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My Danish Sweetheart Volume 2

<h2>CHAPTER III.</h2> <h3>A 'LONGSHORE QUARREL.</h3> We passed the afternoon in this way. Jacob was forward, sleeping; Thomas's turn at the helm had come round again; and Abraham lay over the lee rail, within grasp of the foresheet, lost in contemplation of the rushing waters. 'Where and when is this experience of ours going to end?' said I to Helga as we sat chatting. 'How fast are we travelling?' she asked. 'Between eight and nine miles an hour,' I answered. 'This has been our speed during the greater part of the day,' she said. 'Your home grows more and more distant, Hugh; but you will return to it.' 'Oh, I fear for neither of us, Helga,' said I. 'Were it not for my mother, I should not be anxious. But it will soon be a week since I left her, and, if she should hear that I was blown away out of the bay in the Anine, she will conclude that I perished in the vessel.' 'We must pray that God will support her and give her strength to await your return,' said she, speaking sadly, with her eyes bent down. What more could she say? It was one of those passages in life in which one is made to feel that Providence is all in all, when the very instinct of human action in one is arrested, and when there comes upon the spirit a deep pause of waiting for God's will. I looked at her earnestly as she sat by my side, and found myself dwelling with an almost loverlike pleasure upon the graces of her pale face, the delicacy of her lineaments, the refinement of prettiness that was heightened into something of dignity, maidenly as it was, by the fortitude of spirit her countenance expressed. 'Helga,' said I, 'what will you do when you return to Kolding?' 'I shall have to think,' she answered, with the scarcely perceptible accent of a passing tremor in her voice. 'You have no relatives, your father told me.' 'No; none. A few friends, but no relatives.' 'But your father has a house at Kolding?' 'He rented a house, but it will be no home for me if I cannot afford to maintain it. But let my future be my trouble, Hugh,' said she gently, looking at me, and always pronouncing my name as a sister might a brother's. 'Oh no!' said I. 'I am under a promise to your father—a promise that his death makes binding as a sacred oath upon me. Your future must be my business. If I carry you home in safety—I mean to my mother's home, Helga—I shall consider that I saved your life; and the life a man rescues it should be his privilege to render as easy and happy as it may lie in his power to make it. You have friends in my mother and me, even though you had not another in the wide world. So, Helga,' said I, taking her hand, 'however our strange rambles may end, you will promise me not to fret over what your future may hold when you get ashore.' She looked at me with her eyes impassioned with gratitude. Her lips moved, but no word escaped her, and she averted her face to hide her tears. Poor, brave, gentle little Helga! I spoke but out of my friendship and my sympathy for her, as who would not, situated as I was with her, my companion in distress, now an orphan, desolate, friendless, and poor? Yet I little knew then, heedless and inexperienced as I was in such matters, how pity in the heart of a young man will swiftly sweeten into deeper emotion when the object of it is young and fair and loving, and alone in the world. The sun went down on a wild scene of troubled, running, foaming waters, darkling into green as they leapt and broke along the western sky, that was of a thunderous, smoky tincture, with a hot, dim, and stormy scarlet which flushed the clouds to the zenith. Yet there had been no increase in the wind during the afternoon. It had settled into a hard breeze, good for outward-bounders, but of a sort to send everything heading north that was not steam scattering east and west, with yards fore-and-aft and tacks complaining. By this time I had grown very well used to the motion of the lugger, had marked her easy flight from liquid peak into foam-laced valley, the onward buoyant bound again, the steady rush upon the head of the creaming sea, with foam to the line of the bulwark-rail, and the air for an instant snowlike with flying spume, and all the while the inside of the boat as dry as toast. This, I say, I had noticed with increasing admiration of the sea-going qualities of the hearty, bouncing, stalwart little fabric; and I was no longer sensible of the anxiety that had before possessed me when I thought of this undecked lugger struggling with a strong and lumpish sea—a mere yawn upon the water, saving her forecastle—so that a single billow tumbling over the rail must send her to the bottom. 