My Danish Sweetheart: A Novel. Volume 1 of 3

by William Clark Russell

  CHAPTER IX.

  RESCUED.

  This is a thing easy to recall, but how am I to convey the reality ofit? What is there in ink to put before you that wide scene ofstarlighted gloom, the dusky shapes of swell for ever runningnoiselessly at us--no sounds save the occasional creaking of the raft asshe was swayed--the motionless, black outlines of Helga and myselfoverhanging the pallid streak of cot--at intervals a low sob breakingfrom the girl's heart, and the overwhelming sense of present danger, ofhopelessness, made blacker yet by the night? And amid all this the crazybabbling of the dying Dane, now in English and now in his native tongue!

  It was just upon the stroke of one o'clock in the morning when he died.I had brought my watch to the lamp, when he fetched a sort of groaningbreath, of a character that caused me to bend my ear to his lips: and Ifound that he had ceased to breathe. I continued to listen, and then, tomake sure, cast the light of the lamp upon him.

  'He has gone!' cried Helga.

  'God has taken him,' said I. 'Come to this side, and sit by me!'

  She did as I asked, and I took her hand. I knew by her respiration thatshe was weeping, and I held my peace till her grief should have had somevent. I then spoke of her father, represented that his ailments must inall probability have carried him off almost as swiftly ashore; that hehad died a peaceful death, with his daughter beside him, and his wifeand home present in a vision to his gaze; and said that, so far fromgrieving, we should count it a mercy that he had been called away thuseasily, for who was to imagine what lay before us--what sufferings,which must have killed him certainly later on?

  'His heart broke when his barque sank,' said she. 'I heard it in hiscry.'

  This might very well have been too.

  Never was there so long a night. The moon was behind the sea, and aftershe was gone the very march of the stars seemed arrested, as thoughnature had cried 'Halt!' to the universe. Having run the lamp aloft, Iresolved to leave it there, possessed now with such a superstitiousnotion as might well influence a shipwrecked man, that if I lowered itagain no vessel would appear. Therefore, to tell the time, I was obligedto strike a match, and whenever I did this I would stare at my watch andput it to my ear and doubt the evidence of my sight, so inexpressiblyslow was the passage of those hours.

  Helga's sobs ceased. She sat by my side, speaking seldom after we hadexhausted our first talk on her coming round to where I was. I wishedher to sleep, and told her that I could easily make a couch for her, andthat my oilskin would protect her from the dew. I still held her hand asI said this, and I felt the shudder that ran through her when shereplied that she could not lie down, that she could not sleep. Perhapsshe feared I would disturb her father's body to make a bed for her; and,indeed, there was nothing on the raft, but the poor fellow's cloak andhis pillows and blankets, out of which I could have manufactured a bed.

  Had I been sure that he was dead, I should have slipped the bodyoverboard while it remained dark, so that Helga should not have beenable to see what I did; but I had not the courage to bury him merelybecause I believed he was dead, because he lay there motionless; and Iwas constantly thinking how I should manage when the dawn came--how Iwas so to deal with the body as to shock and pain poor Helga as littleas possible.

  As we sat side by side, I felt a small pressure of her shoulder againstmy arm, and supposed that she had fallen asleep, but, on my whispering,she immediately answered. Dead tired I knew the brave girl must be, butsleep could not visit eyes whose gaze I might readily guess was againand again directed at the faint pale figure of the cot.

  The light air shifted into the north-west at about three o'clock in themorning, and blew a small breeze which extinguished the star-flakes thathere and there rode upon the swell, and raised a noise of tinkling,rippling waters along the sides of the raft. I guessed this newdirection of the wind by my observation of a bright greenish star whichhad hung in the wake of the moon, and was now low in the west. Thislight breeze kindled a little hope in me, and I would rise again andagain to peer into the quarter whence it blew, in the expectation ofspying some pale shadow of ship. Once Helga, giving a start, exclaimed:

  'Hush! I seem to hear the throb of a steamer's engines!'

  We both stood up hand in hand, for the sway of the raft made a danger ofit as a platform, and I listened with strained hearing. It might havebeen a steamer, but there was no blotch of darkness upon the obscuritythe sea-line round to denote her, nor any gleam of lantern. Yet fornearly a quarter of an hour did we listen, in a torment of attention,and then resumed our seats side by side.

