed the helm, sent the crew below and waited, smoking his pipe in the
cabin, till the weather broke. She climbed the seas dryly, and no whale
could have made better weather of it. A ship has an intelligence of her
own. It is the spirit of the sea that comes into her, as into the birds
or fish of the ocean. Observe how long a vessel will wash about after
her crew have abandoned her. They might have sunk her had they stayed,
not understanding her. Much must be left to chance at sea, Helga. No;
there is nothing to be done. Damm reported the hatch-covers on and
everything secure while in the bay. It is so still, of course. Yet it
will ease my mind to know she is a little freed of the water in her.'
'I am ready!' cried I. 'Is the pump too heavy for my arms alone? I
cannot bear to think of your daughter toiling upon that wet and howling
deck.'
'She will not spare herself, though you should wish it,' said her
father. 'What is the hour, my dear?'
She looked at her watch. 'Twenty minutes after two.'
'A weary long time yet to wait for the dawn!' said he. 'And it is Sunday
morning--a day of rest for all the world save for the mariner. But it is
God's own day, and when next Sabbath comes round we may be worshipping
Him ashore, and thanking Him for our preservation.'
As he pronounced these words, Helga, as I will henceforth call her,
giving me a glance of invitation, quitted the berth, and I followed her
into the cabin, as I may term the interior of the deck-house. She picked
up the bull's-eye lamp and trimmed the mesh of it, and, arming herself
with the sounding-rod, stepped on to the deck. I watched her movements
with astonishment and admiration. I should have believed that I
possessed fairly good sea-legs, even for a wilder play of plank than
this which was now tossing us; nevertheless, I never dared let go with
my hands, and there were moments when the upheaval was so swift, the
fall so sickening, that my brain reeled again, and to have saved my life
I could not have stirred the distance of a pace until the sensation had
passed. But excepting an occasional pause, an infrequent grasp at what
was next to her during some unusually heavy roll, Helga moved with
almost the same sort of ease that must have been visible in her on a
level floor. Her figure, indeed, seemed to float; it swayed to the
rolling of the deck as a flame hovers upright upon the candle you
sharply sway under it.
After the comparative calm of the shelter I stepped from, the uproar of
the gale sounded as though it were blowing as hard again as at the time
of our quitting the deck. The noise of the rushing and roaring waters
was deafening; as the vessel brought her masts to windward, the
screaming and whistling aloft are not to be imagined. The wind was
clouded with spray, the decks sobbed furiously with wet, and it was
still as pitch black as ever it had been at any hour of the night. Helga
threw the light of the bull's-eye upon the pump-brake or handle, and we
then fell to work. At intervals we could contrive to hear each other
speak--that is to say, in some momentary lull, when the barque was in
the heart of a valley ere she rose to the next thunderous acclivity,
yelling in her rigging with the voice of a wounded giantess. For how
long we stuck to that dismal clanking job I cannot remember. The water
gushed copiously as we plied the handle, and the foam was all about our
feet as though we stood in a half-fathom's depth of surf. I was amazed
by the endurance and pluck of the girl, and, indeed, I found half my
strength in her courage. Had I been alone I am persuaded I should have
given up. The blow of the wheel that had dashed me into unconsciousness,
coming on top of my previous labours, not to speak of that exhaustion of
mind which follows upon such distress of heart as my situation and the
memory of my foundered boat and the possible loss of all her people had
occasioned in me, must have proved too much but for the example and
influence, the inspiriting presence of this little Danish lioness,
Helga.
In one of those intervals I have spoken of she cried out, 'We have done
enough--for the present;' and so saying she let go of the pump-handle
and asked me to hold the lamp while she dropped the rod. I had supposed
our efforts insignificant, and was surprised to learn that we had sunk
the water by some inches. We returned to the deck-house, but scarcely
had I entered it when I was seized with exhaustion so prostrating that I
fell, rather than seated myself, upon the locker and hid my face in my
arms upon the table till the sudden darkness should have passed from my
eyes. When, presently, I looked up, I found Helga at my side with a
glass of spirits in her hand. There was a wonderful anxiety and
compassion in her gaze.
'Drink this!' said she. 'The work has been too hard for you. It is my
fault--I am sorry--I am sorry.'
I swallowed the draught, and was the better for it.
'This weakness,' said I, 'must come from the blow I got on deck. I have
kept you from your father. He will want your report,' and I stood up.
She gave me her arm, and but for that support I believe I should not
have been able to make my way to the captain's berth, so weak did I feel
in the limbs, so paralyzing to my condition of prostration was the
violent motion of the deck.
