THE 'EARLY MORN.'
I told my story, and the three fellows listened attentively. Their eyes glowed in the lamplight as they stared at me. The weak wind raised a pleasant buzzing noise at the cutwater, and the lugger stole in floating launches through the gloom over the long invisible heave of the Atlantic swell.
'Ah!' said the helmsman, when I had made an end, 'we heerd of that there Tintrenale lifeboat job when we was at Penzance. An' so you was her coxswain?'
'Were the people of the boat drowned?' cried I eagerly. 'Can you give me any news of them?'
'No, sir,' he answered; 'there was no particulars to hand when we sailed. All that we larnt was that a lifeboat had been stove alongside a vessel in Tintrenale Bay; and little wonder, tew, says I to my mates when I heerd it. Never remember the like of such a night as that there.'
'What was the name of the Dane again?' said one of the fellows seated opposite me, as he lighted a short clay pipe by the flame of a match that he dexterously shielded from the wind in his hand as though his fist was a lantern.
'The Anine,' I answered.
'A bit of a black barque, warn't she?' he continued. 'Capt'n with small eyes and a beard like a goat! Why, yes! it'll be that there barque, Tommy, that slipped two year ago. Pigsears Hall and Stickenup Adams and me had a nice little job along with her.'
'You are quite right,' said Helga, in a low voice; 'I was on board the vessel at the time. The captain was my father.'
'Oh, indeed, mum!' said the fellow who steered. 'An' he's gone dead! Poor old gentleman!'
'What is this boat?' said I, desiring to cut this sort of sympathy short.
'The Airly Marn,' said the helmsman.
'The Early Morn! And from what part of the coast, pray?'
'Why, ye might see, I think, sir, that she hails from Deal,' he answered. 'There's nothen resembling the likes of her coming from elsewhere that I knows of.'
'And what are you doing down in this part of the ocean?'
'Why,' said he, after spitting over the stern and passing his hand along his mouth, 'we're agoing to Australey.'
'Going where?' I cried, believing I had not correctly heard him, while Helga started from her drooping posture and turned to look at me.
'To Sydney, New South Wales, which is in Australey,' he exclaimed.
'In this small open boat?'
'This small open boat!' echoed one of the others. 'The Airly Marn's eighteen ton, and if she ben't big enough and good enough to carry three men to Australey there's nothen afloat as is going to show her how to do it!'
By the light shed by the dimly burning lantern, where it stood in the bottom of the boat, I endeavoured to gather from their faces whether they spoke seriously, or whether, indeed, they were under the influence of earlier drams of liquor than the dose they had swallowed from our jar.
'Are you in earnest, men?' said I.
'Airnest!' cried the man at the tiller in a voice of astonishment, as though he wondered at my wonder. 'Why, to be sure we are! What's wrong with us that we shouldn't be agoing to Australey?'
I glanced at the short length of dark fabric, and up at the black square of lugsail.
'What is taking you to Australia in a Deal lugger?' said I.
The man styled Abraham by his mates answered: 'We're a-carrying this here craft out on a job for the gent that's bought her. There was three of us an' a boy, but the boy took sick at Penzance, and we came away without him.'
He paused. The man sitting next him continued in a deep voice:
'A gent as lives in Lunnon took this here Airly Marn over for a debt. Well, when he got her he didn't know what to do with her. There was no good a-leaving her to pine away on the beach, so he tarns to and puts her up to auction. Well, there was ne'er a bid.'
'Ne'er a bid!' echoed the man who was steering.
'Ne'er a bid, I says,' continued the other, 'and whoy? First of all, there ain't no money in Deal; and next, the days of these luggers is nombered. Well, this here gent was called upon by an Australian friend who, gitting to hear of the Airly Marn, says he's a-willing to buy her for a sum. What that sum might be I'm not here for to know.'
'Fifty pound, I allow,' said the man named Tommy. 'Some says she was guv away. I've heerd speak of thirty pound. But fifty's what I call it.'
