No! for this passage of calm, God forgive me! I could not feel grateful. The coward in me rose strong. I could not bless Heaven for what affected me as a brief pause before a dreadful end, that this very quiet of the night was only to render more lingering, and fuller, therefore, of suffering.
Captain Nielsen began to mutter. I did not need to listen to him for above a minute to gather that he was delirious. I could see the outline of Helga against the stars, bending over the cot. The thought of this heroic girl's distress, of her complicated anguish, rallied me, and I broke in a very passion of self-reproach from the degradation of my dejection. I drew to the cot, and Helga said:
'He is wandering in his mind.' She added, with a note of wailing in her voice, 'Jeg er nu alene! Jeg er nu alene!' by which she signified that she was now alone. I caught the meaning of the sentence from her pronunciation of it, and cried:
'Do not say you are alone, Helga! Besides, your father still lives. Hark! what does he say?'
So far he had been babbling in Danish; now he spoke in English, in a strange voice that sounded as though proceeding from someone at a distance.
'It is so, you see. The storks did not return last spring. There was to be trouble!—there was to be trouble! Ha! here is Pastor Madsen. Else, my beloved Else! here is the good Pastor Madsen. And there, too, is Rector Grönlund. Will he observe us? Else, he is deep in his book. Look!' he cried a little shrilly, pointing with a vehemence that startled me into following the indication of his shadowy glimmering hand directed into the darkness over the sea. 'It is Kolding Latin School—nay, it is Rector Grönlund's parsonage garden. Ah, Rector, you remember me? This is the little Else that your good wife thought the prettiest child in Denmark. And this is Pastor Madsen.'
He paused, then muttered in Danish, and fell silent.