JOPPA IS IN EARNEST.
It was about half-past nine when this gale took us, but such was the force and weight of it, so flattening and shearing was its scythe-like horizontal sweep, that no sea worth speaking of had risen till ten o'clock, and then, indeed, it was beginning to run high. All this while there had been no sound of human voices, but at this hour a command was delivered above our heads, and going on to the quarter-deck, I dimly discerned the figures of men hauling upon the forebraces; but they pulled dumbly; no song broke from them; they were silent as though in terror. A little later on I knew by the motions of the barque that she had been brought to the wind and lay hove-to.
That few vessels would better know how to plunge and roll than this old Light of the World I might have guessed from her behaviour in quiet weather, when there was nothing but a slight swell to lift her. But I never could have conjectured how truly prodigious was her skill in the art of tumbling. She soared and sank as an empty cask might. She took every hollow with a shock that threatened to rend her bones into fragments, as though she had been hurled through the air from a mighty height; and when she swung up an acclivity, the sensation was that of being violently lifted, as by a balloon or by the grip of an eagle. Groans and cries rose from her interior as though she had a thousand miserable, perishing slaves—men, women, and children—locked up in her hold.
'This,' said I to Helga, 'is worse than the Anine.'
'Yet it was blowing harder on that Saturday night than it is now,' she answered, watching the mad oscillations of the cabin lamp with serene eyes and a mouth steadfast in expression. 'I have a greater dread of Captain Bunting's smile,' she continued, 'than of any hurricane that can blow across the ocean.' She looked at the clock. 'He is certain to arrive shortly. He is sure to find some excuse to torture me with his politeness. He will tease me to exchange my cabin. I think I will go to bed, Hugh.'
There was little temptation to remain up. I put my hand under her arm to steady the pair of us, and we passed on to the quarter-deck, where I found the hatch that led to our sleeping quarters shut. We lifted it, and looked into a blackness profounder than that of a coal-mine. On this I roared for Punmeamootty. I shouted four or five times at the top of my lungs, and then some voice bawled from over the rail of the deck above, 'What's wrong down there?' Who it was I could not tell; it was impossible to distinguish voices amid the hellish clamour of the wind roaring in the rigging with the sound of a tempest-swept forest. I took no notice, and bawled again for Punmeamootty, and, after a little, the poor coloured wretch came out of the darkness into the sheen of the cabin-light that feebly touched the quarter-deck, crawling on his hands and knees. He was soaked through, and when he stood up could scarcely keep his feet. Indeed, forward, the seas were sweeping the decks in sheets, and each time the vessel lifted her bows the water came roaring in a fury of foam to the cuddy front.
We were forced to put the hatch on again to keep the sea out of the ship till Punmeamootty came staggering out of the cuddy with a lantern. Helga then dropped below with amazing dexterity, and I handed the light down to her, requesting that she would hang it up and leave it burning, as I was in no mood to 'turn in' just then, wishing to see more of the weather before resting, and to smoke a pipe. I put the hatch on and re-entered the cuddy, followed by Punmeamootty.
'You seem half drowned!' said I.
'A sea knock me down, sah. Is dere danger, sah?'
'I hope not,' I answered. 'Do you feel equal to picking up that mess?' and I pointed to the broken china and bit of beef, and so on.
He turned a terrified eye upon them, staggering and swaying wildly, and then, as though he had not heard my question, he exclaimed, 'We all say dis storm come tro' Capt'n being wicked man! Tankee de Lor'! we hab no eat pork! Tankee de Lor'! we hab no eat pork!'
He bared his gleaming teeth, as though in the anguish of cold, and shook his small clenched fist at the skylight. I sat down and lighted a pipe, and, having been somewhat chilled by waiting out in the wet of the quarter-deck for Punmeamootty to bring the lantern, I slided and clawed my way round to Captain Bunting's locker for a bottle of rum that lay within. As I did this, the companion door opened, and down came the skipper. The wind and the wet had twisted his whiskers into lines like lengths of rope. I could have burst into a laugh at the sight of his singular face, framed in the streaming thatch and flannel ear-protectors of his sou'-wester. The water poured from his oilskins as he came to a stand at the end of the table, grabbing it, and looking about him.
