ADRIFT.
It was necessary that we should have everything in readiness before we
carried poor Captain Nielsen out of his cabin. I unshipped the gangway,
and watching an opportunity as the swell lifted the raft against the
side of the barque stooping to it, I sprang; but I could not have
imagined the weight and volume of the swell until I had gained the frail
platform. Indeed, one could feel that the wrath kindled by the tempest
still lived in the deep bosom of the ocean. It was like a stern,
revengeful breathing; but the wind was light, and the water but
delicately brushed, and it was easy to foresee that if no more wind blew
the swell would have greatly flattened down by sunset. Yet the manner in
which the hull and the raft came together terrified me with a notion of
our contrivance going to pieces. I called to Helga, as she threw to me
or handed the several parcels and articles we had collected upon the
deck, that there was not a moment of time to waste--that we must get her
father on to the raft without delay; and then, when I had hastily stowed
the last of the things, I sprang aboard again, and was going straight to
the Captain's berth, when I suddenly stopped, and exclaimed: 'First, how
is he to be removed?'
She eyed me piteously. Perhaps her seamanship did not reach to _that_
height; or maybe her fear that we should cause her father pain impaired
her perception of what was to be done.
'Let me think, now,' said I. 'It is certain that he must be lowered to
the deck as he lies in his cot. Does he swing by hooks? I did not
observe.'
'Yes,' she answered, 'what you would call the clews come together to a
point as in a hammock, and spread at the foot and head.'
'Then there must be iron eyes in the upper deck,' cried I, 'to receive
the hooks. Now, see here! we shall have to get a sling at each end of
the cot, attach a line to it, the ends of which we will pass through
the eyes, and when this is done we will cut away the clews, and so lower
him. Yes, that will do,' said I. 'I have it,' and, looking about me for
such a thickness of rope as I needed, I overhauled some fathoms, passed
my knife through the length, and together we hastened to the Captain's
berth.
'What is it now?' he asked, in a feeble voice, as we entered.
'Everything is ready, Captain Nielsen,' said I, 'there is no time to
lose. The cargo is washing about in the hold, and the ship has not
another hour of life left in her.'
'What is it that you want?' said he, looking dully at the coil of rope I
held in my hand.
'Father, we are here to carry you to the raft.'
'To the raft!' he exclaimed, with an air of bewilderment, and then he
added, while I noticed a little colour of temper enter his cheeks. 'I
have nothing to do with your raft. It was in your power to save the poor
_Anine_. If she is to founder, I will go down with her.'
So saying, he folded his arms upon his bosom in a posture of resolution,
viewing me with all the severity his sickness would suffer his eyes to
express. Nevertheless, there was a sort of silliness in the whole manner
of him which might have persuaded the most heedless observer that the
poor fellow was rapidly growing less and less responsible for his
behaviour. Had he been a powerful man, or, indeed, possessed the use of
his extremities, I should have dreaded what is termed a 'scene.' As it
was, nothing remained but to treat him as a child, to tackle him with
all tenderness, but as swiftly as possible, and to get him over the
side.
There was a dreadful expression of distress in Helga's face when she
looked at him; but her glances at me were very full of assurance that
she was of my mind, and that she would approve and be with me in
sympathy in whatever I resolved to do. Whipping out my knife, I cut
lengths off the rope I held to make slings of. I carried one of these
slings to the cot and passed it over the end. The Captain extended his
hand, and attempted to thrust me aside. The childlike weakness of that
trembling push would, in a time of less wretchedness and peril than
this, have unnerved me with pity.
'Bear with me! Be yourself, Captain! Show yourself the true Danish
sailor that you are at heart--for Helga's sake!' I exclaimed.
He covered his eyes and sobbed.
I secured the slings to the cot, and, until we lowered him to the deck,
he held his face hidden in his hands. I rove two lengths of line through
the iron eyes at which the cot slung, in the manner I had described to
Helga, and when the weight of the cot was on these lines, we belayed one
end, holding by the other. I then passed my knife through the clews, as
it would be called, or thin lines which supported the cot, and, going to
the rope I had belayed, bade Helga lower her end as I lowered mine, and
the cot descended safely to the deck. The girl then came round to the
head of the cot, and together we dragged it out of the house on to the
deck.
