Volume III Part 7 (1/2)

He went to his cabin to refresh himself, first taking care to inform us, with a large smile, that he had spent the whole of the night on deck in looking after the vessel, 'whose safety,' he exclaimed, with a significant leer at Helga, 'has been rendered extraordinarily precious to me since Monday last.'

I now told her--for I had forgotten the incident--how our oily friend had whipped out a small oath on the previous night.

'So, then, he has humanized himself to you?' said she, laughing.

'It is the only symptom of sincerity I have observed in him,' I exclaimed.

He reappeared presently, soaped, s.h.i.+ning, and smiling, with dried whiskers floating smoke-like on either hand a purple satin cravat. But the breakfast was to be a poor one that morning. The cook, it seems, could not keep the galley fire alight, and we had to make the best meal we could off a tin of preserved meat and some biscuit and wine-and-water. The Captain was profusely apologetic to Helga, and unctuously ascribed the poverty of the meal to me, who, he said with an air of jocosity, was the cause of half a ham and an excellent piece of beef being rendered unfit for the table. I made no answer to this.

Indeed, Helga and I sat like mutes at that table; but the Captain talked abundantly, almost wholly addressing himself to the girl. In truth, it was now easy to see that the unfortunate man was head over ears in love with her. His gaze was a prolonged stare of admiration, and he seemed to find nothing in her behaviour to chill or repel him. On the contrary, the more she kept her eyes downwards bent, the colder and harder grew her face, the more taciturn she was--again and again not vouchsafing even a monosyllabic answer to him--the more he warmed towards her, the more he encroached in his behaviour. If he had any sensibility, it was armour-clad by complacency. I never could have believed that vanity had such power as I here found to sheath so impenetrably the human understanding. 'Well,' thought I to myself, 'all this means a voyage for Helga, if not for me. a.s.suredly he'll not part with her this side of the Cape, and the fool's hope,' I thought, as I let my eyes rest on the grinning mask of his countenance, 'is that he will have won her long before he reaches the parallel of thirty-four degrees south, though he has to make the most of every calm and of every gale of wind to achieve his end.'

I will not attempt to follow the hours of that day. They were little more than a repet.i.tion of our experiences in the _Anine_. The Captain came and went, but for the most part Helga and I remained in the cabin.

The gale somewhat moderated at noon, as the skipper had predicted; but it still blew too hard to make sail on the s.h.i.+p, and she lay hove-to in the trough, sickening me to the inmost recesses of my soul with her extravagant somersaults and prodigious falls and upheavals. Somewhere about half-past four that afternoon, on looking through the cuddy-window, I saw Jacob smoking a pipe in the shelter of the projection of the Captain's and mate's cabins. I thought I would keep him company, and, having cut up a pipe of tobacco for myself, I quitted Helga, who showed a disposition to doze, and joined the boatman.

The wind made a great howling aloft, and the thunderous wash of the breaking waters against the vessel's side put a wild note of storm into the shrieking and hissing and hooting of the rigging. But it was fairly calm in the recess, and we conversed very easily. I asked Jacob, while I pointed over the lee-rail at the huge, dark-green, froth-laced backs of the seas rus.h.i.+ng from the s.h.i.+p in headlong race, what would be his thoughts of this weather if he were aboard the _Early Morn_.

'Why, the lugger 'ud be doing as well as this here bucket, any way,'

said he.

'Captain Bunting,' said I, 'will think that you are not half grateful enough for your deliverance.'

'He is a proper gentleman!' he exclaimed. 'Abraham swears there ain't the likes of him afloat for politeness; but his crew ben't of Abey's mind, I'm afraid. Looks to me as if there's going to be trouble.'

'Anything fresh happened?' I asked.

'It's all along of this matter of sarving out pork to them chaps as won't eat it, Mr. Tregarthen. The mate gave 'em pork again to-day. There ain't no galley fire alight, so it's all the same to them coloured chaps whether it be pork or beef. But it's the principle of it what's a-sticking in their gizzards. Nakier says to me, ”It would be allee de same if de water boil,” says he, ”for it is eider pork or no meat,” by which he sinnified that if so be as it was fine weather and the galley fire goin', the men's dinner to-day 'ud be pork or nothen. Now, Mr.

Tregarthen, Oi allow that they don't mean to keep all on enduring of this here treatment.'

'What have you noticed to make you suppose this?' said I, with a glance along the deserted decks, dark with sobbing wet, and often shrouded forwards by vast showers of flying spray.

'Well,' he answered, 'all the darkies has been a-sitting below saving the chap at the wheel, there being nothen for them to do on deck. I was in the fok'sle when Nakier comes down and tells the men that it was to be pork again. I couldn't understand him, for he spoke his own language, but guessed what was up when I heerd the hullabaloo his words raised.

They all began to sing out together in a sort of screeching voice like the row made by a crowd of women a-quarrelling and a-pulling the hair out of each other's heads up a halley. Some skipped about in their rage as though there was a fiddle going. One chap, him with a face like a decayed lemon, he outs with his knife and falls a-stabbing of the atmosphere; and Oi tell ye, Mr. Tregarthen, when I saw _that_ I just drawed my legs up into my bunk and tried to make myself as little as possible, with the hope of escaping his hobservation, for damme! thought I, if that there article's agoing to run amuck, as I've heerd tell the likes of him is in the habit of doing, strike me dark, thinks Oi, if I ben't the fust man he'll fall foul on!'

'What was said?' I asked.

'Why, ask yourself the question, sir! What do monkeys say when they start a-yelling. Who's to know _what_ they said?'

'How do you know, then, that it was the serving out of pork again that excited them?' said I.

'Whoy, that there Nakier told me so arterwards.'

'Ha!' I exclaimed; 'and for how long did they go on shrieking, as you say, and brandis.h.i.+ng their knives?'

'It was over wonderful soon,' he answered. 'Nakier looked on whilst they was all a-shouting together, then said something, and it was like blowing the head off a pint o' ale--nothen remained but flatness. They just stood and listened whilst Nakier spouted, and ye should ha' seen 'em a-nodding and a-grimacing, and brandis.h.i.+ng their arms and slapping their legs; but they never said nothen; they just took and listened.

Tell 'ee, Mr. Tregarthen, the suddenness of it, and the looks of 'em, was something to bring the pusperation out of the pores of a Polar bear.'

'What does Abraham think?' said I.