CHAPTER XVIII.
A gray foggy morning succeeded to the cold windy night. It was six o'clock when the Elizabeth left the wharf, and I had been busy with the fires since three. I soon fell into the work, and scarcely needed the instructions of the lumpish, growling engineer. I had to laugh once or twice involuntarily when the man, seeing me attend to this or the other matter about the engine without directions, stared at me with a look half of surprise and half of vexation. I had told him that I was an entire novice at this work, and this was the literal truth; but I had not told him, nor was there any necessity that I should, that I had thoroughly studied marine steam-engines with the best of teachers, and had familiarized myself with even the minutest parts on an excellent model. And if in a few hours I had mastered the work of a regular fireman, in even a less time I had acquired the appearance of one. To save my own clothes I had laid them in part aside, and put on a working blouse of my unlucky predecessor, which fitted me perfectly; and what with handling the coal and the effects of a stream of smoke which drove into my face for quite ten minutes from the refractory furnace while I was making up the fires, even my friend Doctor Snellius, who piqued himself so greatly upon his physiognomical memory, would not have recognized me. But I cared little for this, for happily I had other things to occupy my attention.
I say happily, for it was ill with me in both head and heart. The death of my father, who had died without my being able even once to press his stern honorable hand, the meeting with my sister who put her children out of my way as if they were endangered by my presence, the prospect of the future which looked all the darker the more I thought over it--all this would have completely overwhelmed me had not the honest furnace been there in which the coals glowed so splendidly and the flames danced so merrily, while the sturdy engine worked on manfully and unresting. Only free work can make us free, my teacher had said to me. I had believed him at his word, but to-day for the first time I comprehended it, as I felt how the hard work which I had here to perform lightened more and more the load upon my heart, and the clouds passed away from my brow.
A kind of joyful pride took hold of me as I felt myself at home here; and I thought of that day eight years' before when I took that fateful trip on the Penguin and visited my friend Klaus in the engine-room, and to my wine-heated brain the engine appeared a machine only fit to crush the life out of me. The good Klaus! He had trouble enough with me that day, and care enough about me; and I should give him both trouble and care now if I should go to him to learn with his help to be a good workman. Some care I should give him, not much; I had found out this morning that I could stand more firmly on my own feet than I had supposed.
Far more firmly than my present superior, the bearded engineer, stood upon his. He stood by no means firmly, the honest fellow, and his watery eyes as well as the sleepy expression of his far from handsome face, and the vulgar perfume of alcohol which he diffused about him, made it obvious that his unsteady gait was not altogether due to the rolling of the boat. The worthy man was not exactly drunk--a regular engineer is never drunk, even though he sits up to two or three in the morning in a tavern drinking Swedish punch with his colleagues from the Swedish mailboat--but neither was he sober; so far from it that I on my side began to look at my superior with suspicious looks when, standing by his lever, he sank into deep meditation, which often bore a striking resemblance to a peaceful slumber.
"A warming-plate wanted on the forward deck; quick, Herr Weiergang!" called the steward down to the engine-room. Herr Weiergang nodded at me: it was a matter that concerned me especially. I knew what was wanted. I had been often enough on steamboats in rough weather when the motion of the boat rendered it impossible for those ladies who readily suffered from sea-sickness to remain in the cabin, and the sharp north-east wind and the spray made the exposure upon deck disagreeable and sometimes intolerable. Intolerable, if the honest fireman were not at hand with plates of iron cast especially for this purpose, which he has heated on the boiler and obligingly places under their half-frozen feet.
To-day I was the honest fireman. It struck me rather oddly; in all my life I had never done this service; had never dreamed that I should ever have to perform it. Had I to do it then? Certainly: I had undertaken the duty of the injured man, and this was part of his duty. So in five minutes I was on deck, holding a well-heated iron in my hands, which I had protected by a bunch of oakum.