'Call it fifty!' exclaimed the fellow who steered.
'Well,' continued the first speaker, whose voice was peculiarly harsh, 'this here gent, having purchased the Airly Marn, comes down to Deal, and gives out that he wants some men to carry her to Sydney. The matter was tarned over. How much would he give? Well, he'd give two hundred an' fifty pound, and them as undertook the job might make what shares they chose of the money. I was for making six shares. Abraham there says no, fower's enough. Tommy says three an' a boy. That's seventy-five pound a man, and twenty-five pound for the boy; but the boy being took sick, his share becomes ourn.'
'And you think seventy-five pound apiece pay enough for as risky an undertaking as was ever heard of?' cried I.
'Wish it were already aimed,' said Abraham. 'Pay enough? Oy, and good monney, tew, in such times as these.'
'How far are we from the English coast?' asked Helga.
The man called Jacob, after a little silence, answered: 'Why, I dare say the Land's End'll be about a hundred an' eighty mile off.'
'It would not take long to return!' she exclaimed. 'Will you not land us?'
'What! on the English coast, mum?' he cried.
I saw him peering earnestly at us, as though he would gather our condition by our attire.
'It's a long way back,' continued he; 'and supposing the wind,' he added, looking up at the sky, 'should head us?'
'If the gent would make it worth us men's while——' broke in Tommy.
'No, no!' exclaimed Abraham, 'we don't want to make nothen out of a fellow-creature's distress. We've saved ye, and that's a good job. Next thing we've got to do is to put ye aboard the first homeward bound vessel we falls in with. I'm for keeping all on. Ships is plentiful hereabout, and ye'll not be kept awaiting. But to up hellum for the English coast again——' I saw his head wag vehemently against the stars. 'It's a long way to Australey, master, and ne'er a man of us touches a penny-piece till we gits there.'
I sat considering a little. My immediate impulse was to offer the fellows a reward to land us. Then I thought—no! They may ask too much, and, indeed, whatever they might expect must prove too much for me, to whom five pounds was a considerable sum, though, as I have told you, my mother's slender income was enough for us both. Besides, the money these men might ask would be far more fitly devoted to Helga, who had lost all save what she stood in—who was without a friend in England except myself and mother, who had been left by her father without a farthing saving some pitiful sum of insurance-money, which she would not get for many a long day, and who, brave heart! would, therefore, need my mother's purse to refurnish her wardrobe and embark her for her Danish home, if, indeed, there would now be a home for her at Kolding.
These considerations passed with the velocity of thought through my mind. On the other hand, we were no longer aboard a stationary raft, but in a nimble little lugger that every hour was carrying us into a new prospect of ocean; and we might be sure, therefore, of speedily falling in with a homeward-bound steamer that would convey us to England in a tenth of the time the lugger would occupy, very much more comfortably too, and at the cost of a few shillings, so to speak. Then, again, I felt too grateful for our preservation, too glad and rejoiceful over our deliverance from the dreadful future that had just now lain before us, to remonstrate with the men, to oppose their wishes to pursue their course, to utter a word, in short, that might make them suppose I did not consider our mere escape from the raft good fortune enough.
'Surely it would not take them very long,' Helga whispered in my ear, 'to sail this boat back to Penzance?'
I repeated, in a voice inaudible to the others, the reflections which had occurred to me.
'Why, see there now!' bawled one of the boatmen, pointing with a shadowy hand into the dusk over the lee quarter. 'There's plenty of the likes of her to fall in with; only she's agoing the wrong way.'
I peered, and spied the green side and white masthead lanterns of a steamer propelling along the water at about a quarter of a mile distant. I could faintly distinguish the loom of her black length, like a smear of ink upon the obscurity, and the line of her smoke against the stars, with now and again a little leap of furnace-light at the funnel-mouth that, while it hung there, might have passed for the blood-red visage of the moon staring out of a stormy sky.
