When you have done, come aft and take charge of the barque for half an hour. Miss Nielsen wishes to go to her cabin, and I am no sailor to be left alone with this craft."
"Send Punmeamootty here with something for us to eat, if you please, Nakier."
He made a soft salaaming bow, and quitted us with shining eyes and a highly pleased face. Presently the steward approached us with some cold salt beef, biscuit, and a bottle of wine. He spread a cloth upon the skylight, and then brought a couple of chairs from the cabin. While he was doing this I slipped into the mate"s berth and took a tract-chart of the world from the bag and returned with it. I opened and pretended to examine it with anxious attention, speaking in an aside to Helga in a grumbling, doubting voice, and with a shake of my head, while Punmeamootty stood by waiting to learn if we had further orders. I told him we should require nothing more, and then, rolling up the chart, feigned to attack the repast before us. But as to _eating_!--not for ten times the value of this _Light of the World_ and her cargo could I have swallowed a morsel. Helga munched a biscuit and drank a little wine, eyeing me collectedly, with often a smile when my glance went to her.
"What a heart beats in you!" I cried gently, for it was impossible to know but that some wriggling, nimble-heeled coloured skin had slipped into the cabin, and was hanging motionless close under us, with his ear at the skylight. "But it is not too late even yet to reconsider. I can do without you."
"Not so well as with me."
"But if we fail----"
"We shan"t fail."
"If we fail," I continued, "they may spare you as not apparently in the plot, and they will spare you the more readily, and use you well too, since they must be helpless without you to navigate them."
"Hush!" she whispered. "The stratagem will be the surer for my presence.
And what is the danger? There can be none if we manage as we have arranged."
"When d"ye reckon on starting on this here job, Mr. Tregarthen?" called Jacob from the wheel.
I shook my fist as a hint to him to hold his tongue. I waited a few minutes, during which I pretended to be busy with my knife and fork. The yellow-faced cook stood in the galley door smoking: there were two fellows beyond him conversing close against the forecastle hatch. The rest of the seamen were below at their dinner. I now opened the chart; Helga came round to my side, and the pair of us fell to pointing and motioning with our hands over the chart as though we were warmly discussing a difficulty. I raised my voice and shook my head, exclaiming: "No, no! Any sailor will tell you that the prevailing gales off Agulhas are from the east"ard;" and continued in this fashion, delivering meaningless sentences, always very noisily, and with a great deal of gesticulation, while Helga acted a like part. The three fellows forward watched us steadfastly.
Just then Abraham rose out of the forecastle hatch and approached the p.o.o.p in a strolling, rolling gait, carelessly filling his pipe as he came, and sending the true "longsh.o.r.e leisurely look at the sea from side to side. A couple of fellows followed him out of the hatch, entered the galley for a light, as I supposed, and emerged smoking. Helga and I still feigned to be wrangling. Then Abraham joined us, and after listening a minute or two, raised his voice with a wrangling note in it also.
"Come, Helga," I whispered; "this fooling has lasted long enough. Now for it, and may G.o.d shield us! Abraham, stand by, my lad! Keep your eye forward!"
I had courted a few occasions of peril in my time, and knew what it was to have death close alongside of me for hour after hour; but then my blood was up, there was human life to be saved, and, outside that consideration, there was small opportunity for thought. It was otherwise now, and I own that my heart felt cold as stone as I advanced to the forecastle with Helga. I prayed that my cheeks would not betray my inward perturbation. I did not greatly fear for the girl. Though we should fail, I believed her life would be saved, horrible as the conditions of preservation _might_ prove to her. It was otherwise with me. Let but a suspicion of my intention enter the minds of the men, and I knew that in the s.p.a.ce of a pulse or two I must be a corpse pierced by every knife in that vessel"s forecastle.
As I approached the hatch that led to the quarters of the crew, Nakier came out of it. I suppose that the fellows who had been watching us called down to him, and that he came up to gather what the discussion on the p.o.o.p might be about. He looked astonished by our presence in that forepart of the ship, and there was a mingling of puzzlement and of cunning in his eyes as he ran them over us.
"I cannot satisfy myself that Mossel Bay is a safe and easy destination for this vessel."
"It was settle, sah," he exclaimed quickly.
"There are more accessible ports on the South African coast. What are the views of your crew?"
"Dey are all of my "pinion, sah."
"The matter has not been discussed in their presence. Why do you wish to carry us round Agulhas? Besides, do not you know that there are ships of war at Simon"s Bay, and that there is every chance of our falling in with one of her Majesty"s cruisers off that line of coast you wish us to sail round?"
By this time the few men on deck gathered about us, and were listening eagerly with their necks stretched and their eyes, like blots of ink upon ovals of yellow satin, but fire-touched, steadfast upon me.
"I do not agree with Mr. Tregarthen, Nakier," said Helga. "I believe there is nothing to fear from our sailing round the Cape. He speaks of the heavy seas of the Southern Ocean, and of strong easterly winds. It is not so."
"No, no," he cried, with a pa.s.sionate motion of the head; "no easter wind dis time ob year. All fine-wedder sailing; beautiful smooth sea, allee same as now."
"Now, see here," said I, with a note of imperativeness in my speech. "I have a right to express an opinion on this matter, and my contention is, that it is ridiculous to sail round to Mossel Bay, when you may get ash.o.r.e for your walk to Cape Town on this side of the stormy headland of Agulhas."
The fellow"s eyes sparkled with irritation and mischief as he looked at me.
"Abraham and his mate are both of my way of thinking," I went on. "The lady, on the other hand, has no objection to Mossel Bay. Here we are, then, undecided as yet. Do you follow me?" He nodded his head sideways, as much as to say, "Go on!" "The four of us, however, will agree to this. The chart gives you a view of South Africa. Let all hands a.s.semble, saving those two men aft there, who are willing to abide by your decision. Let me show them this chart and explain my ideas to them.