'Small wonder,' said I to Helga, as we sat watching the sunset and marking the behaviour of the boat, 'that these Deal luggers should have the greatest reputation of any 'longshore craft around the English coasts, if they are all like this vessel! Her crew's adventure for Australia is no longer the astonishment I first found it. One might fearlessly sail round the world in such a craft.' 'Yes,' she answered softly in my ear—for surly Thomas sat hard by—'if the men had the qualities of the boat! But how are they to reach Australia without knowing their longitude? And if you were one of the party, would you trust Abraham's latitude? My father taught me navigation; and, though I am far from skilful at it, I know quite enough to feel sure that such a rough observation as Abraham took to day will, every twenty-four hours, make him three or four miles wrong, even in his latitude. Where, then, will the Early Morn blunder to?' 'Well, they are plainly a sensitive crew,' said I, 'and if we want their goodwill, our business is to carry admiring faces, to find everything right, and say nothing.' This chat was ended by Abraham joining us. 'Now, lady,' said he, 'when would ye like to tarn in? The forepeak's to be yourn for the night. Name your hour, and whosoever's in it'll have to clear out.' 'I am grateful indeed!' she exclaimed, putting her hand upon his great hairy paw in a pretty, caressing way. 'Abraham,' said I, 'I hope we shall meet again after we have separated. I'll not forget your kindness to Miss Nielsen.' 'Say nothen about it, sir; say nothen about it!' he cried heartily. 'She's a sailor's daughter, for all he warn't an Englishman. Her father lies drownded, Mr. Tregarthen. If he was like his lass he'll have had a good heart, sir, and the sort of countenance one takes to at the first sight o't.' By the rusty light still living in the west I saw him turn his head to look forward and then aft; then lowering his voice into a deep sea growl he exclaimed: 'There's wan thing I should like to say: there's no call for either of ye to take any notice along of old Tommy. His feelings is all right; it's his vays as are wrong. Fact is,' and here he sent another look forward and then aft, 'Tommy's been a disapp'inted man in his marriages. His first vife took to drink, and was always a-combing of his hair with a three-legged stool, as Jack says. His second vife has the heart of a flint, spite of her prowiding him with ten children, fower by her first and six by Tommy. Of course it's got nothen to do with me; but there ain't the loike of Molly Budd—I mean Tommy's vife—in all Deal—ay, ye may say in all Kent—for vickedness. Tommy owned to me wan day that though she'd lost children—ay, and though she'd lost good money tew—he'd never knowed her to shed a tear saving wonst. That was when she went out a-chairing. The master of the house had been in the habit of leaving the beer-key in the cask for th' ale to be sarved out by the hupper servant. Molly Budd was a-cleaning there one day, when down comes word for the key to be drawed out of the cask, and never no more to be left in it. This started Molly. She broke down and cried for a hour. Tommy had some hopes of her on that, but she dried up arterwards, and has never showed any sort of weakness since. But, of course, this is between you and me and the bed-post, Mr. Tregarthen.' 'Oh, certainly!' said I. 'And now about the lady's sleeping,' he continued. 'I was anxious to see her snugly under cover; but she was in trouble to know how I was to get rest. I pointed to the open space under that overhanging ledge of deck which I have before described, and told her that I should find as good a bedroom there as I needed. So after some little discussion it was arranged that she should take possession of the forepeak at nine o'clock, and, meanwhile, Abraham undertook to so bulkhead the opening under the deck with a spare mizenmast-yard and sail as to ensure as much shelter as I should require. I believe he observed Helga's solicitude about me, and proposed this merely to please her: and for the same motive I consented, though I was very unwilling to give the poor honest fellows any unnecessary trouble. When the twilight died out, the night came down very black. A few lean, windy stars hovered wanly in the dark heights, and no light whatever fell from the sky; but the atmosphere low down upon the ocean was pale with the glare of the foam that was plentifully arching from the heads of the seas, and this vague illumination was in the boat to the degree that our figures were almost visible one to another. Indeed, a sort of wave of ghastly sheen would pass through the darkness amid which we sat each time the lugger buried herself in the foam raised by her shearing bounds, as though the dim reflection of a giant lantern had been thrown upon us from on high by some vast shadowy hand searching for what might be upon the sea. When nine o'clock arrived, Abraham went forward and routed Thomas out of the forepeak. The man muttered as he came aft to where we were, but I was resolved to have no ears for anything he might say at such a time. A sailor disturbed in his rest, grim, unshorn, scarcely awake, with the nipping night blast to exchange for his blanket, is proverbially the sulkiest and most growling of human wretches. 