'See, Helga!' I cried; 'there are many like her, as this man says. In a few hours, please God, we may be safe aboard such another!' And I sank my voice to add, 'We cannot do better than wait. Our friends here will be glad to get rid of us. No fear of their detaining us a moment longer than can be helped.'
'Yes, you are right,' she answered; 'but I wish to quickly return for your sake—for your mother's sake, Hugh.'
Her soft utterance of my name fell pleasantly upon my ear. I felt for her hand and pressed it, and whispered, 'A little patience, and we shall find ourselves at home again. All is well with us now.'
The lights to leeward silently glided ahead, and turned black upon the bow. One of the boatmen yawned with the roar of a cow.
'Nothen to keep me out of my bunk now, I allow,' said he. 'No more rafts to run into, I hope.'
'I should like to get this lady under shelter,' said I.
'That's easily done!' exclaimed Abraham. 'There's a nice little forepeak and a bunk in it at her sarvice.'
Helga hastily explained that she had had rest enough. I perceived that the delicacy of our Deal friends did not go to the length of observing that while Helga occupied the forepeak it must be hers, and hers only; but the discussion of that point was out of the question now; so she stayed where she was, the boatman that had yawned went forward, and in a few minutes his snoring came along in a sound like the grating of a boat's keel over the shingle of his native town.
These darkest hours of the night slowly passed. The breeze blew, the keen stem of the lugger ripped through the quiet heave of the ocean, and I waited for the dawn, never doubting that Helga and I would be out of the boat and aboard some homeward-bounder ere we should have counted another half-score hours. The homely chat of the two men, their queer 'longshore phrases, the rough sympathy they sought to convey by their speech, were delightful to listen to. Such had been my experiences, that, though five days comprised them, it seemed as if I had been six months from home. The talk mainly concerned this daring, extraordinary voyage to Australia, in what was truly no more than an open boat. The excitement of delight over our rescue was in a measure spent. I could think calmly, and attend with interest to other considerations than our preservation, our sufferings, and, in short, ourselves. And what could interest me more than this singular undertaking on the part of three boatmen?
I inquired what food they carried.
'Whoy,' says Abraham, 'we've got beef and pork and ship's bread and other wittles arter that sort.'
'Shall you touch at any ports?'
'Oy, if the need arises, master.'
'Need arises! You are bound to run short of food and water!'
'There's a plenty of ships to fall in with at sea, master, to help us along.'
'How long do you reckon on taking to make the run?'
'Fower or foive month,' answered Abraham.
'Oy, an' perhaps six,' said Jacob.
'Who is skipper?' said I.
'There aren't no degrees here,' answered Abraham; 'leastways, now that the boy's gone sick and's left behoind.'
'But which of you is navigator, then?'
'Oy am,' said Abraham; 'that's to say, I've got a quadrant along with me, and know how to tell at noon what o'clock it is. That's what's tarmed hascertaining the latitude. As to what's called longitude, she's best left to the log-line.'
'So she is,' said Jacob.
'And you have no doubt of accurately striking the port of Sydney without troubling yourselves about your longitude?'
'Ne'er a doubt,' said Abraham.
'Or if so be as a doubt should come up, then heave the log, says I,' broke in Jacob.
Their manner of speaking warned me to conceal my amazement, that under other conditions could not have been without merriment. They told me they had left Penzance on the morning of Monday, while it was still blowing heavily. 'But we saw that the breeze,' Abraham said, 'was agoing to fail, and so there was no call to stop for the wedder;' yet they had hardly run the land out of sight when they sprang their mast in the jump of a very hollow sea. 'There was no use trying to ratch back agin that sea and breeze,' said Abraham; 'so we stepped our spare mast and laid the wounded chap in his place; but if the wedder be as bad off the Cape as I've heerd talk of, I allow we'll be needing a rig-out o' spars if we're to reach Australey; and what'll have to be done'll be to fall in with some wessel as'll oblige us.'
Considering they were seafaring men, this prodigious confidence in luck and chance was not less wonderful than the venture they were upon. But it was for me to question and listen, not to criticise.
'They will never reach Australia,' Helga whispered.
'They are English seamen,' said I softly.
'No, Hugh—boatmen,' said she, giving me my name as easily as though we had been brother and sister. 'And what will they do without longitude?'
'Grope their way,' I whispered, 'after the manner of the early marines who achieved everything in the shape of seamanship and discovery in "barkes," as they called them, compared to which this lugger is as a thousand-ton ship to a Gravesend wherry.'
The two boatmen were holding a small hoarse argument touching the superiority of certain galley-punts belonging to Deal, when the dawn broke along the port-beam of the lugger. The sea turned an ashen green, and throbbed darkening to the gray wall of eastern sky, against which it washed in a line of inky blackness. I sprang on to a thwart to look ahead on either bow, and Helga stood up beside me; and as upon the barque, and as upon the raft, so now we stood together sweeping the iron-gray sky and the dark line of horizon for any flaw that might denote a vessel. But the sea stretched bald to its recesses the compass round.
The heavens in the east brightened, and the sea-line changed into a steely whiteness, but this delicate distant horizontal gleam of water before sunrise gave us sight of nothing.
'Anything to be seen, sir?' cried Abraham.
'Nothing,' I answered, dismounting from the thwart.
'Well, there's all day before ye,' paid Jacob, who had taken the helm.
Now that daylight was come, my first look was at Helga, to see how she had borne the bitter time that was passed. Her eyelids were heavy, her cheeks of a deathlike whiteness, her lips pale, and in the tender hollow under each eye lay a greenish hue, resembling the shadow a spring leaf might fling. It was clear that she had been secretly weeping from time to time during the dark hours. She smiled when our eyes met, and her face was instantly sweetened by the expression into the gentle prettiness I had first found in her.
I next took a survey of my new companions. The man styled Abraham was a sailorly-looking fellow, corresponding but indifferently with one's imagination of the conventional 'longshoreman. He had sharp features, a keen, iron-gray, seawardly eye, and a bunch of reddish beard stood forth from his chin. He was dressed in pilot-cloth, wore earrings, and his head was encased in a sugar-loafed felt hat, built after the fashion of a theatrical bandit's.
Jacob, on the other hand, was the most faithful copy of a Deal boatman that could have been met afloat. His face was flat and broad, with a skin stained in places of a brick-red. He had little, merry, but rather dim blue eyes, and suggested a man who would be able, without great effort of memory, to tell you how many public-houses there were in Deal, taking them all round. He had the whitest teeth I had ever seen in a sailor, and the glance of them through his lips seemed to fix an air of smiling upon his face. His attire consisted of a fur-cap, forced so low down upon the head that it obliged his ears to stand out; a yellow oilskin jumper and a pair of stout fearnaught trousers, the ends of which were packed into half-wellington boots.
The third man, named Thomas or Tommy, still continued out of sight, in the forepeak. One will often see at a glance as much as might occupy some pages to even briefly describe. In a few turns of the eye I had taken in these two men and their little ship. The boat seemed to me a very fine specimen of the Deal lugger. Her forepeak consisted of a forecastle, the deck of which was carried in the shape of a platform several feet abaft the bulkhead, which limited the sleeping compartment, and under this pent-house or break were stored the anchors, cables, and other gear belonging to the little vessel. In the middle of the boat, made fast by chains, was a stove, with a box under the 'raft,' as the forecastle-deck is called, in which were kept the cooking utensils. I noticed fresh water casks stowed in the boat's bilge, and a harness-cask for the meat near the forepeak. Right amidships lay a little fat punt, measuring about fourteen feet long, and along the sides of the thwarts were three sweeps or long oars, the foremast that had been 'sprung,' and a spare bowsprit. This equipment I took in with the swift eye of a man who was at heart a boatman.
A noble boat, indeed, for Channel cruising, for the short ragged seas of our narrow waters. But for the voyage to Australia! I could only stare and wonder.
