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My Danish Sweetheart Volume 1

<h2>CHAPTER V.</h2> <h3>DAWN.</h3> There was refreshment, however, to every sense, beyond language to express, in the shelter which this deck-house provided after our long term of exposure to the pouring of the raging gale, into which was put the further weight of volumes of spray, that swept to the face like leaden hail, and carried the shriek of the shot of musketry as it slung past the ear. It was calm in this deck-house; the deafening sounds without came somewhat muffled here; but the furious motion of the vessel was startlingly illustrated by the play of the hanging lantern, and the swing of the illuminated globe was made the wilder and more wonderful by the calm of the atmosphere in which it oscillated. 'I do not think the sea is breaking over the ship,' said the girl, gazing at me in a posture of listening. 'It is hard to tell. I feel no tremble as of the falls of water on the deck.' 'She is battling bravely,' said I; 'but what now would I give for even a couple of those men of yours who jumped into the lifeboat! It is our being so few—two of us only, and you a woman—that makes our situation so hard.' 'I have not the strength of a man,' said she with a smile, and fastening her soft eyes on my face; 'but you will find I have the heart of one. Will you come now and see my father?' I at once rose and followed her. She knocked upon a little door where the bulkhead partitioned off the inner cabin, and then entered, bidding me follow her. A cot swung from the upper deck, and in it sat a man almost upright, his back supported by bolsters and pillows; a bracket lamp burnt steadily over a table, upon which lay a book or two, a chart, a few nautical instruments, and the like. There was no convenience for dressing, and I guessed that this had been a sort of chart-room which the captain had chosen to occupy that he might be easily and without delay within hail or reach of the deck. He was a striking-looking man, with coal-black hair, parted on one side, lying very flat upon his head, and curling down upon his back. He wore a long goat beard and moustaches, and was somewhat grim with several days' growth of whisker upon his cheeks; his brows were thickly thatched, his forehead low, his eyes very dark, small, and penetrating. He was of a deathlike whiteness, and showed, to my fancy, as a man whose days were numbered. That his disease was something more than rheumatism there was no need to look at him twice to make sure of. His daughter addressed him in the Danish tongue, then, recollecting herself, with a half-glance at me of apology, she exclaimed: 'Father, this is Mr. Hugh Tregarthen, the noble gentleman who commanded the lifeboat, who risked his life to save ours, and I pray that God of His love for brave spirits may restore him in safety to those who are dear to him.' Captain Nielsen, with a face contracted into a look of pain by emotion, extended his hand in silence over the edge of his cot. I grasped it in silence too. It was ice cold. He gazed for awhile, without speech, into my eyes, and I thought to see him shed tears; then, putting his hand upon mine in a caressing gesture, and letting it go—for the swing of the cot would not permit him to retain that posture of holding my hand for above a moment or two, he exclaimed in a low but quite audible voice: 'I ask the good and gracious Lord of heaven and earth to bless you, for her sake—for my Helga's sake—and in the name of those who have perished, but whom you would have saved!' 'Captain Nielsen,' said I, greatly moved by his manner and looks, 'would it had pleased Heaven that I should have been of solid use to you and your men! I grieve to find you in this helpless state. I hope you do not suffer?' 'While I rest I am without pain,' he answered, and I now observed that though his accent had a distinctly Scandinavian harshness, such as was softened in his daughter's speech by the clearness—I may say, by the melody—of her tones, his English was as purely pronounced as hers. 'But if I move,' he continued, 'I am in agony. I cannot stand; my legs are as idle and as helpless as though paralyzed. But now tell me of the Anine, Helga,' he cried, with a look of pathetic eager yearning entering his face as he addressed her. 'Have you sounded the well?' 'Yes, father.' 'What water, my child?' She told him. 'Ha!' he exclaimed, with a sudden fretfulness; 'the pump should be manned without delay; but who is there to work it?' 'We two will, very shortly,' she exclaimed, turning to me: 'we require a little breathing time. Mr. Tregarthen and I,' said she, still talking with her soft appealing eyes upon me, 'have strength, or, at all events, courage enough to give us strength; and he will help me in whatever we may think needful to save the Anine and our lives.' 'Indeed, yes!' said I. 'Pray sit, both of you,' cried Captain Nielsen; 'pray rest. Helga, have you seen to the gentleman's comfort? Has he had any refreshment?' She answered him, and seated herself upon a little locker, inviting me with a look to sit beside her, for there was no other accommodation in that cabin than the locker. 