Volume II Part 12 (1/2)

He pulled at his long whiskers with a complacent smile, now contemplating me and now Helga.

'Captain Bunting,' said I, 'this lady and myself are s.h.i.+pwrecked people, very eager indeed to get home. We have met with some hard adventures, and this lady, the daughter of the master of the barque _Anine_, has not only undergone the miseries of s.h.i.+pwreck, the hards.h.i.+ps of a raft, and some days of wretchedness aboard that open boat alongside: she has been afflicted, besides, by the death of her father.'

'Very sorry indeed to hear it, miss,' said the Captain; 'but let this be your consolation, that every man's earthly father is bound to die at some time or other, but man's Heavenly Father remains with him for ever.'

Helga bowed her head. Language of this kind in the mouth of a plain sea-captain comforted me greatly as a warrant of goodwill and help.

'I'm sure,' said I, 'I may count upon your kindness to receive this lady and me and put us aboard the first homeward-bound s.h.i.+p that we may encounter.'

'Why, of course, it is my duty as a Christian man,' he answered, 'to be of service to all sorrowing persons that I may happen to fall in with. A Deal lugger--as I may presume your little s.h.i.+p to be--is no fit abode for a young lady of sweet-and-twenty----'

He was about to add something, but at that moment Abraham came up the ladder, followed by the white man whom I had noticed standing on the forecastle.

'What can I do for you, my man?' said the Captain, turning to Abraham.

'Whoy, sir, it's loike this----' began Abraham.

'He wants us to give him a spare boom to serve as a mast, sir,' clipped in the other, who, as I presently got to know, was the first mate of the vessel--a sandy-haired, pale-faced man, with the lightest-blue eyes I had ever seen, a little pimple of a nose, which the sun had caught, and which glowed red, in violent contrast with his veal-coloured cheeks. He was dressed in a plain suit of pilot-cloth, with a shovel peaked cap; but the old pair of carpet slippers he wore gave him a down-at-heels look.

'A spare boom!' cried the Captain. 'That's a big order, my lad. Why, the sight of your boat made me think I hadn't got rid of the Downs yet!

There's no hovelling to be done down here, is there?'

'They're carrying out the boat to Australia, sir!' said the mate.

The Captain looked hard at Abraham.

'For a consideration, I suppose?' said he.

'Ay, sir, for a consideration, as you say,' responded Abraham, grinning broadly, and clearly very much gratified by the Captain's reception of him.

'Then,' said the Captain, pulling down his whiskers and smiling with an expression of self-complacency not to be conveyed in words, 'I do not for a moment doubt that you _are_ carrying that lugger to Australia, for my opinion of the Deal boatmen is this: that for a consideration they would carry their immortal souls to the gates of the devil's palace, and then return to their public-houses, get drunk on the money they had received, and roll about bragging how they had bested Old Nick himself!

Spare boom for a mast, eh?' he continued, peering into Abraham's face.

'What's your name, my man?'

'Abraham Vise,' answered the boatman, apparently too much astonished as yet to be angry.

'Well, see here, friend Abraham,' said the Captain turning up his eyes and blandly pointing aloft, 'my s.h.i.+p isn't a forest, and spare booms don't grow aboard us. And yet,' said he, once again peering closely into Abraham's face, 'you're evidently a fellow-Christian in distress, and it's my duty to help you! I suppose you _are_ a Christian?'

'Born one!' answered Abraham.

'Then, Mr. Jones,' exclaimed the Captain, 'go round the s.h.i.+p with friend Abraham Vise, and see what's to be come at in the shape of a spare boom. Off with you now! Time's time on the ocean, and I can't keep my tops'l aback all day.'

The two men went off the p.o.o.p. The Captain asked me my name, then inquired Helga's, and said, 'Mr. Tregarthen, and you, Miss Nielsen, I will ask you to step below. I have a drop of wine in my cabin, and a gla.s.s of it can hurt neither of you. Come along, if you please;' and, so saying, he led the way to a little companion-hatch, down which he bundled, with Helga and myself in his wake; and T recollect, as I turned to put my foot upon the first of the steps, that I took notice (with a sort of wonder in me that pa.s.sed through my mind with the velocity of thought) of the lemon-coloured face of a man standing at the wheel, with such a scowl upon his brow, that looked to be withered by the sun to the aspect of the rind of a rotten orange, and with such a fierce, glaring expression in his dusky eyes, the pupils of which lay like a drop of ink slowly filtering out upon a slip of coloured blotting-paper, that but for the hurry I was in to follow the Captain I must have lingered to glance again and yet again at the strange, fierce, forbidding creature.

We entered a plain little state-cabin, or living-room, filled with the furniture that is commonly to be seen in craft of this sort--a table, lockers, two or three chairs, a swinging tray, a lamp, and the like. The Captain asked us to sit, and disappeared in a berth forward of the state-cabin; but he returned too speedily to suffer Helga and me to exchange words. He put a bottle of marsala upon the table, took the winegla.s.ses from a rack affixed to a beam, and produced from a side-locker a plate of mixed biscuits. He filled the gla.s.ses, and, with his singular smile and equally curious bow, drank our healths, adding that he hoped to have the pleasure of speedily trans.h.i.+pping us.

He had removed his wideawake hat, and there was nothing, for the moment, to distract me from a swift but comprehensive survey of him. He had a long hooked nose, small, restless eyes, and hair so plentiful that it curled upon his back. His cheeks were perfectly colourless, and of an unwholesome dinginess, and hung very fat behind his long whiskers, and I found him remarkable for the appearance of his mouth, the upper lip of which was as thick as the lower. He might have pa.s.sed very well for a London tradesman--a man who had become almost bloodless through long years of serving behind a counter in a dark shop. He had nothing whatever of the sailor in his aspect--I do not mean the theatrical sailor, our old friend of the purple nose and grog-blossomed skin, but of that ordinary every-day mariner whom one may meet with in thousands in the docks of Great Britain. But that, however, which I seemed to find most remarkable in him was his smile. It was the haunting of his countenance by the very spectre of mirth. There was no life, no sincerity in it. Nevertheless, it caused a perpetual play of features more or less defined, informed by an expression which made one instantly perceive that Captain Joppa Bunting had the highest possible opinion of himself.

He asked me for my story, and I gave it him, he, meanwhile, listening to me with his singular smile, and his eyes almost embarra.s.singly rooted upon my face.