The big lugsail was doing its work handsomely; the breeze was out on the starboard quarter—a pleasant wind, but with a hardness in the face of the sky to windward, a rigidity of small compacted, high-hanging cloud with breaks of blue between, showing of a wintry keenness when the sun soared, that promised a freshening of the wind before noon. Under the steadfast drag of her lug, the light, bright-sided boat was buzzing through it merrily, with a spitting of foam off either bow, and a streak on either side of wool-white water creaming into her wake, that streamed, rising and falling, far astern.
Had her head been pointing the other way, with a promise of the dusky gray of the Cornish coast to loom presently upon the sea-line, I should have found something delightful in the free, floating, airy motion of the lugger sweeping over the quiet hills of swell, her weather-side caressed by the heads of the little seas crisply running along with her in a sportive, racing way. But the desolation of the ocean lay as an oppression upon my spirits. I counted upon the daybreak revealing several sail, and here and there the blue streak of a steamer's smoke; but there was nothing of the sort to be seen, while every hour of such nimble progress as the lugger was now making must to a degree diminish our chances of falling in with homeward-bound craft; that is to say, we were sure, sooner or later, to meet with a ship going to England; but the farther south we went the longer would be the intervals between the showing of ships by reason of the navigation scattering as it opened out into the North Atlantic; and so, though I never doubted that we should be taken off the lugger and carried home, yet as I looked around this vacant sea I was depressed by the fear that some time might pass before this would happen, and my thoughts went to my mother—how she might be supposing me dead and mourning over me as lost to her for ever, and how, if I could quickly return to her, I should be able to end her heartache and perhaps preserve her life; for I was her only child, and that she would fret over me even to the breaking of her heart, I feared, despite her having sanctioned my going out to save life.
Yet, when I looked at Helga, and reflected upon what her sufferings had been and what her loss was, and noted the spirit that still shone nobly in her steadfast gaze, and was expressed in the lines of her lips, I felt that I was acting my part as a man but poorly, in suffering my spirits to droop. This time yesterday we were upon a raft, from which the first rise of sea must have swept us. It was the hard stare of the north-westerly sky that caused me to think of this time yesterday; and with something of a shiver and a long deep breath of gratitude for the safety that had come to us with this little fabric buoyant under our feet, I broke away from my mood of dulness with a half-smile at the two homely boatmen, who sat staring at Helga and at me.
'The lady looks but poorly,' said Abraham, with his eyes fixed upon Helga, though he addressed me. 'Some people has their allowance of grief sarved out all at once. I earnestly hope, lady, that life's agoing to luff up with you now, and lead ye on a course that won't take long to bring ye to the port of joyfulness.'
He nodded at her emphatically, with as much sympathy in his countenance as his weather-tanned flesh would suffer him to exhibit.
'We have had a hard time,' she answered gently.
'Much too hard for any girl to go through,' said I. 'Men, you must know this lady to be a complete sailor. She can take the wheel; she can sound the well; she has a nerve of steel at a moment that would send a good many who consider themselves stout-hearted to their prayers. It is not the usage of the sea, Abraham, that makes her look poorly, as you say.'
I noticed Jacob leaning forward with his hands upon his knees, staring at her. Suddenly he smacked his leg with the sound of a pistol-shot.
'Why, yes!' he cried: 'now I'm sure of it. Wasn't you once a boy, mum?'
'What!' cried Abraham, turning indignantly upon him.
A faint blush entered Helga's face.
'What I mean is,' continued Jacob, 'when I last see ye, you was dressed up as a boy!'
'Yes,' said I, 'yes. And what then?'
'Whoy, then,' he cried, fetching his leg another violent slap, 'Pigsears Hall owes me a gallon o' beer. When we was aboard the Dane,' he continued, addressing Abraham and talking with 'longshore vehemence, 'I cotched sight of a boy that I says to myself, thinks I, is as sartain surely a female as that the Gull lightship's painted red. I told Pigsears Hall to look. "Gal in your eye!" says he. "Bet ye a gallon of ale, Jacob, she's as much a boy as Barney Parson's Willie!" But we was too busy to argue, and we left the ship without thinking more about it. Now I'm reminded, and I'm right, and I calls ye to witness, Abraham, so that Pigsears mayn't haul off from his wager.'
