My Danish Sweetheart: A Novel. Volume 1 of 3

by William Clark Russell

  CHAPTER II.

  A NIGHT OF STORM.

  I overhung the rail of the pier, looking down upon the heads of thebreakers as they dissolved in white water amid the black and slimysupporters of the structure, and sending a glance from time to timetowards the northern headland, out of which, I gathered from the menabout me, the ship would presently draw, though no one could certainlysay as yet that she was bound for our bay, spite of her heading directin for the land. A half-hour passed, and then she showed: her bowspritand jibbooms came forking out past the chocolate-coloured height ofcliff, and the suddenness of this presentment of white wings of jibs andstaysail caused the canvas to look ghastly for the moment against thedark and drooping smoke-coloured sky that overhung the sea where shewas--as ghastly, I say, as the gleam of froth is when seen at midnight,or a glance of moonshine dropping spear-like through a rift and making alittle pool of light in the midst of a black ocean.

  I watched her with curiosity. She was something less than three milesdistant, and she drew out very stately under a full breast of sail,rolling her three spires--the two foremost of which were clothed to thetrucks--with the majesty of a war-ship. We might now make sure that shewas bound for the bay, and meant to bring up. The air was still a verylight wind, which made a continuous wonder of the muteness of thestorm-shadow that was overhead; and the vessel, which we might now seewas a barque of four hundred tons or thereabouts, floated into the bayvery slowly. Her canvas swung as she rolled, and made a hurry of lightof her, and one saw the glint of the sails broaden in the brows of theswell which chased and underran her, so reflective was the water, spiteof the small wrinkling of it by the weak draught.

  'A furriner,' said a man near me.

  'Ay,' said I, examining her through a small but powerfulpocket-telescope; 'that green caboose doesn't belong to an Englishman.She's hoisting her colour! Now I have it--a Dane!'

  'What does she want to come here for?' exclaimed another of the littleknot of men who had gathered about me. 'Something wrong, I allow.'

  'Master drunk, per'aps,' said a third.

  'He'll be making a lee zhore of our ugly bit of coast if it comes on toblow from the west'ard, and if not from there, then where else it'scoming from who's going to guess?' exclaimed a gruff old fellow, peeringat the vessel under a shaggy, contracted brow.

  'Her captain may have a trick of the weather above our comprehension,'said I. 'If the gale's to come out of the north, he'll do well where helets go his anchor; but if it's to be the other way about--well, Isuppose some of our chaps will advise him. Maybe he has been tempted bythe look of the bay; or he may have a sick or a dead man to land.'

  'Perhaps he has a mind to vind us a job to-night zur,' said one of mylifeboat's men.

  We continued watching. Presently she began to shorten sail, and theleisurely manner in which the canvas was first clewed up and then rolledup was assurance enough to a nautical eye that she was not overmanned.I could distinguish the figure of a short, squarely-framed man,apparently giving orders from the top of a long house aft, and I couldmake out the figure of another man, seemingly young, flitting to and frowith a manner of idle restlessness, though at intervals he would pauseand sweep the town and foreshore with his telescope.

  About this time five men launched a swift, powerful boat of a whalingpattern off the sand on to which it had been dragged that morning, farbeyond high-water mark. They ran the little fabric over a line ofwell-greased planks or skids, and sprang into her as her bow met thefirst roll of water, and in a breath their oars were out and they weresweeping the boat towards the barque, making the spray spit from thestem to the herculean sweep of the blades. She was a boat that wasmainly used for these errands--for putting help aboard ships whichwanted it--for taking pilots off and bringing them ashore, and the like.So slow was the motion of the barque that she was still floating intothe bay with her anchors at the catheads, and a few heads of men alongthe yards furling the lighter canvas, when the boat dashed alongside ofher. When the stranger was about a mile and a half distant from thepoint of pier which I watched her from, she let go her topsailhalliards--she carried single sails--and a few minutes later her anchorfell, and she swung slowly, with her head to the swell and the lightwind.