  The dawn broke at last, dispelling, as it seemed to my weary despairingimagination, a long month of perpetual night. The cold gray was slow andstealthy, and was a tedious time in brightening into the silver and roseof sunrise. My first act was to sweep the sea for a ship, and I thenwent to the cot and looked at the face upon the pillows in it. If I hadnever seen death before, I might have known it now. I turned to thegirl.

  'Helga,' said I gently, 'you can guess what my duty is--for your sake,and for mine, and for his too.'

  I looked earnestly at her as I spoke: she was deadly pale, haggard, hereyes red and inflamed with weeping, and her expression one of exquisitetouching sorrow and mourning. But the sweetness of her young countenancewas dominant even in that supreme time, and, blending with the visiblesigns of misery in her looks, raised the mere prettiness of her featuresinto a sad beauty that impressed me as a spiritual rather than as aphysical revelation.

  'Yes, I know what must be done,' she answered. 'Let me kiss him first.'

  She approached the cot, knelt by it, and put her lips to her father's:then raising her clasped hands above her head, and looking upwards, shecried out: '_Jeg er faderloes! Gud hjelpe mig!_'

  I stood apart waiting, scarcely able to draw my breath for the pity andsorrow that tightened my throat. It is impossible to imagine theplaintive wailing note her voice had as she uttered those Danish words:'_I am fatherless! God help me!_' She then hid her face in her hands,and remained kneeling and praying.

  After a few minutes she arose, kissed again the white face, and seatedherself with her back upon the cot.

  No one could have named to me a more painful, a more distasteful pieceof work than the having to handle the body of this poor Danish captain,and launch him into that fathomless grave upon whose surface we lay.First I had to remove the ropes which formed our little bulwark, that Imight slide the cot overboard; then with some ends of line I laced thefigure in the cot, that it should not float away out of it whenlaunched. The work kept me close to the body, and, thin and white as hewas, yet he looked so lifelike, wore an expression so remonstrant, thatmy horror was sensibly tinctured with a feeling of guilt, as thoughinstead of burying him I was about to drown him.

  I made all despatch possible for Helga's sake, but came to a pause, whenthe cot was ready, to look about me for a sinker. There was nothingthat I could see but the jars, and, as they contained our little stockof spirits and fresh water, they were altogether too precious to send tothe bottom. I could do no more than hope that the canvas would speedilygrow saturated, then fill and sink; and, putting my hands to the cot, Idragged it to the edge of the raft, and went round to the head andpushed.

  It was midway over the side, when a huge black rat sprang from among theblankets out through the lacing, and disappeared under the hatch-cover.I had no doubt it was the same rat that had leapt from my shoulderaboard the barque. If it had terrified me there, you will guess theshock it caused me now! I uttered some cry in the momentaryconsternation raised in me by this beastly apparition of life flashing,so to speak, out of the very figure and stirlessness of death, and Helgalooked and called to know what was the matter.

  'Nothing, nothing,' I replied. 'Turn your eyes from me, Helga!'

  She immediately resumed her former posture, covering her face with herhands. The next moment I had thrust the cot fair into the sea, and itslid off to a distance of twice or thrice its own length, and lay risingand falling, to all app
earances buoyant as the raft itself. I knew itwould sink so soon as the canvas and blankets were soaked, yet thatmight take a little while in doing, and dreading lest Helga shouldlook--for you will readily conceive how dreadful would be to the girlthat sight of her father afloat in the square of canvas, his faceshowing clearly through the lacing of rope--I went to her, and put myarm round her, and so, but without speaking, obliged her to keep herface away. I gathered from her passiveness that she understood me. WhenI glanced again, the cot was in the act of sinking; in a few beats ofthe heart it vanished, and all was blank ocean to the heavens--aprospect of little flashful and feathering ripples, but glorious asmolten and sparkling silver in the east under the soaring sun.

  I withdrew my hand from Helga's shoulder. She then looked, and sighedheavily, but no more tears flowed. I believe she had wept her heart dry!

  'In what words am I to thank you for your kindness and sympathy?' saidshe. 'My father and my mother are looking down upon us, and they willbless you.'