It was now about noon, and the first time I had been on deck. The atmosphere was gray and dense with mist; one could scarcely see a hundred paces ahead. The wind was contrary, so that, though it was not violent, the boat pitched heavily, and a cold fine spray from the waves that broke against the bow swept continually over the deck.
The deck was nearly deserted, or at least seemed so, as the ten or twenty passengers were crouching in every corner, behind the paddle-boxes, the deck-cabin, and wherever any projection offered a little shelter.
"Here, my friend, here!" cried a voice that had a familiar sound to me, and turning suddenly around, I gave so violent a start that I had nearly dropped the plate. There stood a man, who, though he had now a gray old-fashioned overcoat with wide sleeves over his blue frock-coat with gold buttons, and wore his cap not pushed back from his forehead, as usual, but pulled down over his eyes--could be no other than my old friend Commerzienrath Streber.
"Here, my friend!" he cried again, and pointed with his right hand, while with his left he held fast to the capstan, to a lady crouching with her back towards me upon a low chair behind a great coil of cable at the bow of the vessel. The lady drew a large plaid cloak, lined with some soft and fine material, close around her slender figure, and turned her face, which was framed in a swan's-down hood, towards me.
It was a sweet lovely girlish face, upon whose cheeks the sea-breeze had kissed the delicate pink to a bright glow, and whose deep-blue brilliant eyes contrasted singularly with the gray water and the gray air. It had been seven years since I saw this face last. The child had become a maiden; but the maiden had still the face, or at least the mouth and eyes of the child, and by this mouth and these eyes I knew her. I started involuntarily and had to grasp the plate firmly to save it from falling on the wet deck, while I felt the blood rushing to my cheeks. It was certainly a severe trial to appear before the maiden who had been my little friend in other days, in such a costume, and with a face embrowned with soot.
But this dress and this sooty covering were what saved me; she looked up at me with a little surprise but without recognizing me.
"Lay it here, my friend," she said, leaning back a little in her chair, and raising the edge of her skirt a little, so that I had a glimpse of the daintiest little feet in the world, resting on their heels to keep them from the wet deck.
I kneeled, and did what was required, no more and no less; perhaps rather less than more, for she said:
"You can bring me another by and by, if you have time; you do not seem to have time just now."
"Yes; and bring one for me at once!" cried the commerzienrath.
"And for me, if I may venture to ask," cried a thin voice from a corner between the deck-house and the mast, where out of some half-dozen shawls and wrappings peeped out a red nose, and in the wind fluttered a yellow curl which could belong to no one but Fräulein Amalie Duff.
"And for me!" "And for me!" cried a half-dozen other voices from as many other piles of mufflings, whose owners, with the promptness of desperation, had comprehended the advantage of a hot iron plate on a wet deck.
"But for me first!" screamed the commerzienrath, getting alarmed at the competition. "You know who I am, don't you?"
I did not deem it necessary to assure the Herr Commerzienrath that I knew him more than well enough, and hastened away from the deck, which was getting hotter to me than my furnace. I went below in a very unenviable frame of mind, and the thought that presently I must go on deck again brought great beads of perspiration to my forehead; but when I thought the matter over I found that my agitation was merely occasioned by very ordinary vanity. I hated to appear before the pretty girl as a sooty monster--this it was and nothing more; and while I was thus thinking as I stood by the boiler, the plates upon it had long reached the needful temperature, and the steward had called down three times to know if I was not ready with those confounded irons.
"Be ashamed of yourself!" I said to myself; "the poor things up there are freezing because you happen to have on a ragged blouse, and a patch or two of soot on your face. Shame upon you!"
And I was ashamed of myself, and went up the ladder and boldly marched direct to the place where the poor half-frozen governess was crouching in her wet wrappings.
Raising her water-blue eyes to me with the expression of helpless misery, she said, while her teeth chattered with cold, "You good man, you are my preserver!"
"Why do you not stay in the cabin?" I asked. I had no need to speak in Platt-Deutsch, or to disguise my voice, which either the sharp north-easter, or my embarrassment, or both together, made unnaturally deep and rough.
