My Danish Sweetheart: A Novel. Volume 1 of 3

by William Clark Russell

  CHAPTER IV.

  HELGA NIELSEN.

  For full twenty minutes the lad and I clung to the helm withoutexchanging a word. The speed of the driven vessel rendered her motioncomparatively easy, after the intolerable lurching and rolling andplunging of her as she lay at anchor or in the trough. She was sweptonwards with such velocity that I had little or no fear of her taking inthe seas over her stern, and she steered well, with but little wildnessin the swerving of her bows, as was to be seen by the comparativeregularity of the oscillation of the compass-card.

  This running before the tempest, of course, diminished the volume andpower of it, so far, I mean, as our own sensations were concerned; butthe sight of the sea, as much of it at least as was visible, coupledwith the thunder of the wind up aloft in the sky, and the prodigiouscrying and shrieking and shrilling of it in the rigging, was warrantenough that were we to heave the barque to we should find the hurricaneharder now than it had been at any other time since it first came on toblow. Yet our racing before it, as I have said, seemed somewhat to lullit, and we could converse without having to cry out, though for twentyminutes we stood mute as statues waiting and watching.

  At last my companion said to me: 'Have we passed that point which youspoke of, do you think?'

  'Oh yes,' I answered. 'It would not be above two miles distant from thepoint where we broke adrift. Our speed cannot have been less than eightor nine knots. I should say Hurricane Point is a full mile away down onthe quarter there.'

  'I fear that we shall find the sea,' said he, 'grow terribly heavy as weadvance.'

  'Yes,' said I; 'but what is to be done? There is nothing for it but toadvance. Suppose such another shift of wind as has just happened--whatthen? We should have a line of deadly shore right under our lee. No, wemust hold on as we are.'

  'There are but two of us!' cried he: 'my father cannot count. What arewe to do? We cannot work this big ship!'

  'The weather may break,' said I; 'it is surely too fierce to last. Whatcan we hope for but to be rescued or assisted by some passing vessel? Isthis ship stanch?'

  'Yes; she is a strong ship,' he replied. 'She is about six years old. Myfather is her owner. I wish I could go to him,' he added; 'he will bedying to learn what has happened and what is being done, and it is pastthe time for his medicine, and he will be wanting his supper!'

  I tried to catch a view of him as he spoke these words, but the haze ofthe binnacle-lamp did not reach to his face, and it was as black as theface of the sky itself out of that sheen. What he had said had a girlishnote in it that I could not reconcile with his dress, with his seafaringalertness, with his spirited behaviour, his nimble crawling out upon thebowsprit, and his perception of what was to be done, under conditionswhich might well have clouded the wits of the oldest and most audacioussailor.

  'Pray go and see your father,' said I. 'I believe I can keep this helmamidships without help.' And, indeed, if I could not have steered thebarque alone, I do not know that such assistance as he could offer wouldhave suffered me to control her. He seemed but a slender lad--so far, atleast, as I had been able to judge from the view I got when the flarewas burning--very quick, but without such strength as I should havelooked for in a young seaman, as I could tell whenever the wheel had tobe put up or down.

  He let go the spokes, and stood apart for a minute or two, as though tojudge whether I could manage without him; then said he, 'I will returnquickly,' and with that he took a step and vanished in the blacknessforward of the binnacle-stand.

  My mind dwelt for a moment upon him, upon the clearness and purity ofhis voice, upon a something in his speech which I could not define, andwhich puzzled me; upon his words, which were as good English as onecould hope to hear at home, albeit there was a certain sharpness andincisiveness--perhaps I might say a little of harshness--in hisaccentuation that might suggest him a foreigner to an English ear,though, as I then supposed, it was more likely than not this qualityarose from the excitement and dismay and distress which worked in him asin me.

  But he speedily ceased to engage my thoughts. What could I dwell uponbut the situation in which I found myself--the spectacle of the blackoutline of barque painting herself upon the volumes of white water shehove up around her as she rushed forward pitching bows under, herrigging echoing with unearthly cries, as if the dark waving mass of sparand gear aloft were crowded with tormented souls wailing and howling andshrieking dismally? I recalled my mother's dream; I believed I wasacting in some dreadful nightmare of my own slumbers; all had happenedso suddenly--so much of emotion, of wild excitement, of agitation, and,I may say, horror, had been packed into the slender space of timebetween the capsizal of the lifeboat and this rushing out of the bay,that, now I had a little leisure to bend my mind to contemplation of thereality, I could not believe in it as an actual thing. I was dazed; myhearing was stunned by the ceaseless roar of wind and seas. The _Janet_stove and sunk! All my lion-hearted men drowned, perhaps! The poorDanes, for whom they had forfeited their lives, long ago corpses! Wouldnot this break my mother's heart? Would there be a survivor to tell herthat when I was last seen I was aboard the barque? Once again I figuredthe little parlour I had quitted but a few hours since--I pictured mymother sitting by the fire, waiting and listening--the long night, thebitter anguish of suspense!--it was lucky for me that the obligation ofhaving to watch and steer the vessel served as a constant intrusion uponmy mind at this time, for could I have been able to sit down andsurrender myself wholly to my mood, God best knows how it must have gonewith me.