'I wish I could persuade your daughter to take some rest,' said I. 'Her clothes, too, are soaked through!' 'It is salt water,' said Captain Nielsen; 'it will not harm her. She is very used to salt water, sir;' and then he addressed his daughter in Danish. The resemblance of some words he used to our English made me suppose he spoke about her resting. 'The pumps must be worked,' said she, looking at me; 'we must keep the barque afloat first of all, Mr. Tregarthen. How trifling is want of sleep, how insignificant the discomfort of damp clothes, at such a time as this!' She opened her jacket and drew a silver watch from her pocket, and then took a bottle of medicine and a wineglass from a small circular tray swinging by thin chains near the cot, and gave her father a dose. He began now to question us, occasionally in his hurry and eagerness speaking in the Danish language. He asked about the masts—if they were sound, if any sails had been split, if the Anine had met with any injury apart from the loss of her two boats, of which he had evidently been informed by his daughter. A flush of temper came into his white cheeks when he talked of his men. He called the carpenter Damm a villain, said that had he had his way the barque never would have brought up in that bay, that Damm had carried her there, as he now believed, as much out of spite as out of recklessness, hoping no doubt that the Anine would go ashore, but of course taking it for granted that the crew would be rescued. He shook his fist as he pronounced the carpenter's name, and then groaned aloud with anguish to some movement of his limbs brought about by his agitation. He lay quiet a little and grew calm, and talked, with his thin fingers on his breast. He informed me that the Anine was his ship, that he had spent some hundreds of pounds in equipping her for this voyage, that he had some risk in the cargo, and that, in a word, all that he was worth in the wide world was in this fabric, now heavily and often madly labouring, unwatched, amid the blackness of the night of hurricane. 'Your daughter and I must endeavour to preserve her for you,' said I. 'May the blessed God grant it!' he cried. 'And how good and heroic are you to speak thus!' said he, looking at me. 'Surely your great Nelson was right when he called us Danes the brothers of the English. Brothers in affection may our countries ever be! We have given you a sweet Princess—that is a debt it will tax your people's generosity to repay.' The smile that lighted up his face as he spoke made me see a resemblance in him to his daughter. It was like throwing a light upon a picture. He was now looking at her with an expression full of tenderness and concern. 'Mr.—Mr.——' he began. 'Tregarthen,' said his daughter. 'Ay, Mr. Tregarthen,' he continued, 'will wonder that a girl should be clad as you are, Helga. Were you ever in Denmark, sir?' 'Never,' I replied. 'You will not suppose, I hope,' said he, with another soft, engaging smile that was pathetic also with the meaning it took from his white face, 'that Helga's attire is the costume of Danish ladies?' 'Oh no,' said I. 'I see how it is. Indeed, Miss Nielsen explained. The dress is a whim. And then it is a very convenient shipboard dress. But she should not be suffered to do the rough work of a sailor. Will you believe, Captain Nielsen, that she went out upon the bowsprit, and cut adrift or loosed the staysail there when your barque was on her beam-ends in the trough of the sea?' He nodded with emphasis, and said, 'That is nothing. Helga has been to sea with me now for six years running. It is her delight to dress herself in boy's clothes—ay, and to go aloft and do the work of a seaman. It has hardened and spoilt her hands, but it has left her face fair to see. She is a good girl; she loves her poor father; she is motherless, Mr. Tregarthen. Were my dear wife alive, Helga would not be here. She is my only child;' and he made as if to extend his arms to her, but immediately crossed his hands, again addressing her in Danish as though he blessed her. I could perceive the spirit in her struggling with the weakness that this talk induced. She conquered her emotions with a glance at me that was one almost of pride, as though she would bid me observe that she was mistress of herself, and said, changing the subject, but not abruptly, 'Father, do you think the vessel can struggle on without being watched or helped from the deck?' 'What can be done?' he cried. 'The helm is securely lashed hard a-lee?' She nodded. 'What can be done?' he repeated. 'Your standing at the wheel would be of no use. What is the trim of the yards?' 'They lie as they were braced up in the bay,' she responded. 'I have been in ships,' said he, 'that always managed best when left alone in hard weather of this kind. There was the old Dannebrog,' he went on, with his eyes seeming to glisten to some sudden stir of happy memory in him. 