CHAPTER VII.
THE RAFT.
How passed the rest of this the first day of my wild and dangerous adventure, of Helga's and my first day of suffering, peril, and romantic experience, I cannot clearly recall. A few impressions only survive. I remember returning to the deck-house and finding the captain still sleeping. I remember conversing with Helga, who looked me very earnestly in the face when I entered, and who, by some indefinable influence of voice and eye, coaxed me into speaking of my fit of horror on deck. I remember that she left me to obtain some food, which, it seems, was kept in one of the cabins below, and that she returned with a tin of preserved meat, a little glass jar of jam, a tin of biscuits, and a bottle of red wine like to what we had before drunk—a very pleasant, well-flavoured claret; that all the while we ate, her father slept, which made her happy, as she said he needed rest, not having closed his eyes for three nights and days, though it was wonderful to me that he should have fallen asleep in such a mood of excitement and of consternation as I had left him in; but as to his slumbering amid that uproar of straining timbers and flying waters, it is enough to say that he was a seaman.
I also recollect that throughout the remainder of the day we worked the pump at every two hours or thereabouts; but the water was unmistakably gaining upon the barque, and to keep her free would have needed the incessant plying of the pumps—both pumps at once—by gangs of fellows who could relieve one another and rest between. Helga told me that her father had given orders for a windmill pump to be rigged, Scandinavian fashion, but that there had been some delay, so the barque sailed without it. I said that no windmill pump would have stood up half an hour in such a gale of wind as was blowing; but all the same, I bitterly lamented that there was nothing of the sort aboard, for these windmill arrangements keep the pumps going by the revolution of their sails, and such a thing must have proved inexpressibly valuable when the weather should moderate, so as to allow us to erect it.
The Captain slept far into the afternoon, but I could not observe when he awoke that he was the better for his long spell of rest. I entered his cabin fresh from a look round on deck, and found him just awake, with his eyes fixed upon his daughter, who sat slumbering upon the locker, with her back against the cabin-wall and her pale face bowed upon her breast. He immediately attacked me with questions, delivered in notes so high, penetrating, and feverish with hurry and alarm that they awoke Helga. We had to tell him the truth—I mean, that the water was gaining, but slowly, so that it must conquer us if the gale continued, yet we might still hope to find a chance of our lives by keeping the pump going. He broke into many passionate exclamations of distress and grief, and then was silent, with the air of one who abandons hope.
'There are but two, and one of them a girl,' I heard him say, lifting his eyes to the deck above as he spoke.
The night was a dreadful time to look forward to. While there was daylight, while one could see, one's spirits seemed to retain a little buoyancy; but, speaking for myself, I dreaded the effect upon my mind of a second interminable time of blackness, filled with the horrors of the groaning and howling gale, of the dizzy motion of the tormented fabric, of the heart-subduing noises of waters pouring in thunder and beating in volcanic shocks against and over the struggling vessel.
Well, there came round the hour of nine o'clock by my watch. Long before, after returning from a spirit-breaking spell of toil at the pump, we had lighted the deck-house and binnacle lamps, had eaten our third meal that day to answer for tea or supper, and at Helga's entreaty I had lain down upon the deck-house locker to sleep for an hour or so if I could, while she went to watch by her father and to keep an eye upon the ship by an occasional visit to the deck.
We had arranged that she should awaken me at nine, that we should then apply ourselves afresh to the pump, that she should afterwards take my place upon the locker till eleven, I, meanwhile, seeing to her father and to the barque, and that we should thus proceed in these alternations throughout the night. It was now nine o'clock. I awoke, and was looking at my watch when Helga entered from the deck. She came up to me and took my hands, and cried: