I MAKE FREE.
It was four o'clock when the steamer passed, and, half an hour later, she was out of sight, so rapid was the combined pace of the vessels. Her name was large upon her stern had we chosen to read it, but the mate was too busy with his board and I with my temper to note the letters, and Helga did not think of doing so, and thus it was that the steamer passed away and none of us knew more about her than that she was a Cape Union mail-liner bound to England with now a message, meant for my mother, on board.
The Captain hung about us, and was all blandness, courtesy, and admiration when he addressed Helga or directed his eyes at her. On his first joining us she said quickly, pointing to the steamer that was still in sight:
'Why have you suffered us to lose that opportunity?'
'Mr. Tregarthen's and your company,' he answered, 'makes me so happy that I cannot bear to part with you yet!'
Her little nostrils enlarged, her blue eyes glittered, her breast quickly rose and fell.
'You called yourself a Samaritan yesterday!' she exclaimed, with all the scorn her tender soul was capable of, and her pensive, pretty face could express. 'Is this the way in which Samaritans usually behave?'
He viewed her as though she were a picture that cannot be held in a new position without disclosing a fresh grace.
'You are too good and kind to be cruel,' said he, regarding her with deepening admiration, as it seemed to me. 'The Samaritan played his part fairly well yesterday, I believe?' He blandly bowed to her with a countenance of exquisite self-complacency. 'He is still on board, my dear young lady, with a character in essentials unchanged, merely enlarged.' Here he spread his fingers upon his breast, and expanded his waistcoat, looking at her in a very knowing sort of way, with his head on one side. 'Now that we have sent our message home, there is no hurry. Our little cruise,' he exclaimed, pointing over the bow, 'is almost entirely tropical, and there is no reason at all why we should not find it delightful!'
I caught Helga's eye, and exhorted her by a glance to keep silent. She fixed her gaze upon the deck, with a lip lightly curled by disgust, and I stepped aft under a pretence to look at the compass, with so much more contempt and anger than I could hold between my teeth that I dared not speak.
The breeze slackened as the sun sank, and at supper, as the Captain persisted in calling the last meal, the ocean fell calm and the old broad-bowed barque rolled sleepily, but with much creaking of her rheumatic bones, upon a long-drawn polished swell flowing out of the north-east. Her canvas beat the masts and fetched reports out of the tall spars that penetrated the little cuddy like discharges of musketry.
For a long while the Captain gave Helga and me no opportunity for a quiet talk. At table he was more effusive than he had been, distressingly importunate in his attentions to the girl, to whom he would address himself in tones of loverlike coaxing if she happened to say No to his entreaties to her to drink a little wine, to try a slice of ham, and the like. He begged us to make ourselves thoroughly at home; his coloured cook, he said, was not a first-rate hand, but if Miss Helga ever had a fancy, she need but name it, and it would go very hard with the cook if he failed to humour her.
'We are not a yacht,' said he, pulling a whisker and looking around, 'but, most fortunately, gaudy mirrors and handsome carpets and the ginger-bread ornamentations of the pleasure craft need never form any portion of human happiness at sea. The sun looks as brightly down upon the Light of the World as upon the most stately ship afloat, the ocean breeze will taste as sweetly over my bulwark-rails as on the bridge of the gallantest man-of-war that flies the crimson cross;' and thus he went on vapouring as usual in fathoms of commonplace, yet with a bland underlying insistence always upon our being his guests, upon our remaining with him and being happy, as though, indeed, we had cheerfully consented to stop, and were looking forward with great enjoyment to the voyage.
I was as cold and distant as I could well be, answered him in monosyllables, ate as if with aversion, and as though I constrained myself to devour merely to keep body and soul together. But he did not seem to heed my manner in the least; I could swear, indeed, that he did not observe it. He was wholly engrossed in contemplation of Helga, and in the enjoyment of enlarging his waistcoat, and delivering, more or less through his nose, with a fixed smile and somewhat leering eye, the dull, trivial, insipid contents of his mind.
He asked the girl to play draughts with him when Punmeamootty had cleared the table. On her declining, he fetched from his cabin the volume of Jeremy Taylor—it was that divine's 'Holy Living and Dying,' I think—and asked permission to read a few pages aloud. She could not refuse, and I see that extraordinary shipmaster now, standing under the lamp, holding the portly volume up with both hands, smiling upon the page, pausing at intervals to look over the top of the book at the girl with a nod to serve as a point of admiration, and reading nasally without the faintest inflection, so that at a little distance his delivery must have sounded like a continuous groan. He then begged her to read to him.
