Volume III Part 1 (1/2)

My Danish Sweetheart.

Volume 3.

by William Clark Russell.

CHAPTER I.

WE SPEAK A s.h.i.+P.

On the afternoon of this same day of Tuesday, October 31, Helga having gone to her cabin, I stepped on deck to smoke a pipe--for my pipe was in my pocket when I ran to the lifeboat, and Captain Bunting had given me a square of tobacco to cut up.

We had dined at one. During the course of the meal Helga and I had said but very little, willing that the Captain should have the labour of talking. Nor did he spare us. His tongue, as sailors say, seemed to have been slung in the middle, and it wagged at both ends. His chatter was an infinite variety of nothing; but he spoke with singular enjoyment of the sound of his own voice, with ceaseless reference, besides, in his manner, to Helga, whom he continued silently and self-complacently to regard in a way that rendered her constantly uneasy, and kept her downward-looking and silent.

But nothing more at that table was said about our leaving his s.h.i.+p.

Indeed, both Helga and I had agreed to drop the subject until an opportunity for our transference should arrive. We might, at all events, be very certain that he would not set us ash.o.r.e in the Canary Islands; nor did I consider it politic to press him to land us there, for, waiving all consideration of other reasons which might induce him to detain us, it would have been unreasonable to entreat him to go out of his course to oblige us, who were without the means to repay him for his trouble and for loss of time.

He withdrew to his cabin after dinner. Helga and I sat over his draughtboard for half an hour; she then went below, and I, as I have already said, on deck, to smoke a pipe.

The wind had freshened since noon, and was now blowing a brisk and sparkling breeze out of something to the northward of east; sail had been heaped upon the barque, and when I gained the deck I found her swarming through it under overhanging wings of studdingsail, a broad wake of frost-like foam stretching behind, and many flying fish sparking out of the blue curl from the vessel's cut.w.a.ter ere the polished round of brine flashed into foam abreast of the fore-rigging. Mr. Jones stumped the deck, having relieved Abraham at noon. The fierce-faced, lemon-coloured creature with withered brow and fiery glances grasped the wheel. As I crouched under the lee of the companion-hatch to light my pipe, I curiously and intently inspected him; strangely enough, finding no hindrance of embarra.s.sment from his staring at me too; which, I take it, was owing to his exceeding ugliness, so that I looked at him as at something out of nature, whose sensibilities were not of a human sort to grieve me with a fancy of vexing them.

'Well, Mr. Jones,' said I, crossing the deck and accosting the shabby figure of the mate as he slouched from one end to another in shambling slippers and in a cap with a broken peak, under which his thimble-shaped nose glowed in the middle of his pale face like--to match the poor creature with an elegant simile--the heart of a daisy, 'this is a very good wind for you, but bad for me, seeing how the s.h.i.+p heads. I want to get home, Mr. Jones. I have now been absent for nearly eleven days, though my start was but for an hour or two's cruise.'

'There's no man at sea,' said he, 'but wants to get home, unless he's got no home to go to. That's my case.'

'Where do you hail from?'

'Whitechapel,' he answered, 'when I'm ash.o.r.e. I live in a big house; they call it the Sailors' Home. There are no wives to be found there, so that the good of it is to make a man glad to s.h.i.+p.'

'The sea is a hard life,' said I, 'and a very great deal harder than it need be--so Nakier and his men think, I warrant you. There's too much pork goes to the making of the Captain's religious ideas.'

'The pork in this s.h.i.+p,' said he, 'is better than the beef; and what is good enough for English sailors is good enough for Malays.'

'Ay! but the poor fellows' religion is opposed to pork.'

'Don't you let them make you believe it, sir,' he exclaimed. 'Religion!

You should hear them swear in Englis.h.!.+ They want a grievance. That's the nature of everything afore the mast, no matter what be the colour of the hide it's wrapped up in.'

'What sort of sailors are they?'

'Oh, they tumble about; they're monkeys aloft; they're willing enough; I'm bound to say that.'

I could instinctively guess that whatever opinions I might offer on the Captain's treatment of his crew would find no echo in him. Poverty must make such a man the creature of any s.h.i.+pmaster he sailed with.

'Have you received orders from Captain Bunting,' I asked, 'to signal and bring-to any homeward s.h.i.+p that may come along?'

'No, sir.'

'We wish to be trans.h.i.+pped, you know, Mr. Jones. We should be sorry to lose the opportunity of a homeward-bounder through the Captain omitting to give you orders, and through his being below and asleep, perhaps, at the time.'