Saving a little wrench when we hauled the cot over the coaming of the
deck-house door, the poor man was put to no pain. It was merciful indeed
that he should have lain ill in the deck-house, for had he occupied a
cabin below I cannot imagine how we should have got him out on to the
deck without killing him with the anguish which we should have been
forced by our efforts to cause him.
When we had got him to the gangway I sprang on to the raft and caught
hold of the block that dangled at the extremity of the yardarm tackle.
With this I returned to the barque, and, just as we had got the raft
over, so did we sway the poor Captain on to her. I got on to the raft to
receive him as Helga lowered the cot. He descended gently, and on my
crying, 'Let go!' she swiftly released the line, and the tackle
overhauled itself to the roll of the vessel.
I remember exclaiming 'Thank God!' when this job was ended, and I had
unhooked the block, as though the worst was over; and indeed, in the
mere business of abandoning the barque, the worst had ended with the
bestowal of the sick and helpless Captain on the raft. But what was now
to begin? My 'Thank God!' seemed to sound like a piece of irony in my
heart when I looked from the deep, wet, gleaming side of the leaning
hull, waving her wrecked spars in the reddening light of the sun--when I
looked from her, I say, to seawards, where the flowing lines of the
lifting and falling swell were running bald and foamless into the
south-west sky.
Helga came to the gangway and called to know if all were well with her
father.
'All is well,' I answered. 'Come now, Helga! There is nothing to detain
us. We shall be wise to cast adrift from the barque. She is very much
down by the head, and the next dip may be her last.'
'A few minutes cannot signify,' she cried. 'There are one or two things
I should like to bring with me. I wish to possess them, if we are
preserved.'
'Make haste, then!' I called. She disappeared, and I turned to the
Captain. He looked up at me out of his cot with eyes in which all the
feverish fire of the morning was quenched.
'Is Helga remaining in the barque?' he asked listlessly.
'God forbid!' cried I. 'She will be with us in a minute or two.'
'It is a cruel desertion,' said he. 'Poor _Anine_! You were to have been
kept afloat!'
It was idle to reason with him. He was clothed as I had found him when I
had first seen him--in a waistcoat and serge coat, and a shawl round
his neck; but he was without a hat--a thing to be overlooked at such a
time as this--and the lower part of him was protected only by the
blankets he lay under. There was still time to supply his requirements.
I had noticed his wideawake and a long cloak hanging in his berth, and I
immediately sprang on board, rushed aft, procured them and returned.
Helga was still below. I put the hat on the Captain's head and clasped
the cloak over his shoulders, fretting over the girl's absence, for
every minute was communicating a deadlier significance to the languid,
sickly, dying motions of the fast-drowning hull.
I think about ten minutes had passed since she left the barque's side to
go to her cabin, when, bringing my eyes away from the sea, into whose
eastern quarter I had been gazing with some wild hope or fancy in me of
a sail down there--though it proved no more than a feather-tip of
cloud--I saw Helga in the gangway. I say Helga, but for some moments I
did not know her. I started and stared as if she had been a ghost.
Instead of the boyish figure to which my sight was already used, there
stood in the aperture betwixt the bulwarks, which we call the gangway,
a girl who looked at least half a head taller than the Helga who had
been my associate. I might have guessed at once that this appearance of
stature in her was due to her gown, but, as I did not suspect that she
had gone to change her dress, her suggestion of increased height
completed the astonishment and perplexity with which I regarded her. She
stood on the leaning and swaying side of the barque, as perfect a figure
of a maiden as mortal eyes could wish to rest on. Her dress was of a
dark-blue serge that clung to her: she also wore a cloth jacket, thinly
edged about the neck and where it buttoned with fur, and upon her head
was a turban-shaped hat of sealskin, the dark glossy shade of which
brightened her short hair into a complexion of the palest gold. She held
a parcel in her hand, and called to me to take it from her. I did so,
and cried:
'You will not be able to jump from the gangway. Get into the
fore-chains, and I will endeavour to haul the raft up to you.'
But even as I spoke she grasped her dress, and disclosed her little
feet, and with a bound gained the raft as it rose with the swell,
yielding on her knees as she struck the platform with the grace that
nothing but the teaching of old ocean could have communicated to her
limbs.