'What's all that?' cried he, pointing with a fat forefinger to the mess on deck.
This was addressed to Punmeamootty, but I answered, flinging the surliest note I could manage into my voice, which I had to raise into a shout, 'An accident. This is a beast of a ship, sir! No barge could make worse weather of a breeze of wind.'
I let fall the lid of the locker, and sat upon it, poising the bottle of rum, and blowing a great cloud with my pipe.
'Where is Miss Nielsen?' he exclaimed.
'Gone to bed,' I answered. 'Punmeamootty, reach me a glass out of that rack.'
The man, in taking the tumbler, reeled to a violent heel of the deck, and let it fall.
'D—n it!' roared the Captain, 'you clumsy son of a bitch! What more damage is to be done?' His sudden passion made his fixed smile extraordinarily grotesque. 'Get a basket and pick up that stuff, and bear a hand!' he thundered. 'Has Miss Helga a light?'
'Yes,' I answered. 'I have seen to that.'
'But she may fall—she may let the lantern drop!'
'She is a better sailor than you,' I called out; 'she knows how to keep her feet. Punmeamootty! a tumbler, if you please, before you begin picking up that stuff.'
'I must see that Miss Nielsen's lantern is safe,' said the Captain; and he was coming forward as though to pass through the cuddy door. I sprang to my feet and confronted him on widely stretched legs.
'No man,' said I, 'enters Miss Nielsen's sleeping quarters while she and I remain in this ship.'
He stared at me, with twenty emotions working in his face. His countenance then changed. I perceived him glance at the bottle of rum that I held by the neck, and that I was just in the temper to let him have fair between his eyes had he attempted to shove past me. I believe he thought I had been drinking.
'I can assure you,' he exclaimed, with a violent reaching out of his mind, so to speak, in the direction of his regular and familiar blandness, 'that Miss Nielsen's privacy is as sacred to me as to you. Will you go below and see that her light is all right? It is a matter that as much concerns your safety as ours.'
Without answering him, I opened the locker, replaced the bottle, and continuing to puff out great clouds of smoke through the excitement under which I laboured—for I had been prepared for a hand-to-hand struggle with him, and my heart beat fast to the resolution of my temper—I quitted the cuddy, with a loud call to Punmeamootty to follow me and replace the hatch.
Whether the coloured steward put the hatch on, whether, indeed, he followed me as I bade him, I cannot tell. I found the lantern burning bravely and swinging fiercely under the beam, and extinguished it, and lay down completely clothed, with the exception of my boots, shrewdly guessing there would be little sleep for me that night.
That it blew at any time as hard as it had when we were aboard the Anine, I cannot say; enough that the dreadful maddened motions of the old vessel made a truly hideous gale of wind of the weather. Again and again she would tumble off the head of a sea and fall headlong into the yawn of water at the base, heeling over as she fell, till you would have believed the line of her masts parallel with the horizon, and strike herself such a mighty blow when she got to the bottom, that you listened, with a thumping heart, for a crackling and a rending noise of timbers to tell you that she was going to pieces like a child's house of cards. It was impossible to sleep; twice I was flung from my bunk, and came very near to breaking a limb. I called to Helga, and found her awake. I asked her how she did; but, silver-clear and keen as her voice was, I could not catch her answer.
