'You will not be able to jump from the gangway. Get into the fore-chains, and I will endeavour to haul the raft up to you.'
But even as I spoke she grasped her dress, and disclosed her little feet, and with a bound gained the raft as it rose with the swell, yielding on her knees as she struck the platform with the grace that nothing but the teaching of old ocean could have communicated to her limbs.
'Thank God you are here!' I cried, catching her by the hand. 'I was growing uneasy—in another minute I should have sought you.'
She faintly smiled, and then turned eagerly to her father.
'I have my mother's portrait,' said she, pointing to the parcel, 'and her Bible. I would not bring away more. If we are to perish, they will go with us.'
He looked at her with a lack-lustre eye, and in a low voice addressed a few words to her in Danish. She answered in that tongue, glancing down at her dress, and then at me, and added, in English, 'It was time, father. The hard work is over. I may be a girl now;' and looking along the sea she sighed bitterly.
Her father brought his knitted hands together to his brow, and never could I have imagined the like of the look of mental anguish that was on his face as he did this. But what I am here narrating did not occupy above a minute or two. Indeed, a longer delay than this was not to have been suffered if we desired the raft to hold together. I let go the line that held the little structure to the barque, and getting the small studdingsail boom over—that is, the boom we had shipped to serve as a signal-mast—I thrust with it, and, Helga helping me, we got the raft clear of the side of the vessel. The leewardly swell on which we rode did the rest for us and not a little rejoiced was I to find our miserable fabric gradually increasing its distance from the Anine; for if the barque foundered with us close alongside, we stood to be swamped in the vortex, the raft scattered, and ourselves left to drown.
It now wanted about twenty minutes to sundown. A weak air still blew, but the few clouds that still lived in the heavens floated overhead apparently motionless; yet the swell continued large, to our sensations at least, upon that flat structure, and the slope of the platform rapidly grew so distressing and fatiguing to our limbs, that we were glad to sit and obtain what refreshment we could from a short rest.
Among the things we had brought with us was the bull's-eye lamp, together with a can of oil, a parcel of meshes, and some lucifer-matches. I said to Helga:
'We should step, or set up, our mast before it grows dark.'