"I should die down there!" moaned the poor creature.
"Then sit over there by the paddle-box, where you have some shelter. You have here the worst place on the whole deck."
"O you good man!" said the governess. "It is indeed an eternal truth that there are good men in every clime."
I had to bite my lips.
"Can I assist you?" I said. "If you do not mind my working-dress----"
"'Among monsters the only feeling breast,'" murmured the governess, hanging on my arm.
"Where are you going, dear Duff?" cried a joyous voice behind us, and Hermine, who had sprung from her seat, came running up, apparently to help her friend, but if this was her intention, she could not carry it out for laughing. She clapped her hands and laughed until her white teeth glittered between her red lips. "Pluto and Proserpine!" she cried. "Düffchen, Düffchen, I always said they would carry you off from me some day!"
And she danced about the wet deck in wild glee, just as she had danced with her little spaniel about the deck of the Penguin eight years before.
"Are you ever coming to me, you fellow?" cried the commerzienrath, who, squeezed into a corner, had watched my attentions to the governess with very ill-pleased looks.
"There are two ladies here yet," I said.
"But I called you first," he cried, stamping with impatience.
"Ladies must always be served first, Herr Commerzienrath," smilingly remarked the captain, who was coming aft from the forward deck.
"O, you can talk: you are used to this abominable cold," growled the commerzienrath.
I went below again, but not to stay long. The cry for warm plates had grown general, and a hard job I had of it to satisfy the impatient clamors from all quarters. The weather had in the mean time grown rougher, and the fog increased in density. I observed that the captain's jovial face grew graver and graver, and once I heard him say to a passenger who had the appearance of a seafaring man:
"If we were only well out of the cursed channel once. With this wind the largest ships can come in; and we can not see a hundred paces ahead."
I knew enough of seamanship fully to comprehend the captain's uneasiness; and I had another anxiety of my own besides.
My superior, namely, the engineer Weiergang, had visibly with every hour sunk deeper and deeper into meditation upon the felicities attending the copious indulgence in Swedish punch; and though he still mechanically stood at his post and performed his duties about the engine, where now, as the vessel was going steadily ahead, there was but little to do, I still did not leave the engine-room without considerable uneasiness. How easily might it happen that the narrowness of the channel should render a complicated manœuvre necessary, and was the nodding figure there in a condition to carry it out?
I had gone on deck with another plate, intended for no other than the blue-eyed, vivacious beauty. She had resumed her old place at the bow, and gave me a friendly nod as I approached.
"I give you a great deal of trouble," she said.
"No trouble at all," I answered, with a bow.
"Are you from Uselin?" she asked, while I arranged the plate.
"No," I muttered, about to take a hasty departure.
"But you speak our Platt." she said quickly, and looked sharply at me with a surprised expression.
I felt that the coating of soot on my cheeks must be very thick indeed to hide the flush which I felt burning in my cheeks.
"Ship in sight!" suddenly shouted the man at the foretop.
An immense dark mass loomed out of the gray fog. A feeling of terror, not for myself, seized me. I, too, shouted with my whole strength, "Ship in sight!" and following an impulse which flashed upon me like lightning, I bounded across the deck to the hatch leading to the engine-room, while the captain upon the paddle-box was shouting through his trumpet like mad--"Stop her! Back her!" an order which evidently was not obeyed, for the boat rushed through the water with undiminished speed.
How I got down the steep ladder I do not know. I only know that I flung the drunken engineer out of the way, pushed the lever to the other side, and simultaneously threw open the throttle-valve and let on the full head of steam.
A mighty shock followed, making the whole boat quiver as it struggled in the waves, produced by the reversed wheels. The push I had given him, and, perhaps still more the violent jar of the boat, had awakened the drunken engineer. In his confusion he rushed upon me like a madman to force me from my post, so that I defended myself against him with difficulty.
It was a terrible moment. Every instant I expected to feel the crash of the collision.
But a minute passed, and with it passed the danger, for I knew that by this time the collision must have taken place, if we had not escaped it: and now resounded through the speaking-trumpet the order, "Stop her!"