It is likely that towards the small hours of the morning I now and again snatched a few minutes of sleep. From one of these brief spells of slumber I was aroused by the blow of a sea that thrilled like an electric shock through every plank and fastening of the vessel, and to my great joy I observed, as I thought, the faint gray of dawn colouring the dim and weeping glass of the scuttle. I immediately pulled on my boots and made for the hatch, but the cover was on and the darkness was as deep as ever it had been at midnight. I considered for a minute how I should make myself heard, and groping my way back to my berth, I took a loose plank, or bunk-board as it is called, from out of the sea-bedstead, and with it succeeded in raising such a thunder in the hollow cover that in a few minutes it was lifted. The homely, flat, ruddy-cheeked face of Jacob, his head clothed in a somewhat tattered yellow sou'-wester, which he had probably borrowed from one of his coloured mates forward, looked down upon me through the glimmering square of the aperture.
'Why, blowed, Mr. Tregarthen,' cried he, 'if Oi didn't think the barque was ashore! But ye'd have had to hammer much louder and much longer before escaping from that rat-trap, if it hadn't been for me a-sheltering of moyself under this 'ere break.'
It was a wild scene indeed to arrive on deck and suddenly view. Furious as was the behaviour of the barque, I could have got no notion of the weight of the surge from her capers. A huge swelling, livid, frothing surface—every billow looking to rear to the height of the maintop, where it was shattered and blown into a snowstorm—a heaven of whirling soot: this, in brief, was the picture. The vessel, however, was undamaged aloft. She was lying hove-to under a band of close-reefed topsail, which glanced like a sheet of foam against the stooping dismal dusk of the sky. None of the dark-skinned crew were visible. Jacob roared in my ear that they had been half wild with fear during the night.
'There's some sort of superstition a-working in them,' he shouted; 'they've been a-praying and a-praying horrible, arter their fashion. Lucky for the ship that she was snugged afore the storm busted. Them poor covies ain't agoing to save their lives when the call comes for them to live or perish.'
'Who has the watch?' said I.
'The mate,' he answered.
I looked at my watch, and was astonished to find that it was after eight. I had believed the hour to be daybreak, but, indeed, it was surprising that any light at all should have had power to sift through that storm-laden sky. Helga at this moment showed in the hatch. I took her hand. She looked pale, but her mouth was firm as she swept the boiling, swollen scene with her gaze, holding the deck with feet that seemed to float above the planks.
'What a night it has been!' she cried. 'This is a bad ship for bad weather. Hour after hour I have been thinking that she was going to pieces!'
I told Jacob to replace the hatch-cover, and the girl and I entered the cuddy, as it was impossible to converse in the open; while, spite of the parallel on which we reeled, the weight of the wind carried an edge as of a Channel January blast in it. In the comparative shelter of the interior we were able to talk, and I told her how I had behaved to the Captain on the previous night.
'Nothing that we can do,' said she, 'can signify while this weather lasts!'
'No, indeed!' I exclaimed. 'We must now pray for the ship to live. Our leaving her is made a twopenny consideration of by this gale.'
She rose to look at the tell-tale compass, and returned to my side with a look of concern and a sad shake of the head.
'This must end our dream of Santa Cruz,' said she.
'It was an idle dream at the best,' I answered.
'Unless it should result in disabling the barque!' she continued. She added, with a little passion, as she looked through the cuddy window on to the quarter-deck: 'I wish all three masts would go overboard!'
'Leaving the hull sound,' said I.
'Yes, yes, leaving the hull sound. I would be content to roll about in this hateful vessel for a whole fortnight, if I could be sure of being taken off at the end. Anything, anything to terminate this cruel, this ridiculous captivity!'