Captain Nielsen looked eagerly at us over the edge of his cot. Helga
would not release me until I was seated on the locker.
'Mr. Tregarthen's strength has been overtaxed, father,' said she.
'Poor man! poor man!' he cried. 'God will bless him. He has suffered
much for us.'
'It must be a weakness, following my having been stunned,' said I,
ashamed of myself that I should be in need of a girl's pity at such a
time--the pity of a girl, too, who was sharing my labours and danger.
'What have you to tell me, Helga?' exclaimed the captain.
She answered him in Danish, and they exchanged some sentences in that
tongue.
'She is a tight ship,' cried the captain, addressing me: 'it is good
news,' he went on, his white countenance lighted up with an expression
of exultation, 'to hear that you two should be able to control the water
in the hold. Does the weather seem to moderate?'
'No,' said I; 'it blows as hard as ever it did.'
'Does the sea break aboard?'
'There is plenty of water washing about,' said I, 'but the vessel seems
to be making a brave fight.'
'When daylight comes, Helga,' said he, 'you will hoist a distress colour
at the mizzen-peak. If the peak be wrecked or the halliards gone, the
flag must be seized to the mizzen shrouds.'
'I will see to all that, father,' she answered; 'and now, Mr.
Tregarthen, you will take some rest.'
I could not bear the idea of sleeping while she remained up; yet though
neither of us could be of the least use on deck, our both resting at
once was not to be thought of, if it was only for the sake of the
comfort that was to be got out of knowing that there was somebody awake
and on watch.
'I will gladly rest,' said I, 'on condition that you now lie down and
sleep for two or three hours.'
She answered no; she was less tired than I; she had not undergone what I
had suffered in the lifeboat. She begged me to take some repose.
'It is my selfishness that entreats you,' said she: 'if you break down,
what are my father and I to do?'
'True,' I exclaimed, 'but the three of us would be worse off still if
_you_ were to break down.'
However, as I saw that she was very much in earnest, while her father
also joined her in entreating me to rest, I consented on her agreeing
first to remove her soaking clothes, for it was miserable to see her
shivering from time to time and looking as though she had just been
dragged over the side, and yet bravely disregarding the discomfort,
smiling as often as she addressed me and conversing with her father with
a face of serenity, plainly striving to soothe and reassure him by an
air of cheerful confidence.
She left the cabin, and Captain Nielsen talked of her at once: told me
that her mother was an Englishwoman; that he was married in London, in
which city he had lived from time to time; that Helga had received a
part of her education at New-castle-on-Tyne, where his wife's family
then lived, though they were now scattered, or perhaps dead, only one
member to his knowledge still residing at Newcastle. He took Helga to
sea with him, he said, after his wife died, that he might have her under
his eye, and such was her love for the sea, such her intelligent
interest in everything which concerned a ship, that she could do as much
with a vessel as he himself, and had often, at her own request, taken
charge for a watch, during which she had shortened canvas and put the
craft about as though, in short, she had been skipper. The poor man
seemed to forget his miserable situation while he spoke of Helga. His
heart was full of her; his eyes swam with tears while he cried, 'It is
not that I fear death for myself, nor for myself do I dread the loss of
my ship, which would signify beggary for me and my child. It is for
her--for my little Helga. We have friends at Kolding, where I was born,
and at Bjert, Vonsild, Skandrup, and at other places. But who will help
the orphan? My friends are not rich--they could do little, no matter how
generous their will. I pray God, for my child's sake, that we may be
preserved--ay, and for your sake--I should have said that,' he added,
feebly smiling, though his face was one of distress.
He was beginning to question me about my home, and I was telling him
that my mother was living, and that she and I were alone in the world,
and that I feared she would think me drowned, and grieve till her heart
broke, for she was an old lady, and I was her only son, as Helga was his
only daughter, when the girl entered, and I broke off. She had changed
her attire, but her clothes were still those of a lad. I had thought to
see her come in dressed as a woman, and she so interpreted the look I
fastened upon her, for she at once said, without the least air of
confusion, as though, indeed, she were sensible of nothing in her
apparel that demanded an excuse from her: 'I must preserve my sailor's
garb until the fine weather comes. How should I be able to move about
the decks in a gown?'
'Helga,' cried her father, 'Mr. Tregarthen is the only son of his
mother, and she awaits his return.'