'Thank God you are here!' I cried, catching her by the hand. 'I was
growing uneasy--in another minute I should have sought you.'
She faintly smiled, and then turned eagerly to her father.
'I have my mother's portrait,' said she, pointing to the parcel, 'and
her Bible. I would not bring away more. If we are to perish, they will
go with us.'
He looked at her with a lack-lustre eye, and in a low voice addressed a
few words to her in Danish. She answered in that tongue, glancing down
at her dress, and then at me, and added, in English, 'It was time,
father. The hard work is over. I may be a girl now;' and looking along
the sea she sighed bitterly.
Her father brought his knitted hands together to his brow, and never
could I have imagined the like of the look of mental anguish that was on
his face as he did this. But what I am here narrating did not occupy
above a minute or two. Indeed, a longer delay than this was not to have
been suffered if we desired the raft to hold together. I let go the line
that held the little structure to the barque, and getting the small
studdingsail boom over--that is, the boom we had shipped to serve as a
signal-mast--I thrust with it, and, Helga helping me, we got the raft
clear of the side of the vessel. The leewardly swell on which we rode
did the rest for us and not a little rejoiced was I to find our
miserable fabric gradually increasing its distance from the _Anine_; for
if the barque foundered with us close alongside, we stood to be swamped
in the vortex, the raft scattered, and ourselves left to drown.
It now wanted about twenty minutes to sundown. A weak air still blew,
but the few clouds that still lived in the heavens floated overhead
apparently motionless; yet the swell continued large, to our sensations
at least, upon that flat structure, and the slope of the platform
rapidly grew so distressing and fatiguing to our limbs, that we were
glad to sit and obtain what refreshment we could from a short rest.
Among the things we had brought with us was the bull's-eye lamp,
together with a can of oil, a parcel of meshes, and some
lucifer-matches. I said to Helga:
'We should step, or set up, our mast before it grows dark.'
'Why?' she inquired. 'The flag we hoist will not be seen in the
dark'--knowing that the mast was there for no other purpose than to
display a flag on.
'But we ought to light the lamp and masthead it,' said I, 'and keep it
burning all night--if God suffers us to live through the night. Who can
tell what may come along?--what vessel invisible to us may perceive the
light?'
She answered quickly: 'Yes. Your judgment is clearer than mine. I will
help you to set up the mast.'
Her father again addressed her in Danish. She answered him, and then
said to me, 'My father asks why we are without a sail.'
'I thought of a sail,' I replied, speaking as I went about to erect the
mast, 'but without wind it could not serve us, and with wind it would
blow away like a cobweb. It would have occupied too much time to rig and
securely provide for a sail. Besides, our hopes could never lie in the
direction of such a thing. We must be picked up--there is no other
chance for us.'
The Captain made no response, but sat, propped up on his pillows,
motionless, his eyes fixed upon the barque.
The sun had sunk, but a strong scarlet yet glowed in the western sky by
the time we had erected and stayed the spar. I then lighted the lamp and
ran it aloft by means of a line and a little block which I had taken
care to throw into the raft. This finished, we seated ourselves.
There was now nothing more to be done but watch and pray. This was the
most solemn and dreadful moment that had as yet entered into the passage
of our fearful and astonishing experience. In the hurry and agitation of
leaving the barque there had been scarcely room for pause. All that we
could think of was how quickly to get away, how speedily to equip and
launch the raft, how to get Captain Nielsen over, and the like; but all
this was ended: we could now think--and I felt as if my heart had been
suddenly crushed in me as I sat on the slanting, falling, and rising
platform viewing the barque, that lay painted in clear black lines
against the fast-dimming glow in the west.
