My Danish Sweetheart Volume 2 — On Board The Light of the World

'But I _was_ on board,' she answered quickly: 'and he has saved my life, and I wish him to return to his mother, who may believe him drowned and be mourning him as dead!'

CHAPTER VII. ON BOARD 'THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD.'

At that moment the man whom the Captain styled Nakier entered the little cuddy, followed by the steward.

He made a singular gesture, a sort of salaam, bowing his head and whipping both hands to his brow, but with something of defiance in the celerity of the gesture.

He was the man whom I had seen haranguing the two boatmen.

He had a large, fine intelligent eye, liquid and luminous, despite the Asiatic duskiness of its pupil; his features were regular and almost handsome: an aquiline nose, thin and well chiselled at the nostrils, a square brow, small ears decorated with thick gold hoops, and teeth as though formed of china.

The expression of his face was mild and even prepossessing, his complexion a light yellow.

He bore in his hand what had apparently been a soldier's foraging cap, and was dressed in an old pilot jacket, a red shirt, and a pair of canvas breeches held by a belt, to which was attached a sheath containing a knife lying tight against his hip.

He took me and Helga in with a rapid roll of his handsome eyes, then looked straight at the Captain in a posture of attention, with a little contraction of the brow.

'I want a couple of the berths below cleared out at once,' said the Captain.

'Goh Syn Koh seems one of the smartest among you.

Send him.

Also send Mow Lauree.

He can make a bed, I hope?

He is making a bed for himself!

Bear a hand and clear this table, Punmeamootty, so as to be able to assist.

You'll superintend the work, Nakier.

See all clean and comfortable.'

'Yaas, sah,' said the man.

He was going.

'Stop!'

exclaimed the Captain, smiling all the time he continued to talk.

'Did you eat your dinner to-day!'

'No, sah.'

'What has become of it?'

'Overboard, sah,' answered the man, preserving his slight frown.

'Overboard!

As good a mess of pork and peasoup as was ever served out to a ship's company.

Overboard!

For the third time!

If it happens again----' he checked himself with a glance at Helga: 'if it happens again,' he went on, speaking with an air of concern, 'I shall be obliged to stop the beef.'

'We cannot eat pork, sah--we are Mussulmans----' he was proceeding.

The Captain silenced him with a bland motion of the hand.

'Send the men aft, Nakier,' said he, with a small increase of nasal twang in his utterance, 'and see that the cleaning and the clearance out is thorough.'

He gave him a hard, significant nod, and the man marched out, directing an eager look at me as he wheeled round, as though for my sympathy.

Punmeamootty was clearing the table with much ill-dissembled agitation in the hurry of his movements: his swift glances went from the Captain to me, and then to Helga.

They were like the flashing of a stiletto, keen as the darting blue gleam of the blade, and they would be as murderous, too, I thought, if the man could execute his wishes with his eyes.

I believed the Captain would now make some signal to leave the table, but he continued to sit on.

'Did you observe that man just now?'

said he, addressing Helga.

She answered 'Yes.'

'Handsome, do you think?'

said he.

'He had a mild, pleasant face,' she answered.

'His name,' said he, 'is Vanjoor Nakier.

He is boss of the native crew, and I allow him to act as a sort of boatswain.

It is hard to reconcile so agreeable a countenance with the horrible and awful belief which must make him for ever and ever a lost soul, if he is not won over in plenty of time for repentance, for prayer and mortification.'

'You seem to have the fellows' names very pat,' said I. 'Are you acquainted with the Malay tongue?'

'Ah!'

cried he, with a shake of the head; 'I wish I were.

I might then prove a true missionary to the poor benighted fellows.

Yet I shall hope to have broken heavily into their deplorable and degraded superstitions before I dismiss them at Cape Town.'

I caught sight of the shadowy form of the steward lurking abaft the companion-steps, where he seemed busy with some plates and a basket.

'It is your hope,' said I, 'to convert the Mussulmans?'

'It is my hope, indeed,' he answered; 'and, pray, what honester hope should possess a man?'

'It is an admirable desire,' said I, 'but a little dangerous perhaps.'

'Why?'

asked he.

'Well,' said I, 'I am no traveller.

I have seen nothing of the world, but I have read, and I have always gathered from books of voyages, that there is no class of men more bigoted in their faith and more treacherous in their conduct than Malay seamen.'

'Hush!'

cried Helga, putting her finger to her lips and looking in the direction of the steward.

The Captain turned in his chair.

'Are you there, Punmeamootty?'

'Yes, sah;' and his figure came swiftly gliding into the light.

'Go below and help the others!

They should be at work by this time.'

The man went out on to the quarter-deck, where, close against the cuddy front, lay the little hatch that conducted to the steerage.

'You are quite right,' exclaimed the Captain, lying back and expanding his waistcoat.

'Malay seamen are, undoubtedly, treacherous.

In fact, treachery is part and parcel of the Malay character.

It is the people of that nation who run amuck, you know.'

'What is that?'

inquired Helga.

'A fellow falls crazy,' answered the Captain, smiling, 'whips out a weapon called a creese, and stabs and kills as many as he can encounter as he flies through the streets.'

'They are a people to live on good terms with,' said Helga, looking at me.

'They are a people,' said the Captain, nasally accentuating his words, 'who are to be brought to a knowledge of the Light; and, in proportion as the effort is dangerous, so should the worker glory in his task.'

He gazed at Helga, as though seeking her approval of this sentiment.

But she was looking at me with an expression of anxiety in her blue eyes.

'I gather,' said I, with curiosity stimulated by thought of the girl's and my situation aboard this homely little barque, with her singular skipper and wild, dark crew--'I gather, Captain Bunting, from what has passed, that the blow you are now levelling at these fellows' superstitions--as you call them--is aimed at their diet?'

'Just so,' he answered.

'I am trying to compel them to eat pork.

Who knows that before the equator be crossed I may not have excited a real love for pork among them?

That would be a great work, sir.

It will sap one of the most contemptible of their superstitions, and provide me with a little crevice for the insertion of the wedge of truth.'

'I believe pork,' said I, 'is not so much a question of religion as a question of health with these poor dark creatures, bred in hot latitudes.'

'Pork enters largely into their faith,' he answered.

'So far, you have not been very successful, I think?'

'No. You heard what Vanjoor Nakier said.

The wasteful wretches have for the third time cast their allowance overboard.

Only think, Miss Nielsen, of wilfully throwing over the rail as much hearty excellent food--honest salt pork and very fair peasoup--as would keep a poor family at home in dinners for a week!'

'What do they eat instead?'

she asked.

'Why, on pork days, biscuit, I suppose.

There is nothing else.'

'You give them beef every other day?'

said I. 'Beef and duff,' he answered; 'but I shall stop that.

Famine may help me in dealing with their superstitions.'

It was not for me, partaking, as Helga and I were, of this man's hospitality, using his ship, dependent upon him, indeed, for my speedy return home with Helga--it was not for me, I say, at this early time at all events, to remonstrate with him, to tell him that, exalted as he might consider his motives, they were urging him into a very barbarous, cruel behaviour; but, as I sat looking at him, my emotion, spite of his claims upon my kindness, was one of hearty disgust, with deeper feelings working in me besides, when I considered that, if our evil fortune forced us to remain for any length of time on board _The Light of the World_, we might find his theory of conversion making his ship a theatre for as bad a tragedy as was ever enacted upon the high seas.

On a sudden he looked up at a little timepiece that was ticking against a beam just over his head.

'Have you any acquaintance with the sea, Mr. Tregarthen?'

he asked.

'Merely a boating acquaintance,' I replied.

'Can you stand a watch?'

'I could keep a look-out,' said I, a little dismayed by these questions, 'but I am utterly ignorant of the handling of a ship.'

He looked reflectively at Helga, then at me, pulling down first one whisker, then the other, while his thick lips lay broad in a smile under his long hooked nose.

'Oh, well' said he, 'Abraham Wise will do.'

He went to the cuddy door and called 'Forward there!'

'Yaas, sah,' came a thick Africander-like note out of the forecastle obscurity.

'Ask Abraham Wise to step aft.'

He resumed his seat, and in a few minutes Abraham arrived.

Helga instantly rose and gave him her hand with a sweet cordial smile that was full of her gratification at the sight of him.

For my part, it did my heart good to see him.

After the tallowy countenance and odd talk of the Captain and the primrose complexions and scowling glances of his Malays, there was real refreshment to the spirits to be got out of the homely English face and English 'longshore garb of the boatman, with the man's suggestions, besides, of the English Channel and of home.

'And how is Jacob?'

said I. 'Oh, he's a-feeling a little better, sir.

A good bit down, of course, as we both are.

'Taint realizable even _now_.'

'Do you refer to the loss of your lugger?'

said Captain Bunting.

'Ay, sir, to the _Airly Marn_,' answered Abraham, confronting him, and gazing at him with a steadfastness that slightly increased his squint.

'But surely, my good fellow,' cried the Captain, 'you had plenty of time, I hope, to feel thoroughly grateful for your preservation from the dreadful fate which lay before you had Providence suffered you to continue your voyage?'

