The Pilot and His Wife

by Jonas Lie

CHAPTER XII.

It was some months after. The Juno lay ready to sail in the roads of Monte Video, where she had taken in hides as part of her home cargo. The remainder, of coffee, she was to load at Rio, and in the meantime she had filled up with coals for that port. She was lying in tropical costume, with awnings over the fore and after deck as a protection against the fierce rays of the sun; and the crew were going about in correspondingly airy clothing, with open shirts and tucked-up canvas trousers, brown and shiny with perspiration, and gasping after every breath. It was the hottest season of the year. The pitch was melting in the chinks between the planking of the decks, and the tar running down her sides.

They had lain thus for a couple of days, hoping to receive before starting the post, which they had been disappointed in not finding on their arrival. And what a disappointment this can be, only those who have been in one of these ships that go on long voyages can understand. In foreign ports there may be many a wild pleasure to be enjoyed, but the longing to hear from home is the strongest feeling among sailors after all.

The mate had gone ashore to make one last inquiry before they sailed; and as the jolly-boat came alongside again, it was seen that he had the precious packet in his hand. He sprang up the accommodation-ladder and disappeared aft without a word to where the captain was sitting by a small table with a carafe and glass before him, mopping his bald head in the heat.

"You've got them at last, then," he said, as the mate laid the packet on the table before him, and retired a few paces while he opened it.

Almost the first letter that caught his eye was one to himself from his son, and his face brightened. He ran rapidly over the others, making a comment here and there according as he was acquainted with the circumstances of the men to whom they were addressed, and gathering them up in a bundle, handed them over then to the mate, with a cheery "Here you are, Mr. Johnson—letters for every one, from wives and sweethearts, and I don't know whom besides."

The news that the post had come had spread like wildfire over the ship, and by the time the mate began to call out the addresses by the main hatch, the whole crew were assembled, with the exception of a straggler or two who had happened to be aloft, and who were now to be seen hurrying down the ratlines.

The only one who neither expected news, nor cared apparently whether he received a letter or not, was Salvé Kristiansen. While the parcel was being distributed, he remained standing by the wheel, intent apparently upon watching the movements of the two men who were hoisting up and making fast the jolly-boat. His lips were compressed; and when he gave the men a hand now and then, it was not a very willing one, and was generally accompanied by some bitter or sarcastic remark. His nature since they last sailed from Arendal seemed to have turned to gall; and when the captain had casually mentioned in his letter home that he was not so well satisfied with him, he had had good reason for saying so. There had been all sorts of unpleasantness between them; and if any discontent or difference between himself and the crew prevailed, Salvé was sure to be at the bottom of it. He had found a rancid salt-herring, set up on four legs with a tail, as he was walking on the poop one evening in the moonlight; and as complaints had been recently made about the food, a good deal of which had become worse than bad from the effects of the hot climate, he had at once attributed to Salvé this pointed method of drawing his attention to the subject again. It seemed almost as if he had some cause for bitterness against himself personally; and as he had always treated him with marked favour, he was at a loss to comprehend the reason for it.

With the exception of the captain, who had retained his seat at the after-end of the poop, Salvé was soon the only human being to be seen on deck. The whole crew had disappeared, and might have been found poring over their letters two and two, or singly, in the most out-of-the-way places, from the main and fore top even to the bowsprit end, where one had erected a pavilion for himself out of a fold of the hauled-down jib.

Captain Beck's letter, to judge from his gestures and half-audible exclamations, was not giving him the pleasure which he had anticipated. His whole face, up to the top of his head, had become red as a lobster, and he sat now drumming with one hand on his knee, and casting an occasional fierce look over at Salvé, in the attitude of a man beside himself with anger. At last he brought the hand in which he held the letter down upon the table with a force that sent the decanter and glass flying, and thrusting the fragments aside with his foot, he strode up and down the deck for a couple of minutes and then came towards Salvé as if he meant to say something; and as the latter could very well perceive that it was not going to be anything pleasant, his countenance assumed an expression of defiance accordingly. He changed his mind, though, before he reached him, and turning short round shouted instead—

"Where is the second mate? Where is the whole watch?" and he looked furiously about him, as if surprised, although he knew very well how they were occupied, and that it had been decided not to weigh anchor until later in the day, when they would have the evening breeze.

"Ay, ay, sir!" was heard from the mate in the long-boat; and he raised himself and came forward with the letter he had been reading in his hand.

"Stand by to man the windlass! Pipe all hands!" ordered the captain, and roared the command again gratuitously through the trumpet.

The crew turned out from their several retreats with sour looks. They had expected to be left alone until after tea-time, when there would have been a general interchange of news on the forecastle; and now there came instead a hail of orders from the speaking-trumpet, as if the captain had all of a sudden become possessed.

There was already a good deal of discontent prevailing among the crew, both on account of the bad food which they had to put up with, and on account of their leave ashore at Monte Video having been, as they thought, capriciously refused; and it was therefore something more nearly approaching to a howl than a song that was now heard from the capstan and from the party who were hoisting the heavy mainsail. The customary English chorus—

"Haul the bowline,
The captain he is growling;
Haul the bowline,
The bowline haul"—

was sung with offensive significance; and though, at the last heavy heave with which the enormous anchor was catted up to the bows, the mate tried to create a diversion in the feeling by a cheery "Saat 'kjelimen—hal' paa," the concluding words of the song—

"Aa hal i—aa—iaa—
Cheerily, men!"—

were delivered in a scornful shout.