  The lad was about ten minutes absent. I found him alongside the wheelwithout having witnessed his approach. He came out of the darkness as aspirit might shape itself, and I did not know that he was near me untilhe spoke.

  'My father says that our safety lies in heading into the open sea, toobtain what you call a wide offing,' said he.

  'What does he advise?' I asked.

  '"We must continue to run," he says,' answered the lad, meaning by _run_that we should keep the barque before the wind. '"When the coast is farastern we must endeavour to heave to." So he counsels. I told him we arebut two. He answered, "It may be done."'

  'I wish he were able to leave his cabin and take charge,' said I. 'Whatis his complaint?'

  'He was seized, shortly after leaving Cuxhaven, with rheumatism in theknees,' he answered; 'he cannot stand--cannot, indeed, stir either leg.'

  'Why did he not get himself conveyed ashore for treatment?'

  'He hoped to get better. We were to call at Swansea before proceeding toPorto Allegre, and if he had found himself still ill when he arrivedthere, it was his intention to procure another captain for the _Anine_,and remain at Swansea with me until he was able to return home.'

  'Who had charge of the barque when she brought up in the bay?' Iinquired, finding a sort of relief in asking these questions, and,indeed, in having somebody to converse with, for even my ten minutes ofloneliness at the helm of that pitching and foaming vessel had depressedme to the very core of my soul.

  'The carpenter, who acted as second mate.'

  'Yes, I recollect some of our boatmen brought the news. Your chief matebroke his leg and was sent ashore. But did your father consent to the_Anine_ dropping anchor in so perilous a bay as ours--perilous, I mean,considering the weather at the time?'

  'He was at the mercy of the man Damm--the carpenter, I mean,' heanswered. 'The crew had refused to keep the sea: they said a tempest wascoming, and that shelter must be sought before the wind came, and thecarpenter steered the barque for the first haven he fell in with, whichhappened to be your bay. Our crew were not good men; they were grumblingmuch, as your English word is, from the hour of our leaving Cuxhaven.'

  'But surely,' said I, 'the poor fellows who sprang out of thefore-rigging could not have formed the whole of the crew of a ship ofthis burthen.'

  'No,' he answered; 'the carpenter and five men got away in one of theboats when they found that the barque was dragging her anchors. Theylowered one boat, which fille
d and was knocked to pieces, and the wreckof it, I dare say, is still swinging at the tackles. They lowered theother boat and went away in her.'

  'Did they reach the shore?'

  'I do not know,' said he.

  'They must have been a bad lot,' said I--'those who escaped in the boatand those who hung in the shrouds, to leave your helpless father to hisfate.'

  'Oh! a bad lot, a wicked lot!' he cried. 'They were not Danes,' headded. 'Danish sailors would not have acted as those men did.'

  'Are you a Dane?' I asked.

  'My father is,' he answered. 'I am as much English as Danish. My motherwas an Englishwoman.'

  'I should have believed you wholly English,' said I. 'Are you a sailor?'

  He answered, 'No.' I was about to speak, when he exclaimed: 'I am agirl!'

  Secretly for some time I had supposed this, and yet I was hardly lessastonished than had I been without previous suspicion.

  'A _girl_!' I cried, sending my sight groping over her figure; but to nopurpose. She was absolutely indistinguishable saving her arms, whichwere dimly touched by the haze of the binnacle-light as they lay uponthe spokes of the wheel.

  'It is my whim to dress as a boy on board ship!' she exclaimed, with nostammer of embarrassment that I could catch in her clear delivery, thatpenetrated to my ear without loss of a syllable through the heavystorming of the gale, flashing with the fury of a whirlwind off thebrows of the seas which rushed at us, as the barque's counter soaredinto the whole weight and eye of the tempest.

  So far had we conversed; but at this moment a great surge took thebarque and swung her up in so long, so dizzy, and sickening an upheaval,followed by so wild a fall into the frothing hollow at its base, thatspeech was silenced in me, and I could think of nothing else but themountainous billows now running. Indeed, as my companion had predicted,the farther we drew out from the land the heavier we found the sea. Theplay of the ocean, indeed, out here, was rendered fierce beyond words bythe dual character of the tempest; for the seas which had been setracing out of the west had not yet been conquered by the violence of thenew gale and by the hurl of the liquid hills out of the east; and thebarque was now labouring in the same sort of pyramidal sea as had run inthe bay, saving that here the whole power of the great Atlantic was ineach billow, and the fight between the contending waters was as a combatof mighty giants.

  The decks were full of water; at frequent intervals the brow of the searushing past us, swift as was our own speed upon its careering back,would arch over the rail and tumble aboard in a heavy fall of water, andthe smoke of it would rise from the planks as though the barque were onfire, and make the blackness forward of the mainmast hoary. I sought invain for the least break in the dark ceiling of the sky. Will the vesselbe able to keep afloat? I was now all the time asking myself. Is itpossible for any structure put together by human hands to outlive sucha night of fury as this? As I have said, I was no sailor, yet my'longshore training gave me very readily to know that the best, if notthe only, chance for our lives was to get the barque hove-to, and leaveher to breast the seas and live the weather out as she could with herhelm lashed, and, perhaps some bit of tarpaulin in the weather-rigging,to keep her head up. But this, that was to be easily wished, wasinexpressibly perilous to attempt or achieve, for, in bringing thevessel to, it was as likely as not we should founder out of hand. Asingle sea might be enough to do our business; and, failing that, therewas the almost certain prospect of the decks being swept, of everyerection from the taffrail to the bows being carried away, ourselvesincluded; of a score of leaks being started by a single blow, and, evenif the girl and I managed to hold on, of the barque foundering under ourfeet.

  Thus we rushed onward, very literally indeed scudding under bare poles,as it is called; and for a long while we had neither of us a word toexchange, so present was calamity, so near was death, so dreadful werethe thunderous sounds of the night, so engrossing our business ofkeeping the flying fabric dead before the seas.

  I pulled out my watch and held it hastily to the binnacle-lamp, andfound the hour exactly one. The girl asked me the time. This was thefirst word that had passed between us for a long while. I replied, andshe said in a voice that indicated extraordinary spirit, but thatnevertheless sounded languishingly after her earlier utterance: 'Nowthat it is past midnight, the gale may break; surely such fierce weathercannot last for many hours!'

  'I wish you would go,' said I, 'and get some refreshment for yourself,and lie down for awhile. I believe I can manage single-handed to keepthe vessel before it.'

  'If I lie down, it would not be to sleep,' she answered; 'but if youthink I can be spared from the wheel for a few minutes, I will obtainsome refreshment for us both, and I should also like to see how myfather does.'

  I answered that if the helm was to prove too heavy for me, her helpmight hardly save me from being obliged to let go.

  'Do not believe this,' she exclaimed, 'because you now know that I am agirl!'

  'I have had no heart to express wonderment as yet,' said I, 'otherwisemy astonishment and admiration would reassure you, if you suppose Idoubt your strength and capacity now that I know you to be a girl. Alittle refreshment will help us both,' and I was going to advise her toseize the opportunity to attire herself in dry clothes, for I was inoilskins, whereas, so far as I was able to gather, her dress was apea-jacket and a cloth cap; and I knew that again and again she had beensoaked to the skin, and that the wind pouring on her would be chillingher to her very heart. But even amid such a time as this I was sensibleof a diffidence in naming what was in my mind, and held my peace.

  She left the wheel, and I stood steering the barque single-handed, withmy eyes fixed upon the illuminated compass-card, while I noticed thatthe course the vessel was taking, which always held her dead before thegale, was now above a point, nay, perhaps two points, to the southwardof west, whence it was clear the hurricane was veering northwardly.

  Whether it was because this small shift in the wind still found thecolliding seas travelling east and west, or that some heavy surgesweeping its volume along the starboard bow caused the barque to 'yaw'widely, as it is termed, and so brought a great weight of billow againstthe rudder: be the cause what it will, while my eye was rooted upon thecard, the stern of the vessel was on a sudden run up with the velocityof a balloon from whose car all the ballast has been thrown, the spokeswere wrenched from my hand as they revolved like the driving-wheel of alocomotive in full career, and I was sent spinning against the bulwark,from which I dropped upon my knees and so rolled over, stunned.