'Twice when I was in her—once in the Baltic, once in the South Atlantic—we met with gales: well, perhaps not such a gale as this; but it blew very fiercely, Mr. Tregarthen. The captain, my old friend Sorensen, knew her as he knew his wife. He pointed the yards, lashed the helm, sent the crew below and waited, smoking his pipe in the cabin, till the weather broke. She climbed the seas dryly, and no whale could have made better weather of it. A ship has an intelligence of her own. It is the spirit of the sea that comes into her, as into the birds or fish of the ocean. Observe how long a vessel will wash about after her crew have abandoned her. They might have sunk her had they stayed, not understanding her. Much must be left to chance at sea, Helga. No; there is nothing to be done. Damm reported the hatch-covers on and everything secure while in the bay. It is so still, of course. Yet it will ease my mind to know she is a little freed of the water in her.' 'I am ready!' cried I. 'Is the pump too heavy for my arms alone? I cannot bear to think of your daughter toiling upon that wet and howling deck.' 'She will not spare herself, though you should wish it,' said her father. 'What is the hour, my dear?' She looked at her watch. 'Twenty minutes after two.' 'A weary long time yet to wait for the dawn!' said he. 'And it is Sunday morning—a day of rest for all the world save for the mariner. But it is God's own day, and when next Sabbath comes round we may be worshipping Him ashore, and thanking Him for our preservation.' As he pronounced these words, Helga, as I will henceforth call her, giving me a glance of invitation, quitted the berth, and I followed her into the cabin, as I may term the interior of the deck-house. She picked up the bull's-eye lamp and trimmed the mesh of it, and, arming herself with the sounding-rod, stepped on to the deck. I watched her movements with astonishment and admiration. I should have believed that I possessed fairly good sea-legs, even for a wilder play of plank than this which was now tossing us; nevertheless, I never dared let go with my hands, and there were moments when the upheaval was so swift, the fall so sickening, that my brain reeled again, and to have saved my life I could not have stirred the distance of a pace until the sensation had passed. But excepting an occasional pause, an infrequent grasp at what was next to her during some unusually heavy roll, Helga moved with almost the same sort of ease that must have been visible in her on a level floor. Her figure, indeed, seemed to float; it swayed to the rolling of the deck as a flame hovers upright upon the candle you sharply sway under it. After the comparative calm of the shelter I stepped from, the uproar of the gale sounded as though it were blowing as hard again as at the time of our quitting the deck. The noise of the rushing and roaring waters was deafening; as the vessel brought her masts to windward, the screaming and whistling aloft are not to be imagined. The wind was clouded with spray, the decks sobbed furiously with wet, and it was still as pitch black as ever it had been at any hour of the night. Helga threw the light of the bull's-eye upon the pump-brake or handle, and we then fell to work. At intervals we could contrive to hear each other speak—that is to say, in some momentary lull, when the barque was in the heart of a valley ere she rose to the next thunderous acclivity, yelling in her rigging with the voice of a wounded giantess. For how long we stuck to that dismal clanking job I cannot remember. The water gushed copiously as we plied the handle, and the foam was all about our feet as though we stood in a half-fathom's depth of surf. I was amazed by the endurance and pluck of the girl, and, indeed, I found half my strength in her courage. Had I been alone I am persuaded I should have given up. The blow of the wheel that had dashed me into unconsciousness, coming on top of my previous labours, not to speak of that exhaustion of mind which follows upon such distress of heart as my situation and the memory of my foundered boat and the possible loss of all her people had occasioned in me, must have proved too much but for the example and influence, the inspiriting presence of this little Danish lioness, Helga. In one of those intervals I have spoken of she cried out, 'We have done enough—for the present;' and so saying she let go of the pump-handle and asked me to hold the lamp while she dropped the rod. I had supposed our efforts insignificant, and was surprised to learn that we had sunk the water by some inches. We returned to the deck-house, but scarcely had I entered it when I was seized with exhaustion so prostrating that I fell, rather than seated myself, upon the locker and hid my face in my arms upon the table till the sudden darkness should have passed from my eyes. When, presently, I looked up, I found Helga at my side with a glass of spirits in her hand. There was a wonderful anxiety and compassion in her gaze. 'Drink this!' said she. 'The work has been too hard for you. It is my fault—I am sorry—I am sorry.' I swallowed the draught, and was the better for it. 'This weakness,' said I, 'must come from the blow I got on deck. I have kept you from your father. He will want your report,' and I stood up. She gave me her arm, and but for that support I believe I should not have been able to make my way to the captain's berth, so weak did I feel in the limbs, so paralyzing to my condition of prostration was the violent motion of the deck. Captain Nielsen looked eagerly at us over the edge of his cot. Helga would not release me until I was seated on the locker. 