I placed the lever in the middle and closed the throttle-valve. My prompt execution of an order which he had plainly heard brought the engineer at once to his senses. Now for the first time he seemed to understand what I had kept shouting to him while we were struggling together; a deathly pallor overspread his bearded face, as some one came rapidly down the ladder.
"Don't ruin me," he murmured.
It was the captain, who wanted to see what upon earth was the matter below. Upon his good-natured honest face was still the trace of terror at the peril we had just escaped.
"What is the meaning of this, Weiergang?" he cried to the engineer.
"I was--I had--" he stammered.
"Seeing to the fire," I put in.
"And so--" he began again--
"We will look into this another time," said the captain, looking fixedly at the unfortunate man.
The captain knew his man. He saw that the man, whatever might have been his previous condition, was now thoroughly sober and fit for duty.
"We will look into it later," he repeated, and then turning to me, said:
"Come on deck with me."
I followed the captain, but not without first casting a glance at the engineer, whose meditations upon the effects of Swedish punch were now at an end, and who, in desperation at the frightful results of his indulgence, cast a supplicating look at me.
"What was the matter?" the captain asked me.
I held it my duty to tell him the whole truth, accompanying it with an entreaty that the man might be forgiven.
"He has always been the soberest fellow in the world," said the captain. "This is the first time he has ever behaved so."
"Then I trust it is the last time," I replied.
"I cannot comprehend it," said the captain. He spoke with me as if I was his equal.
"You have done me a great service," he continued. "Who are you? It seems to me I must have seen you before; and the ladies on deck have the same fancy."
"Never mind about that, captain," I said.
This brief dialogue took place while we were going up the ladder. The captain could not any further indulge the curiosity that had visibly seized him; he had too much to do.
My first glance, as I reached the deck, was involuntarily directed towards the ship which had so nearly been our destruction, and which now was disappearing in the fog astern of us; my next sought Hermine, who, with her maid, was busy recovering the governess, who had fainted. A sense of satisfaction, almost exultation, filled my breast. Thus might a general feel who has won a battle that he might have lost without disgrace.
The poor governess was not the only victim of the terror with which the frightfully imminent peril had filled the passengers of the Elizabeth. Here and there sat a lady with a face as white as that of a corpse; even the men looked pale and agitated, and were just beginning to talk over the occurrence. And, in fact, the situation must have been in the highest degree alarming. The approaching ship--a merchantman of the largest size--had been so negligently steered that the Elizabeth, though her engines were reversed and the full head of steam turned on, only escaped the collision by a few feet. Then the shock that shook the boat, the cracking and creaking of the planks, the crash of some half-dozen of the paddles that snapped at once--one did not need Fräulein Amalie Duff's susceptibility of nerves to be overwhelmed at such a moment.
Even now the state of things was not agreeable. The large steamer rolled in the heavy sea all the more violently now the engine had been stopped, on account of the injury to the wheels. Happily the wind was favorable, and sail was quickly made, so that we were able to control her with the helm. All the spare hands were busy repairing the paddles as far as possible, and I had learned enough of the carpenter's craft to lend a hand at once. I was not sorry in this way to avoid the inquisitive eyes of Hermine, and of Fräulein Duff, who possessed the talent of recovering from a swoon as promptly as she had fallen into it, and was now engaged in a conversation with her pupil and friend, which it could scarcely be doubted had some reference to me.
"Look as much as you please," I said to myself "I am, in spite of all, no worse than many another upon whom you have cast or will cast your beautiful eyes."
And yet I was glad, as she seemed about to come over to the place where I was standing, that I could creep into the open paddle-box, where things looked queer enough. As there was a heavy sea running we were obliged to confine our repairs to the merest make-shift.
In an hour the work was done, and we were ordered to the forward deck, where the bowsprit of the passing ship had carried away a part of the bulwarks.
