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                     MY DANISH SWEETHEART

                           A Novel

                     BY W. CLARK RUSSELL

    AUTHOR OF 'THE WRECK OF THE GROSVENOR,' 'THE LIFE OF ADMIRAL
    LORD COLLINGWOOD,' 'A MARRIAGE AT SEA,' ETC., ETC.


    IN THREE VOLUMES

    VOL. III.

    Methuen & Co.
    18, BURY STREET, LONDON, W.C.
    1891
    [_All rights reserved_]




CONTENTS OF VOL. III.


   CHAPTER                                         PAGE

        I. WE SPEAK A SHIP                            1

       II. I MAKE FREE                               34

      III. JOPPA IS IN EARNEST                       58

       IV. A NIGHT OF HORROR                         87

        V. A CONFERENCE                             116

       VI. HELGA'S PLOT                             146

      VII. FIRE!                                    177

     VIII. HOME                                     221




MY DANISH SWEETHEART.




CHAPTER I.

WE SPEAK A SHIP.


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 ship.
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 ashore 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 cutwater 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- 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 embarrassment 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 ship 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 ashore. 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 ship.'

'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 ship,' 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 English! 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 shipmaster he sailed with.

'Have you received orders from Captain Bunting,' I asked, 'to signal and
bring-to any homeward ship that may come along?'

'No, sir.'

'We wish to be transhipped, 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.'

'I can do nothing without his instructions, sir,' he exclaimed, with a
singular look that rose to the significance of a half-smile.

'All right!' I said, perceiving that his little blue eyes had witnessed
more than I should have deemed them capable of observing in the slender
opportunities he had had for employing them.

The wind blew the fire out of my pipe, and to save the tobacco I went
down to the quarter-deck for the shelter of the bulwarks there. While I
puffed I spied Jacob low down in the lee fore-rigging repairing or
replacing some chafing-gear upon the swifter-shroud. I had not exchanged
a word with this honest boatman since the previous day, and strolled
forward to under the lee of the galley to greet him. I asked him if he
was comfortable in his new berth. He answered 'Yes;' he was very well
satisfied; the Captain had given orders that he was to have a glass of
grog every day at noon; the provisions were also very good, and there
was no stint.

''Soides,' he called down to me, with his fat, ruddy face framed in the
squares of the ratlines, 'three pound a month's good money. There'll be
something to take up when I gets home, something that'll loighten the
loss o' my eight pound o' goods and clothes, and make the foundering of
the _Airly Marn_ easier to think of.'

'You and Abraham, then, have regularly entered yourselves for the round
voyage?'

'Ay; the Capt'n put us on the articles this afternoon. He called us to
his cabin and talked like a gemman to us. Tain't often as one meets the
likes of him at sea. No language--a koind smoile--a thank'ee for
whatever a man does, if so be as it's rightly done--a feeling consarn
for your morals and your comforts: tell'ee, Mr. Tregarthen, the loikes
of Capt'n Buntin' ain't agoin' to be fallen in with every
day--leastways, in vessels arter this here pattern, where mostly a man's
a dog in the cap'n's opinion, and where the mate's got no other argument
than the fust iron belaying-pin he can out with.'

'I am very glad to learn that you are so well satisfied,' said I. 'A
pity poor Thomas isn't with you.'

'Pore Tommy! There's nothen in my toime as has made me feel so ordinary
as Thomas's drownding. But as to him making hisself happy here----'

'I beg your pardon, sah,' said a voice close beside me.

I turned, losing the remainder of Jacob's observations, and perceived
the face of Nakier in the galley door, that was within an arm's length
of me from where I leaned. His posture was one of hiding, as though to
conceal himself from sight of the poop. As I looked, a copper-<DW52>
face, with black, angry eyes flashing under a low forehead as wrinkled
as the rind of an old apple, with the temper that worked in the
creature, showed behind Nakier's head, and vanished in a breath. I now
recollected that when I had first taken up my station under the lee of
the galley I had caught the hiss of a swift fiery whispering within the
little structure, but it had instantly ceased on my calling to Jacob,
and the matter went out of my head as I listened to the boatman in the
rigging.

'I beg your pardon, sah! May I speak a word wit you?'

'What is it, Nakier?' I exclaimed, finding a sort of pleasure in the
mere contemplation of his handsome face and noble liquid Eastern eyes,
dark and luminous like the gleam you will sometimes observe in a
midnight sea.

'Are you a sailor, sah?'

