William Clark Russell

“ Helga surrendered the helm to Abraham, and the boat blew nimbly along over that summer stretch of sea; Abraham steering with a mortified face; Jacob leaning upon the weather gunwale with his chin upon his arms, sullenly gazing into vacancy; and Helga and I a little way forward, talking in a low voice over the past. What new adventure was this we had entered upon? Should we come off with our lives, after all? The tigress ocean had shown herself in many moods since I had found myself within reach of her claws. ”

“ There was a great deal of greenish fire in the sea, and it broadened and shrank in wide spaces in the lift of the noiseless running swell as though the rays of a tinted lantern were cast upon the water. The dew was plentiful, and lay along the rails and upon the skylight, crisp as frost in the starshine.
It was Abraham's watch, and I spied his figure flitting cumbrously in the neighbourhood of the wheel, at which stood the shape of some coloured man, motionless as though carved in ebony, faintly touched by the sheen of the binnacle lamp. I was in no humour to converse with the boatman. ”

“ Pressing my forefinger upon the chart, the curling corners of which were held down by Nakier on the one hand and Helga on the other, I fell to explaining my views, as I chose to call them, meanwhile looking round to observe that all hands of the Malays and Cingalese were present—for the creatures had a trick of coming and going like shadows. I bade them all listen, looking into one face after another, and I can see them now, shouldering one another and eagerly bending forwards—a strange, gloomy huddle of discoloured countenances flashful with eyes, and of many expressions. ”

“ Then, again, I found a sort of support in the experiences I had passed through on the raft and in the lugger. The mind is always sensible of a shock on leaving the secure high deck of a ship, and looking abroad upon the vast, pitiless breast of old Ocean from the low elevation of a boat's side. I have heard of this sort of transition paralyzing the stoutest-hearted of a shipwrecked crew; for in no other situation does death seem to come nearer to one, floating close alongside, as it were, and chilling the hottest air of the tropics to the taste and quality of a frosty blast ”

“ The three of us—Helga being at the wheel—armed ourselves with a heavy iron belaying-pin apiece, and, stationing the boatmen at the hatch, I put my face against the mouth of the funnel and hailed the men through it. I was instantly answered:
'Yaas, yaas, sah! In the name of Allah, water!'
It was such another thin, reed-like voice as had before sounded, yet not the same. This time it might have been Nakier who spoke.
'We are going to give you water and food now!' I shouted. 'We will open the hatch; but only one man must show himself to receive the things. ”

“ Of all the nights that Helga and I had as yet passed, this one of Friday, November the 3rd, was the fullest of anxiety, the most horribly trying. The wind held very light; the darkness was richly burthened with stars, there was much fire in the sea too, and the moon, that was drawing on to her half, rode in brilliance over the dark world of waters which mirrored her light in a wedge of rippling silver that seemed to sink a hundred miles deep. ”

“ Though I was not very hungry, I made a great business of sharpening my knife, and fell to the beef and ham with every appearance of avidity, not doubting that we should be furtively surveyed from time to time by the Captain, who could peep at us unseen without trouble as he passed the skylight, and who could very well overhear the clatter of dishes, the sharpening of my knife, and my calls to the steward, so silent did the night continue, as though there rested some great hush of expectancy upon the ocean. ”

“ I left the table and stood under the hatch a moment to address a word to Nakier in that wild mad spirit of defiance that will often in the timidest mock at peril in the most terrible instant of it.
'Make your men understand,' I cried, 'that if we fall in with a man-of-war, every soul of them stands to be hanged by the neck until he is dead!'
As I said these words I sprang, caught the coaming of the hatch, gained the deck with another bound, and the next instant the slide of the hatch was swept in a roar through its grooves by the powerful hands of the two Deal boatmen. ”

“ We were too much astounded to do more than gape at them. A minute later Nakier sprang back again on to the forecastle and piped out some orders in his melodious voice, in which, assuredly, the most attentive ear could have detected nothing of the weakness that I had noticed in his cries to us through the half-closed hatch. Instantly the men distributed themselves, one of them running to the wheel; and while we continued to gaze, mute with amazement, the foretopsail-yard was swung, the barque's head slowly fell off, the yards were then again braced up, and, behold! ”

“ I considered for a minute how I should make myself heard, and groping my way back to my berth, I took a loose plank, or bunk-board as it is called, from out of the sea-bedstead, and with it succeeded in raising such a thunder in the hollow cover that in a few minutes it was lifted. The homely, flat, ruddy-cheeked face of Jacob, his head clothed in a somewhat tattered yellow sou'-wester, which he had probably borrowed from one of his coloured mates forward, looked down upon me through the glimmering square of the aperture. ”

“ The sun looks as brightly down upon the Light of the World as upon the most stately ship afloat, the ocean breeze will taste as sweetly over my bulwark-rails as on the bridge of the gallantest man-of-war that flies the crimson cross;' and thus he went on vapouring as usual in fathoms of commonplace, yet with a bland underlying insistence always upon our being his guests, upon our remaining with him and being happy, as though, indeed, we had cheerfully consented to stop, and were looking forward with great enjoyment to the voyage. ”

“ I say I grew mighty sensible of the slenderness of our little crew of three men and a girl—who, to be sure, in her boy's clothes would have been the nimblest of us all aloft, but who could do no service in that way in her woman's dress—when I sent my gaze up at the quiet breasts of sail softly swelling one upon another, and rising spire-like, and thought of how it must be with us should heavy weather set in, such a gale as we might be able to show no more than a close-reefed topsail to, unless the whole fabric of masts and canvas was to go overboard. ”