"You'll have a chance of cooling yourselves presently, my lads," said Salvé, coming up at the moment from his own heavy work with the cross-jack; "when we weather the point, all the lee-sails have to be set"—and the remark had the effect which he desired of intensifying the prevailing irritation.

In spite of the vertical heat, the hail of orders from the captain's trumpet continued, accompanied by reprimands and fault-finding all round, until the crew were nearly in a state of mutiny, and it was not until late in the evening that he showed any signs of exhaustion.

His temper had not improved next day. He looked as if he had a determination of blood to the head; and every time he came near Salvé, he glared at him as if it was all he could do to control himself from an outburst of some kind or another. He knew that Salvé had made love to Elizabeth, and had wished to make her presents since she had come into his house; and that the same girl was now to be his son's wife—the idea was absolutely intolerable!

At last he could contain himself no longer. Salvé had just deposited a coil of rope aft, and the captain, after watching his movements with evidently suppressed irritation, broke out suddenly, without preface of any kind—

"You, I believe, had some acquaintance with that—that Elizabeth Raklev
I took into my house."

Salvé felt the blood rush to his heart. He seemed to know what was coming.

"The post," the captain continued, in a bitterly contemptuous tone, "has brought me the delightful intelligence that my son has engaged himself to her."

"Congratulate you, captain," said Salvé. His voice almost failed him, and he was deadly pale, but his eyes flashed with a wild defiance.

He went forward, and the captain growled after him to himself, "He can have that to fret over now instead of the food;" and as the mate was coming up the cabin stairs at the moment polishing the sextant, he turned away with a look of grim satisfaction to take the altitude.

When the Juno last sailed from Arendal she had changed two of her crew. One of the new hands was a square-built, coarse-featured, uncouth-looking creature, from the fjord region north of Stavanger, who called himself Nils Buvaagen, but whose name had been changed by the others to Uvaagen (not-awake), on account of his evident predisposition to sleep. He was incredibly naïve and communicative, especially on the subject of his wife and children (of which latter he apparently had his nest full), and had soon become the butt of the ship. Salvé was the only one who ever took his part, and that only because he saw all the others against him; and having also been the means of saving his life when he had been washed overboard one dark night in the English Channel, he had inspired the simple fellow with a perfectly devoted attachment to him.

They were up on the mainyard together that evening, where they had been helping to carry out an order with the mainsail. The rest had gone down again, but Salvé, who felt a longing to be alone, had remained aloft, and was standing on the foot-rope, with his elbows resting on the yard. Nils's sympathetic eyes had perceived from his behaviour and whole appearance that day that there was something unusual the matter with him; and when he saw that Salvé remained behind, he remained too, observing that it would be pleasant to cool for a while before going to their hammocks in the close air between decks.

The sky above them blazed like a cupola "inlaid with patines of bright gold;" obliquely from the horizon the Southern Cross was rising, and the evening star shone in the warm night, before the moon had yet risen, with a silver gleam that threw clear light and shadow upon the deck below; while the vessel seemed to plough through a sea of phosphorescence, leaving in her wake a long trail of bluish glittering light.

From the forecastle below came wafted up a sentimental sailor's song, the burden of which was pretty well summed up in the two concluding lines:—

"But never more her name I'll utter till I die,
For rosy though her lips were, her heart it was a lie."

It sounded melancholy at that hour, and Nils, to judge from the occasional sighs with which he had accompanied it, was moved. When it came to an end, Salvé turned suddenly to him.

"You are distressing yourself for another's sweetheart now, Nils. What would you have done if it had been your own?"

"My wife!" He had evidently not for the moment taken in the idea, and looked with all his heavy countenance at Salvé.

"Yes. Wouldn't you have liked to see her sunk to the bottom of the sea?"

"My Karen to the bottom of the sea! I'd go there myself first."

"Yes; but if she had been unfaithful to you?" persisted Salvé, seeming to take a fiendish delight in bringing home the idea to the poor fellow.

"But she is not," was the rejoinder.

Nils had no genius for the abstract, and no more satisfaction was to be got out of him. But at the same time he had been shocked, and went down shortly after without saying a word.

Salvé still remained aloft, the dull consciousness of Elizabeth's engagement with the captain's son alternating with a more active desire for revenge upon the captain himself for the manner in which he had conveyed the information; and the result of his brooding up there upon the yard was a determination to desert as soon as the Juno arrived at Rio. He would never go back to Arendal; and he would no longer tread the same deck with the father of Carl Beck.

Later on in the night, when the moon had risen, Nils, who had not been able to sleep in his hammock, came up to Salvé again, and drew him aside behind the round-house, as if for a private conversation.

"What would I have done? you asked. I'll tell you," he said, after a short pause, and his honest face seemed to express a vivid realisation of the whole misery of the situation. "I would have died upon the doorstep!"

Salvé stood and looked at him for a moment. There came a strange pallor over his face in the moonlight.

"Look you," he said, ironically, laying his hand upon the other's shoulder, "I have never a wife; but all the same, I am dead upon the doorstep—" Then, in the next breath, and with a sudden change of tone, he said, "Of course I am only joking, you know," and left him, with a hard, forced laugh.

Nils remained where he was, and pondered, not knowing exactly how to take it. It was possible Salvé had only been making fun of him. But another feeling eventually predominated. It told him that he had had a glimpse into a despairing soul; and he was profoundly moved.