Helga sat close against her father's cot. So far as I was able to
distinguish her face, there was profound grief in it, and a sort of
dismay, but no fear. Her gaze was steady, and the expression of her
mouth firm. Her father kept his eyes rooted upon his ship. I overheard
her address him once or twice in Danish, but getting no reply, she
sighed heavily and held her peace. I was too exhausted in body and
spirits to desire to speak. I remember that I sat, or rather squatted,
Lascar fashion, upon the hatch-cover, that somewhat raised the platform
of the raft, with my hands clasped upon my shins, and my chin on a level
with my knees, and in this posture I continued for some time motionless,
watching the _Anine_, and waiting for her to sink, and realizing our
shocking situation to the degree of that heart-crushing sensation in me
which I have mentioned. I was exactly clad as I had been when I boarded
the barque out of the lifeboat. Never once, indeed, from the hour of my
being in the vessel, down to the present moment, had I removed my
oilskins, saving my sou'-wester, which I would take from my head when I
entered the cabin; and I recollect thinking that it was better for me to
be heavily than thinly clad, because being a stout swimmer, a light
dress would help me to a bitter long battle for life, whereas the
clothes I had on must make the struggle brief, and speedily drag me down
into peace, which was, indeed, all that I could bring my mind to dwell
upon now, for when I sent my glance from the raft to the darkling ocean,
I felt hopeless.
The rusty hectic died out. The night came along in a clear dusk with a
faint sighing of wind over the raft every time the swell threw her up.
There was a silver curl of moon in the south-west, but she was without
power to drop so much as a flake of her light into the dark shadow of
water under her. Yet the starlight was in the gloom, and it was not so
dark but that I could see Helga's face in a sort of glimmer, and the
white outline of the cot and the configuration of the raft upon the
water in dusky strokes.
The barque floated at about a cable's length distant from us, a dark
mass, rolling in a strangling manner, as I might know by the sickly
slide of the stars in the squares of her rigging and along the pallid
lines of the canvas stowed upon her yards. There was more tenacity of
life in her than I should have believed possible, and I said to Helga:
'If this raft were a boat, I would board the barque and set her on fire.
She may float through the night, for who is to know but that one of her
worse leaks may have got choked, and the blaze she would make might
bring us help.'
The Captain uttered some exclamation in Danish, in a small but vehement
and shrill tone. He had not spoken for above an hour, and I had believed
him sleeping or dying and speechless.
'What does he say?' I called across softly to Helga.
'That the _Anine_ might have been saved had we stood by her,' she
answered, struggling, as I could hear by the tremor in her voice, to
control her accents.
'No, no!' said I, almost gruffly, I fear, with the mood that was upon me
of helplessness, despair, and the kind of rage that comes with
perception that one is doomed to die like a rat, without a chance,
without a soul of all those one loves knowing one's fate. 'No, no!' I
cried, 'the _Anine_ was not to be saved by us two, nor by twenty like
us, Helga. _You_ know that--for it is like making me responsible for our
situation here to doubt it.'
'I do not doubt it,' she answered firmly and reproachfully.
Captain Nielsen muttered in his native tongue; but I did not inquire
what he said, and the hush of the great ocean night, with its delicate
threading of complaining wind, fell upon us.
My temper of despair was not to be soothed by recollection of this time
yesterday, by perception of the visible evidence of God's mercy in this
tranquillity of sky and sea, at a time when, but for the change of
weather, we had certainly been doomed. I was young; I passionately
desired to live. Had death been the penalty of the lifeboat attempt, I
might, had time been granted me, have contemplated my end with the
fortitude that springs from the sense of having done well. But what was
heroic in this business had disappeared out of it when the lifeboat
capsized and left me safe on board. It was now no more than a vile
passage of prosaic shipwreck, with its attendant horror of lingering
death, and nothing noble in what had been done, or that might yet have
to be done, to prop up my spirits. Thus I sat, full of wretchedness, and
miserably thinking, mechanically eyeing the dusky heap of barque; then
breaking away from my afflicting reverie, I stood up, holding by the
mast, to carefully sweep the sea, with a prayer for the sight of the
coloured gleams of a steamer's lights, since there was nothing to be
expected in the way of sail in this calm that was upon the water.
I was thus occupied, when I was startled by a strange cry--I cannot
describe it. It resembled the moan of a wild creature wounded to death,
but with a human note in it that made the sound something not to be
imagined. For an instant I believed it came from the sea, till I saw by
the dim light of the starshine the figure of Captain Nielsen, in a
sitting-posture, pointing with the whole length of his arm in the
direction of his barque. I looked, and found the black mass of hull
gone, and nothing showing but the dark lines of spars and rigging that
melted out of my sight as I watched. A noise of rending, intermingled
with the shock of an explosion, came from where she had disappeared. It
signified no more than the blowing up of the decks as she sank; but the
star-studded vastness of gloom made the sound appalling beyond language
to convey.