'Mr. Tregarthen's strength has been overtaxed, father,' said she. 'Poor man! poor man!' he cried. 'God will bless him. He has suffered much for us.' 'It must be a weakness, following my having been stunned,' said I, ashamed of myself that I should be in need of a girl's pity at such a time—the pity of a girl, too, who was sharing my labours and danger. 'What have you to tell me, Helga?' exclaimed the captain. She answered him in Danish, and they exchanged some sentences in that tongue. 'She is a tight ship,' cried the captain, addressing me: 'it is good news,' he went on, his white countenance lighted up with an expression of exultation, 'to hear that you two should be able to control the water in the hold. Does the weather seem to moderate?' 'No,' said I; 'it blows as hard as ever it did.' 'Does the sea break aboard?' 'There is plenty of water washing about,' said I, 'but the vessel seems to be making a brave fight.' 'When daylight comes, Helga,' said he, 'you will hoist a distress colour at the mizzen-peak. If the peak be wrecked or the halliards gone, the flag must be seized to the mizzen shrouds.' 'I will see to all that, father,' she answered; 'and now, Mr. Tregarthen, you will take some rest.' I could not bear the idea of sleeping while she remained up; yet though neither of us could be of the least use on deck, our both resting at once was not to be thought of, if it was only for the sake of the comfort that was to be got out of knowing that there was somebody awake and on watch. 'I will gladly rest,' said I, 'on condition that you now lie down and sleep for two or three hours.' She answered no; she was less tired than I; she had not undergone what I had suffered in the lifeboat. She begged me to take some repose. 'It is my selfishness that entreats you,' said she: 'if you break down, what are my father and I to do?' 'True,' I exclaimed, 'but the three of us would be worse off still if you were to break down.' However, as I saw that she was very much in earnest, while her father also joined her in entreating me to rest, I consented on her agreeing first to remove her soaking clothes, for it was miserable to see her shivering from time to time and looking as though she had just been dragged over the side, and yet bravely disregarding the discomfort, smiling as often as she addressed me and conversing with her father with a face of serenity, plainly striving to soothe and reassure him by an air of cheerful confidence. She left the cabin, and Captain Nielsen talked of her at once: told me that her mother was an Englishwoman; that he was married in London, in which city he had lived from time to time; that Helga had received a part of her education at New-castle-on-Tyne, where his wife's family then lived, though they were now scattered, or perhaps dead, only one member to his knowledge still residing at Newcastle. He took Helga to sea with him, he said, after his wife died, that he might have her under his eye, and such was her love for the sea, such her intelligent interest in everything which concerned a ship, that she could do as much with a vessel as he himself, and had often, at her own request, taken charge for a watch, during which she had shortened canvas and put the craft about as though, in short, she had been skipper. The poor man seemed to forget his miserable situation while he spoke of Helga. His heart was full of her; his eyes swam with tears while he cried, 'It is not that I fear death for myself, nor for myself do I dread the loss of my ship, which would signify beggary for me and my child. It is for her—for my little Helga. We have friends at Kolding, where I was born, and at Bjert, Vonsild, Skandrup, and at other places. But who will help the orphan? My friends are not rich—they could do little, no matter how generous their will. I pray God, for my child's sake, that we may be preserved—ay, and for your sake—I should have said that,' he added, feebly smiling, though his face was one of distress. He was beginning to question me about my home, and I was telling him that my mother was living, and that she and I were alone in the world, and that I feared she would think me drowned, and grieve till her heart broke, for she was an old lady, and I was her only son, as Helga was his only daughter, when the girl entered, and I broke off. She had changed her attire, but her clothes were still those of a lad. I had thought to see her come in dressed as a woman, and she so interpreted the look I fastened upon her, for she at once said, without the least air of confusion, as though, indeed, she were sensible of nothing in her apparel that demanded an excuse from her: 'I must preserve my sailor's garb until the fine weather comes. How should I be able to move about the decks in a gown?' 'Helga,' cried her father, 'Mr. Tregarthen is the only son of his mother, and she awaits his return.' Instantly entered an expression of beautiful compassion into her soft eyes. Her gaze fell, and she remained for a few moments silent; the lamplight shone upon her tumbled hair, and I am without words to make you see the sweet sorrowful expression of her pale face as she stood close against the door, silent, and looking down. 