'What greater treat could we have,' said he, looking at me, 'than to hear the rich, noble, impressive words of this great Bishop pronounced by the charming lips of Miss Helga Nielsen?'
But she curtly refused; and, after hovering about her for another half-hour, during which I could notice a growing air in him that was a distinct intimation, in its way, of his entire satisfaction with the progress he was making, he withdrew to his cabin.
Helga looked at me with weariness and dismay, and moistened her lips.
'This is worse than the raft,' said I.
'It is so bad,' she exclaimed, 'that I feel persuaded it cannot last.'
'Let us go on deck. If we linger here he may rejoin us. How tragical it all is one may know by the humour of it.'
We went softly to the companion-steps, and I recollect that I looked over my shoulder to see if he was following us—than which I can recall no better proof of my perfect recognition of our helplessness.
The new moon had followed the sun, and the planet would not be showing by night for two or three days; but in the south, and over our mastheads, the sky was richly spangled with stars, which burnt in one or two dyes of glory, and very sharply, whence, from recollection of a like sight at home, I supposed that hard weather was at hand. There was some little lightning, of a delicate shade of violet, in the north-east, which, indeed, would have been no noticeable thing down in this part of the world but for the mountainous heaping of cloud it revealed, a black sullen mass stretching along the sea-line in that quarter, and putting a hue as of ink into the dusk which swept in glittering obscurity to the shadow of it. There was a great deal of greenish fire in the sea, and it broadened and shrank in wide spaces in the lift of the noiseless running swell as though the rays of a tinted lantern were cast upon the water. The dew was plentiful, and lay along the rails and upon the skylight, crisp as frost in the starshine.
It was Abraham's watch, and I spied his figure flitting cumbrously in the neighbourhood of the wheel, at which stood the shape of some coloured man, motionless as though carved in ebony, faintly touched by the sheen of the binnacle lamp. I was in no humour to converse with the boatman. His stupid talk that afternoon in response to my questions had vexed me, and I was still angry with the fool, as I chose to think him, spite of the claims he had upon my kindness and gratitude.
I put Helga's hand under my arm, and we quietly patrolled the deck to leeward. Our conversation wholly concerned our position—it would only tease you to repeat it. There was nothing to suggest, no plan to propose; for think, advise, scheme as we might, it could only come to this: that if the Captain declined to part with us, then, unless the men took our side and insisted on putting us aboard a passing ship, we must stop. But if the crew took our side, it would be mutiny with them; and bewilderingly disagreeable as our situation was, preposterously and ridiculously wretched as it was, yet assuredly it was not to be mended by a revolt among those dusky skins forward.
Yet the fancy of stirring up the Malays to befriend us was in my mind as I walked with the girl.
'God forbid,' said I, 'that I should have a hand in it; yet, for all that, I believe it is to be done. I had a short talk with Nakier to-day, and there was that in his questions and his manner which persuades me that the train is ready, and nothing wanting but the spark.'
'A mutiny is a terrible thing at sea,' said she; 'and what would men like the crew of this ship stop at?'
'Ay, nothing more terrible, Helga. But are we to be carried to the Cape?'
'The Captain has no intention of putting into Santa Cruz,' said she.
'That we may be sure of. But does the fellow intend that you shall pass week after week with no other apparel than what you stand up in?'
I was interrupted by Abraham sending a hurricane shout into the blackness forward for some hands to clew up the fore and main royals, and for others to lay aft and haul down the gaff-topsail.
'It's agoing to blow to-night, Mr. Tregarthen,' he called across to me.
'Yes; and you may see where it is coming from, too,' I replied, not knowing till then that he had observed us.
In a few moments the silence that had hung upon the vessel, with nothing to disturb it but an occasional sob of water and the beating of canvas hollowing into the mast to the roll of the fabric, was broken by the strange howling noises raised by the coloured seamen as they hauled upon the gear.
'Get them sails furled, my lads!' bawled Abraham; 'and the rest of ye lay aft and take this 'ere mizzen off her.'
'It is wonderful that the fellows should understand the man,' said I.