'Help!' cried Helga. 'My father is dying.'
I gained the side of the cot in a stride, and kneeled by him, but there
was no more to be seen of his face than the mere faint whiteness of it,
and I could not tell whether his eyes were open or not. Imagining, but
scarcely hoping, that a dram might put some life into the poor fellow, I
lowered the bull's-eye lamp from the masthead to seek for one of the
jars of spirits we had stowed; but when we came to put the tin pannikin
to his lips we found his teeth set.
'He is not dead, Helga,' I cried; 'he is in a fit. If he were dead his
jaw would drop;' and this I supposed, though I knew little of death in
those days.
I flashed the bull's-eye upon his face, and observed that though his
eyes were open the pupils were upturned and hidden. This, with the
whiteness of the skin and the emaciation of the lineaments, made a
ghastly picture of his countenance, and the hysteric sob that Helga
uttered as she looked made me grieve that I should have thrown the
light upon her father.
I mastheaded the lamp again, and crouched by the side of the cot talking
to Helga across the recumbent form in it. Who could remember what was
said at such a time? I weakly essayed to cheer her, but soon gave up,
for here was the very figure of Death himself lying between us, and
there was Death awaiting us in the black invisible folds in which we
swung; and what had I to say that could help her heart at such a time?
Occasionally I would stand erect and peer around. The weak wind that
went moaning past us as the raft rose to the liquid heave, had the chill
in it of the ocean in October; and fearing that Helga's jacket did not
sufficiently protect her, I pulled off my oilskin-coat--there is no
warmer covering for ordinary apparel--and induced her to put it on. Her
father remained motionless, but by stooping my ear to his mouth I could
catch the noise of his breathing as it hissed through his clenched
teeth. Yet it was a sort of breathing that would make one expect to hear
it die out in a final sigh at any minute.
I mixed a little spirit and water, and gave it to the girl, and obliged
her to swallow the draught, and begged her to eat for the sake of the
life and heart food would give her; but she said 'No,' and her frequent
silent sobbing silenced me on that head, for how could one grieving as
she did swallow food? I filled the pannikin for myself and emptied it,
and ate a biscuit and a piece of cheese, which were near my hand in an
interstice of the raft, and then lay down near the cot, supporting my
head on my elbow. Never did the stars seem so high, so infinitely
remote, as they seemed to me that night. I felt as though I had passed
into another world that mocked the senses with a few dim semblances of
things which a little while before had been real and familiar. The very
paring of moon showed small as though looked at through an inverted
telescope, and measurelessly remote. I do not know why this should have
been, yet once afterwards, in speaking of this experience to a man who,
in a voyage to India, had fallen overboard on such another night as
this, and swam for three hours, he told me that the stars had seemed to
him as to me, and the moon, which to him was nearly full, appeared to
have shrunk to the size of the planet Venus.
After awhile the Captain's breathing grew less harsh, and Helga asked me
to bring the lamp that she might look at him. His teeth were no longer
set, and his eyes as in nature, saving that there was no recognition in
them, and I observed that he stared straight into the brilliant glass of
magnified flame without winking or averting his gaze. I propped him up,
and Helga put the pannikin to his lips, but the fluid ran from the
corners of his mouth; upon which I let him rest upon his pillows, softly
begging the girl to let God have His way with him.
'He cannot last through the night!' she exclaimed, in a low voice; and
the wonderful stillness upon the sea, unvexed by the delicate winnowing
of the draught, gathered to my mood an extraordinary emphasis from my
being able to hear her light utterances as distinctly as though she
whispered in a sickroom.
'You are prepared, Helga?' said I.
'No, no!' she cried, with a little sob. 'Who can be prepared to lose
one that is dearly loved? We believe we are prepared--we pray for
strength; but when the blow falls it finds us weak and unready. When he
is gone, I shall be alone. And, oh! to die _here_!'
We sank into silence.
Another hour went by, and I believed I had fallen into a light, troubled
doze, less sleepful than a waking daydream, when I heard my name
pronounced, and instantly started up.
'What is it?' I cried.
'My father is asking for you,' answered Helga.
I leaned over the cot and felt for his hand, which I took. It was of a
deathlike coldness, and moist.