As these words left her lips, the Captain came down the companion-steps. He paused on seeing us, as though he had supposed the cuddy empty, and was ashamed to be seen in that figure. The dried white salt lay like flour in his eyes, his whiskers were mere rags of wet hair; a large globule of salt water hung at the end of his nose, like a gem worn after the Eastern fashion. He struggled along to where we sat, and extended his hand to Helga. In his most unctuous manner, that contrasted ludicrously with his streaming oilskins, he expressed the hope that she had slept well, lamented the severity of the gale, for her sake, but assured her there was no danger, that the barque was making noble weather of it, and that he expected the wind to moderate before noon. He held her hand while he spoke, despite her visible efforts to withdraw it from his grasp. He then addressed me:
'I have to apologize,' he exclaimed, 'for a little exhibition of temper last night. I employed an expletive which I am happy to think has not escaped me for years. The provocation was great—the anxieties of the gale—the loss of a foretopmast-staysail—the ruined crockery on the deck—a bottle of my valuable cordial-brandy wasted—Punmeamootty's somewhat insolent stupidity: the most pious mind might be reasonably forgiven for venting itself in the language of the forecastle, under the irritation of so many trials! But I offer you my apologies, Mr. Tregarthen, and I hope, sir, that you slept well!'
I answered him coldly and with averted eyes, being now resolved to persevere in my assumption of contemptuous dislike, which I also desired he should believe was animated by a determination to punish him when I got ashore.
He went to his cabin to refresh himself, first taking care to inform us, with a large smile, that he had spent the whole of the night on deck in looking after the vessel, 'whose safety,' he exclaimed, with a significant leer at Helga, 'has been rendered extraordinarily precious to me since Monday last.'
I now told her—for I had forgotten the incident—how our oily friend had whipped out a small oath on the previous night.
'So, then, he has humanized himself to you?' said she, laughing.
'It is the only symptom of sincerity I have observed in him,' I exclaimed.
He reappeared presently, soaped, shining, and smiling, with dried whiskers floating smoke-like on either hand a purple satin cravat. But the breakfast was to be a poor one that morning. The cook, it seems, could not keep the galley fire alight, and we had to make the best meal we could off a tin of preserved meat and some biscuit and wine-and-water. The Captain was profusely apologetic to Helga, and unctuously ascribed the poverty of the meal to me, who, he said with an air of jocosity, was the cause of half a ham and an excellent piece of beef being rendered unfit for the table. I made no answer to this. Indeed, Helga and I sat like mutes at that table; but the Captain talked abundantly, almost wholly addressing himself to the girl. In truth, it was now easy to see that the unfortunate man was head over ears in love with her. His gaze was a prolonged stare of admiration, and he seemed to find nothing in her behaviour to chill or repel him. On the contrary, the more she kept her eyes downwards bent, the colder and harder grew her face, the more taciturn she was—again and again not vouchsafing even a monosyllabic answer to him—the more he warmed towards her, the more he encroached in his behaviour. If he had any sensibility, it was armour-clad by complacency. I never could have believed that vanity had such power as I here found to sheath so impenetrably the human understanding. 'Well,' thought I to myself, 'all this means a voyage for Helga, if not for me. Assuredly he'll not part with her this side of the Cape, and the fool's hope,' I thought, as I let my eyes rest on the grinning mask of his countenance, 'is that he will have won her long before he reaches the parallel of thirty-four degrees south, though he has to make the most of every calm and of every gale of wind to achieve his end.'
I will not attempt to follow the hours of that day. They were little more than a repetition of our experiences in the Anine. The Captain came and went, but for the most part Helga and I remained in the cabin. The gale somewhat moderated at noon, as the skipper had predicted; but it still blew too hard to make sail on the ship, and she lay hove-to in the trough, sickening me to the inmost recesses of my soul with her extravagant somersaults and prodigious falls and upheavals. Somewhere about half-past four that afternoon, on looking through the cuddy-window, I saw Jacob smoking a pipe in the shelter of the projection of the Captain's and mate's cabins. I thought I would keep him company, and, having cut up a pipe of tobacco for myself, I quitted Helga, who showed a disposition to doze, and joined the boatman.
The wind made a great howling aloft, and the thunderous wash of the breaking waters against the vessel's side put a wild note of storm into the shrieking and hissing and hooting of the rigging. But it was fairly calm in the recess, and we conversed very easily. I asked Jacob, while I pointed over the lee-rail at the huge, dark-green, froth-laced backs of the seas rushing from the ship in headlong race, what would be his thoughts of this weather if he were aboard the Early Morn.