'There's the Captain!' exclaimed Helga, instantly halting, and then recoiling in a way that dragged me a pace back with her.
He rose through the companion-hatch, his outline vaguely visible in the dim radiance sifting through the cabin skylight. Abraham addressed him.
'Quite right, Wise, very wise of you, Wise!' he exclaimed. 'There is a marked fall in the barometer, and I perceive lightning in the north-east, with a deal of rugged cloud down there.' His shadowy form stepped to the binnacle, into which he peered a moment. 'I think, Wise,' said he—and, to use a Paddyism, I could see the man's fixed and singular smile in the oiliness of his accents—'that you cannot do better than go forward and rouse up all hands. I can rely best upon my crew when the weather is quiet.'
Abraham trudged forward, and a minute later I heard him thumping heavily on the fore hatch, topping the blows with a boatswain's hoarse roar of 'All hands shorten sail!'
'The Captain's politeness,' I said, 'will end in making that Deal boatman sit at his feet.'
'He is afraid of his crew, perhaps,' answered Helga, 'and is behaving so as to make sure that the two men will stand by him should difficulties come.'
'It was a bad blow that sunk the fellows' lugger. We might have sighted that steamer of to-day and be now homeward bound at the rate of fourteen knots an hour.'
'And it is all my fault!' she cried, in tones impassioned by regret and temper. 'But for me, Hugh——'
I silenced her by taking her hand as it lay in my arm and pressing it. She drew closer to me, with a movement caressing but wistful too, though finely and tenderly simple.
I did not doubt that the Captain perceived us; nevertheless, he hung near the wheel, never coming farther forward than the companion-hatch, while we kept at the other end of the little poop, where the shadow of the port-wing of mainsail lay heavy.
Shortly after Abraham had summoned the men, the decks were alive with sliding and gliding shapes, and the stillness of the ocean night was clamorous with parrot-like cries. The lightning had ceased, but the darkness was fast deepening, and overhead the stars were beginning to languish in the projected dimness of the growing mass of cloud that, now that there was no play of violet fire upon it, was indistinguishable in its own dumb, brooding obscurity.
'Whatever is to come will happen on a sudden,' said I.
We neither of us cared to keep the deck now that the Captain had arrived, and descending the ladder, we entered the cabin. Under other conditions I should have been willing, and indeed anxious, to assist the crew, but now I was resolved not to touch a rope, to maintain and present as sullen a front as I could contrive, to hold apart with Helga, to mark my resentment by my behavior, and so, perhaps—but God knows I had no hope of it—to intimidate the fellow into releasing us by obliging him to understand that he had already gone a very great deal too far. There was much noise on deck; Mr. Jones was bawling from the forecastle, and Abraham from the waist, and the songs of the Malays might easily have passed for the cries of people writhing in pain. Apparently the Captain was alarmed by the indications of the glass and the look of the weather in the north-east, and was denuding his little ship as speedily as might be. His own voice began to sound now, and, though it was perfectly distinguishable, there was nothing nasal, bland, or greasy about it. On the contrary, his roars seemed to proceed from a pair of honest sealungs, as though what was nautical in him had been worked up by the appearance of the weather, and was proving too strong for the soapy exterior of his habitual manner.
'He can be natural when he forgets himself,' said I.
'It is quite possible that he swears at times,' said Helga.
'One touch of nature in the fellow would make me feel almost comfortable,' I exclaimed.
'He is not a true sailor: he never could be natural for any length of time,' said Helga.
The pattering of the naked feet of the crew was like the noise of a shower of rain. Helga seemed to be able to follow what was being done, as though she were on deck directing the crew.
They have furled this sail—they are reefing that sail—now they are hauling down such and such a jib—now they are stowing the mainsail, she would say, giving the canvas its proper names, and looking at me with a little smile in her liquid blue eyes, as though the interest in the sailors' work made her forget our troubles.
'Be as nautical as you like with me,' said I. 'I love to hear you pronounce the strange, uncouth language of the sea; but guard your lips before the Captain. The more sailorly you are, the more he will admire you.'
'What would make him hate me?' she exclaimed, with the light of the smile going out of her eyes, and her white brow contracting. 'How is he to be sickened?'
'Oh, what can you do? What can a pretty girl do that will not heighten the passion of a man who has fallen in love with her?'