'I am here, Captain Nielsen,' said I.
'If God preserves you,' he exclaimed, very faintly, 'you will keep your
word?'
'Be sure of it--be sure of it,' I said, knowing that he referred to what
had passed between us about Helga.
'I thank you,' he whispered. 'My sight seems dark; yet is not that the
moon down there?'
'Yes, father,' answered the girl.
'Helga,' he said, 'did you not tell me you had brought your mother's
likeness with you?'
'It is with us, and her Bible, father.'
'Would to God I could look upon it,' said he, 'for the last time,
Helga--for the last time!'
'Where is the parcel?' I asked.
'I have it close beside me,' she answered.
'Open it, Helga!' said I. 'The lamp will reveal the picture.'
Again I lowered the bull's-eye from the masthead, and, while Helga held
the picture before her father's face, I threw the light upon it. It was
a little oil-painting in an oval gilt frame. I could distinguish no more
than the face of a woman--a young face--with a crown of yellow hair upon
her head. The sheen of the lamp lay faintly upon the profile of Helga.
All else, saving the picture, was in darkness, and the girl looked like
a vision upon the blackness behind her, as she knelt with the portrait
extended before her father's face.
He addressed her in weak and broken tones in Danish, then turned his
head and slightly raised his arm, as though he wished to point to
something up in the sky, but was without power of limb to do so. On
this Helga withdrew the portrait, and I put down the lamp, first
searching the dark line of ocean, now scintillant with stars, before
sitting again.
As the moon sank, spite of her diffusing little or no light, a deeper
dye seemed to come into the night. The shooting-stars were plentiful,
and betokened, as I might hope, continuance of fair weather. Here and
there hovered a steam-coloured fragment of cloud. An aspect of almost
summer serenity was upon the countenance of the sky, and though there
was the weight of the ocean in the swing of the swell, there was peace
too in the regularity of its run and in the soundless motion of it as it
took us, sloping the raft after the manner of a see-saw.
In a boat, aboard any other contrivance than this raft put together by
inexpert hands, I must have felt grateful--deeply thankful to God
indeed, for this sweet quietude of air and sea that had followed the
roaring conflict of the long hours now passed. But I was without hope,
and there can be no thankfulness without that emotion. These were the
closing days of October; November was at hand; within an hour this
sluggish breathing of air might be storming up into such another
hurricane as we were fresh from. And what then? Why, it was impossible
to fancy such a thing even, without one's spirits growing heavy as lead,
without feeling the presence of death in the chill of the night air.
No! for this passage of calm, God forgive me! I could not feel grateful.
The coward in me rose strong. I could not bless Heaven for what affected
me as a brief pause before a dreadful end, that this very quiet of the
night was only to render more lingering, and fuller, therefore, of
suffering.
Captain Nielsen began to mutter. I did not need to listen to him for
above a minute to gather that he was delirious. I could see the outline
of Helga against the stars, bending over the cot. The thought of this
heroic girl's distress, of her complicated anguish, rallied me, and I
broke in a very passion of self-reproach from the degradation of my
dejection. I drew to the cot, and Helga said:
'He is wandering in his mind.' She added, with a note of wailing in her
voice, 'Jeg er nu alene! Jeg er nu alene!' by which she signified that
she was now alone. I caught the meaning of the sentence from her
pronunciation of it, and cried:
'Do not say you are alone, Helga! Besides, your father still lives.
Hark! what does he say?'
So far he had been babbling in Danish; now he spoke in English, in a
strange voice that sounded as though proceeding from someone at a
distance.
'It is so, you see. The storks did not return last spring. There was to
be trouble!--there was to be trouble! Ha! here is Pastor Madsen. Else,
my beloved Else! here is the good Pastor Madsen. And there, too, is
Rector Grönlund. Will he observe us? Else, he is deep in his book.
Look!' he cried a little shrilly, pointing with a vehemence that
startled me into following the indication of his shadowy glimmering hand
directed into the darkness over the sea. 'It is Kolding Latin
School--nay, it is Rector Grönlund's parsonage garden. Ah, Rector, you
remember me? This is the little Else that your good wife thought the
prettiest child in Denmark. And this is Pastor Madsen.'
He paused, then muttered in Danish, and fell silent.