'Why, the lugger 'ud be doing as well as this here bucket, any way,' said he.
'Captain Bunting,' said I, 'will think that you are not half grateful enough for your deliverance.'
'He is a proper gentleman!' he exclaimed. 'Abraham swears there ain't the likes of him afloat for politeness; but his crew ben't of Abey's mind, I'm afraid. Looks to me as if there's going to be trouble.'
'Anything fresh happened?' I asked.
'It's all along of this matter of sarving out pork to them chaps as won't eat it, Mr. Tregarthen. The mate gave 'em pork again to-day. There ain't no galley fire alight, so it's all the same to them coloured chaps whether it be pork or beef. But it's the principle of it what's a-sticking in their gizzards. Nakier says to me, "It would be allee de same if de water boil," says he, "for it is eider pork or no meat," by which he sinnified that if so be as it was fine weather and the galley fire goin', the men's dinner to-day 'ud be pork or nothen. Now, Mr. Tregarthen, Oi allow that they don't mean to keep all on enduring of this here treatment.'
'What have you noticed to make you suppose this?' said I, with a glance along the deserted decks, dark with sobbing wet, and often shrouded forwards by vast showers of flying spray.
'Well,' he answered, 'all the darkies has been a-sitting below saving the chap at the wheel, there being nothen for them to do on deck. I was in the fok'sle when Nakier comes down and tells the men that it was to be pork again. I couldn't understand him, for he spoke his own language, but guessed what was up when I heerd the hullabaloo his words raised. They all began to sing out together in a sort of screeching voice like the row made by a crowd of women a-quarrelling and a-pulling the hair out of each other's heads up a halley. Some skipped about in their rage as though there was a fiddle going. One chap, him with a face like a decayed lemon, he outs with his knife and falls a-stabbing of the atmosphere; and Oi tell ye, Mr. Tregarthen, when I saw that I just drawed my legs up into my bunk and tried to make myself as little as possible, with the hope of escaping his hobservation, for damme! thought I, if that there article's agoing to run amuck, as I've heerd tell the likes of him is in the habit of doing, strike me dark, thinks Oi, if I ben't the fust man he'll fall foul on!'
'What was said?' I asked.
'Why, ask yourself the question, sir! What do monkeys say when they start a-yelling. Who's to know what they said?'
'How do you know, then, that it was the serving out of pork again that excited them?' said I.
'Whoy, that there Nakier told me so arterwards.'
'Ha!' I exclaimed; 'and for how long did they go on shrieking, as you say, and brandishing their knives?'
'It was over wonderful soon,' he answered. 'Nakier looked on whilst they was all a-shouting together, then said something, and it was like blowing the head off a pint o' ale—nothen remained but flatness. They just stood and listened whilst Nakier spouted, and ye should ha' seen 'em a-nodding and a-grimacing, and brandishing their arms and slapping their legs; but they never said nothen; they just took and listened. Tell 'ee, Mr. Tregarthen, the suddenness of it, and the looks of 'em, was something to bring the pusperation out of the pores of a Polar bear.'
'What does Abraham think?' said I.
'Whoy, I dunno how it is, he don't seem to obsarve—appears to find nothen to take to heart. He's growed a bit consequential, being now what the skipper would call a orficer, and though he sleeps forrard his feelings is aft. 'Tis mere growling, he thinks, with the fellows. But there's more 'n that,' said he, striking a match and catching the flame of it in his clasped hand, and lighting his pipe as easily as if there were not a breath of air stirring.
'The lunatic of a Captain has eyes in his head,' said I, thinking aloud rather than conversing. 'If he can't see the mischief his mad notion of conversion is breeding, it is not for me to point it out. In fact, I heartily wish the Malays would seize the barque and sail her to Madeira or the Canaries. Is it not abominable that Miss Nielsen and I should be carried away to the Cape of Good Hope against our will by that long-whiskered rogue?' signifying the Captain by a backward motion of my head at the cabin.