  Scarcely was she straining to the scope of cable that had been paid out,when the boat which had gone to her left her side. The men rowedleisurely; one could tell by the rise and fall of the oars that theirerrand had proved a disappointment, that there was nothing to be earned,nothing to be done, neither help nor counsel wanted. I walked down tothat part of the sands where she would come ashore, but had to waituntil her crew had walked her up out of the water before I could get anynews. Our town was so dull, our habits of thought so primitive as to bealmost childlike--the bay for long spells at a time so barren of allinterests, that the arrival of a vessel, if it were not a smack or acollier, excited the sort of curiosity among us that a new-comer raisesin a little village. A ship bringing up in the bay was something tolook at, something to speculate upon; and then, again, there was alwaysthe expectation among the 'longshoremen of earning a few pounds out ofher.

  I called to one of the crew of the boat after she had been secured highand dry, and asked him the name of the vessel.

  'The _Anine_', says he.

  'What's wrong with her?' said I.

  'Nothing but fear of the weather, I allow,' said he; 'she's fromCuxhaven, bound to Party Alleggy, or some such a hole away down in theBrazils.'

  'Porto Allegre, is it?' said I.

  'Ay,' he answered, 'that zounds nearer to the name that vur given to us.She's got a general cargo aboard. The master's laid up in the cabin; thechief mate broke un's leg off Texel, and they zent him into Partsmouthaboard of a zmack. The chap in charge calls himself Damm. I onderstoodhe'z carpenter, acting as zecond mate. But who's to follow such a lingoas he talks?'

  'He's brought up here with the master's sanction, I suppose?'

  'Can't tell you that,' he answered, 'for I don't know. 'Pears to me asif this here traverse was Mr. Damm's own working out. He's got across-eye, and I don't rightly like his looks. He pointed aloft andzhook his head, and made us understand that he was here for zhelter.Jimmy, meaning one of the boat's crew, pointed to the Twins, and Mr.Damm he grins and says, "Yaw, yaw, dot's right!"'

  'But if he's bound to the Brazils,' I said, 'how does it happen that heis on this side the Land's End? Porto Allegre isn't in Wales.'

  Here another of the boat's crew who had joined us said, 'I understoodfrom a man who spoke a bit of English that they was bound round toSwansea, but what to take in, atop of a general cargo, I can't say.'

  The sailors aboard the vessel were now slowly rolling the up canvas uponthe yards. She was a wall-sided vessel, with a white figure-head and asquare stern, and she pitched so heavily upon the swell sweeping to herbows that one could not but wonder how it would be with her when it cameon to blow in earnest, with such a sea as the Atlantic in wrath threwinto this rock-framed bight of coast. She rolled as regularly as shecurtseyed, and gave us a view of a band of new metal sheathing that rosewith a dull rusty gleam out of the water, as though to some swiftvanishing touch of stormy sunlight. The white lines of her furledcanvas, with the delicate interlacery of shrouds and running-gear, thefine fibres of her slender mastheads with a red spot of dog-vane at themizzenmast--the whole body of the vessel, in a word, stood out with anexquisite clearness that made the heaving fabric resemble a choicelywrought toy upon the dark, tempestuous green which went rising andfalling past her, and against the low and menacing frown of the skybeyond her.

  A deeper shadow seemed to have entered the atmosphere since she let goher anchor. Away down upon her port-quarter the foam was leaping uponthe black Twins and the larger rock beyond, and the round of the bay wassharply marked by the surf twisting in a wool-white curve from one pointto another, but gathering a brighter whiteness as it stretched towardsthose extremities of the land which breasted the deeper waters and thelarger swell.

  The clock of St.
Saviour's Church chimed five--tea-time; and as I turnedto make my way home two bells were struck aboard the barque, and thelight inshore wind brought in the distant tones upon the ear with afairy daintiness of faint music that corresponded to perfection with thetoy-like appearance of the vessel. One of the crew of the boataccompanied me a short distance on his way to his own humble cottage inSwim Lane.

  'If that Dutchman,' said he--and by 'Dutchman' he meant Dane, for thisword covers all the Scandinavian nations in Jack's language--'if thatDutchman, Mr. Tregarthen, knows what's good for him, he'll up anchor and"ratch" out afore it's too late.'

  'Did you see the captain?'

  'No, sir. He's in his cabin, badly laid up.'