  'We must count on being saved, Helga,' said I, forcing a cheerful noteinto my voice. 'You will see Kolding again, and I shall hope to see ittoo, by your side.' And, with the idea of diverting her mind from hergrief, I told her of my promise to her father, and how happy it wouldmake me to accompany her to Denmark.

  'I have been too much of a home bird,' said I. 'You will provide me witha good excuse for a ramble, Helga; but first you shall meet my dear oldmother, and spend some time with us. I am to save your life, you know. Iam here for that purpose;' and so I continued to talk to her, now andagain coaxing a light sorrowful smile to her lips; but it was easy toknow where her heart was; all the while she was sending glances at thesea close to the raft, where she might guess the cot had sunk, and twiceI overheard her whisper to herself that same passionate, grievingsentence she had uttered when she kissed her father's dead face: '_Jeger faderloes! Gud hjelpe mig!_'

  The morning stole away. Very soon after I had buried the Captain Ilowered the lamp, and sent the Danish flag we had brought with us to thehead of the little mast, where it blew out bravely, and promised toboldly court any passing eye that might be too distant to catch a sightof our flat platform of raft. I then got breakfast, and induced Helga toeat and drink. Somehow, whether it was because of the sick complainingCaptain, with his depressing menace of death, being gone, or because ofthe glad sunshine, the high marbling of the heavens, full of fineweather, and the quiet of the sea, with its placid heave of swell andits twinkling of prismatic ripples, my heart felt somewhat light, myburden of despondency was easier to carry, was less crushing to myspirits. What to hope for I did not know. I needed no special wisdom toguess that if we were not speedily delivered from this raft we were ascertainly doomed as though we had clung to the barque and gone down inher. Yet spite of this there was a stirring of hope in me. It seemedimpossible but that some ship must pass us before the day was gone. Howfar we had blown to the southward and westward during the gale I couldnot have told, but I might be sure we were not very distant from themouth of the English Channel, and therefore in the fair way of vesselsinward and outward bound, more particularly of steamers heading forPortuguese and Mediterranean ports.

  But hour after hour passed, and nothing hove into view. The sun wentfloating from his meridian into the west, and still the horizon remaineda blank, near, heaving line, with the sky whitening to the ocean rim.Again and again Helga sought the boundary, as I did. Side by side wewould stand, she holding by my arm, and together we gazed, slowlysweeping the deep.

  'It is strange!' she once said, after a long and thirsty look. 'We arenot in the middle of the ocean. Not even the smoke of a steamer!'

  'Our horizon is narrow,' answered I. 'Does it exceed three miles? Ishould say not, save when the swell lifts us, and then, perhaps, we maysee four. Four miles of sea!' I cried. 'There may be a dozen shipswithin three leagues of us, all of them easily within sight from themaintop of the _Anine_, were she afloat. But what, short of a straightcourse for the raft, could bring this speck of timber on which we standinto view? This is the sort of situation to make one understand what issignified by the immensity of the ocean.'

  She shivered and clasped her hands.

  'That I--that we,' she exclaimed, speaking slowly and almost under herbreath, 'should have brought you to this pass, Mr. Tregarthen! It wasour fate by rights--but it ought not to be yours!'

  'You asked me to call you Helga,' said I; 'and you must give me myChristian name.'

  'What is it?' she asked.

  'Hugh.'

  'It is a pretty name. If we are spared, it will be sweet to my memorywhile I have life!'

  She said this with an exquisite artlessness, with an expression ofwonderful sweetness and gentleness in her eyes, which were bravelyfastened upon me, and then, suddenly catching up my hand, put her lipsto it and pressed it to her heart, letting it fall as she turned herface upon the water on that side of the raft where her father's body hadsunk.

  My spirits, which remained tolerably buoyant while the sun stood high,sank as he declined. The prospect of another long night upon the raft,and of all that might happen in a night, was insupportable. I hadsecurely bound the planks together, as I believed, but the constant playof the swell was sure to tell after a time. One of the ligatures mightchafe through, and in a minute the whole fabric scatter under our feetlike the staves of a stove boat, and leave us no more than a plank tohold on by in the midst of this great sea which all day long had beenwithout ships. I often bitterly deplored I had not brought a sail fromthe barque, for the air that hung steady all day blew landwards, andthere was no weight in it to have carried away the flimsiest fabric wecould have erected. A sail would have given us a drift--perhaps have putus in the way of sighting a vessel, and in any case it would havemitigated the intolerable sense of helpless imprisonment which came toone with thoughts of the raft floating without an inch of way upon her,overhanging all day long, as it might have seemed, that very spot ofwaters in which Helga's father had found his grave.

  Shortly before sundown Helga sighted a sail in the south-west. It wasthe merest shaft of pearl gleaming above the ocean rim, and visible tous only when the quiet heave of the sea threw us up. It was no more thana vessel's topmost canvas, and before the sun was gone the dim starlikesheen of those cloths had faded out into the atmosphere.

  'You must get some rest to-night, Helga,' said I. 'Your keeping awakewill not save us if we are to be drowned, and if we are to be saved thensleep will keep you in strength. It is the after-consequences of thissort of exposure and mental distress which are to be dreaded.'

  'Shall I be able to sleep on this little rickety platform?' sheexclaimed, running her eyes, glowing dark against the faint scarlet inthe west, over the raft. 'It brings one so dreadfully near to thesurface of the sea. The coldness of the very grave itself seems to comeout of it.'

  'You talk like a girl now that you are dressed as one, Helga. The heartyyoung sailor-lad that I met aboard the _Anine_ would have found nothingmore than a raft and salt water in this business, and would have"planked" it here as comfortably as in his cabin bunk.'

  'It did not please you to see me in boy's clothes,' said she.

  'You made a very charming boy, Helga; but I like you best as you are.'

  'No stranger should have seen me dressed so,' she exclaimed in a tone ofvoice that made me figure a little flush in her cheeks, though there wasnothing to be seen in that way by the twilight which had drawn aroundus. 'I did not care what the mates and the crew thought, but I could nothave guessed----' she stammered and went on: 'when I saw in the bay whatthe weather was likely to prove, I determined to keep my boy's dress on,more particularly after that wretched man, Damm, went away with theothers, for then the _Anine_ would be very short-handed for what mighthappen; and how could I have been of use in this attire?' and she tookhold of her dress and looked down it.

  'I have heard before,' said I, 'of girls doing sailors' work, but notfor love of it. In the old songs and stories they are represented asgoing to
sea chiefly in pursuit of absconding sweethearts.'

  'You think me unwomanly for acting the part of a sailor?' said she.

  'I think of you, Helga,' said I, taking her by the hand, 'as a girl withthe heart of a lioness. But if I once contrive to land you safely atKolding, you will not go to sea again, I hope?'

  She sighed, without replying.

  There was nothing but her father's cloak and my oilskins to make a couchfor her with. When I pressed her to take some rest, she entreated softlythat I would allow her to go on talking and sitting--that she wassleepless--that it lightened her heart to talk with me--that there weremany hours of darkness yet before us--and that before she consented tolie down we must arrange to keep watch, since I needed rest too.

  I was willing, indeed, to keep her at my side talking. The dread of theloneliness which I knew would come off the wide, dark sea into my brainwhen she was silent and asleep, and when there would be nothing but thestars and the cold and ghastly gleam of the ebony breast on which welay, to look at, was strong upon me. I mastheaded the bull's-eye lamp,and spread the poor Danish Captain's cloak, and we seated ourselves uponit, and for a long two hours we talked together, in which time she gaveme her life's history, and I chatted to her about myself. I listened toher with interest and admiration. Her voice was pure, with a quality ofplaintive sweetness in it, and now and again she would utter a sentencein Danish, then translate it. It might be that the girlish nature I nowfound in her was accentuated to my appreciation by the memory of herboyish attire, by her appearance when on board the barque, the work shedid there and the sort of roughness one associates with the trade of thesea, whether true of the individual or not; but, as I thought, never hadI been in the company of any woman whose conversation and behaviour wereso engaging, with their qualities of delicacy, purity, simplicity, andcandour, as Helga's.

  It was such another night as had passed, saving that the ocean swell hadthe softness of the long hours of fine weather in its volume, whereas onthe previous night it still breathed as in memory of the fierceconflict that was over.