'Abraham was a-telling me about this here traverse. The skipper's gone and fallen in love with the young lady, ain't he?' said Jacob, with a grin overspreading his flat face.
'Yes,' said I, 'and hopes by keeping her aboard to win her heart. The dolt!'
'Dunno about dolt, sir!' exclaimed Jacob. 'She's a nice-looking young gal, is Miss Nielsen, and, I allow, just the sort of wife as a shipmaster would live heasy vith.'
'You argue as vilely as Abraham,' said I, looking at him angrily. 'Will you pretend that this Captain is not acting outrageously in detaining the young lady on board his ship—imprisoning her, in short—for that is what it comes to?'
A little look of intelligence gave a new expression to the flat-faced fellow's smile as he respectfully surveyed me.
'Well, sir—I don't blame you, I can't blame you,' he exclaimed. 'I've kep' company myself. I was for five year along with as nice a gal as was ever seen in Deal, a-courting and a-courting, and always too pore to git spliced. I know what the passion of jealousy is. She took up with a corporal of Marines, and, I tell ye, I suffered. It came roight, then it went wrong again, and it ended in her marrying a measly little slice of a chap, named Billy Tusser, who'd saved a bit out o' sprattin' and hovellin'. I can't blame 'ee, sir.'
It was not a matter to pursue with this worthy man, whose small intelligence lay too deep to be worth boring for; so I dropped the subject, and talked afresh of the coloured crew, and continued lingering till I could not have told how long our chat lasted. Though the gale was much less hard than it had blown down from noon, it was still a very violent wind, and the sea as wild as ever it had been, with the shadow of the evening now to add a darker tinge of gloom to the whirl of stooping, sooty heaven, under which every head of surge broke like a flash of ghastly light. The vessel was a strangely desolate picture—not a living creature to be seen forward, the decks half drowned, water sluicing white off the forecastle rim, or blowing up into the wind from off that raised deck in bursts of crystalline smoke, like corkscrew leapings of fine snow to the hurl of a blast roaring across a wintry moor. The black gear curved black with wet: again and again the vessel would pitch into the head sea till the spreading froth made by the massive plunge of her round bows rose to her forecastle rail. I had had enough of the cold and the wet; the cheerless picture of the barque and the ocean, too, was unspeakably depressing, and, with a glance round at the near horizon of broken creaming waters on which nothing showed, I bestowed a nod of farewell on Jacob, and re-entered the cuddy.
Captain Bunting was sitting close to Helga. The light was so weak in this interior that I had to peer a little to make sure that it was the Captain, for the dim figure might well have been the mate's. Helga was at the extreme end of the locker, as though she had uneasily worked her way from his side while they sat; but he had followed, and was now close, and her next and only step to get rid of him must be to rise. He was addressing her very earnestly when I entered; his whiskers floated from his cheeks as he bent towards her. Though the cuddy was charged with the complaining sounds of the labouring fabric, speech was very easy within it, nor was it necessary to raise the voice. Indeed, the interior had the effect of a hush upon my ears, coming as I did fresh from the shriek and thunder of the weather out on deck.
On seeing me the Captain instantly broke off, sat up, and called out:
'Well, and how are things looking on deck?'
Helga rose and went to the little window against the door.
'The weather could not be worse,' I answered, with the air and tone of sullenness I had resolved on. 'Your ship is too old and squab for such a conflict.'
'She is old, but she is a stout ship,' he answered. 'She will be afloat when scores of what you might consider beauties have vanished.'
'I think not,' said I, looking towards Helga, and wondering what the man had been saying to her.
