Volume I Part 7 (1/2)

'Yes. I was talking to him when you were thrown from the wheel. I knew what had happened by the behaviour of the vessel. I ran out, and feared you were lost.'

'What does he counsel?'

'It is still his wish that we should go on putting plenty of sea betwixt us and the land. But do you notice that the gale has gone somewhat into the north? He will be glad to hear it, now that we are no longer scudding. Our drift should put us well clear of the Land's End, and, indeed, I dare say now we are being thrust away at several miles in the hour from the coast. He is very anxious to know if the _Anine_ has taken in water, and wishes me to sound the well. I fear I shall not be able to do this alone.'

'Why should you?' cried I. 'You shall do nothing alone! I cannot credit that you are a girl! Such spirit--such courage--such knowledge of a calling the very last in the wide world that women are likely to understand! Pray let me ask your name?'

'Helga Nielsen,' she answered. 'My father is Peter Nielsen--Captain Peter Nielsen,' she repeated. 'And your name?'

'Hugh Tregarthen,' said I.

'It is sad that you should be here,' said she, 'brought away from your home, suffering all this hards.h.i.+p and peril! You came to save our lives.

G.o.d will bless you, sir. I pray that the good G.o.d may protect and restore you to those you love.'

Spite of the roar of the wind, and the ceaseless cras.h.i.+ng and seething sound of the smiting and colliding seas, I could catch the falter of emotion in her voice as she p.r.o.nounced these words; but then, as you will suppose, we were close together, standing shoulder to shoulder against the binnacle, while we exchanged these sentences.

'There is refreshment in the cabin,' said she, after a pause of a moment or two. 'You need support. This has been a severe night of work for you, sir, from the hour of your putting off to us in the lifeboat.'

I found myself smiling at the motherly tenderness conveyed in the tone of her voice. I longed to have a clear view of her, for it was still like talking in a pitch-dark room; the binnacle-lamp needed tr.i.m.m.i.n.g, its light was feeble, and the sky lay horribly black over the ocean, that was raging, ghastly with pallid glances of sheets of foam under it.

'Let us first sound the well, if possible,' said I, 'for our lives' sake we ought to find out what is happening below!'

By this time we had watched and waited long enough to satisfy ourselves that the barque would do as well as we dared hope with her helm lashed; and it also happened, very fortunately, that her yards were in the right trim for the posture in which she lay, having been pointed to the wind--the fore-yards on one tack, the main-yards on the other--when the gale came on to blow in the bay, and the braces had not since been touched. I walked with the girl to the entrance of the deck-house, the door of which faced forwards. She entered the structure and, while I waited outside, lighted a bull's-eye lamp, with which she rejoined me, and together we went forward to another house built abaft of the galley.

This had been the place in which the crew slept. The carpenter's chest was here, and also the sounding-rod. We then went to the pumps, and while I held the lamp she dropped the rod down the sounding-pipe, drew it up and brought it to the light and examined it, and named the depth of water there was in the hold. I do not recollect the figure, but I remember that, though it was significant, there was nothing greatly to alarm us in it, seeing how heavily and how frequently the barque had been flooded with the seas, and how much of the water might have made its way from above.

I recount this little pa.s.sage in a few lines, yet it forms one of the most sharp-cut of the memories of my adventure. The picture is before me as I write. I see the pair of us as we come to a dead stand, grasping each other for support, while the vessel rolls madly over on the slope of some huge hurtling sea. I see the bright glare from the bull's-eye lamp in the girl's hand, dancing like a will-o'-the-wisp upon the black flood betwixt the rails was.h.i.+ng with the slant of the decks to our knees; I see her dropping the rod down the tube, coolly examining it, declaring its indication, while, to the flash of the lamplight, I catch an instant's glimpse of her face, s.h.i.+ning out white--large-eyed, as it seemed to me--upon the blackness rus.h.i.+ng in thunder athwart the deck.

She led the way into the deck-house. There was a small lantern wildly swinging at a central beam--my companion had lighted it when she procured the bull's-eye lamp--it diffused a good l.u.s.tre, and I could see very plainly. It was just a plain, ordinary, s.h.i.+pboard interior, with three little windows of a side, a short table, lockers on either hand, and a sleeping-berth, or cabin, designed for the captain's use, aft; the companion-hatch, which led to the deck below, was betwixt the after-end of the cabin and the bulkhead of the berth, but the rapid glance I threw around speedily settled, as you may suppose, into a look--a long look--full of curiosity, surprise, and admiration, at the girl.

She stood before me dressed as a sailor lad, in a suit of pilot cloth and a red silk handkerchief round her throat; but her first act on entering was to remove her cloth cap, that was streaming wet, and throw it down upon the table; and thus she stood with her eyes fixed on me, as mine were on her, each of us surveying the other. Her hair was cut short, and was rough and plentiful, without remains of any sort of fas.h.i.+on in the wearing of it--nay, indeed, it was unparted. It was very fair hair, and as pale as amber in the lamplight. Her eyebrows were of a darker colour, and very perfectly arched, as though pencilled. It was impossible to guess the hue of her eyes by that light: they seemed of a very dark blue, such as might prove violet in the suns.h.i.+ne, soft and liquid, and of an expression, even in that hour of peril, of the horror of tempest, of the prospect of death, indeed, that might make one readily suppose her of a nature both sweet and merry. There was no sign of exposure to the weather upon her face; she was white with the paleness of fatigue and emotion. Her cheeks were plump, her mouth small, the under-lip a little pouted, and her teeth pearl-like and very regular. Even by the light in which I now surveyed her, I never for a moment could have mistaken her for a lad. There was nothing in her garb to neutralize for an instant the suggestions of her s.e.x.

'I will take you to my father,' said she; 'but you must first eat and drink.'

I could not have told how exhausted I was until I sank down upon a locker and rested my arms upon the table. I was too wearied to ask the questions that I should have put to her at another time, and could do no more than watch her, with a sort of dull wonder at her nimbleness, and the spirit and resolution of her movements as she lifted the lid of the locker and produced a case-bottle of Hollands, some cold meat, and a tin of white biscuits.

'We have no bread,' said she, smiling; 'we obtained some loaves off the Isle of Wight, but the last was eaten yesterday.'

She took a tumbler from a rack and mixed a draught of the Hollands with some water which she got from a filter fixed to a stanchion, and extended the gla.s.s.

'Pray let me follow you!' said I. She shook her head. 'Yes!' I cried; 'G.o.d knows you should need some such tonic more than I!'

I induced her to drink, and then took the gla.s.s and emptied it. A second dram warmed and heartened me. I was without appet.i.te, but was willing to eat for the sake of such strength as might come from a meal. The girl made herself a sandwich of biscuit and meat, and we fell to. And so we sat facing each other, eating, staring at each other; the pair of us all the while hearkening with all our ears to the roaring noises outside, to the straining sounds within the s.h.i.+p, and feeling--I speak of myself--with every nerve tense as a fiddlestring, the desperate slants and falls and uprisals of the deck or platform upon which our feet rested.

CHAPTER V.

DAWN.

There was refreshment, however, to every sense, beyond language to express, in the shelter which this deck-house provided after our long term of exposure to the pouring of the raging gale, into which was put the further weight of volumes of spray, that swept to the face like leaden hail, and carried the shriek of the shot of musketry as it slung past the ear. It was calm in this deck-house; the deafening sounds without came somewhat m.u.f.fled here; but the furious motion of the vessel was startlingly ill.u.s.trated by the play of the hanging lantern, and the swing of the illuminated globe was made the wilder and more wonderful by the calm of the atmosphere in which it oscillated.