'I will see you to your chamber door, Helga,' said I, laughing. 'Abraham, can you spare the lady this lantern? She will not long need it.' 'She can have it as long as she likes,' he answered. 'Good-night to you, mum, and I hope you'll sleep well, I'm sure. Feared ye'll find the forepeak a bit noisy arter the silence of a big vessel's cabin.' She made some answer, and I picked up the lantern that had been placed in the bottom of the boat for us to sit round, and, with my companion, went clambering over the thwarts to the hatch. 'It is a dark little hole for you to sleep in, Helga,' said I, holding the lantern over the hatch while I peered down, 'but then—this time last night! Our chances we now know, but what were our hopes?' 'We may be even safer this time to-morrow night,' she answered, 'and rapidly making for England, let us pray!' 'Ay, indeed!' said I. 'Well, if you will get below, I will hand you down the light. Good-night, sleep well, and God bless you!' I grasped and held her hand, then let it go, and she descended, carrying with her the little parcel she had brought with her from the barque. I gave her the lantern, and returned to smoke a pipe in the bottom of the boat under the shelter of the stern sheets, before crawling to the sail that was to form my bed under the overhanging deck. Thomas, whose watch below it still was, was already resting under the ledge, Abraham steered, and Jacob sat with a pipe in his mouth to leeward. I noticed that one of these men always placed himself within instant reach of the foresheet. Abraham's talk altogether concerned Helga. He asked many questions about her, and got me to tell for the second time the story of her father's death upon the raft. He frequently broke into homely expressions of sympathy, and when I paused, after telling him that the girl was an orphan and without means, he said: 'Beg pardon, Mr. Tregarthen; but might I make so bold as to ask if so be as you're a married man?' 'No,' said I; 'I am single.' 'And is her heart her own, sir, d'ye know?' said he. 'For as like as not there may be some young Danish gent as keeps company with her ashore.' 'I can't tell you that,' said I. 'If so be as her heart's her own,' said he, 'then I think even old Tommy could tell 'ee what's agoing to happen.' 'What do you mean?' I asked. 'Why, of course,' said he, 'you're bound to marry her!' As she was out of hearing, I could well afford to laugh. 'Well,' said I, 'the sea has been the cause of more wonderful things than that! Any way, if I'm to marry her, you must put me in the way of doing so by sending us home as soon as you can.' 'Oy,' said he, 'that we'll do, and I don't reckon, master, that you'd be dispoged to wait ontil we've returned from Australey, that Tommy and me and Jacob might have the satisfaction of drinking your healths and cutting a caper at your marriage.' Jacob broke into a short roar that might or might not have denoted a laugh. 'I shall now turn in,' said I, 'for I am sleepy. But first I will see if Miss Nielsen is in want of anything, and bring the lantern aft to you.' I went forward and looked down the hatch. By stooping, so as to bring my face on a level with the coaming, I could see the girl. She had placed the lantern in her bunk, and was kneeling in prayer. Her mother's picture was placed behind the lantern, where it lay visible to her, and she held the Bible she had brought from the barque; but that she could read it in that light I doubted. I supposed, therefore, that she grasped it for its sacredness as an object and a relic while she prayed, as a Roman Catholic might hold a crucifix. I cannot express how much I was affected by this simple picture. Not for a million would I have wished her to guess that I watched her; and yet, knowing that she was unconscious I was near, I felt I was no intruder. She had removed her hat: the lantern-light touched her pale hair, and I could see her lips moving as she prayed, with a frequent lifting of her soft eyes. But the beauty, the wonder, the impressiveness of this picture of maidenly devotion came to it from what surrounded it. The little forepeak, dimly irradiated, showed like some fancy of an old painter upon the shadows and lights of whose masterly canvas lies the gloom of time. The strong wind was full of the noise of warring waters, and of its own wild crying; the foam of the surge roared about the lugger's cleaving bows, and to this was to be added the swift leaps, the level poising, the shooting, downward rushes of the little structure upon that wide, dark breast of wind-swept Atlantic. She rose to her feet, and, stooping always, for her stature exceeded the height of the upper deck, she carefully replaced the Bible and picture in their cover. I withdrew, and, after waiting a minute or two, I approached again and called down to ask if all was well with her. 'Yes, Hugh,' she answered, coming under the hatch with the lantern. 'I have made my bed. It was easily made. Will you take this light? The men may want it, and I shall not need to see down here.' I grasped the lantern, and told her I would hold it in the hatch that it might light her while she got into her bunk. 'Good-night, Hugh,' said she, and presently called, in her clear, gentle voice, to let me know that she was lying down; on which I took the lantern aft, and, without more ado, crawled under the platform, or raft, as the Deal boatmen called it, crept into a sail, and in a few moments was sound asleep. And now for three days, incredible as it will appear to those who are acquainted with that part of the sea which the lugger was then traversing, we sighted nothing—nothing, I mean, that provided us with the slenderest opportunity of speaking it. At very long intervals, it would be a little streak of canvas on the starboard or port sea-line, or some smudge of smoke from a steamer whose funnel was below the horizon; nothing more, and these so remote that the dim apparitions were as useless to us as though they had never been. The wind held northerly, and on the Friday and Saturday it blew freshly, and in those hours Abraham reckoned that the Early Morn had done a good two hundred and twenty miles in every day, counting from noon to noon. I was for ever searching the sea, and Helga's gaze was as constant as mine; until the eternal barrenness of the sinuous line of the ocean induced a kind of heart-sickness in me, and I would dismount from the thwart in a passion of vexation and disappointment, asking what had happened that no ship showed? Into what part of the sea had we drifted? Could this veritably be the confines of the Atlantic off the Biscayan coast and waters? or had we been transported by some devil into an unnavigated tract of ocean on the other side of the world? 'There's no want of ships,' Abraham said. 'The cuss of the matter is, we don't fall in with them. S'elp me, if I could only find one to give me a chance, I'd chivey her even if she showed the canvas of a R'yal Jarge.' 'If this goes on you'll have to carry us to Australia,' said I, guessing from my spirits as I spoke that I was carrying an uncommonly long and dismal countenance. 'Hope not,' exclaimed sour Tommy, who was at the helm at this time of conversation. ''Taint that we objects to your company; but where's the grub for five souls a-coming from?' 'Don't say nothen about that,' said Abraham sharply. 'Both the gent and the lady brought their own grub along with them. That ye know, Tommy, and I allow that ye hain't found their ham bad eating either. They came,' he added, softening as he looked at his mate, 'like a poor man's twins, each with a loaf clapped by the angels on to its back.' It was true enough that the provisions which had been removed from the raft would have sufficed Helga and me—well, I dare say, for a whole month, and perhaps six weeks, but for the three of the crew falling to the stock; and therefore I was not concerned by the reflection that we were eating into the poor fellows' slender larder. But, for all that, Thomas's remark touched me closely. I felt that if the three fellows, hearty and sailorly as were Abraham and Jacob—I say, I felt that if these three men were not already weary of us they must soon become so, more particularly if it should happen that they met with no ship to supply them with what they might require; in which case they would have to make for the nearest port, a delay they would attribute to us, and that might set them grumbling in their gizzards, and render us both miserable until we got ashore. However, I was no necromancer; I could not conjure up ships, and staring at the sea-line did not help us; but I very well recollect that that time of waiting and of expectation and of disappointment lay very heavily upon my spirits. There was something so strange in the desolation of this sea that I became melancholy and imaginative, and I remember that I foreboded a dark issue to my extraordinary adventure with Helga, insomuch that I took to heart a secret conviction I should never again see my mother—nay, that I should never again see my home. Sunday morning came. I found a fine bright day when I crawled out of my sail under the overhanging ledge. The wind came out of the east in the night, and the Early Morn, with her sheet aft, was buzzing over the long swell that came flowing and brimming to her side in lines of radiance in the flashing wake of the sun. Jacob was at the tiller, and, on my emerging, he instantly pointed ahead. I jumped on to a thwart, and perceived directly over the bows the leaning, alabaster-like shaft of a ship's canvas. 