  'I thought I made out two men on top of the deck-house, who seemed incommand--one the captain, and the other the mate, as I supposed.'

  'No, sir; the capt'n's below. One of them two men you saw was thecarpenter Damm; t'other was a boy--a passenger he looked like, thoughdressed as a sailor man. I didn't hear him give any orders, though hiseyes seemed everywhere, and he looked to know exactly what was goingforward. A likelier-looking lad I never see. Capt'n's son, I dare say.'

  'Well,' said I, sending a glance above and around, 'spite of drunken oldIsaac and his prediction of "airthquakes," as he calls them, it's aslikely as not, to my mind, that all this gloom will end as it began--inquietude.'

  The man--one of the most intelligent of our 'longshoremen--shook hishead.

  'The barometer don't tell lies, sir,' said he; 'the drop's been too slowand regular to signify nothing. I've known a gale o' wind to bust aftertaking two days to look at the ocean with his breath sucked in, as he donow. This here long quietude's the worst part, and----Smother me! Mr.Tregarthen,' said he, halting and turning his face seawards, 'if thedraught that was just now blowing ain't gone!'

  It was as he had said. The light breathing of air had died out, and theswell was rolling in, burnished as liquid glass.

  This day-long extraordinary pause in the most menacing aspect of weatherthat I had ever heard of--and never in my time had I seen the like ofit--seemed to communicate its own quality of breathless suspense toevery living object my eye rested upon. The very dogs seemed to movewith a cowed manner, as though fresh from a whipping. There was noalacrity--little movement, indeed, anywhere visible. Men hung about insmall groups and conversed quietly, as though some trouble that hadaffected the whole community was upon them. The air trembled with thenoise of the breaking surf, and there was a note in that voice, soundingas it did out of the unnatural dark hush upon sea and land, thatconstrained the attention to it as to something new and even alarming. Atradesman, with his apron on and without a hat, would come to hisshop-door and look about him uneasily, and perhaps have a word with acustomer as he entered before going round the counter and serving him.The gulls flew close inshore and screamed harshly. Here and there,framed in a darkling pane of window, you would see an old face peeringat the weather and pale in the shadow.

  I found my mother a good deal troubled by the appearance of the ship.She asked, with a pettishness I had seldom witnessed in her, 'What doesshe want? Why does she come here? Do they court destruction?'

  I told her all that I had learnt about the vessel.

  'There was no occasion for them to come here,' she said. 'Your dearfather would have told you that the more distant a ship is upon theocean in violent weather the safer she is; and here now come the foolishDanes to nestle among rocks, and to sneer at the advice our people givethem, with the sky looking more threatening than ever I can remember it.Who could have patience with such folk?' she cried, pouring out the teawith an air of distraction and an agitated hand. 'If there were no suchsailors as they at sea I am sure there would be no need for lifeboats,and brave fellows would not have to risk their lives, and perhaps leavetheir wives and little children to starve, to assist people whosestupidity renders them almost unfit to be rescued.'

  'Why, mother,' cried I, 'this is not how you are accustomed to talkabout such things.'

  'I am depressed,' she answered; 'my spirits have taken their colourfrom the day. A most melancholy heavy day, indeed! Hark, my dear! Is notthat the sound of wind?'

  She looked eagerly, straining her hearing.

  'Yes,' said I, 'it is the wind come at last, mother,' catching, at theinstant of her speaking, the hollow groaning, in the chimney, of asudden gust of wind flying over the housetop. 'From which quarter doesit blow? I must find out!'

  I ran to the house-door, and as I opened it, the wind blew with thesweep of a sudden squall right out of the darkness upon the ocean. Itfilled the house, and such was the weight of it that I drove the door towith difficulty. It was but a quarter before six, but the shadow of thenight had entered to deepen the shadow of the storm, and it was alreadyas dark as midnight. I went to the window and parted the curtains totake a view of the bay, but the panes of glass were made a sort ofmirror of by the black atmosphere without, and when I looked they gaveme back my own countenance, darkly gleaming, and the reflection ofobjects in the room--the lamp with its green shade upon the table, thesparkle of the silver and the china of the tea-things, and my mother'sfigure beyond. Yet, by peering, I managed to distinguish the speck ofyellow lustre that denoted the riding light of the Danish barque--thelantern, I mean, that is hung upon a ship's fore-stay when she lies atanchor; otherwise, it was like looking down into a well. Nothing, savethe flash of the near foam tumbling upon the beach right abreast of thehouse, was to be seen.