  A little after midnight there was a red scar of moon in the west, andthe hour was a very dark one, spite of the silver showering of theplentiful stars. I had made for Helga the best sort of couch it was inmy power to manufacture, and at this time she lay upon it sleepingdeeply, as I knew by the regularity of her respiration. The sense ofloneliness I dreaded had been upon me since she lay down and left me tothe solitary contemplation of our situation. A small wind blew out ofthe north-west, and there was much slopping noise of waters under myfeet amid the crevices of the clumsily framed raft. I had promised Helgato call her at three, but without intending to keep my word if sheslept, and I sat near her head, her pale face glimmering out of thedarkness as though spectrally self-luminous, and for ever I was turningmy eyes about the sea and directing my gaze at the little mastheadlantern to know that it was burning.

  Happening to bend my gaze down upon the raft, into some interstice closeagainst where the hatch-cover was secured, I spied what, for themoment, I might have supposed a pair of glow-worms, minute, but definedenough. Then I believed there was a little pool of water there, and thatit reflected a couple of stars. A moment after I guessed what it was,and in a very frenzy of the superstition that had been stirring in me,and in many directions of thought influencing me from the moment of myleaving the barque, I had my hand upon the great rat--for that was whatit was--and sent it flying overboard. I remember the wild squeak of thething as I hurled it--you would have supposed it the cry of a distantgull. There was a little fire in the water, and I could see where itswam, and all very quietly I seized hold of a loose plank and, waitingtill it had come near, I hit it, and kept on hitting it, till I might besure it was drowned.

  Some little noise I may have made: Helga spoke in her sleep, but did notwake. You will smile at my mentioning this trifling passage; you wouldlaugh could I make you understand the emotion of relief, the sense ofexultant happiness, that possessed me when I had drowned this rat. WhenI look back and recall this little detail of my experiences, I neverdoubt that the overwhelming spirit of the loneliness of that ocean nightlay upon me in a sort of craziness. I thought of the rat as an evilspirit, a something horribly ominous to us, a menace of suffering and ofdreadful death while it stayed with us. God knows why I should have thusthought; but the imagination of the shipwrecked is quickly diseased, andthe moods which a man will afterwards look back upon with shame andgrief and astonishment are, while they are present, to him as fruitfulof terrible imaginings as ever made the walls of a madhouse ring withmaniac laughter.

  It might have been some half-hour after this--the silly excitement ofthe incident having passed out of my mind--that I fell into a doze.Nature was well-nigh exhausted in me, yet I did not wish to sleep. Inproportion, however, as the workings of my brain were stealthily quietedby the slumberous feelings stealing over me, so the soothing influenceswithout operated: the cradling of the raft, the hushing and subduinggaze of the stars, the soft whispering of the wind.

  I was awakened by a rude shock, followed by a hoarse bawling cry. Therewas a second shock of a sort to smartly bring my wits together, attendedwith several shouts, such as--'What is it? What have ye run us into?Why, stroike me silly, if it ain't a raft!'

  I sprang to my feet, and found the bows of a little vessel overhangingus. Small as I might know her to be, she yet loomed tall and black, andeven seemed to tower over us, so low-seated were we. She lined herproportions against the starry sky, and I made out that she had hookedherself to us by running her bowsprit through the stays which supportedour mast.

  My first thought was for Helga, but she was rising even as I looked, andthe next moment was at my side.

  'For God's sake!' I cried, 'lower away your sail, or your stem willgrind this raft to pieces! We are two--a girl and a man--shipwreckedpeople. I implore you to help us to get on board you!'

  A lantern was held over the side, and the face of the man who held itshowed out to the touch of the lustre like a picture in a _cameraobscura_. The rays of the lantern streamed fairly upon us, and the manroared out:

  'Ay! it's a raft, Jacob, and there are two of 'em, and one a gal. Chuckthe man a rope's-end and he'll haul the raft alongside.'

  'Look out!' shouted another voice from the after-part of the littlevessel, and some coils of rope fell at my feet.

  I instantly seized the line, and, Helga catching hold too, we strainedour united weight at it, and the raft swung alongside the craft at themoment that she lowered her sail.

  'Catch hold of the lady's hands!' I shouted.

  In a moment she was dragged over the side. I handed up the littleparcel, containing her mother's picture and Bible, and followed easily,scrambling over the low rail.

  The man who grasped the lantern held it aloft to survey us, and I sawthe dusky glimmer of two other faces past him.

  'This is a queer start!' said he. 'How long have you been knocking abouthere?'

  'You shall have the yarn presently,' said I; 'but before the raft goesadrift, it's well you should know that she is pretty handsomely stockedwith provisions--all worth bringing aboard.'

  'Right!' he cried. 'Jacob, take this here lantern and jump over theside, and hand up what ye find.'

  All this had happened too suddenly to suffer me as yet to be sensible ofwhat came little short of a miraculous deliverance; for had the craftbeen a vessel of burthen, or had there been any weight in the soft nightair still blowing, she would have sheared through us as we lay asleep,and scattered the raft and drowned us out of hand--nay, before we couldhave cried 'O God!' we should have been suffocating in the water.

  I believed her at first a fishing-boat. She was lugger-rigged and open,with a little forecastle in her bows, as I had noticed while the lanterndangled in the hand of the man who surveyed us. Yet, had she been aline-of-battle ship, she could not, as a refuge and a means ofdeliverance after the horror and peril of that flat platform of raft,have filled me with more joy and thanksgiving.
r />   'The worst is over, Helga!' I cried, as I seized the girl's cold andtrembling hand. 'Here is a brave little vessel to carry us home, and youwill see Kolding again, after all!'

  She made some answer, which her emotion rendered scarcely intelligible.Her being suddenly awakened by the shock of the collision, her alarm onseeing what might have passed in the gloom as a tall, black mass of bowcrushing into the raft; then the swiftness of our entry into the lugger,and the sensations which would follow on her perception of our escapefrom a terrible death--all this, combined with what she had gonethrough, was too much for the brave little creature; she could scarcelywhisper; and, as I have said, her hand was cold as frost, and trembledlike an aged person's, as I gently brought her to one of the thwarts.

  By this time I had made out that the boat carried only three of a crew.One of them, holding the lantern, had sprung on to the raft, and wasbusy in handing up to the others whatever he could lay his hands upon.They did not spend many minutes over this business. Indeed, I wasastonished by their despatch. The fellow on the raft worked like one whowas very used to rummaging, and, as I knew afterwards by observing whathe had taken, it was certain not a single crevice escaped him.

  'That's all,' I heard him shout. 'There's naught left that I can find,unless so be as the parties have snugged any valuables away.'

  'No!' I cried, 'there are no valuables, no money--nothing but food anddrink.'

  'Come aboard, Jacob, arter ye've chucked up what's loose for firewood.'

  Presently the lantern flashed as it was passed across the rail, and thefigure of the man followed.

  'Shove her clear!' was bawled, and shortly afterwards, 'Up foresail!'

  The dark square of sail mounted, and one of the men came aft to thehelm. Nothing was said until the sheet had been hauled aft, and thelittle craft was softly rippling along over the smooth folds of theswell, communicating a sensation so buoyant, so vital after the flatmechanical swaying and slanting of the inert raft, that the mere feelingof it to me was as potent in virtue as some life-giving dram.

  The other two men came out of the bows and seated themselves, placingthe lighted lantern in the midst of us, and so we sat staring at oneanother.

  'Men,' said I, 'you have rescued us from a horrible situation. I thankyou for my life, and I thank you for this lady's life.'

  'How long have ye been washing about, sir?' said the man at the helm.

  'Since Monday night,' said I.

  'A bad job!' said he; 'but you'll have had it foine since Monday night.Anyone perish aboard your raft?'

  'One,' I answered quickly. 'And now I'll tell you my story. But first Imust ask for a drop of spirits out of one of those jars you havetranshipped. A sudden change of this sort tries a man to the soul.'

  'Ay, you're right,' growled one of the others. 'I know what it is to beplucked by the hair o' the head out of the hopen jaws of Death, and thesort of feelings what comes arter the plucking job's o'er. Which'll bethe particler jar, sir?'

  'Any one of them,' said I.

  He explored with the lantern, found a little jar of brandy, and theglass, or rather I should say the pannikin, went round. I coaxed Helgainto taking a sup; yet she continued silent at my side, as one stilldazed and incapable of mastering what had happened. Indeed, with herwoman's apparel, you might have believed that she had re-equippedherself with her woman's nature.

  END OF VOL. I.