'I am not,' I responded.

'Can you tellee me de law of ships?'

Here the copper-<DW52> face came out again, and now hung steadily with
its frown over Nakier's shoulder; but both fellows kept all but their
heads hidden.

'I know what you mean,' I answered. 'I fear I cannot counsel you.'

'Our Captain would have us starve,' said he; 'he give us meat we must
not eat, and on dose days we have only bread and water. Dat is not
right?'

'No, indeed,' said I; 'and how little we think it right you may know by
what the lady said to-day.'

'Ah! she is good; she is good!' he exclaimed, always speaking very
softly, and clasping his long thin fingers with filbert-shaped nails
while he upturned his wonderful eyes. 'We are not of de Captain's
religion--he sabbe dat when we ship. Is dere law among Englishman to
ponish he for trying to make us eat what is forbidden?'

'I wish I knew--I wish I could advise you,' said I, somewhat secretly
relieved by hearing this man talk of law; for when I had watched him
that morning on the poop I could have sworn that his and his mates'
whole theory of justice lay in the blades which rested upon sheaths
strapped to their hips. 'One thing you may be sure of, Nakier: Captain
Bunting has no right to force food upon you that is forbidden to you by
your religion. There must be lawyers in Cape Town who will tell you how
to deal with this matter if it is to be dealt with. Meanwhile, try to
think of your Captain in this business as----' I significantly tapped my
forehead. 'That will help you to patience, and the passage to the Cape
is not a long one.'

The copper-<DW52> face behind Nakier violently wagged, the frown
deepened, and the little dangerous eyes grew, if possible, more menacing
in their expression.

'He is a cruel man,' said Nakier, with a sigh as plaintive as one could
imagine in any love-sick Eastern maid: 'but we will be patient; and,
sah, I tank you for listening.'

The copper-<DW52> face disappeared.

'You are no sailor, sah!' continued Nakier, smiling and showing as
pearl-white a set of teeth as were ever disclosed by the fairest woman's
parted lips; 'and yet you have been shipwreck?'

I briefly related my lifeboat adventure, and in a few words completed
the narrative of the raft and of our deliverance by the lugger. Indeed,
it pleased me to talk with him: his accent, his looks, were a sort of
realization, in their way, of early boyish dreams of travel; they
carried me in fancy to the provinces of the sun; I tasted the ripe
aromatic odours of tropic vegetation, there seemed a scent as of the
hubble-bubble in the blue and sparkling breeze gushing fair over the
rail. He begot in me a score of old yearning imaginations--of the
elephant richly castellated, of the gloom of palatial structures
dedicated to idols, their domes starry with encrustation of gems and the
precious ores.

The brief spell was broken by Jacob's gruff, 'longshore voice:

'It don't look, Mr. Tregarthen, as if you and the lady was to git home
as fast as ye want to.'

'No,' I replied. 'Do you see anything in sight up there, Jacob?'

He spat, and looked leisurely ahead.

'Nothen, sir.'

'I beg pardon, sah!' broke in Nakier's voice. 'Do you sabbe navigation?'

'I do not,' I answered, struck with a question that recalled
Punmeamootty's inquiries that morning.

'But Mr. Vise,' he continued, 'he sabbe navigation?'

I shook my head with a slight smile.

'He has some trifling knowledge,' said I. 'Fortunately, there is no
occasion to trust to his skill.'

'De sweet young lady sabbe navigation, sah?'

'I will not answer for it!' I exclaimed, looking at him. A sudden fancy
in me may have been disclosed by my eyes. His gaze fell, and he drew in
his head. Just then I caught sight of Helga at the break of the poop to
leeward, looking along the decks. She saw me, and beckoned. As I knocked
the ashes out of my pipe, Jacob cried out:

'Blowed if I don't believe that's a steamer's smoke ahead.'

'Ha!' thought I, 'Helga has seen it;' and I at once made for the
poop-ladder.

It was as I supposed. She had seen the smoke when she came on deck, and
instantly looked about for me. It was the merest film, the faintest
streak, dim as a filament of spider's web; but it was directly ahead,
and it was easy to guess that unless the steamer was heading east or
west she must be coming our way, for assuredly, though the _Light of the
World_ was sweeping through it at some six or seven knots, we were not
going to overhaul a steamer at that pace.