Instantly entered an expression of beautiful compassion into her soft
eyes. Her gaze fell, and she remained for a few moments silent; the
lamplight shone upon her tumbled hair, and I am without words to make
you see the sweet sorrowful expression of her pale face as she stood
close against the door, silent, and looking down.
'I have kept my word, Mr. Tregarthen,' said she presently. 'Now you will
keep yours and rest yourself. There is my father's cabin below.'
I interrupted her: 'No; if you please, I will lie down upon one of the
lockers in the deck-house.'
'It will make a hard bed,' said she.
'Not too hard for me,' said I.
'Well, you shall lie down upon one of those lockers, and you shall be
comfortable too;' and, saying this, she went out again, and shortly
afterwards returned with some rugs and a bolster. These she placed upon
the lee locker, and a minute or two later I had shaken the poor captain
by the hand, and had stretched myself upon the rugs, where I lay
listening to the thunder of the gale and following the wild motions of
the barque, and thinking of what had happened since the lifeboat summons
had rung me into this black, and frothing, and roaring night from my
snug fireside.
It was not long, however, before I fell asleep. I had undergone some
lifeboat experiences in my time, but never before was nature so
exhausted in me. The roaring of the gale, the cannonading of the
deck-house by incessant heavy showerings of water, the extravagant
motions of the plunging and rolling vessel, might have been a mother's
lullaby sung by the side of a gently-rocked cradle, so deep was the
slumber these sounds of thunder left unvexed.
I awoke from a dreamless, deathlike sleep, and opened my eyes against
the light of the cold stone-gray dawn, and my mind instantly coming to
me, I sprang up from the locker, pausing to guess at the weather from
the movement and the sound. It was still blowing a whole gale of wind,
and I was unable to stand without grasping the table for support. The
deck-house door was shut, and the planks within were dry, though I could
hear the water gushing and pouring in the alleys betwixt the deck-house
and the bulwarks. I thought to take a view of the weather through one of
the windows, but the glass was everywhere blind with wet.
At this moment the door of the captain's berth was opened, and Helga
stepped out. She immediately approached me with both hands extended in
the most cordial manner imaginable.
'You have slept well,' she cried; 'I bent over you three or four times.
You are the better for the rest, I am sure.'
'I am, indeed!' said I. 'And you?'
'Oh, I shall sleep by-and-by. What shall we do for hot water? It is
impossible to light the galley fire; yet how grateful would be a cup of
hot tea or coffee!'
'Have you been on deck,' said I, 'while I slept?'
'Oh yes, in and out,' she answered. 'All is well so far--I mean, the
_Anine_ goes on making a brave fight. The dawn has not long broken. I
have not yet seen the ship by daylight. We must sound the well, Mr.
Tregarthen, before we break our fast--my fear is there,' she added,
pointing to the deck, by which she signified the hold.
There was but little of her face to be seen. She was wearing an
indiarubber cap shaped like a sou'-wester, the brim of which came low,
while the flannel ear-flaps almost smothered her cheeks. I could now
see, however, that her eyes were of a dark blue, with a spirit of life
and even of vivacity in them that expressed a wonderful triumph of heart
over the languor of frame indicated by the droop of the eyelids. A
little of her short hair of pale gold showed under the hinder thatch of
the sou'-wester; her face was blanched. But I could not look at the
pretty mouth, the pearl-like teeth, the soft blue eyes, the delicately
figured nostril, without guessing that in the hour of bloom this girl
would show as bonnily as the fairest lass of cream and roses that ever
hailed from Denmark.
We stepped on to the deck--into the thunder of the gale and the flying
clouds of spray. I still wore my oilskins, and was as dry in them as at
the hour of leaving home. I felt the comfort, I assure you, of my high
sea-boots as I stood upon that deck, holding on a minute to the
house-front, with the water coming in a little rage of froth to my legs
and washing to leeward with the _scend_ of the barque with the force of
a river overflowing a dam.
Our first glance was aloft. The foretopgallant-mast was broken off at
the head of the topmast and hung with its two yards supported by its
gear, but giving a strange wrecked look to the whole of the fabric up
there as it swung to the headlong movements of the hull, making the
spars, down to the solid foot of the foremast, tremble with the spearing
blows it dealt. The jibbooms were also gone, and this, no doubt, had
happened through the carrying away of the topgallant-mast; otherwise all
was right up above, assuming, to be sure, that nothing was sprung. But
the wild, soaked, desolate--the almost mutilated--look, indeed, of the
barque! How am I to communicate the impression produced by the soaked
dark lines of sailcloth rolled upon the yards, the ends of rope blowing
out like the pennant of a man-of-war, the arched and gleaming gear, the
decks dusky with incessant drenchings and emitting sullen flashes as the
dark flood upon them rolled from side to side! The running rigging lay
all about, working like serpents in the wash of the water; from time to
time a sea would strike the bow and burst on high in steam-like volumes
which glanced ghastly against the leaden sky that overhung us in strata
of scowling vapour, dark as thunder in places, yet seemingly motionless.