  'Which way does the wind come, Hugh?' called my mother.

  'From the westward, with a touch of south in it, too, right deadinshore. It is as I have been expecting all day.'

  That night of tempest began in gusts and squalls, with lulls between,which were not a little deceptive, since they made one think that thewind was gone for good, though while the belief was growing there wouldcome another shrieking outrush and a low roaring in the chimney, andsuch a shrill and doleful whistling in the casements, which there was noart in carpentry to hermetically seal against the winds of that wild,rugged western coast, as might have made one imagine the air to befilled with the ghosts of departed boatswains plying their silver pipesas they sped onwards in the race of black air.

  Some while before seven o'clock it had settled into a gale, that wasslowly but obstinately gathering in power, as I might know by thegradually raised notes in the humming it made, and by the ever-deepeningthunder of warring billows rushing into breakers and bursting upon sandand crag. It came along in a furious play of wet, too, at times; therain lashed the windows like small shot, and twice there was a brilliantflash of lightning that seemed spiral and crimsoned; but, if thunderfollowed, it was lost in the uproar of the wind. It was a night to'stand by,' as a sailor would say; at any moment a summons might come,and, while that weather held, I knew there must be no sleep for me. Itwould have been all the same, indeed, barque or no barque, for this wasa night to make a very hell of the waters along our line of coast; therewas not another lifeboat station within twenty-five miles, and, even hadthe bay been empty, as I say, yet, as coxswain of the boat, I must haveheld myself ready for a call--ready for the notes of the bell summoningus to the rescue of a vessel that had been blown out of the sea into thebay--ready for a breathless appeal for help from some mounted messengerdespatched by the coastguards miles distant to tell me that there was aship stranded and that all hands must perish if we did not hurry to her.

  My mother sat silent, with her face rendered austere by anxiety. It wasabout eight o'clock, when someone knocked hurriedly at the door. I ranout, being too eager to await the attendance of the servant; but,instead of some rough figure of a boatman which I had expected to see,in swept Mr. Trembath, who was carried by the violence of the windseveral feet along the passage before he could bring himself up. I putmy shoulder to the door, but believed I should have had to call for helpto close it, so desperate was the resistance.

  'What a night! What a night!' cried the clergyman. 'What is the news?You will not tell me, Tre
garthen, that the ship yonder is going to holdher own against this wind and the sea that is running?'

  'Pray step in,' said I. 'You are plucky to show your face to it!'

  'Oh, tut!' he cried; 'it is not for a clergyman any more than for aseaman to be afraid of weather. I fear there'll be a call for you,Tregarthen. I thought I would look round--I have finished my sermon forto-morrow morning.' And thus talking in a disjointed way while he pulledoff his topcoat, he entered the parlour.

  After warming himself and exchanging a few sentences with my motherabout the weather, he began to talk about the barque.

  'Hark to that, now!' he cried, as the wind struck the front of the housewith a crash that had something of the weight of a great sea in thesound of it, while you heard it in a roar of thunder overhead, chargedalways with an echo of pouring waters; 'what chain cables wrought bymortal skill are going to hold a vessel in the eye of all this?'

  'What business have they to come here?' cried my mother.

  'I met young Beckerley just now,' continued Mr. Trembath, 'and he tellsme that there's some talk among our men of there having been a mutinyaboard that Dane.'

  'Nothing was said to me about that,' I said.

  'Beckerley was in the boat's crew that boarded her,' he went on.'Probably he imagined a mutiny--misinterpreted a gloomy look among theDanes into an air of revolt. Anyway, nothing short of a mutiny shouldjustify a master in anchoring in such a roadstead as this, in the faceof the ugliest sky I ever saw in my life.'

  'They told me the master was below, ill and helpless,' said I.

  He went to the window and parted the curtains to peer through, but thewet ran down the glass, and it was like straining the gaze against awall of ebony.