If after I have been heard, you and your men still insist upon our carrying this vessel to Mossel Bay, it shall be done."
"Where can we lay the chart?" said Helga.
"Is there a table in your forecastle?" I asked, sending a look at the little hatch which yawned close by.
"Yaas, sah," answered Nakier, glancing from Helga to the cuddy, as if he could not understand us.
I met his eyes with a shake of my head, as though I could read his thoughts, and, approaching him by a stride, whispered: "Not in the cuddy. You know why. I must have her by my side if we are to fairly argue this difficulty."
"I can easily descend," said Helga, stepping to the forecastle hatch to look down. "I want to see the men"s quarters, Nakier. I am as much a sailor as any of you, and have slept in a hammock."
The man"s gaze glowed with the admiration I had noticed in it when she worked out the navigation problems. Had he been the subtlest-witted of his race, what could he have witnessed in this desire of the girl and me to enter the forecastle to excite his suspicion? The other poor dusky fools, standing by with tawny, orange, or primrose faces, wrinkled their repellent masks with sailor-like grins of expectation; for whatever be the colour of Jack"s skin at sea, the least excitement, the least divergement from the miserable monotony of his life, is a delight to him.
"Shall I go first?" said I.
Helga uttered a clear laugh. "I should be ashamed," she answered, "not to be able to enter a ship"s forecastle without help;" and so saying, she put her little foot upon the first of the pieces of wood nailed against the bulkhead and serving as steps, and descended. I followed, bidding Nakier, as I entered the hatch, to order every mother"s son of his crew to attend, since it was a question for all hands, and their decision was to be final.
It was a time of emotions and sensations, and memory recalls but little more. I remember that one after another, in response to Nakier"s call, the men who were on deck dropped below, till the forecastle was full of dusky, grotesquely attired shapes. The daylight streamed down through the oblong yawn of hatch. The flame of a slush-lamp charged the interior with an atmosphere of greasy smoke. Some bunks went on either hand, and a few hammocks dangled from the upper deck. There was a square table fixed to the stout after-bulkhead that divided this compartment from the hold. The men seemed to be without other wearing apparel than that they stood up in. I saw no sea-chests, no bags, merely here and there a shoe, a cap, a sou"-wester, an oilskin smock dangling at a nail. The murmur of the water, broken by the stealthily sliding stem, penetrated the stillness with a subdued sound of hissing like the swift respiration of the men, who gathered about Helga and me as we stood at the table with the chart open before us. Hard by the table was a stove, the chimney of which, in a zigzag, pierced the deck, showing its head well out of the way, close against the hollow under the top-gallant forecastle, where the windla.s.s was.
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. Some of them barely understood English, apart from the plain sea-going terms, and these frowned down upon the chart, or at me, in their effort to understand my meaning. 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.
"See here, now!" I exclaimed, addressing the men generally: "judge of the time and leagues we might be able to save by making for St. Helena Bay, or say Saldanha Bay, instead of Mossel Bay. Here is Simon"s Town, and in this bight, as all of you know, lie several of her Majesty"s ships. Figure a cruiser requiring us to bring to, and sending a boat aboard us. What then?"
The few of the fellows who understood me breathed hard and looked at Nakier. One of them, with a Dutch accent, exclaimed:
"Boss! how far it be from Saldanha Bay to Cape Town?"
Nakier said something almost fiercely to him in his native tongue. The man responded in a dialect that certainly, to my ear, did not resemble Nakier"s--but this might have been owing to the swinish thickness of his utterance--and, having spoken, he thrust one of his mates aside to get nearer to the table, and, putting his grimy thumb on the part of the chart where Simon"s Bay was marked, he stared at Nakier, nodding with a vehemence that seemed a sort of fury in him--immediately afterwards rounding upon the others, and gesticulating with his hand to his neck, clearly signifying a halter.
"No, no!" cried Nakier.
"How far?--how far, boss?" shouted the other, addressing me.
"I cannot tell," said I, "without a pair of compa.s.ses. I forgot to bring those measuring instruments with me. I will fetch them--I will be back among you in a few minutes."
Helga, with a well-acted start and look of alarm, said: "You must not leave me alone here! Let me fetch the box!"
"Very good," said I.
She lightly gained the deck, but even while she was making for the hatch I was covering her retreat by noisily talking and demonstratively pointing, so that every man"s attention was fixed upon me.
I held the corner of the chart, which Helga had pinned down with her fingers, while I spoke; the chart was stiff, and had not been often used, and when you let go it rolled itself up into a funnel. I perceived that my reference to the British ships of war at Simon"s Bay had taken a hold upon the imagination of a few of the fellows, and while I seemed to wait for Helga I made the most of this by asking the men if they could tell me what vessels were on that station, if they knew how often and in what direction they cruised, and then I said:
"Suppose on our arrival at Mossel Bay we find an English frigate or corvette there? Men, have you thought of that? It is not because I am innocent of the blood of the Captain and the mate who were a.s.sa.s.sinated last night that I wish to be boarded by a lieutenant and a dozen English sailors from a man-of-war on our arrival, wherever it may be, or on the high seas. Can I be sure of proving my innocence if I am charged with having had a hand in this crime?" I cried, looking defiantly at Nakier, and raising my voice. "Would you come forward and say that you and your men were guilty, and that I and the lady and the two Englishmen were innocent? You know you would not!" I thundered, heavily striking the chart a thump with my clenched fist. "Why, then, do you want to sail past this Simon"s Bay? Is not this side of the coast safer, freer from the risks of falling in with a ship of war, and nearer by many miles to Cape Town than Mossel Bay?"
"How much near?--how much near, boss?" cried the man who had already asked this question.