“You do not mean to say that they will not help us if there really is danger?” said the Swede.
“Upon my word, I hope there will not be any real danger; for if you expect any help from them, I can tell you that you will not get it.”
“Not get it!” said Birger, who did not at all seem to relish the prospect before him.
“That you will not. Sink or swim, we sink or swim by our own exertions. Those scoundrels could not help us without losing a whole tide up the river, a whole day’s pay of the men, and so much per cent. on the cargo, besides the chance of being forestalled in the market: do you think they would do that to save the lives of half-a-hundred such as you and me? Why, you have not learned your interest tables; you do not seem to understand how much twenty per cent. in a year comes to for a day. A precious deal more than our lives are worth, I can tell you.”
Birger looked graver still; drowning for a soldier was not a professional death, and he did not relish the idea of it.
The Captain continued his words of comfort. “I was very nearly losing a brother this way myself,” he said. “He was invalided from the coast of Africa, and had taken his passage home in a merchant vessel. They had met with a gale of wind off the Scillies; the ship had sprung a leak, and when the gale had subsided to a gentle easterly breeze dead against them, there were they within twenty miles of the Longships, water-logged, with all their boats stove, and their bulwarks gone. Timber ships do not sink very readily, and incessant pumping had kept them afloat, but it was touch and go with that—their decks awash, and the seas rolling in at one side and out at the other. While they were in this state, the whole outward-bound fleet of English ships passed them, some almost within hailing distance, and all without taking more notice of them than those scoundrels are taking of us. They would, all hands, have gone to the bottom together, in the very midst of their countrymen, if a French brig had not picked them off and carried them into Falmouth. It was so near a thing, that the vessel sank almost before the last boat had shoved off from her side.
“Well,” said Birger, “if there is a selfish brute upon earth, it is an English sailor.”
“Natural enough that you should say so, just at present,” said the Captain; “though, as a Swede, you might have recollected the superstition that prevails in your own country against helping a drowning man. But the fact is, the fault lies not so much with the sailors as with the insurance regulations at Lloyds’. Likely enough, every one of these fellows has a desire to help us; but if they go one cable’s length from their course to do so, or if they stay one half-hour by us when they might have been making their way to their port, they vitiate their insurance. Man is a selfish animal, no doubt—sea-going man as well as shore-going man—and it is very possible that some of them would rather see their neighbours perish than lose the first of the market; but laws such as these render selfishness imperatively necessary to self-preservation, and banish humanity from the maritime code.”
“I wish all Lloyds’ were on the Shipwash,” said Birger, “and had to wait there till I picked them off.”
“Yes,” said the Captain; “or that the House of Commons were compelled to take a winter’s voyage every year in some of these company’s vessels. I think, then, they might possibly find out the advantage of certain laws and certain officers to see them put in force, in order to prevent their going to sea so wretchedly found. There is nothing like personal experience for these legislators. This vessel has not a boat bigger than a cockle-shell belonging to her. Did you not hear how nearly the Mate was lost last night,—and he is the only real sailor in the ship—when they were trying to lay out an anchor—a manœuvre which, I see, they have not accomplished yet?”