  'You see,' he continued, coming back to his chair, 'the vessel has thosedeadly rocks right under her stern, and even if her cables don't part,it is impossible to suppose that she will not drag and be on to them inthe blackness, perhaps without her people guessing at theirneighbourhood until she touches--and then, God help them!'

  'I suppose Pentreath,' exclaimed my mother, naming the second coxswainof the lifeboat, 'is keeping a look-out?'

  'We need not doubt it,' I answered. 'As to her dragging,' said I,addressing Mr. Trembath, 'the Danes are as good sailors as the English,and understand their business; and, mutiny or no mutiny, those fellowsdown there are not going to take whatever may come without a shrewdguess at it, and outcry enough when it happens. They'll know fast enoughif their vessel is dragging; then a flare will follow, and out we shallhave to go, of course.'

  'We!' said he significantly, looking from me to my mother. 'You'll notventure to-night, I hope, Tregarthen.'

  'If the call comes, most certainly I shall,' said I, flushing up, butwithout venturing to send a glance at my mother. 'I have appointedmyself captain of my men, and is it for _me_, of all my boat's crew, toshirk my duty in an hour of extremity? Let such a thing happen, and Ivow to Heaven I could not show my face in Tintrenale again.'

  Mr. Trembath seemed a little abashed.

  'I respect and admire your theory of dutifulness,' said he; 'but you arenot an old hand--you are no seasoned boatman in the sense I have in mymind when I think of others of your crew. Listen to this wind! It blowsa hurricane, Hugh,' he exclaimed gently; 'you may have the heart of alion, but have you the skill--the experience----' He halted, looking atmy mother.

  'If the call comes I will go,' said I, feeling that he reasoned only formy mother's sake, and that in secret his sympathies were with me.

  'If the call comes, Hugh must go,' said my mother. 'God will shield him.He looks down upon no nobler work done in this world, none that canbetter merit His blessing and His countenance.'

  Mr. Trembath bowed his head in a heartfelt gesture.

  'Yet I hope no call will be made,' she went on. 'I am a mother----' hervoice faltered, but she rallied, and said with courage and strength anddignity: 'Yes, I am Hugh's mother. I know what to expect from him, andthat whatever his duty may be, he will do it.' Yet in saying this shepressed both her hands to her heart, as though the mere utterance ofthe words came near to breaking it.

  I stepped to her side and kissed her. 'But the call has not yet come,mother,' said I. 'The vessel's anchors may hold bravely, and then,again, the long dark warning of the day will have kept the coast clearof ships.'

  To this she made no reply, and I resumed my seat, gladdened to the veryheart by her willingness that I should go if a summons came, albeitextorted from her love by perception of my duty; for had she beenreluctant, had she refused her consent indeed, it must have been all thesame. I should go whether or not, but in that case with a heavy heart,with a feeling of rebellion against her wishes that would have taken adeal of spirit out of me, and mingled a sense of disobedience with whatI knew to be my duty and good in the sight of God and man.

  I saw that it comforted my mother to have Mr. Trembath with her, andwhen he offered to go I begged him to stop and sup with us, and heconsented. It was not a time when conversation would flow very easily.The noise of the gale alone was subduing enough, and to this was to beadded the restlessness of expectation, the conviction in my own heartthat sooner or later the call must come; and every moment that Italked--putting on as cheerful a face as I could assume--I was waitingfor it. I constantly went to the window to look out, guessing that ifthey burnt a flare aboard the barque the torch-like flame of it wouldshow through the weeping glass; and shortly before supper wasserved--that is to say, within a few minutes of nine o'clock--I left theparlour, and going to a room at the extremity of the passage, where Ikept my sea-going clothes, I pulled on a pair of stout fisherman'sstockings, and over them the sea-boots I always wore when I went in thelifeboat. I then brought away my monkey-jacket and oilskins andsou'-wester, and hung them in the passage ready to snatch at; for asummons to man the boat always meant hurry--there was no time forhunting; indeed, if the call found the men in bed, their custom was todress as they ran.