'Oi dunno about dreadful fate,' answered Abraham: 'all I can say is, I should be blooming glad if that there _Airly Marn_ was afloat again, or if so be as we'd never fallen in with this here _Light of the World_.'

'It is as I told you, you perceive,' exclaimed the Captain, smiling and addressing Helga and me in his blandest manner: 'as we descend the social scale, recognition of signal and providential mercies grows feebler and feebler, until it dies out--possibly before it gets down to Deal boatmen.

I want a word with you, Abraham Wise.

But first, how have you been treated forward?'

'Oh, werry well indeed, sir,' he answered.

'The mate showed us where to tarn in when the time comes round, and I dessay we'll manage to git along all right till we gets clear of ye.'

'What have you had to eat?'

'The mate gave us a little bit o' pork for to be biled, but ye've got a black cook forrads as seemed to Jacob and me to take the dressing of that there meat werry ill.'

The Captain seemed to motion the matter aside with his hand, and said: 'My vessel is without a second mate; I mean, a man qualified to take charge of the deck when Mr. Jones and I are below.

Now, I am thinking that you would do very well for that post.'

'I'd rather go home, sir,' said Abraham.

'Ay,' said the Captain, complacently surveying him, 'but while you are with me, you know, you must be prepared to do your bit.

I find happiness in assisting a suffering man.

But,' added he nasally, 'in this world we must give and take.

You eat my meat and sleep in what I think I may fairly term my bedroom.

What pay do I exact?

Simply the use of your eyes and limbs.'

He glanced with a very self-satisfied expression at Helga.

It seemed, indeed, that most of his talk now was _at_ her when not directly _to_ her.

She had come round to my side of the table after leaving Abraham, and giving her my chair, I stood listening, with my hand on the back of it.

'I'm quite willing to tarn to,' said Abraham, 'while I'm along with ye, sir.

I ain't afeared of work.

I dorn't want no man's grub nor shelter for nothen.'

'Quite right,' said the Captain; 'those are respectable sentiments.

Of course, if you accept my offer I will pay you, give you the wages that Winstanley had--four pounds a month for the round voyage.'

Abraham scratched the back of his head and looked at me.

This proposal evidently put a new complexion upon the matter to his mind.

'You can handle a ship, I presume?'

continued the Captain.

'Whoy, yes,' answered Abraham with a grin of wonder at the question: 'if I ain't been poiloting long enough to know that sort o' work, ye shall call me a Malay.'

'I should not require a knowledge of navigation in you,' said the Captain.

Abraham responded with a bob of the head, then scratching at his back hair afresh, said: 'I must ask leave to tarn the matter over.

I should like to talk with my mate along o' this.'

'I'll put him on the articles, too, if he likes, at the current wages,' said the Captain.

'However, think over it.

You can let me know to-morrow.

But I shall expect you to take charge during the middle watch.'

'That I'll willingly dew, sir,' answered Abraham.

'But how about them Ceylon chaps and Malays forrads?

Dew they understand sea tarms?'

'Perfectly well,' answered the Captain, 'or how should I and Mr. Jones get along, think you?'

'Well,' exclaimed Abraham: 'I han't had much to say to 'em as yet.

One chap's been talking a good deal this evening, and I allow he's got a grievance, as most sailors has.

There's some sort o' difficulty: I allow it lies in the eating; but a man wants practice to follow noicely what them there sort o' coloured covies has to say.'

'Well,' exclaimed the Captain, with another bland wave of the hand in dismissal of the subject, 'we understand each other, at all events, my lad.'

He went to the locker from which he had extracted the biscuits, produced a bottle of rum, and filled a wineglass.

'Neat or with water?'

said he, smiling.

'I've pretty nigh had enough water for to-day, sir,' answered Abraham, grinning too, and looking very well pleased at this act of attention.

'Here's to you, sir, I'm sure, and wishing you a prosperous woyage.

Mr. Tregarthen, your health, sir, and yourn, miss, and may ye both soon get home and find everything comfortable and roight.'

He drained the glass with a smack of his lips.

'As pretty a little drop o' rum as I've had this many a day,' said he.

'You can tell Jacob to lay aft presently,' said the Captain, 'when the steward is at liberty, and he will give him such another dose.

That will do.'

Abraham knuckled his forehead, pausing to say to me in a hoarse whisper, which must have been perfectly audible to the Captain.

'A noice gemman, and no mistake.'

'I am going below,' said the Captain when he was gone, 'to see after your accommodation.