'I have kept my word, Mr. Tregarthen,' said she presently. 'Now you will keep yours and rest yourself. There is my father's cabin below.' I interrupted her: 'No; if you please, I will lie down upon one of the lockers in the deck-house.' 'It will make a hard bed,' said she. 'Not too hard for me,' said I. 'Well, you shall lie down upon one of those lockers, and you shall be comfortable too;' and, saying this, she went out again, and shortly afterwards returned with some rugs and a bolster. These she placed upon the lee locker, and a minute or two later I had shaken the poor captain by the hand, and had stretched myself upon the rugs, where I lay listening to the thunder of the gale and following the wild motions of the barque, and thinking of what had happened since the lifeboat summons had rung me into this black, and frothing, and roaring night from my snug fireside. It was not long, however, before I fell asleep. I had undergone some lifeboat experiences in my time, but never before was nature so exhausted in me. The roaring of the gale, the cannonading of the deck-house by incessant heavy showerings of water, the extravagant motions of the plunging and rolling vessel, might have been a mother's lullaby sung by the side of a gently-rocked cradle, so deep was the slumber these sounds of thunder left unvexed. I awoke from a dreamless, deathlike sleep, and opened my eyes against the light of the cold stone-gray dawn, and my mind instantly coming to me, I sprang up from the locker, pausing to guess at the weather from the movement and the sound. It was still blowing a whole gale of wind, and I was unable to stand without grasping the table for support. The deck-house door was shut, and the planks within were dry, though I could hear the water gushing and pouring in the alleys betwixt the deck-house and the bulwarks. I thought to take a view of the weather through one of the windows, but the glass was everywhere blind with wet. At this moment the door of the captain's berth was opened, and Helga stepped out. She immediately approached me with both hands extended in the most cordial manner imaginable. 'You have slept well,' she cried; 'I bent over you three or four times. You are the better for the rest, I am sure.' 'I am, indeed!' said I. 'And you?' 'Oh, I shall sleep by-and-by. What shall we do for hot water? It is impossible to light the galley fire; yet how grateful would be a cup of hot tea or coffee!' 'Have you been on deck,' said I, 'while I slept?' 'Oh yes, in and out,' she answered. 'All is well so far—I mean, the Anine goes on making a brave fight. The dawn has not long broken. I have not yet seen the ship by daylight. We must sound the well, Mr. Tregarthen, before we break our fast—my fear is there,' she added, pointing to the deck, by which she signified the hold. There was but little of her face to be seen. She was wearing an indiarubber cap shaped like a sou'-wester, the brim of which came low, while the flannel ear-flaps almost smothered her cheeks. I could now see, however, that her eyes were of a dark blue, with a spirit of life and even of vivacity in them that expressed a wonderful triumph of heart over the languor of frame indicated by the droop of the eyelids. A little of her short hair of pale gold showed under the hinder thatch of the sou'-wester; her face was blanched. But I could not look at the pretty mouth, the pearl-like teeth, the soft blue eyes, the delicately figured nostril, without guessing that in the hour of bloom this girl would show as bonnily as the fairest lass of cream and roses that ever hailed from Denmark. We stepped on to the deck—into the thunder of the gale and the flying clouds of spray. I still wore my oilskins, and was as dry in them as at the hour of leaving home. I felt the comfort, I assure you, of my high sea-boots as I stood upon that deck, holding on a minute to the house-front, with the water coming in a little rage of froth to my legs and washing to leeward with the scend of the barque with the force of a river overflowing a dam. Our first glance was aloft. The foretopgallant-mast was broken off at the head of the topmast and hung with its two yards supported by its gear, but giving a strange wrecked look to the whole of the fabric up there as it swung to the headlong movements of the hull, making the spars, down to the solid foot of the foremast, tremble with the spearing blows it dealt. The jibbooms were also gone, and this, no doubt, had happened through the carrying away of the topgallant-mast; otherwise all was right up above, assuming, to be sure, that nothing was sprung. But the wild, soaked, desolate—the almost mutilated—look, indeed, of the barque! How am I to communicate the impression produced by the soaked dark lines of sailcloth rolled upon the yards, the ends of rope blowing out like the pennant of a man-of-war, the arched and gleaming gear, the decks dusky with incessant drenchings and emitting sullen flashes as the dark flood upon them rolled from side to side! The running rigging lay all about, working like serpents in the wash