'Shall I go first?' said I.
Helga uttered a clear laugh. 'I should be ashamed,' she answered, 'not to be able to enter a ship's forecastle without help;' and so saying, she put her little foot upon the first of the pieces of wood nailed against the bulkhead and serving as steps, and descended. I followed, bidding Nakier, as I entered the hatch, to order every mother's son of his crew to attend, since it was a question for all hands, and their decision was to be final.
It was a time of emotions and sensations, and memory recalls but little more. I remember that one after another, in response to Nakier's call, the men who were on deck dropped below, till the forecastle was full of dusky, grotesquely attired shapes. The daylight streamed down through the oblong yawn of hatch. The flame of a slush-lamp charged the interior with an atmosphere of greasy smoke. Some bunks went on either hand, and a few hammocks dangled from the upper deck. There was a square table fixed to the stout after-bulkhead that divided this compartment from the hold. The men seemed to be without other wearing apparel than that they stood up in. I saw no sea-chests, no bags, merely here and there a shoe, a cap, a sou'-wester, an oilskin smock dangling at a nail. The murmur of the water, broken by the stealthily sliding stem, penetrated the stillness with a subdued sound of hissing like the swift respiration of the men, who gathered about Helga and me as we stood at the table with the chart open before us. Hard by the table was a stove, the chimney of which, in a zigzag, pierced the deck, showing its head well out of the way, close against the hollow under the top-gallant forecastle, where the windlass was.
Pressing my forefinger upon the chart, the curling corners of which were held down by Nakier on the one hand and Helga on the other, I fell to explaining my views, as I chose to call them, meanwhile looking round to observe that all hands of the Malays and Cingalese were present—for the creatures had a trick of coming and going like shadows. I bade them all listen, looking into one face after another, and I can see them now, shouldering one another and eagerly bending forwards—a strange, gloomy huddle of discoloured countenances flashful with eyes, and of many expressions. Some of them barely understood English, apart from the plain sea-going terms, and these frowned down upon the chart, or at me, in their effort to understand my meaning. Upon every man's left hip was strapped the inevitable sheath-knife of the sailor, accessible in a twist of the wrist, and my breath for a little while grew laboured, while I cursed myself for not having acted upon the first motion of my mind after Nakier had laid the capful of naked blades at Helga's feet.
'See here, now!' I exclaimed, addressing the men generally: 'judge of the time and leagues we might be able to save by making for St. Helena Bay, or say Saldanha Bay, instead of Mossel Bay. Here is Simon's Town, and in this bight, as all of you know, lie several of her Majesty's ships. Figure a cruiser requiring us to bring to, and sending a boat aboard us. What then?'
The few of the fellows who understood me breathed hard and looked at Nakier. One of them, with a Dutch accent, exclaimed:
'Boss! how far it be from Saldanha Bay to Cape Town?'
Nakier said something almost fiercely to him in his native tongue. The man responded in a dialect that certainly, to my ear, did not resemble Nakier's—but this might have been owing to the swinish thickness of his utterance—and, having spoken, he thrust one of his mates aside to get nearer to the table, and, putting his grimy thumb on the part of the chart where Simon's Bay was marked, he stared at Nakier, nodding with a vehemence that seemed a sort of fury in him—immediately afterwards rounding upon the others, and gesticulating with his hand to his neck, clearly signifying a halter.
'No, no!' cried Nakier.
'How far?—how far, boss?' shouted the other, addressing me.