“ I swiftly lighted the lantern, and placed it in Helga's bunk. Abraham was of an ashen paleness, and I knew my own cheeks to be bloodless.
'Ought we to fear the crew?' cried Helga. 'We have not wronged them. They will not want our lives.'
'Dorn't trust 'em, dorn't trust 'em!' exclaimed Abraham. 'Ain't there nothen here to sarve as weapons?' he added, rolling his eyes around the cabin. ”

“ The decks ran darkling forwards; the shadow of the courses flung a dye that was deeper than the gloom of the hour betwixt the rails, and nothing stirred save the low-lying stars which slipped up and down past the forecastle rail under the crescent of the foresail as the barque curtseyed.
Nevertheless, though I could not see the men, I heard a delicate sound of voices proceeding from the block of darkness where the forecastle front lay. Mr. Jones had charge of the watch, and, on my stepping aft to the wheel, I found Jacob grasping the spokes, having relieved the helm at four bells—ten o'clock. ”

“ Tankee de Lor'! we hab no eat pork! Tankee de Lor'! we hab no eat pork!'
He bared his gleaming teeth, as though in the anguish of cold, and shook his small clenched fist at the skylight. I sat down and lighted a pipe, and, having been somewhat chilled by waiting out in the wet of the quarter-deck for Punmeamootty to bring the lantern, I slided and clawed my way round to Captain Bunting's locker for a bottle of rum that lay within. As I did this, the companion door opened, and down came the skipper. The wind and the wet had twisted his whiskers into lines like lengths of rope. ”

“ I spoke pleasantly to the fellow at the helm—what man it was I could not see—said that the vessel's course was the right navigation for the South African coast, and so forth. He answered me throatily, with a note of satisfaction in his thick speech, and then Helga and I fell to quietly pacing the deck.
We took great care to speak low; so nimble and ghostly were the movements of this coloured crew, that it was impossible to tell where a man might be lying listening and hidden. ”

“ The men who formed the watch on deck were 'loafing about,' to use the expressive vulgarism, one lounging against the bulwark-rail with another talking to him; here a fellow squatting like a Hindoo blowing a cloud, there a couple patrolling ten feet of deck, their arms folded upon their breasts. There was no gesticulation, no excitement, nothing of the swift fierce whispered conversation significant with the flashing of the askant glance that had been noticeable down to the dusk of the previous evening. Nakier paced the weather-side of the forecastle. ”

“ We found a breaker stowed away in the long-boat, and this we filled with fresh water from the scuttle-butt, ready to hand through the hatch. I was very earnest in this work. It was easily imagined that the interior in which the men lay imprisoned would be desperately hot, with no more air to get to them than such as sulkily sank out of the listless breeze through the zigzag chimney, and with the planks of the deck above their heads like the top of an oven with the day-long pouring of the sun. ”

“ If more than one of you shows himself we will close the hatch instantly, and you will get no water. Do you understand me?'
'Yaas, yaas,' responded the voice, sounding in my ear as though it were half a mile distant. 'We swear by Allah only one man he show hisself.'
'Let that man be Punmeamootty!' I bawled.
I then returned to the hatch. Jacob, putting the belaying-pin into his coat pocket, stood abaft ready to rush the lid of the hatch to at a cry from me, while Abraham, on the left, hung, with poised weapon, prepared for the first hint of a scramble up from below. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But now the two bold headlands of the fair coast of Falmouth—the tenderest, most gem-like bit of scenery, I do honestly believe, not that England only, but that this whole great world of rich and varied pictures has to show—lay plain in our eyes. Streaks of snow upon the heights shone like virgin silver in the crisp brilliant November sun of that wintry Channel morning, and betwixt the headlands the hills beyond showed in masses of a milk-white softness poised cloud-like in the keen blue distance, as though by watching you would see them soar. ”

“ He then went on to tell us what he had said, how he had reasoned, and I shall not soon forget the unctuous, self-satisfied chuckle which broke from the folds of his throat as he paused before asking Helga what she thought of that as an example of pure logic. I listened, wondering that a man who could talk as he did could be crazy enough to attempt so perilous an experiment as the attempting to win his crew over to his own views of religion by as dangerous an insult as his fanatical mind could have lighted upon. ”

“ Upon every man's left hip was strapped the inevitable sheath-knife of the sailor, accessible in a twist of the wrist, and my breath for a little while grew laboured, while I cursed myself for not having acted upon the first motion of my mind after Nakier had laid the capful of naked blades at Helga's feet. ”

“ Nor were we under any apprehension that the immured men could find other means of escaping. The bulkhead of the forecastle was a massive wall of wood. There was, indeed, a little hatch right forward, by which the forepeak might be entered, but this forepeak was also stoutly bulkheaded, with the cargo in the hold coming hard against the division; and though the men should contrive to break through into the hold, the secured after-hatches would still as effectually bar the deck to them as though every mother's son lay helplessly manacled in the bottom of the ship. ”

“ I found a sweetheart at sea, and made her my wife ashore, and a time came when my mother was as proud of her Danish daughter as I was of my Danish bride.
There had been much talk between Helga and me, when we were on the ocean, of our going to Kolding; but down to the present time we have not visited that place. Her friends there are few, and the journey a long one; yet we are constantly talking of making an excursion to Copenhagen: the mere fancy, perhaps, gives us as much pleasure as the trip itself would. ”

“ The Captain came and went, but for the most part Helga and I remained in the cabin. The gale somewhat moderated at noon, as the skipper had predicted; but it still blew too hard to make sail on the ship, and she lay hove-to in the trough, sickening me to the inmost recesses of my soul with her extravagant somersaults and prodigious falls and upheavals. Somewhere about half-past four that afternoon, on looking through the cuddy-window, I saw Jacob smoking a pipe in the shelter of the projection of the Captain's and mate's cabins. ”