  Thus prepared, I returned to the parlour. Mr. Trembath ran his eye overme, but my mother apparently took no notice. A cheerful fire blazed inthe grate. The table was hospitable with damask and crystal; the play ofthe flames set the shadows dancing upon the ceiling that lay in thegloom of the shade over the lamp. There was something in the figure ofmy old mother, with her white hair and black silk gown and antique goldchain about her neck, that wonderfully fitted that homely interior, warmwith the hues of the coal-fire, and cheerful with pictures and withseveral curiosities of shield and spear, of stuffed bird and Chineseivory ornament, gathered together by my father in the course of manyvoyages.

  Mr. Trembath looked a plump and rosy and comfortable man as he took hisseat at the table, yet there was an expression of sympathetic anxietyupon his face, and frequently I would catch him quietly hearkening, andthen he would turn involuntarily to the curtained window, so that it waseasy to see in what direction his thoughts went.

  'One had need to build strongly in this part of the country,' said he,as we exchanged glances at the sound of a sudden driving roar of wind--asquall of wet of almost hurricane power--to which the immensely strongfabric of our house trembled as though a heavy battery of cannon werebeing dragged along the open road opposite, 'for, upon my word, Hugh,'said he--we were old friends, and he would as often as not give me myChristian name--'if the Dane hasn't begun to drag as yet, there shouldbe good hope of her holding on throughout what may still be coming.Surely, for two hours now past her ground-tackle must have been veryheavily tested.'

  'My prayer is,' said I, 'that the wind may chop round and blow offshore. They'll have the sense to slip then, I hope, and make for thesafety of wide waters, with an amidship helm.'

  'He is his father's son,' said Mr. Trembath, smiling at my mother. 'Anamidship helm! It is as a sailor would put it. You should have been asailor, Tregarthen.'

  My mother gently shook her head, and then for some while we ate insilence, the three of us feigning to look as though we thought ofanything else rather than of the storm that was
raging without, and ofthe barque labouring to her cables in the black heart of it.

  On a sudden Mr. Trembath let fall his knife and fork.

  'Hist!' he cried, half rising from his chair.

  'The lifeboat bell!' I shouted, catching a note or two of the summonsthat came swinging along with the wind.

  'Oh, Hugh!' shrieked my mother, clasping her hands.

  'God keep your dear heart up!' I cried.

  I sprang to her side and kissed her, wrung the outstretched hand of Mr.Trembath, and in a minute was plunging into my peacoat and oilskins. Theinstant I was out of the house I could hear the fast--I may say thefurious--tolling of the lifeboat bell, and sending one glance at thebay, though I seemed almost blinded, and in a manner dazed by the suddenrage of the gale and its burthen of spray and rain against my face, Icould distinguish the wavering, flickering yellow light of a flare-updown away in that part of the waters where the Twins and the DeadlowRock would be terribly close at hand. But I allowed myself no time tolook, beyond this hasty glance. Mr. Trembath helped me, by thrusting,to pull the house-door after me, for of my own strength I never couldhave done it; and then I took to my heels and drove as best I mightheadlong through the living wall of wind, scarcely able to fetch abreath, reeling to the terrific outflies, yet staggering on.

  The gas-flames in the few lamps along the seafront were wildly dancing,their glazed frames rattled furiously, and I remember noticing, even inthat moment of excitement, that one of the lamp-posts which stood a fewyards away from our house had been arched by the wind as though it werea curve of leaden pipe. The two or three shops which faced the sea hadtheir shutters up to save the windows, and the blackness of the nightseemed to be rather heightened than diminished by the dim and leapingglares of the street lights. But as I neared the lifeboat house myvision was somewhat assisted by the whiteness of the foam boiling inthunder a long space out. It flung a dim, elusive, ghostly illuminationof its own up on the air. I could see the outline of the boat-houseagainst it, the shapes of men writhing, as it seemed, upon the slipway;the figure of the boat herself, which had already been eased by her ownlength out of the house; and I could even discern, by the aid of thatwonderful light of froth, that most of or all her crew were already inher, and that they were stepping her mast, which the roof of the housewould not suffer her to keep aloft when she was under shelter.

  'Here's the cox'n!' shouted a voice.

  'All right, men!' I roared, and with that I rushed through the door ofthe house, and in a bound or two gained the interior of the boat and mystation on the after-grating.