A furious Atlantic sea was running; it came along in hills of frothing
green which shaped themselves out of a near horizon thick with storms of
spume. But there was the regularity of the unfathomed ocean in the run
of the surge, mountainous as it was; and the barque, with her
lashed helm, not a rag showing save a tatter or two of the
fore-topmast-staysail whose head we had exposed on the previous night,
soared and sank, with her port bow to the sea, with the regularity of
the tick of a clock.
There was nothing in sight. I looked eagerly round the sea, but it was
all thickness and foam and headlong motion. We went aft to the compass
to observe if there had happened any shift in the wind, and what the
trend of the barque was, and also to note the condition of the wheel,
which could only have been told in the darkness by groping. The helm was
perfectly sound, and the lashings held bravely. I could observe now that
the wheel was a small one, formed of brass, also that it worked the
rudder by means of a screw, and it was this purchase or leverage, I
suppose, that had made me find the barque easy to steer while she was
scudding. The gale was blowing fair out of the north-east, and the
vessel's trend, therefore, was on a dead south-west course, with the
help of a mountainous sea besides, to drive her away from the land, beam
on. I cried to Helga that I thought our drift would certainly not be
less than four, and perhaps five, miles in the hour. She watched the sea
for a little, and then nodded to me; but it was scarcely likely that she
could conjecture the rate of progress amid so furious a commotion of
waters, with the great seas boiling to the bulwark rail, and rushing
away to leeward in huge round backs of freckled green.
She was evidently too weary to talk, rendered too languid by the bitter
cares and sleepless hours of the long night to exert her voice so as to
be audible in that thunder of wind which came flashing over the side in
guns and bursts of hurricane power; and to the few sentences I uttered,
or rather shouted, she responded by nods and shakes of the head as it
might be. There was a flag locker under the gratings abaft the wheel,
and she opened the box, took out a small Danish ensign, bent it on to
the peak-signal halliards, and between us we ran it half-mast high, and
there it stood, hard and firm as a painted board, a white cross on red
ground, and the red of it made it resemble a tongue of fire against the
soot of the sky. This done, we returned to the main-deck, and Helga
sounded the pump. She went to work with all the expertness of a seasoned
salt, carefully dried the rod and chalked it, and then waited until the
roll of the barque brought her to a level keel before dropping it. I
watched her with astonishment and admiration. It would until now have
seemed impossible to me that any mortal woman should have had in her the
makings of so nimble and practised a sailor as I found her to be, with
nothing, either, of the tenderness of girlhood lost in her, in speech,
in countenance, in looks, spite of her boy's clothes. She examined the
rod, and eyed me with a grave countenance.
'Does the water gain?' said I.
'There are two more inches of it,' she answered, 'than the depth I found
in the hold last night when I first sounded. We ought to free her
somewhat.'
'I am willing,' I exclaimed; 'but are you equal to such labour? A couple
of hours should not make a very grave difference.'
'No, no!' she interrupted, with a vehemence that put her air of
weariness to flight. 'A couple of hours would be too long to wait,'
saying which she grasped the brake and we went to work as before.
No one who has not had to labour in this way can conceive the fatigue of
it. There is no sort of shipboard work that more quickly exhausts. It
grieved me to the soul that my associate in this toil should be a girl,
with the natural weakness of her sex accentuated by what she had
suffered and was still suffering; but her spirited gaze forbade
remonstrance. She seemed scarcely able to stand when utter weariness
forced her at last to let go of the brake. Nevertheless, she compelled
her feeble hands again to drop the rod down the well. We had reduced the
water to the height at which we had left it before, and, with a faint
smile of congratulation, she made a movement towards the deck-house; but
her gait was so staggering, there was such a character of blindness,
too, in her posture as she started to walk, that I grasped her arm and,
indeed, half carried her into the house.
She sat and rested herself for a few minutes, but appeared unable to
speak. I watched her anxiously, with something of indignation that her
father, who professed to love her so dearly, should not come between her
and her devotion, and insist upon her resting. Presently she rose and
walked to his cabin, telling me with her looks to follow her.