'Call me pretty if you will,' said she, with a maidenly droop of her eyelids; 'but do not speak of me as a girl with whom anybody has fallen in love.'
'By George!' said I, starting and heaving a long sigh, with a look at the clock, the hands of which were now at nine, 'the road to Kolding gets longer and longer. But we shall measure it—we shall measure it yet, Helga!' I quickly added, heartily grieved by the sorrow that entered her face.
'What a strange dream has all this time been!' she half murmured, pressing her eyes. 'My father stood by my side last night; I felt his kiss—oh, Hugh! it was colder than the salt water outside.' She uttered an exclamation in Danish, with a little passionate shake of the head.
'I hope you are quite comfortable below,' exclaimed a much too familiar voice, and, looking up, I spied the long whiskers and smiling countenance of Captain Bunting framed in the open casement of the skylight.
Helga rallied as if to a shock, and stiffened into marble, motionless, and with a hardening of her countenance that I should have thought impossible to the gentle, ingenuous prettiness of her face.
'I fear,' he continued, talking through the skylight, 'that we are in for some nasty weather; but my barque is stripped and nearly ready for the affray. I am grieved not to be able to join you, Miss Nielsen. It is necessary that I should remain on deck. You are partaking of no refreshment. I will send Punmeamootty to you. Pray give him your orders.'
His whiskers floated out into the obscurity like two puffs of smoke, and he called, but in genteel accents, for Helga was now listening, and he knew it, to Abraham to send Punmeamootty 'to wait upon his guests in the cabin.' A moment after his whiskers reappeared.
'I have to beg, Miss Nielsen, that you will consider yourself mistress here. And before you withdraw to rest—and, whatever may happen, pray slumber securely, for I shall be watching the ship—may I entreat you to occupy Mr. Jones's berth, which you will find so very much more airy and comfortable than the dark, confined steerage?'
'I am quite satisfied with my accommodation, thank you,' she answered, without looking up.
He youthfully wagged his head in reproach of what his manner seemed to consider no more than an enchanting girlish capriciousness, and adding, 'Well, I entreat you both to make yourselves thoroughly at home,' he disappeared.
Punmeamootty arrived. He entered soundlessly as a spirit, and with the gliding movements that one could imagine of a phantom. I said to Helga:
'Abraham's philosophy shall be mine. My temper shall not prevent me from using our friend's larder. You asked just now what will sicken him. Let us eat and drink him up! Punmeamootty, when is the gale going to burst?'
'It will not be long, sah,' he answered, showing his teeth.
'Put the best supper you can upon the table. Have you nothing better than rum to drink?'
'Dere is wine, sah.'
'Yes, and very poor wine too. Have you no brandy?'
'Yes, sah, de Capt'n hab some choice brandy for sickness.'
'Put a bottle of it on the table, Punmeamootty, and be quick, like a good fellow as you are, to serve the food before this sweet little ship begins to kick up her heels.'
He showed his teeth again, with a glance at the skylight, following it on with a short-lived look of deep interest at Helga, then slipped away.
With wonderful nimbleness he had spread the cloth and put ham, salt beef, biscuit, and such things upon the table.
'Now draw that cork!' said I.
The pop of it brought the whiskers to the open skylight as if by magic.
'Quite right, quite right!' exclaimed the Captain. 'I hope, Miss Helga, this repast is of your ordering? What have you there, Punmeamootty?' he suddenly cried with excitement. 'That is brandy, I believe?'
'I ordered it!' I called out in a sullen voice.
'You will handle it tenderly, if you please,' said he, with a trifle of asperity in his speech. 'It is a fine cordial brandy, and I have but three bottles of it.'
I returned no answer, and he vanished.
'Upon my word, I believe Abraham is right, after all!' said I, with a laugh. 'Now, Helga, to punish him, if the road to his sensibility lie through ham and beef!'
She feigned to eat merely to please me, as I could see. Though I was not very hungry, I made a great business of sharpening my knife, and fell to the beef and ham with every appearance of avidity, not doubting that we should be furtively surveyed from time to time by the Captain, who could peep at us unseen without trouble as he passed the skylight, and who could very well overhear the clatter of dishes, the sharpening of my knife, and my calls to the steward, so silent did the night continue, as though there rested some great hush of expectancy upon the ocean.