of the water; from time to time a sea would strike the bow and burst on high in steam-like volumes which glanced ghastly against the leaden sky that overhung us in strata of scowling vapour, dark as thunder in places, yet seemingly motionless. A furious Atlantic sea was running; it came along in hills of frothing green which shaped themselves out of a near horizon thick with storms of spume. But there was the regularity of the unfathomed ocean in the run of the surge, mountainous as it was; and the barque, with her lashed helm, not a rag showing save a tatter or two of the fore-topmast-staysail whose head we had exposed on the previous night, soared and sank, with her port bow to the sea, with the regularity of the tick of a clock. There was nothing in sight. I looked eagerly round the sea, but it was all thickness and foam and headlong motion. We went aft to the compass to observe if there had happened any shift in the wind, and what the trend of the barque was, and also to note the condition of the wheel, which could only have been told in the darkness by groping. The helm was perfectly sound, and the lashings held bravely. I could observe now that the wheel was a small one, formed of brass, also that it worked the rudder by means of a screw, and it was this purchase or leverage, I suppose, that had made me find the barque easy to steer while she was scudding. The gale was blowing fair out of the north-east, and the vessel's trend, therefore, was on a dead south-west course, with the help of a mountainous sea besides, to drive her away from the land, beam on. I cried to Helga that I thought our drift would certainly not be less than four, and perhaps five, miles in the hour. She watched the sea for a little, and then nodded to me; but it was scarcely likely that she could conjecture the rate of progress amid so furious a commotion of waters, with the great seas boiling to the bulwark rail, and rushing away to leeward in huge round backs of freckled green. She was evidently too weary to talk, rendered too languid by the bitter cares and sleepless hours of the long night to exert her voice so as to be audible in that thunder of wind which came flashing over the side in guns and bursts of hurricane power; and to the few sentences I uttered, or rather shouted, she responded by nods and shakes of the head as it might be. There was a flag locker under the gratings abaft the wheel, and she opened the box, took out a small Danish ensign, bent it on to the peak-signal halliards, and between us we ran it half-mast high, and there it stood, hard and firm as a painted board, a white cross on red ground, and the red of it made it resemble a tongue of fire against the soot of the sky. This done, we returned to the main-deck, and Helga sounded the pump. She went to work with all the expertness of a seasoned salt, carefully dried the rod and chalked it, and then waited until the roll of the barque brought her to a level keel before dropping it. I watched her with astonishment and admiration. It would until now have seemed impossible to me that any mortal woman should have had in her the makings of so nimble and practised a sailor as I found her to be, with nothing, either, of the tenderness of girlhood lost in her, in speech, in countenance, in looks, spite of her boy's clothes. She examined the rod, and eyed me with a grave countenance. 'Does the water gain?' said I. 'There are two more inches of it,' she answered, 'than the depth I found in the hold last night when I first sounded. We ought to free her somewhat.' 'I am willing,' I exclaimed; 'but are you equal to such labour? A couple of hours should not make a very grave difference.' 'No, no!' she interrupted, with a vehemence that put her air of weariness to flight. 'A couple of hours would be too long to wait,' saying which she grasped the brake and we went to work as before. No one who has not had to labour in this way can conceive the fatigue of it. There is no sort of shipboard work that more quickly exhausts. It grieved me to the soul that my associate in this toil should be a girl, with the natural weakness of her sex accentuated by what she had suffered and was still suffering; but her spirited gaze forbade remonstrance. She seemed scarcely able to stand when utter weariness forced her at last to let go of the brake. Nevertheless, she compelled her feeble hands again to drop the rod down the well. We had reduced the water to the height at which we had left it before, and, with a faint smile of congratulation, she made a movement towards the deck-house; but her gait was so staggering, there was such a character of blindness, too, in her posture as she started to walk, that I grasped her arm and, indeed, half carried her into the house. She sat and rested herself for a few minutes, but appeared unable to speak. I watched her anxiously, with something of indignation that her father, who professed to love her so dearly, should not come between her and her devotion, and insist upon her resting. Presently she rose and walked to his cabin, telling me with her looks to follow her. <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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