'How is she steering?' I cried. 'Slap for us,' he answered. 'Come!' I exclaimed with a sudden delight, 'we shall be giving you a farewell shake of the hand at last, I hope. You'll have to signal her,' I went on, looking at the lugger's masthead. 'What colours will you fly to make her know your wants?' 'Ye see that there pole?' exclaimed Thomas, in a grunting voice, pointing with a shovel-ended forefinger to the spare booms along the side of the boat. I nodded. 'Well,' said he, 'I suppose you know what the Jack is?' 'Certainly,' said I. 'Well,' he repeated, 'we seizes the Jack on to that there pole and hangs it over, and if that don't stop 'em it'll be 'cause they have a cargo of wheat aboard, the fumes of which'll have entered their eyes and struck 'em bloind.' 'That's so,' said Jacob, with a nod. Just then Abraham came from under the deck, and in another moment Helga rose through the little hatch, and they both joined us. 'At last, Helga!' I cried, with a triumphant face, pointing. She looked with her clear blue eyes for a little while in silence at the approaching vessel, as though to make sure of the direction she was heading in, then, clasping her hands, she exclaimed, drawing a breath like a sigh, 'Yes, at last. Hugh, your home is not so very far off now.' 'What's she loike?' said Abraham, bringing his knuckles out of his eyes and staring. He went to the locker for a little old-fashioned 'longshore telescope, pointed it, and said, 'A bit of a barque. A furriner.' He peered again, 'A Hamburger,' cried he. 'Look, Tommy!' The man put the glass to his eye and leaned against the rail, and his mouth lay with a sour curl under the little telescope as he stared through it. 'Yes, a whoite hull and a Hamburger,' said he 'and she's coming along tew. There'll be no time, I allow, to bile the coffee-pot afore she's abreast,' he added, casting a hungry, morose eye towards the little cooking-stove. 'Ye can loight the foire, Tommy,' said Abraham, 'whoilst I signalize her,' saying which he took an English Jack out of that locker in which he kept the soap, towels, and, it seemed to me, pretty well all the crew's little belongings, and, having secured the flag to the end of the pole, he thrust it over the side and fell to motioning with it, continuing to do so until it was impossible to doubt that the people of the little barque had beheld the signal. He then let the pole with the flag flying upon it rest upon the rail, and took hold of the fore-halliards in readiness to let the sail drop. I awaited the approach of the barque with breathless anxiety. I never questioned for a moment that she would take us aboard, and my thoughts flew ahead to the moment when Helga and I should be safely in her: when we should be looking round and finding a stout little ship under our feet, the lugger with her poor plucky Deal sailors standing away from us to the southward, and the horizon, past which lay the coast of Old England, fair over the bows. 'Shove us close alongside, Jacob,' cried Abraham. 'Shall 'ee hook on, Abraham?' inquired Jacob. 'No call to it,' answered Abraham. 'We'll down lug and hail her. She'll back her tawps'l, and I'll put the parties aboard in the punt.' 'I have left my parcel in the forepeak,' said Helga, and was going for it. 'I'm nimbler than you can be now, Helga,' said I, smiling, and meaning that now she was in her girlish attire she had not my activity. I jumped forward, and plunged down the hatch, took the parcel out of the bunk, and returned with it, all in such a wild, feverish hurry that one might have supposed the lugger was sinking, and that a moment of time might signify life or death to me. Abraham grinned, but made no remark. Thomas, on his knees before the stove, was sulkily blowing some shavings he had kindled. Jacob, with a wooden face at the tiller, was keeping the bows of the Early Morn on a line with the oncoming vessel. The barque was under a full breast of canvas, and was heeling prettily to the pleasant breeze of wind that was gushing brilliantly out of the eastern range of heaven, made glorious by the soaring sun. Her hull sat white as milk upon the dark-blue water, and her canvas rose in squares which resembled mother-of-pearl with the intermixture of shadow and flashing light upon them occasioned by her rolling, so that the cloths looked shot like watered silk or like the inside of an oyster-shell. But it was distance on top of the delight that her coming raised in me which gave her the enchantment I found in her, for, as she approached, her hull lost its snowstormglare and showed somewhat dingily with rusty stains from the scupper-holes. Her canvas, too, lost its symmetry, and exhibited an ill-set pile of cloths, most of the clews straining at a distance from the yardarm sheave holes, and I also took notice of the disfigurement of a stump-foretop-gallant-mast. 