I filled a bumper of brandy-and-water, and exclaimed in a loud voice:
'Here's to our speedy release, Helga! But if that is not to happen, then here's to the safest and swiftest passage this crazy old bucket is capable of making. And here's to proceedings hereafter to be taken!'
The coloured steward stood looking on with a grin of wonder.
'Capital brandy, this, Punmeamootty!' I sang out in accents that might have been heard upon the forecastle. 'Another drop, if you please! Thank you! I will help myself.'
A mere drop it was, for I had had enough; but I took care by my posture to persuade an eye surveying me from above that I was not sparing the bottle.
'You may clear away, Punmeamootty; and if you can find a cigar I shall feel obliged by your bringing it to me.'
'Well, and how are we getting on?' exclaimed the Captain, bending his head into the skylight.
'We have supped, thank you,' I answered haughtily and coldly. 'Punmeamootty, a cigar, if you please!'
The Captain's head vanished.
'Me no sabbee where the Capt'n him keep his cigar,' said Punmeamootty.
'Ransack his cabin!' said I loudly.
The fellow shook his head, but there was enjoyment in his grin, with an expression of elation in his eyes that borrowed a quality of fierceness from the singularly keen gleam which irradiated their dusky depths. I was about to speak, when Helga raised her hand.
'Hark!' she cried.
I bent my ear, and caught a sound resembling the low moan of surf heard at a distance.
'More than a capful of wind goes to the making of that noise,' said I.
A bright flash of lightning dazzled upon the skylight and eclipsed the cabin-lamp with its blinding bluish glare. A small shock of thunder followed. I heard the Captain cry out an order; the next minute the skylight was hastily closed and a tarpaulin thrown over it.
'Bring me my oilskins, Punmeamootty!' shouted the Captain down the companionway. The man ran on deck with the things.
'Can that be rain?' cried Helga.
Rain it was indeed! a very avalanche of wet, charged with immense hailstones. The roar of the smoking discharge upon the planks was absolutely deafening. It lasted about a couple of minutes, then ceased with startling suddenness, and you heard nothing but the surf-like moaning that had now gathered a deeper and a more thrilling note, mingled with the wild sobbing in the scuppers, and a melancholy hissing of wet as the water on the quarter-deck splashed from side to side to the light rolling of the barque. Yet fully another five minutes passed in quiet, while the growling of the thunder of the still distant storm-swept sea waxed fiercer and fiercer. It was as though one stood at the mouth of a tunnel and listened to the growing rattling and rumbling of a long train of goods waggons approaching in tow of a panting locomotive.
Then in a breath the wind smote the barque, and down she leaned to it. So amazingly violent was the angle, I do most truthfully believe that for the space of some twenty or thirty seconds the barque lay completely on her beam ends, as much so as if she were bilged high and dry upon a shoal, and there was a dreadful noise of water pouring in upon her deck from over the submerged lee main-deck rail.
Helga was to windward, and the table supported her, but the chair upon which I was seated broke away with me, and I fell sprawling upon my back amid a whole raffle of the contents of the table, which Punmeamootty had not yet removed. The full mess of it came headlong about me with a mighty smash; the beef, the ham, the bottle of brandy, now shivered into a thousand pieces, the jam pots, the biscuits, the knives and forks—all these things I lay in the midst of, and such was the heel of the deck that I could not stir a limb. Helga shrieked.
I cried out:
'I am not hurt; I'll rise when I can.' Someone was hoarsely bawling from the poop; but whatever the meaning of the yell might have been, it was immediately followed by a loud report resembling the blast of a twenty-four-pounder gun. 'There goes a sail!' I shouted. The vessel found life on being relieved of the canvas, whatever it was; there was a gradual recovery of her hull, and presently she was on a level keel, driving smoothly as a sleigh over a level plain of snow, but with such an infernal bellowing and hooting and ear-piercing whistling of wind accompanying her that there is nothing I can imagine to liken it to.
I waited awhile, and then, bidding Helga stay where she was, went on to the quarter-deck; but all betwixt the rails was of a pitch darkness, with a sort of hoariness in the blackness on either hand outside, rising from the foam, of which the ocean was now one vast field. I mounted the poop-ladder, but was blinded in a moment by the violence of the wind, that was full of wet, and was glad to regain the cabin; for I could be of no use, and there was no question to be asked nor answer to be caught at such a time.