My Danish Sweetheart: A Novel. Volume 3 of 3

by William Clark Russell

This time I could distinctly recognise the melodious voice of Nakier: 'It is allee right now. Oh, how sweet is dis breeving! Why you wantchee keep us here?'

He was proceeding, but I cut him short; the liberation of the wretched creatures was not to be entertained for an instant, and it could merely grieve my heart to the quick, without staggering my resolution, to listen to the protests and appeals of them as they stood directly under the hatch in that small, black, oppressive hole of a forecastle.

After this all remained quiet among them. I was happy to believe that they were free from suffering; but, though I knew the hatch to be secure as though it was shut tight and the hinged bar bolted, yet it was impossible not to feel uneasy at the thought of its lying even a little way open. Of all the nights that Helga and I had as yet passed, this one of Friday, November the 3rd, was the fullest of anxiety, the most horribly trying. The wind held very light; the darkness was richly burthened with stars, there was much fire in the sea too, and the moon, that was drawing on to her half, rode in brilliance over the dark world of waters which mirrored her light in a wedge of rippling silver that seemed to sink a hundred miles deep. We dared not leave the hatch unwatched a minute, and our little company of four we divided into watches, thus: one man to sentinel the Malays, two resting, the fourth at the wheel. But there was to be no rest for me, nor could Helga sleep, and for the greater space of the night we kept the deck together.

Yet there were times when anxiety would yield to a quiet, pure emotion of happiness, when I had my little sweetheart's hand under my arm, and when by the clear light of the moon I gazed upon her face and thought of her as my own, as my first love, to be my wife presently, as I might hope—a gift of sweetness and of gentleness and of heroism, as it might well seem to me, from old Ocean himself. That she loved me fondly I did truly believe and, indeed, know. It might be that the memory of her father's words to me had directed, and now consecrated, her affection. She loved me, too, as one who had adventured his life to save hers, who had suffered grievously in that attempt—as one, moreover, whom bereavement, whom distress, privation, all that we had endured, in short, had rendered intimate to her heart as a friend, and, as it might be, now that her father was gone and she was a girl destitute of means, her only friend. All had happened since October the 21st: it was now the 3rd of November. A little less than a fortnight had sufficed for the holding of this wild, adventurous, tragical, yet sweet passage of our lives. But how much may happen in fourteen days! Seeds sown in the spirit have time to shoot, to bud, and to blossom—ay, and often to wither—in a shorter compass of time. Was my dear mother living? Oh! I might hope that, seeing that, if ever Captain Bunting's message about me had been delivered, she would before this be knowing that I was safe, or alive, at least. What would she think of Helga? What of me, coming back with a sweetheart, and eager for marriage?—coming back with a young girl of whom I could tell her no more than this: that she was brave and good and gentle; an heroic daughter; all that was lovely and fair in girlhood meeting in her Danish and English blood.

The morning broke. All through the night there had been silence in the forecastle; but daylight showed how the extreme vigilance of those long hours had worked in my face, as I might tell by no other mirror than Helga's eyes, whose gaze was full of concern as we viewed each other by the spreading light of the dawn. There was the dim gleam of a ship's canvas right abreast of us to starboard, and that was all to be seen the whole horizon round.

After we had got breakfast, the three of us went forward and received the empty breaker from the fellows below, contriving on our removing the stretchers so to pose ourselves as to be ready to beat down the first of them if a rush should be attempted, and instantly close the hatch. The breaker came empty to our hands. We filled and lowered it as on the previous evening, then left the hatch a little open as before; and now, so far as the provisioning of the fellows was concerned, our work for the day was ended, seeing that they had beef and biscuit enough to last them for several days. They made no complaint as to the heat or want of air; but after we had lowered the little cask, and were fixing the stretchers, several of them shouted out to know what we meant to do with them, and I heard Nakier vowing that if we released them they would be honest, that they had sworn by the Koran and would go to hell if they deceived us; but we went on securing the hatch with deaf ears, and then Jacob and I went aft, leaving Abraham to watch.

The sun was hanging about two hours and a half high over the western sea-line that afternoon, when the light air that had been little more than a crawling wind all day freshened into a pleasant breeze with weight enough slightly to incline the broad-beamed barque. This pleasant warm blowing was a refreshment to every sense: it poured cool upon our heated faces; it raised a brook-like murmur, a sound as of some shallow fretting stream on either hand the vessel; and, above all, it soothed us with a sense and reality of motion, for to it the barque broke the smooth waters bravely, and the wake of her, polished and iridescent as oil, went away astern to the scope of two or three cables. A few wool-white clouds floated along the slowly darkening blue like puffs of steam from the funnel of a newly started locomotive; but they had not the look of the trade cloud, Helga said. She had taken sights at noon, had worked out the vessel's reckoning, and had made me see that it would not need very many hours of sailing to heave the high land of Teneriffe into sight over the bow, if only wind enough would hold to give the old bucket that floated under us headway.

I was holding the wheel at this hour I am speaking of, and Helga was abreast of me, leaning against the rail, sending her soft blue glances round the sea as she talked. Abraham, with a pipe in his mouth, his arms folded, and his head depressed, was slowly marching up and down beside the forecastle hatch. Jacob lay sound asleep upon a locker in the cuddy within easy reach of a shout down the companionway or through the skylight.

On a sudden my attention was taken from what Helga was saying, and I found myself staring at the mainmast, which was what is called at sea a 'bright' mast—that is to say, unpainted, so that the slowly crimsoning sun found a reflection in it, and the western splendour lay in a line of pinkish radiance upon the surface of the wood. This line, along with a portion of the spar, to the height, perhaps, of eighteen or twenty feet, seemed to be slowly revolving, as though, in fact, it were part of a gigantic corkscrew, quietly turned from the depth of the hold. At first I believed it might be the heat of the atmosphere. Helga observing that I stared, looked too, and instantly cried out:

'The vessel is on fire!'