Will you sit here,' addressing Helga, 'or will you go on deck for a few turns?

I fear you will find the air chilly.'

'I will go on deck with you, Hugh,' answered Helga.

The Captain ran his eye over her.

'You are without luggage,' said he, 'and, alas!

wanting in almost everything; but if you will allow me----' he broke off and went to his cabin, and before we could have found time to exchange a whisper, returned with a very handsome, almost new, fur coat.

'Now, Miss Nielsen,' said he, 'you will allow me to wrap you in this.'

'Indeed my jacket will keep me warm,' she answered, with that same look of shrinking in her face I have before described.

'Nay, but wear it, Helga,' said I, anxious to meet the man, at all events, halfway in his kindness.

'It is a delightful coat--the very thing for the keen wind that is blowing on deck!'

Had I offered to put it on for her she would at once have consented, but I could observe the recoil in her from the garment stretched in the Captain's hands, with his pale fat face smiling betwixt his long whiskers over the top of it.

On a sudden, however, she turned and suffered him to put the coat on her, which he did with great ostentation of anxiety and a vast deal of smiling, and, as I could not help perceiving, with a deal more of lingering over the act than there was the least occasion for.

'Wonderfully becoming, indeed!'

he exclaimed; 'and now to see that your cabin is comfortable.'

He passed through the door, and we mounted the companion steps.

The night was so dark that there was very little of the vessel to be seen.

Her dim spaces of canvas made a mere pale whistling shadow of her as they floated, waving and bowing, in dim heaps through the obscurity.

There was a frequent glancing of white water to windward and a dampness as of spray in the wind, but the little barque tossed with dry decks over the brisk Atlantic heave, crushing the water off either bow into a dull light of seething, against which, when she stooped her head, the round of the forecastle showed like a segment of the shadow in a partial eclipse of the moon.

The haze of the cabin-lamp lay about the skylight, and the figure of the mate appeared in and vanished past it with monotonous regularity as he paced the short poop.

There was a haze of light, too, about the binnacle-stand, with a sort of elusive stealing into it of the outline of the man at the helm.

Forward the vessel lay in blackness.

It was blowing what sailors call a top-gallant breeze, with, perhaps, more weight in it even than that; but the squabness of this _Light of the World_ promised great stiffness, and, though the wind had drawn some point or so forward while we were at table, the barque rose as stiff to it as though she had been under reefed topsails.

'Will you take my arm, Helga?'

said I. 'Let me first turn up the sleeves of this coat,' said she.

I helped her to do this; she then put her hand under my arm, and we started to walk the lee-side of the deck as briskly as the swing of the planks would suffer.

Scarcely were we in motion when the mate came down to us from the weather-side.

'Beg pardon,' said he.

'Won't you and the lady walk to wind'ard?'

'Oh, we shall be in your way!'

I answered.

'It is a cold wind.'

'It is, sir.'

'But it promises a fair night,' said I. 'I hope so,' he exclaimed.

'Dirty weather don't agree with dirty skins.'

He turned on his heel and resumed his post on the weather-side of the deck.

'Dirty skins mean Malays in that chief mate's nautical dictionary,' said I.

'Hugh, how thankful I shall be when we are transferred to another ship!'

'Ay, indeed!

but surely this is better than the lugger?'

'No!

I would rather be in the lugger.'

'How now?'

cried I. 'We are very well treated here.

Surely the Captain has been all hospitality.

No warm-hearted host ashore could do more.

Why, here is he now at this moment superintending the arrangement of our cabins below to ensure our comfort!'

'I do not like him at _all_!'

said she, in a tone which her slightly Danish accent rendered emphatic.

'I do not like his treatment of the men,' said I; 'but he is kind to us.'

'There is an unwholesome mind in his flabby face!'

she exclaimed.

I could not forbear a laugh at this strong language in the little creature.

'And then his religion!'

she continued.

'Does a truly pious nature talk as he does?

I can understand professional religionists intruding their calling upon strangers; but I have always found sincerity in matters of opinion modest and reserved--I mean among what you call laymen.

What right has this man to force upon those poor fellows forward the food that they are forbidden by their faith to eat?'

'Yes,' said I; 'that is a vile side of the man's nature, I must own;

vile to you and me and to the poor Malays, I mean.

But, surely, there must be sincerity too, or why should he bother himself?'

'It may be meanness,' said she: 'he wants to save his beef; meanness and that love of tyrannizing which is oftener to be found among the captains of your nation, Hugh, than mine!'

'Your nation!'

said I, laughing.

'I claim you for Great Britain by virtue of your English speech.