To change the subject, I said abruptly, 'You men seem to have some queer names among you. Pigsears Hall! Could any parson be got to christen a man so?'
''Taint his right name,' said Abraham. 'It's along of his ears that he's got that title. There's Stickenup Adams; that's 'cause he holds his thin nose so high. Then there's Paper-collar Joe; that's 'cause he likes to be genteel about the neck. We've all got nicknames. But in a voyage to Australey we give ourselves the tarms our mothers knew us by.'
'What is your name?' said I.
'Abraham Vise,' said he.
'Wise?'
'I calls it Vise,' said he, looking a little disconcerted. 'It's wrote with a W.'
'And your shipmates?'
'Him,' he answered, indicating his comrade by jerking his chin at him, 'is Jacob Minnikin. Him that's forrards is Tommy Budd.' He paused, with his eyes fixed upon Helga. 'Jacob,' said he, addressing his mate while he steadfastly regarded the girl, 'I've been a-thinking, if so be as the gentleman and lady aren't going to be put aboard a homeward-bounder in a hurry, how's she to sleep? Tell ye what it is,' said he slowly, looking around at Jacob; 'if to-night finds 'em aboard us we'll have to tarn out of the forepeak. There's a good enough bed for the likes of us men under that there raft,' said he, pointing to the wide recess that was roofed by the overhanging of the deck of the forepeak. 'The lady looks as if nothen short of a twenty-four hours' spell of sound sleep was going to do her good. But, of course, as I was saying,' and now he was addressing me, 'you and her may be aboard another craft, homeward bound, before the night comes.'
'I thank you, on behalf of the lady, for your proposal, Abraham,' said I. 'She wants rest, as you say; but privacy must naturally be a condition of her resting comfortably in your forepeak. Six hours would suffice——'
'Oh! she can lie there all night,' said Jacob.
At this moment the third man made his appearance. He rose thrusting through a little square hatch, and, with true 'longshore instincts, took a slow survey of the sea, with an occasional rub of his wrist along his eyes, before coming aft. He glanced at Helga and me carelessly, as though we had long become familiar features of the lugger to his mind, and, giving Abraham a nod, exclaimed, with another look round the sea, 'A nice little air o' wind out this marning.'
This fellow was a middle-aged man, probably forty-five. His countenance was of a somewhat sour cast, his eyebrows thick and of an iron-gray, and his eyes, deep-seated under them, gazed forth between lids whose rims were so red that they put a fancy into one of their being slowly eaten away by fire, as a spark bites into tinder. The sulky curl of mouth expressed the born marine grumbler. His headgear was of fur, like Jacob's; but I observed that he was dressed in a long coat, that had manifestly been cut for or worn by a parson. Under the flapping tails of this coat were exhibited a pair of very loose fearnaught trousers, terminating in a pair of large, gouty, square-toed shoes.
'What about breakfast?' said he. 'Ain't it toime to loight the fire?'
'Why, yes,' answered Abraham, 'and I dessay,' said he, looking at me, 'ye won't be sorry to get a mouthful of wittles.'
The sour-faced man, named Tommy, went forward, and was presently busy in chopping up a piece of wood.
'There are some good rashers to be had out of those hams you took from the raft,' said I; 'you will find the canned meat pleasant eating too. While you are getting breakfast I'll explore your forepeak, with your permission.'
'Sartinly,' answered Abraham.
'Come along, Helga,' said I; and we went forward.
We dropped through the hatch, and found ourselves in a little gloomy interior, much too shallow to stand erect in. There were four bunks, so contrived as to serve as seats and lockers as well as beds. There were no mattresses, but in each bunk was a little pile of blankets.
'A noble sea-parlour, Helga!' said I, laughing.
'It is better than the raft,' she answered.
