'Helga Nielsen.'
He nodded approvingly, as though pleased with the sound of the name.
'She's a nice little gal, upon my word!' said he; 'too good to belong to any other country nor Britain. Them Danes gets hold of the English tongue wonderful fast. Take a Swede or a Dutchman: it's yaw yaw with them to the end of their time. But I've met Danes as ye wouldn't know from Deal men, so fust-class was their speech.' He slowly carried his chin to his shoulder, to take a view of the weather astern, and then, fastening his eyes with 'longshore leisureliness upon my face—and I now noticed for the first time that he slightly squinted—he said, 'It's a good job that we fell in with 'ee, Mr. Tregarthen; for if so be as you two had kept all on washing about on that there raft till noon to-day—and I give ye till noon—ye'd be wanting no man's help nor prayers afterwards. It's agoing to blow.'
'Yes,' said I, 'there's wind enough in that sky there; in fact it's freshening a bit already, isn't it?' For I now perceived the keener feathering and sharper play upon the waters, and the harder and broader racing of the yeast that was pouring away from either quarter of the lugger. 'There's been a shift of the wind, too, I think,' I added, trying to catch a sight of the dusky interior of a little compass-box that stood on the seat close against Abraham.
'Yes, it's drawed norradly,' he answered. 'I ain't sorry, for it's like justifying of me for not setting ye ashore. I did think, when the young lady asked me to steer for England, that I wasn't acting the part of a humane man in refusing of her, and for keeping all on stretching the distance between you and your home. But I reckoned upon the wind drawing ahead for a homeward-bound course, and now it has; so that if we was to keep you a week and get ye aboard a steamer at the end of it you'd stand to get home sooner than if we was to down hellum now and start aratching for your coast.'
'We owe our lives to you,' said I cordially. 'Not likely that we could wish to inconvenience you by causing your lugger to swerve by so much as a foot from her course.'
CHAPTER II.
HEADING SOUTH.
Just then Helga rose through the hatch. I caught an expression of admiration in Abraham's face at her floating, graceful manner of passing through the little aperture.