'Let us hope,' he exclaimed, lifting a great pilot coat from the locker and struggling into it, 'that the necessity for your remaining here will not last very much longer. I should have expected handsomer treatment at your hands, Mr. Tregarthen.'
'I do not know what you can find to base such an expectation on,' I cried. 'Your detention of us is cruel, and, as I hope and believe, punishable. But there is no good in discussing that matter with you here and now. I have merely to beg that we may be as strangers while we are so unfortunate as to be together in the same ship.'
He drew his sou'-wester down upon his head, surveying me meanwhile; but I witnessed no malevolence in his regard; indeed, I may say, no trace of temper. His enduring smile lay broad with such expansion, indeed, as gave an air of elation to his face.
'No,' said he, wagging his head, while he slipped the elastic band of his sou'-wester behind his whisker; 'we will not live together as strangers, as you desire. Brotherly love is still practicable, and nothing that you can say or do, my young friend, shall dissuade me from cultivating it. That we shall be long together I do not believe,' he added, with a significance that astonished me and sent my eyes askant at Helga, whose back was still upon us. 'Meanwhile, endeavour to be contented. To have content is to have all, and to have all is to be richer than the richest.'
He inclined his sou'-westered head in an odd benedictory, grotesque nod, or bow, and, with a half-pause in his manner as though he would call some speech to Helga, turned on his heel and went on deck.
'What has he been saying, Helga?'
She looked round, and, finding the Captain gone, came to my side and locked her fingers upon my arm. She had drawn to me with a pale face, but the blood flushed her throat and cheeks as she let fall her eyes from mine. I had never before thought her so sweet as she showed at that moment. She was without a hat, and her short fair hair glimmered on her head in the gathering gloom of the evening with a sheen like the glancing of bright amber. My memory gave me a thought full of beauty—a wild caprice of sentiment at such a time:
'The freshness of new hay is on thy hair,
And the withdrawing innocence of home
Within thine eye.'
'What has he been saying to you, Helga?'
'That he loves me,' she answered, now fixing her artless, tender gaze upon me, though her blush lingered.
'A fine time to tell you such a thing! Does that sort of sea-captain wait for a gale of wind to propose to a girl?' I exclaimed, with a sudden irritation of jealousy tingling through me, and I looked at her closely and suspiciously.
'I wanted to be angry, but could not,' said she. 'I hate the man, yet I could not be angry with him. He spoke of his daughter—he did not talk through his nose—he did not cant at all. Is "cant" the right word? I felt sorry; I had not the heart to answer him in rudeness, and to have risen and left him whilst he was speaking would have been rudeness.'
I made a slight effort to disengage my arm from her clasp.
'He told me—no doubt you heard him,' said I—'he told me he believed there would be no necessity to keep me long. He is a clever man—a shrewd man. Well, after this I shall believe in all the proverbs about women.'
'What do you mean?' she exclaimed in a startled voice, letting fall her hands and staring at me.
'What do you mean?'
'Why, that I am sorry for the man, and hate him.'
'Oh! if you keep sorry long you will soon cease to hate him.'
'No, no!' she cried with a little passion, making as if to clasp my arm afresh, and then shrinking. 'I could not help his coming here and speaking to me.'
'That is true.'
'Why are you angry?'
Her gaze pleaded, her lips twitched, even as she looked at me her blue eyes filled. Her grieved, pretty face, her wistful, tender, tearful face, must have transformed my temper into impassioned pity, into self-reproach, into keen self-resentment, even had there been solid ground for vexation. I took her hand and lifted it to my lips.
'Forgive me; we have been much together. Our association and your father's dying words make me think of you as mine until—until—the long and short of it is, Helga, I am jealous!'
An expression of delight entered and vanished from her face. She stood thoughtfully looking down on the deck. Just then Punmeamootty entered to prepare the table for supper, and Helga again went to the cabin window and stood looking out, lightly, with unconscious ease and grace, swaying to the stormy heave of the deck, with her hands clasped behind her in a posture of meditation.