'Ay, indeed! but for all that not so good as to render us unwilling to leave this little lugger. You will never be able to sleep in one of these holes?'
'Oh yes,' she answered, with a note of cheerfulness in her voice; 'but I hope there may be no occasion. I shall not want to sleep till the night comes, and before it comes we may be in another ship, journeying home—to your home, I mean,' she added, with a sigh.
'And not more mine than yours, so long as it will please you to make it yours. And now,' said I, 'that we may be as comfortable as possible, where are our friends' toilet conveniences? Their washbasin is, no doubt, the ocean over the side, and I suspect a little lump of grease, used at long intervals, serves them for the soap they need. But there is plenty of refreshment to be had out of a salt-water rinsing of the face. Stay you here, and I will hand you down what is to be found.'
I regained the deck, and asked one of the men to draw me a bucket of salt-water. I then asked Abraham for a piece of sailcloth to serve as a towel.
'Sailcloth!' he cried. 'I'll give ye the real thing,' and, sliding open a locker in the stern sheets, he extracted a couple of towels.
'Want any soap?' said he.
'Soap!' cried I. 'Have you such a thing?'
'Why, what d'ye think we are?' called the sour-faced man Tommy, who was kneeling at the little stove and blowing into it to kindle some chips of wood. 'How's a man to shave without soap?'
'Want a looking-glass?' said Abraham, handing me a lump of marine soap as he spoke.
'Thank you,' said I.
'And here's a comb,' said he, producing out of his trousers pocket a knife-shaped affair that he opened into a large brass comb. 'Anything more?'
'What more have you?' said I.
'Nothen, saving a razor,' said he.
This I did not require. I carried the bucket and the little bundle of unexpected conveniences to the hatch, and called to Helga.
'Here am I, rich in spoils,' said I softly. 'These boatmen are complete dandies. Here is soap, here are towels, here is a looking-glass, and here is a comb,' and having handed her these things I made my way aft again.
'We han't asked your name yet, sir,' said Abraham, who was at the tiller again, while the other two were busy at the stove getting the breakfast.
'Hugh Tregarthen,' said I.
'Thank ye,' said he; 'and the lady?'
'Helga Nielsen.'
He nodded approvingly, as though pleased with the sound of the name.
'She's a nice little gal, upon my word!' said he; 'too good to belong to any other country nor Britain. Them Danes gets hold of the English tongue wonderful fast. Take a Swede or a Dutchman: it's yaw yaw with them to the end of their time. But I've met Danes as ye wouldn't know from Deal men, so fust-class was their speech.' He slowly carried his chin to his shoulder, to take a view of the weather astern, and then, fastening his eyes with 'longshore leisureliness upon my face—and I now noticed for the first time that he slightly squinted—he said, 'It's a good job that we fell in with 'ee, Mr. Tregarthen; for if so be as you two had kept all on washing about on that there raft till noon to-day—and I give ye till noon—ye'd be wanting no man's help nor prayers afterwards. It's agoing to blow.'
'Yes,' said I, 'there's wind enough in that sky there; in fact it's freshening a bit already, isn't it?' For I now perceived the keener feathering and sharper play upon the waters, and the harder and broader racing of the yeast that was pouring away from either quarter of the lugger. 'There's been a shift of the wind, too, I think,' I added, trying to catch a sight of the dusky interior of a little compass-box that stood on the seat close against Abraham.
'Yes, it's drawed norradly,' he answered. 'I ain't sorry, for it's like justifying of me for not setting ye ashore. I did think, when the young lady asked me to steer for England, that I wasn't acting the part of a humane man in refusing of her, and for keeping all on stretching the distance between you and your home. But I reckoned upon the wind drawing ahead for a homeward-bound course, and now it has; so that if we was to keep you a week and get ye aboard a steamer at the end of it you'd stand to get home sooner than if we was to down hellum now and start aratching for your coast.'
'We owe our lives to you,' said I cordially. 'Not likely that we could wish to inconvenience you by causing your lugger to swerve by so much as a foot from her course.'