  For all I could tell I might have lain five minutes or five hourswithout my senses. I believe I was brought to by the washing over me ofthe water that lay in that lee-part of the deck into which I had beenshot. I sat erect, but for a long while was unable to collect my mind,so bewildered were my brains by the fall, and so confounded besides bythe uproar round about. I then made out the figure, as I took it, of thegirl standing at the wheel, and got on my legs, and after feeling overmyself, so to speak, to make sure that all my bones were sound, Istaggered, or rather clawed my way up to the wheel; for the barqueseemed now to me to be upon her beam-ends, and rolling with dreadfulwildness, and there were times when the foaming waters rushed inboardsover the rail which she submerged to leeward.

  The girl cried out when she spied me. I had to draw close, indeed, to beseen; it was as black down where I was thrown, as the inside of thevessel's hold. She cried out, I say, uttering some Danish exclamation,and then exclaimed:

  'I feared you were lost; I feared that you had been thrown overboard; Iought not to have left you alone at the wheel. Tell me if you are hurt?'

  'No; I am uninjured,' I replied. 'But what has become of the ship? I amonly just recovered from my swoon.'

  'Oh!' she cried, 'she has taken up the very situation you wished for.She has hove herself to. She came broadside to the sea after you wereflung from the wheel. We are mercifully watched over. We dared not ofourselves have brought her to the wind.'

&nb
sp; All my senses were now active in me once more, and I could judge formyself. It was as the girl had said. The barque had fallen into thetrough, and had taken up a position for herself, and was shouldering theheavy western surge with her bow, coming to and falling off in rhythmicsweep. Clouds of froth repeatedly broke over her forecastle; but sheseemed while I then watched her to rise buoyant to each black curl ofbillow as it took her amidships.

  'Will you help me to lash the helm?' cried the girl. 'It is all that the_Anine_ will need, I am sure. She will be able to fight the storm aloneif we can secure the wheel.'

  Between us, we drove the helm 'hard a-lee,' to use the sea term--forwhich, indeed, it is impossible to find an equivalent, though I trust tobe as sparing in this language as the obligation of explanation willpermit--and then, by means of ropes wound round the spokes, so bound thewheel as to cripple all play in it.

  'Will she lie up to the wind, do you think,' said I, 'without somesquare of canvas abaft here to keep her head to it?'

  'I have been watching her. I believe she will do very well,' the girlanswered. 'I feared that that little head of sail we hoisted in the baywould blow her bows round, and, by this not happening, I suppose thatsail is in rags. One would not have heard it split in such a thunder ofwind as this.'

  'Have you seen your father?'

  'Yes. I was talking to him when you were thrown from the wheel. I knewwhat had happened by the behaviour of the vessel. I ran out, and fearedyou were lost.'

  'What does he counsel?'

  'It is still his wish that we should go on putting plenty of sea betwixtus and the land. But do you notice that the gale has gone somewhat intothe north? He will be glad to hear it, now that we are no longerscudding. Our drift should put us well clear of the Land's End, and,indeed, I dare say now we are being thrust away at several miles in thehour from the coast. He is very anxious to know if the _Anine_ has takenin water, and wishes me to sound the well. I fear I shall not be able todo this alone.'

  'Why should you?' cried I. 'You shall do nothing alone! I cannot creditthat you are a girl! Such spirit--such courage--such knowledge of acalling the very last in the wide world that women are likely tounderstand! Pray let me ask your name?'

  'Helga Nielsen,' she answered. 'My father is Peter Nielsen--CaptainPeter Nielsen,' she repeated. 'And your name?'

  'Hugh Tregarthen,' said I.

  'It is sad that you should be here,' said she, 'brought away from yourhome, suffering all this hardship and peril! You came to save our lives.God will bless you, sir. I pray that the good God may protect andrestore you to those you love.'

  Spite of the roar of the wind, and the ceaseless crashing and seethingsound of the smiting and colliding seas, I could catch the falter ofemotion in her voice as she pronounced these words; but then, as youwill suppose, we were close together, standing shoulder to shoulderagainst the binnacle, while we exchanged these sentences.

  'There is refreshment in the cabin,' said she, after a pause of a momentor two. 'You need support. This has been a severe night of work for you,sir, from the hour of your putting off to us in the lifeboat.'

  I found myself smiling at the motherly tenderness conveyed in the toneof her voice. I longed to have a clear view of her, for it was stilllike talking in a pitch-dark room; the binnacle-lamp needed trimming,its light was feeble, and the sky lay horribly black over the ocean,that was raging, ghastly with pallid glances of sheets of foam under it.

  'Let us first sound the well, if possible,' said I, 'for our lives' sakewe ought to find out what is happening below!'