A telescope lay in brackets inside the companionway; I fetched and
levelled it, but there was nothing more to be seen than the soaring of
the thin blue vein of smoke from behind the edge of the sea, where the
dark, rich central blue of it went lightening out into a tint of opal.
It did not take long, however, to discover, by the hanging of the smoke
in the same place, that the steamer was heading directly for us. I put
down the glass, and said to Mr. Jones:

'Will you be so good as to call the Captain and tell him that there is a
steamer in sight, coming this way?'

'I have no orders to call the Captain merely to report a ship in sight,
sir,' he answered.

'That may be,' said I; 'but here is a chance for us to leave this
vessel, and the Captain might not thank you to keep him ignorant of the
opportunity.'

'I can't help it, sir. My duty here is to obey orders and to do what's
expected of me, and no more;' and so saying, he marched shambling aft;
yet I will not say that his manner of leaving me was abrupt or
offensive.

'There is no time to be lost, Helga,' said I. 'If that steamer is doing
ten and we are doing six the joint speed is sixteen knots, and she will
be abreast of us and away again quickly. I will report to the Captain
myself,' with which I went on to the quarter-deck and passed into the
cabin and knocked on the door of Captain Bunting's berth.

He immediately cried:

'Who's there?'

'Mr. Tregarthen,' I answered.

'Are you alone?' he called.

I told him I was.

'Then pray walk in,' said he.

I opened the door and found him lying in his bunk in his shirt-sleeves.
Full as I was of the business of the steamer heaving into view, I could
yet manage to notice, now that he was under no particular obligation to
smile, that his habitual grin when his face was off duty, so to speak,
was of the kind that is called sardonic. It was the set of his mouth
with the thick curve of its upper lip that made the smile; but his eyes
bore not the least part in this expression of mirth. It was a mere
stroke of nature in him, however, and, though the congenital grin did
not increase his beauty, it left untouched in his countenance the old
character of blandness, self-complacency and an air of kindness too.

'What can I do for you, Mr. Tregarthen?' said he, promptly sitting up in
his bunk, with a glance around for his coat.

'I must ask your pardon for intruding upon you,' said I; 'there is a
steamer's smoke in sight over the bows. Mr. Jones declined to report to
you. I venture to do so, and I have also to ask you, Captain Bunting, to
signal her to stop that she may receive Miss Nielsen and me.'

'I shall be very willing to transfer you, Mr. Tregarthen,' said he,
without more or less significance in his manner than was usual in it;
'but you must not, you really must not, ask me to part in this sort of
hurry with your sweet engaging companion.'

'I certainly shall not leave you without her,' said I, breathing
quickly.

'Just so,' he exclaimed, 'nor is it my wish that you should. I want you
to convert your experience of shipwreck into a little holiday cruise. I
hope you are comfortable with me?'

'Perfectly comfortable; but all the same, Miss Nielsen and I desire to
return to England, and I must entreat--indeed, Captain Bunting, I must
_insist_ upon your signalling the steamer that is rapidly approaching
us.'

He opened his eyes at the word _insist_, which I deplored having made
use of the moment it had escaped me; but he continued very bland, and
his smile, being now vitalized, as when he was at the table or on deck
with us, had lost what I had found sardonic in it.

'A captain's powers, Mr. Tregarthen, are considerable,' he exclaimed.
'He is first on board his own ship; his will is the law that governs
the vessel; no man aboard but he can _insist_ for an instant. But my
desire is for cordial feelings between us. Let us be friends and talk as
friends. Pray bear with me. You are in possession of my hopes. Do not
add fears to them by your behaviour.'

He dropped his head on one side, and surveyed me with an eye that seemed
almost wistful. I believed that he meant to keep me talking till the
steamer had passed.

'Captain Bunting,' said I, 'I am as fully disposed as you are to be
friendly; but I must tell you that, if you decline to transfer us--if,
in other words, you force us to proceed on this voyage--you will be
acting at your peril. I shall exact reparation, and whatever the law can
do for me shall be done. Practically you will be abducting Miss Nielsen,
and _that_, you must know, is a highly punishable offence.'

He motioned with both his hands.

'It is no abduction,' said he. 'When you rescue a young lady with your
lifeboat from a foundering craft you do not abduct her. I can understand
your impatience, and forgive your irritability. Yet I had thought to
have some claim upon you for a more generous, for a handsomer
interpretation of my wishes. What is the reason of this extreme hurry in
you to return home?'

'You surely do not require me to repeat my answer to that question!' I
exclaimed, curbing my temper with an effort.

'To be sure. You are concerned for your poor dear mother. Come, Mr.