No pure Dane could talk your mother's tongue as you do.

Spite of what you say, though, I believe the man sincere.

Would he, situated as he is--two white men to eleven yellow-skins (for we and the boatmen must count ourselves out of it)--would he, I say, dare venture to arouse the passions--the religious passions--of a set of men who hail from the most treacherous community of people in the world, if he were not governed by some dream of converting them?

--a fancy that were you to transplant it ashore, would be reckoned noble and of a Scriptural and martyr-like greatness.'

'That may be,' she answered; 'but he is going very wickedly to work, nevertheless, and it will not be his fault if those coloured sailors do not dangerously mutiny long before he shall have persuaded the most timid and doubting of them that pork is good to eat.'

'Yes,' said I gravely; for she spoke with a sort of impassioned seriousness that must have influenced me, even if I had not been of her mind.

'I, for one, should certainly fear the worst if he persists--and I don't doubt he _will_ persist, if Abraham and the other boatman agree to remain with him; for then it will be four to eleven--desperate odds, indeed, though as an Englishman he is bound to underrate the formidableness of anything coloured.

However,' said I, with a glance into the darkness over the side, 'do not doubt that we shall be transhipped long before any trouble happens.

I shall endeavour to have a talk with Abraham before he decides.

What he and Jacob then do, they will do with their eyes open.'

As I spoke these words, the Captain came up the ladder and approached us.

'Ha!

Miss Nielsen,' he cried, 'were not you wise to put on that warm coat?

All is ready below; but still let me hope that you will change your mind and occupy Mr. Jones's berth.'

'Thank you; for the short time we shall remain in this ship the cabin you have been good enough to prepare will be all I require,' she answered.

He peered through the skylight to see the hour.

'Five minutes to eight,' he exclaimed.

'Mr. Jones!'

The man crossed the deck.

'I have arranged,' said the Captain, 'with the Deal boatman Abraham Wise to take charge of the barque during the middle watch.

It is an experiment, and I shall require to be up and down during those hours to make sure of him.

Not that I distrust his capacities.

Oh dear no!

From the vicious slipping of cables, merely for sordid purposes of hovelling, to the noble art of navigating a ship in a hurricane amid the shoals of the Straits of Dover, your Deal boatman is the most expert of men.

But,' continued he, 'since I shall have to be up and down, as I have said, during the middle watch, I will ask you to keep charge of the deck till midnight.'

'Very good, sir,' said the mate, who appeared to me to have been on duty ever since the hour of our coming aboard.

'It will keep the round of the watches steady, sir.

The port watch comes on duty at eight bells.'

'Excellent!'

exclaimed the Captain.

'Thank you, Mr. Jones.'

The mate stalked aft.

'Mr. Tregarthen,' he added, 'I observe that you wear a sou'-wester.'

'It is the headgear I wore when I put off in the lifeboat,' said I, 'and I am waiting to get home to exchange it.'

'No need, no need!'

cried he; 'I have an excellent wideawake below--not, indeed, perfectly new, but a very serviceable clinging article for ocean use--which is entirely at your service.'

'You are all kindness!'

'Nay,' he exclaimed in a voice of devotion, 'I believe I know my duty.

Shall we linger here, Miss Nielsen, or would you prefer the shelter of the cabin?

At half-past eight Punmeamootty will place some hot water, biscuit, and a little spirit upon the table.

I fear I shall be at a loss to divert you.'

'Indeed not!'

exclaimed Helga.

The unconscious irony of this response must have disconcerted a less self-complacent man.

'I have a few volumes of an edifying kind, and a draughtboard.

My resources for amusing you, I fear, are limited to those things.'

The sweep of the wind was bleaker than either of us had imagined, and, now that the Captain had joined us, the deck possessed no temptation.

We followed him into the cabin, where Helga hastily removed the coat as though fearing the Captain would help her.

His first act was to produce the wideawake he had spoken of.

This was a very great convenience to me;

the sou'-wester lay hot and heavy upon my head, and the sense of its extreme unsightliness added not a little to the discomfort it caused me.

He looked at my sea-boots and then at his feet, and, with his head on one side, exclaimed, in his most smiling manner, that he feared his shoes would prove too large for me, but that I was very welcome to the use of a pair of his slippers.

These also I gratefully accepted, and withdrew to Mr. Jones's berth to put them on, and the comfort of being thus shod, after days of the weight and unwieldiness of my sea-boots, it would be impossible to express.

'I think we shall be able to make ourselves happy yet,' said the Captain.

'Pray sit, Miss Nielsen.

Do you smoke, Mr. Tregarthen?'