Volume II Part 18 (1/2)

'Perfectly well,' answered the Captain, 'or how should I and Mr. Jones get along, think you?'

'Well,' exclaimed Abraham: 'I han't had much to say to 'em as yet. One chap's been talking a good deal this evening, and I allow he's got a grievance, as most sailors has. There's some sort o' difficulty: I allow it lies in the eating; but a man wants practice to follow noicely what them there sort o' coloured covies has to say.'

'Well,' exclaimed the Captain, with another bland wave of the hand in dismissal of the subject, 'we understand each other, at all events, my lad.'

He went to the locker from which he had extracted the biscuits, produced a bottle of rum, and filled a winegla.s.s.

'Neat or with water?' said he, smiling.

'I've pretty nigh had enough water for to-day, sir,' answered Abraham, grinning too, and looking very well pleased at this act of attention.

'Here's to you, sir, I'm sure, and wis.h.i.+ng you a prosperous woyage. Mr.

Tregarthen, your health, sir, and yourn, miss, and may ye both soon get home and find everything comfortable and roight.' He drained the gla.s.s with a smack of his lips. 'As pretty a little drop o' rum as I've had this many a day,' said he.

'You can tell Jacob to lay aft presently,' said the Captain, 'when the steward is at liberty, and he will give him such another dose. That will do.'

Abraham knuckled his forehead, pausing to say to me in a hoa.r.s.e whisper, which must have been perfectly audible to the Captain. 'A noice gemman, and no mistake.'

'I am going below,' said the Captain when he was gone, 'to see after your accommodation. Will you sit here,' addressing Helga, 'or will you go on deck for a few turns? I fear you will find the air chilly.'

'I will go on deck with you, Hugh,' answered Helga.

The Captain ran his eye over her.

'You are without luggage,' said he, 'and, alas! wanting in almost everything; but if you will allow me----' he broke off and went to his cabin, and before we could have found time to exchange a whisper, returned with a very handsome, almost new, fur coat.

'Now, Miss Nielsen,' said he, 'you will allow me to wrap you in this.'

'Indeed my jacket will keep me warm,' she answered, with that same look of shrinking in her face I have before described.

'Nay, but wear it, Helga,' said I, anxious to meet the man, at all events, halfway in his kindness. 'It is a delightful coat--the very thing for the keen wind that is blowing on deck!'

Had I offered to put it on for her she would at once have consented, but I could observe the recoil in her from the garment stretched in the Captain's hands, with his pale fat face smiling betwixt his long whiskers over the top of it. On a sudden, however, she turned and suffered him to put the coat on her, which he did with great ostentation of anxiety and a vast deal of smiling, and, as I could not help perceiving, with a deal more of lingering over the act than there was the least occasion for.

'Wonderfully becoming, indeed!' he exclaimed; 'and now to see that your cabin is comfortable.'

He pa.s.sed through the door, and we mounted the companion steps.

The night was so dark that there was very little of the vessel to be seen. Her dim s.p.a.ces of canvas made a mere pale whistling shadow of her as they floated, waving and bowing, in dim heaps through the obscurity.

There was a frequent glancing of white water to windward and a dampness as of spray in the wind, but the little barque tossed with dry decks over the brisk Atlantic heave, crus.h.i.+ng the water off either bow into a dull light of seething, against which, when she stooped her head, the round of the forecastle showed like a segment of the shadow in a partial eclipse of the moon. The haze of the cabin-lamp lay about the skylight, and the figure of the mate appeared in and vanished past it with monotonous regularity as he paced the short p.o.o.p. There was a haze of light, too, about the binnacle-stand, with a sort of elusive stealing into it of the outline of the man at the helm. Forward the vessel lay in blackness. It was blowing what sailors call a top-gallant breeze, with, perhaps, more weight in it even than that; but the squabness of this _Light of the World_ promised great stiffness, and, though the wind had drawn some point or so forward while we were at table, the barque rose as stiff to it as though she had been under reefed topsails.

'Will you take my arm, Helga?' said I.

'Let me first turn up the sleeves of this coat,' said she.

I helped her to do this; she then put her hand under my arm, and we started to walk the lee-side of the deck as briskly as the swing of the planks would suffer. Scarcely were we in motion when the mate came down to us from the weather-side.

'Beg pardon,' said he. 'Won't you and the lady walk to wind'ard?'

'Oh, we shall be in your way!' I answered. 'It is a cold wind.'