  By this time we had watched and waited long enough to satisfy ourselvesthat the barque would do as well as we dared hope with her helm lashed;and it also happened, very fortunately, that her yards were in the righttrim for the posture in which she lay, having been pointed to thewind--the fore-yards on one tack, the main-yards on the other--when thegale came on to blow in the bay, and the braces had not since beentouched. I walked with the girl to the entrance of the deck-house, thedoor of which faced forwards. She entered the structure and, while Iwaited outside, lighted a bull's-eye lamp, with which she rejoined me,and together we went forward to another house built abaft of the galley.This had been the place in which the crew slept. The carpenter's chestwas here, and also the sounding-rod. We then went to the pumps, andwhile I held the lamp she dropped the rod down the sounding-pipe, drewit up and brought it to the light and examined it, and named the depthof water there was in the hold. I do not recollect the figure, but Iremember that, though it was significant, there was nothing greatly toalarm us in it, seeing how heavily and how frequently the barque hadbeen flooded with the seas, and how much of the water might have madeits way from above.

  I recount this little passage in a few lines, yet it forms one of themost sharp-cut of the memories of my adventure. The picture is before meas I write. I see the pair of us as we come to a dead stand, graspingeach other for support, while the vessel rolls madly over on the slopeof some huge hurtling sea. I see the bright glare from the bull's-eyelamp in the girl's hand, dancing like a will-o'-the-wisp upon the blackflood betwixt the rails washing with the slant of the decks to ourknees; I see her dropping the rod down the tube, coolly examining it,declaring its indication, while, to the flash of the lamplight, I catchan instant's glimpse of her face, shining out white--large-eyed, as itseemed to me--upon the blackness rushing in thunder athwart the deck.

  She led the way into the deck-house. There was a small lantern wildlyswinging at a central beam--my companion had lighted it when sheprocured the bull's-eye lamp--it diffused a good lustre, and I could seevery plainly. It was just a plain, ordinary, shipboard interior, withthree little windows of a side, a short table, lockers on either hand,and a sleeping-berth, or cabin, designed for the captain's use, aft; thecompanion-hatch, which led to the deck below, was betwixt the after-endof the cabin and the bulkhead of the berth, but the rapid glance I threwaround speedily settled, as you may suppose, into a look--a longlook--full of curiosity, surprise, and admiration, at the girl.

  She stood before me dressed as a sailor lad, in a suit of pilot clothand a red silk handkerchief round her throat; but her first act onentering was to remove her cloth cap, that was streaming wet, and throwit down upon the table; and thus she stood with her eyes fixed on me, asmine were on her, each of us surveying the other. Her hair was cutshort, and was rough and plentiful, without remains of any sort offashion in the wearing of it--nay, indeed, it was unparted. It was veryfair hair, and as pale as amber in the lamplight. Her eyebrows were of adarker colour, and very perfectly arched, as though pencilled. It wasimpossible to guess the hue of her eyes by that light: they seemed of avery dark blue, such as might prove violet in the sunshine, soft andliquid, and of an expression, even in that hour of peril, of the horrorof tempest, of the prospect of death, indeed, that might make onereadily suppose her of a nature both sweet and merry. There was no signof exposure to the weather upon her face; she was white with thepaleness of fatigue and emotion. Her cheeks were plump, her mouth small,the under-lip a little pouted, and her teeth pearl-like and veryregular. Even by the light in which I now surveyed her, I never for amoment could have mistaken her for a lad. There was nothing in her garbto neutralize for an instant the suggestions of her sex.

  'I will take you to my father,' said she; 'but you must first eat anddrink.'

  I could not have told how exhausted I was until I sank down upon alocker and rested my arms upon the table. I was too wearied to ask thequestions that I should have put to her at another time, and could do nomore than watch her, with a sort of dull wonder at her nimbleness, andthe spirit and resolution of her movements as she lifted the lid of thelocker and produced a case-bottle of Hollands, some cold meat, and a tinof white biscuits.

  'We have no bread,' said she, smiling; 'we obtained some loaves off theIsle of Wight, but the last was eaten yesterday.'

  She took a tumbler from a rack and mixed a draught of the Hollands withsome water which she got from a filter fixed to a st
anchion, andextended the glass.

  'Pray let me follow you!' said I. She shook her head. 'Yes!' I cried;'God knows you should need some such tonic more than I!'

  I induced her to drink, and then took the glass and emptied it. A seconddram warmed and heartened me. I was without appetite, but was willing toeat for the sake of such strength as might come from a meal. The girlmade herself a sandwich of biscuit and meat, and we fell to. And so wesat facing each other, eating, staring at each other; the pair of us allthe while hearkening with all our ears to the roaring noises outside, tothe straining sounds within the ship, and feeling--I speak ofmyself--with every nerve tense as a fiddlestring, the desperate slantsand falls and uprisals of the deck or platform upon which our feetrested.