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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.