'Dirty as a Portugee,' said Abraham; 'yet she's Jarman all the same.' 'I never took kindly to the Jarmans, myself,' said Jacob; 'they're a shoving people, but they arn't clean. Give me the Dutch. What's to beat their cheeses? There's nothing made in England in the cheese line as aquils them Dutch cannon-balls, all pink outside and all cream hin.' 'Do you mean by a Hamburger a Hamburg ship?' asked Helga. 'Yes, lady, that's right,' answered Abraham. 'Then she's bound to Hamburg,' said the girl. 'Ask yourself the question,' answered Abraham—which is the Deal boatmen's way of saying yes. She looked at me. 'It will be all the same,' said I, interpreting the glance; 'England is but over the way from Hamburg. Let us be homeward-bound, in any case. We have made southing enough, Helga.' 'Tommy!' sung out Abraham, 'give that there Jack another flourish, will ye?' The man did so, with many strange contortions of his powerful frame, and then put down the pole and returned to the stove. 'There don't seem much life aboard of her,' said Jacob, eying the barque. 'I can only count wan head ower the fo'k'sle rail.' 'Down hellum, Jacob!' bawled Abraham, and as he said the words he let go the fore-halliards, and down came the sail. The lugger, with nothing showing but her little mizzen, lost way, and rose and fell quietly beam-on to the barque, whose head was directly at us, as though she must cut us down. When she was within a few cables' length of us she slightly shifted her helm and drew out. A man sprang on to her forecastle rail and yelled at us, brandishing his arms in a motioning way, as though in abuse of us for getting into the road. We strained our ears. 'What do 'ee say?' growled Abraham, looking at Helga. 'I do not understand him,' she answered. 'Barque ahoy!' roared Abraham. The man on the forecastle-head fell silent, and watched us over his folded arms. 'Barque ahoy!' yelled Jacob. The vessel was now showing her length to us. On Jacob shouting, a man came very quietly to the bulwarks near the mizzen rigging and, with sluggish motions, got upon the rail, where he stood, holding on by a backstay, gazing at us lifelessly. The vessel was so close that I could distinguish every feature of the fellow, and I see him now, as I write, with his fur cap and long coat and half-boots, and beard like oakum. The vessel was manifestly steered by a wheel deep behind the deck-house, and neither helm nor helmsman was visible—no living being, indeed, saving the motionless figure on the forecastle head and the equally lifeless figure holding on by the backstay aft. 'Barque ahoy!' thundered Abraham. 'Back your tawps'l, will 'ee? Here's a lady and gent as we wants to put aboard ye; they're in distress. They've bin shipwreckt—they wants to git home. Heave to, for Gord's sake, if so be as you're men!' Neither figure showed any indications of vitality. 'What! are they corpses?' cried Abraham. 'No—they're wuss—they're Jarmans!' answered Jacob, spitting fiercely. On a sudden the fellow who was aft nodded at us, then kissed his hand, solemnly dismounted, and vanished, leaving no one in sight but the man forward, who a minute later disappeared also. Abraham drew a deep breath, and looked at me. His countenance suddenly changed. His face crimsoned with temper, and with a strange, ungainly, 'longshore plunge he sprang on top of the gunwale, supporting himself by a grip of the burton of the mizzenmast with one hand while he shook his other fist in a very ecstasy of passion at the retreating vessel. 'Call yourselves men!' he roared. 'I'll have the law along of ye! It'll be me as'll report ye! Don't think as I can't spell. HANSA—Hansa. There it is, wrote big as life on your blooming starn! I'll remember ye! You sausage-eaters!—you scow-bankers—you scaramouches!—you varmint! Call yourselves sailors? Only gi' me a chance of getting alongside!' He continued to rage in this fashion, interlarding his language with words which sent Helga to the boat's side, and held her there with averted face; but, all the same, it was impossible to keep one's gravity. Vexed, maddened, indeed, as I was by the disappointment, it was as much as I could do to hold my countenance. The absurdity lay in this raving at a vessel that had passed swiftly out of hearing, and upon whose deck not a living soul was visible. Having exhausted all that he was able to think of in the way of abuse, Abraham dismounted, flung his cap into the bottom of the boat, and, drying his brow by passing the whole length of his arm along it, he exclaimed: 'There!