I congratulated myself, when I crept out of the paddle-box, that the deck was nearly deserted, and especially that Hermine was nowhere to be seen; but as I passed the forecastle she suddenly appeared before me with her governess. The meeting was not accidental, for the duenna at once stepped back, but the young lady remained standing, and, looking up with her great blue eyes into mine, asked boldly:
"Are you George Hartwig, or are you not?"
"I am," I replied.
"How came you here? What are you doing here? Are you a sailor, or fireman, or what? And why? Can you do nothing better? Is this a fit place for you?"
These questions followed each other so rapidly that I contented myself with answering the last.
"Why not? It is no disgrace to be a fireman."
"But you look so--so black--so sooty--so frightful. I cannot bear such black men. You used to look much, very much better."
I did not know what to answer to this, so I merely shrugged my shoulders.
"You must come away from here!" said the young beauty, vivaciously. "This is no place for you."
"And yet it was very well that I was here to-day," I said with a touch of pride, of which I felt ashamed as soon as I had said it.
"I know it," she answered. "The captain told us. It is like you; but for that very reason you should not stay here. You are destined to something better than this."
"I thank you, Fräulein Hermine, for your kind interest," I answered gravely; "but what I am destined to, the result must show. In the mean time I must pursue my way, wherever it leads me."
She looked at me partly in displeasure, and partly, as it seemed to me, with compassion, and added quickly:
"You are poor: perhaps that is the reason you are here and look so--so--not nice. My father must help you: he is very rich."
"I know it, my dear young lady," I replied: "but just for that reason I do not desire his help."
A bright glow suffused her cheeks; her blue eyes flashed, and her red lips quivered.
"Then I will detain you no further."
She turned quickly from me and hastened away.
I was still standing in the same place, when Fräulein Duff came suddenly from behind the corner of the forecastle, where she had been an attentive if an invisible witness of our interview. Her watery eyes, in which sympathetic tears were now standing, were raised to mine, and she whispered in her softest tones, "Seek faithfully, and you will find!" Then prudently avoiding a reply on my part, she hurried after her young lady.
An hour later we touched at the wharf of St. ----.
I was below in the engine-room, where there was now enough to do, to my great satisfaction. I heard the noises upon deck, as the passengers hastened to leave the ship on board which they had passed so unpleasant a time. She also was leaving it--perhaps at this moment. It was very improbable that I should ever see her again. Why should I, indeed?
The question seemed a matter of course, and yet I sighed as I asked it of myself.
My leave-taking of the engineer was brief, but not unfriendly. He had already told me that he had "made it all right with the captain." He seemed at bottom a worthy man, and I parted from him with a mind at ease.
I had hoped to slip away from the boat unperceived, but the captain called to me as I was crossing the deck with my bundle. He told me that he had learned that I was the son of the late Customs-Accountant Hartwig in Uselin, whom he had known well. He had also heard of my misfortunes, but they were no affair of his. I had this day done the owners, and himself personally, an important service, and it was his duty to thank me for it, and to ask me if his owners and himself could not in some way testify their gratitude.
I said, "Yes; you can if you will take something more than common care of the man whose place I have filled today, and who would have done what I did had he been here."
The captain saw that it was no use to press me further; so he promised faithfully to comply with my request, and shook my hand heartily, saying that it would give him the greatest pleasure to meet me again.
This had occupied some time, and yet a carriage and horses, which I had noticed on the arrival of the steamer, were still standing on the wharf. Just as I approached them, however, they started off; but I caught a glimpse of a youthful face in a swan's-down hood vanishing from the window, from which it had been looking at something or some one on the wharf.
The luxurious carriage rolled away, and I gazed after it with a sigh. Not that I coveted the carriage with the two high-mettled bays. The distance from St. ---- to the capital was more than eighty miles, it was true, and I was obliged to economize the little sum I had saved up in the prison: but I knew that I could walk without much fatigue twenty-five or thirty miles a day, and I felt fresher and stronger than ever. It was therefore scarcely the carriage with the mettled bays for which my sighing heart was yearning.