—now I've given 'em something to think of!' 'Why, there was ne'er a soul to hear a word ye said,' exclaimed Thomas, who was still busy at the stove, without looking up. 'See here!' shouted Abraham, rounding upon him with the heat of a man glad of another excuse to quarrel. 'Dorn't you have nothen to say. No sarce from you, and so I tells ye! I know all about ye. When did ye pay your rent last, eh? Answer me that!' he sneered. 'Oh, that's it, is it? that's the time o' day, eh?' growled Thomas, looking slowly but fiercely round upon Abraham, and stolidly rising into a menacing posture, that was made wholly ridiculous by the clergyman's coat he wore. 'And what's my rent got to do with you? 'T all events, if I am a bit behoind hand in my rent, moy farder was never locked up for six months.' 'Say for smuggling, Tommy, say for smuggling, or them parties as is a-listening 'll think the ould man did something wrong,' said Jacob. Helga took me by the arm. 'Hugh, silence them!—they will come to blows.' 'No, no,' said I quickly, in a low voice. 'I know this type of men. There must be much more shouting than this before they double up their fists.' Still, it was a stupid passage of temper, fit only to be quickly ended. 'Come, Abraham,' I cried, waiting till he had finished roaring out some further offensive question to Thomas, 'let us get sail on the boat and make an end of this. The trial of temper should be mine, not yours. Luck seems against the lady and me; and let me beg of you, as a good fellow and an English seaman, not to frighten Miss Nielsen.' 'What does Tommy want to sarce me for?' said he, still breathing defiance at his mate, out of his large nostrils and blood-red visage. 'What's my rent got to do with you?' shouted the other. 'And what's moy father got to do with you?' bawled Abraham. 'I say, Jacob!' I cried, 'for God's sake let's tail on to the halliards and start afresh. There's no good in all this!' 'Come along, Abey! come along, Tommy!' bawled Jacob. 'Droy up, mates' More'n enough's been said;' and with that he laid hold of the halliards, and, without another word, Abraham and Thomas seized the rope, and the sail was mastheaded. Abraham went to the tiller, the other two went to work to get breakfast, and now, in a silence that was not a little refreshing after the coarse hoarse clamour of the quarrel, the lugger buzzed onwards afresh. 'We shall be more fortunate next time,' said Helga, looking wistfully at me; and well I knew there was no want of worry in my face; for now there was peace in the boat the infamous cold-blooded indifference of the rogues we had just passed made me feel half mad. 'We might have been starving,' said I; 'we might have been perishing for the want of a drink of water, and still the ruffians would have treated us so.' 'It is but waiting a little longer, Hugh,' said Helga softly. 'Ay, but how much longer, Helga?' said I. 'Must we wait for Cape Town, or perhaps Australia?' 'Mr. Tregarthen—don't let imagination run away with ye!' exclaimed Abraham, in a voice of composure that was not a little astonishing after his recent outbreak; though, having a tolerably intimate knowledge of the 'longshore character, and being very well aware that the words these fellows hurl at one another mean little, and commonly end in nothing—unless the men are drunk—I was not very greatly surprised by the change in our friend. 'There's nothen' that upsets the moind quicker than imagination. I'll gi' ye a yarn. There's an old chap, of the name of Billy Buttress, as crawls about our beach. A little grandson o' his took the glasses out o' his spectacles by way o' amusing hisself. When old Billy puts 'em on to read with, he sings out: "God bless me, Oi'm gone bloind!" and trembling, and all of a clam, as the saying is, he outs with his handkerchief to woipe the glasses, thinking it might be dirt as hindered him from seeing, and then he cries out, "Lor' now, if I an't lost my feeling!" He wasn't to be comforted till they sent for a pint o' ale and showed him that his glasses had been took out. That's imagination, master. Don't you be afeered. We'll be setting ye aboard a homeward-bounder afore long.' By the time the fellows had got breakfast, the hull of the barque astern was out of sight; nothing showed of her but a little hovering glance of canvas, and the sea-line swept from her to ahead of us in a bare unbroken girdle. <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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