"Ah!" broke in the other, a Tonsberger, "you should have seen handsome Elizabeth in 'The Star' at Amsterdam. But she wasn't for such as you to dance with, my lad."
Salvé's interest was awakened at once. He listened with strained attention for what might come next.
"And why not?" asked the other, a little on his dignity.
"Well, in the first place, they don't dance there; and in the next, you would want to be a skipper at least to pay court in that quarter, mind you. I saw her in the spring of last year, when we were lying there with the Galatea; she was talking to the captain, for she's Norwegian—and a proud one she is, too; with hair like a crown of gold on her head, and so straight rigged that it makes a man nervous to come alongside her."
Salvé sat rapt in thought, and more absent than was polite to his friend for the rest of the evening. An idea that it might be Elizabeth had shot through him, and he could not divest himself of it, although the more he reflected the more certain he knew he ought to be that she had been married long ago to young Beck. His mind was in a ferment, and a wild longing now possessed him to get home to Arendal and find out for certain how matters actually stood.
When the time came for breaking up, Federigo was drunk, and Salvé was obliged to accompany his inconsolable friend in the darkness over the long narrow dam down by the dock, where there was water on both sides, Federigo clinging to his arm the whole way, and leaning heavily upon it.
When they had reached the middle of the dam, Salvé saw him make a sudden movement, and almost at the same moment he received a thrust in the region of the heart, of such force that he staggered two or three steps backwards. At the same time he heard Federigo say, in a voice trembling with vindictive passion—
"Take that for Paolina, you hound!"
The object of his cupidity, the belt of money, had saved Salvé, who now felled him to the ground with a blow that sent him rolling over the embankment into the sea.
"Help! help!" came up to him from the water.
"You shall have it," replied Salvé, derisively, "for our fine friendship's sake. Throw up your knife, though, first;" and he made a noose in his handkerchief then to reach down to him. "You and your owl of a sister," he muttered as he did so, "have taught me a thing or two. I should only have had exactly what I deserved if I had been both stuck and plundered, after being fool enough to put faith for one moment in you or any one else."
"Now, up with you!"
When he saw Federigo's form scrambling up over the edge, he said, scornfully, "Now then, at last we part. Good-bye, my old and faithful friend!"
With that he went his way, and heard the Brazilian screaming and stamping with rage down on the dam behind him in the dark.
CHAPTER XVIII.
An opportunity offered almost immediately for taking a passage home with the Tonsberger before alluded to, and Salvé gladly availed himself of it, calculating upon being taken off by one of the pilot boats off the coast of Arendal.
It was with a strange deep feeling that he once more trod the deck of a home vessel, and as he went about and listened to the people's talk, felt himself an object for their curiosity. The southern brown of his face, the foreign cut of his clothes, and his whole exterior, marked him as coming from a much higher condition of sailor life than any with which they were acquainted, and he passed for an Englishman or an American; for he purposely avoided being recognised by them as a countryman, and had made his agreement with the skipper in English.
It was certainly a long time since he had been on board a craft so miserably found in every way as this leaky old galliot was. She had been bought by auction for a small sum at Færder; and in shape resembled an old wooden shoe, in which her skipper venturesomely trudged across to Holland through the spring and winter storms, calculating that he and his crew could always lash themselves to something to avoid being washed overboard; that their timber cargo would keep them afloat; and that as long as the rigging held they could sail. He carried no top-gallant-mast, so as not to strain her; her sails were all in holes, as if they had been riddled with bullets; and where ropes had broken in the rigging, they had been tied in clumsy knots, instead of being spliced in proper sailor-like fashion. There was not much to boast of in the way of navigation either; the captain keeping his log by the simple method of spitting over the side, or throwing a chip of wood overboard, and making his calculations according to the pace it drifted past. The food, too, was on a par with all the rest, and the cook could be heard beating the dried fish with the back of an axe to make it tender. Salvé seemed to have dropped all at once into home life and ways again.
The crew were dressed in thick winter clothing, and had the appearance of navvies rather than of sailors, but they were all fearless, hardy-looking fellows, as most of the men who risk their lives on these timber vessels are; and what immediately struck him with a feeling of pleasure, was the honest expression which every countenance, without exception, wore. It was long since he had seen a sight of the kind, and he felt ashamed of himself for going about with his knife ready to hand, as had been his custom for so many years, and put it away in his chest the very first day. He took a pleasure in leaving his watch and money out on the top where they might easily have been taken, and was filled with surprise and admiration when he found that they were not stirred.
He had not been able to get out of his head the idea that Elizabeth was now in Amsterdam, in spite of the almost certain feeling which he had that she had been long ago married to young Beck. His thoughts kept returning to, and dwelling upon, this subject, and he began to sound the skipper as to whether the trade with Holland was a paying one, and to post himself up generally in all particulars. Their conversation was carried on in a kind of jumble of English chiefly, and he gathered, at all events, that it was a lucrative business, and an occupation which seemed likely to suit him in every way. It was adventurous, and that was a recommendation; and a way of living at home in which he would be under nobody's orders but his own, fell in exactly with his nature. He had more than money enough to purchase some old craft or other, and—in fact, it was decided; he would be the owner of a timber ship, and ply to Holland.
He began now to look out more impatiently than ever for land, and longed so to catch the first streak of the Norwegian coast above the horizon, as if it was something he hardly dared hope that he should live to see. He paced up and down for hours together, anathematising through his teeth the old tub with her slack sails and rolling motion—they seemed to be drifting, not sailing; and from the restlessness and impatience he exhibited, it began to be whispered among the crew that the Englishman must have a screw loose somewhere. When the dim outline of Lindesnaes became discernible at last in the far distance, there was not a palm-clad promontory in all the southern seas that could compare with it, he thought; and the pleasure he experienced was only dashed by the apprehension of what he might have to learn about Elizabeth on landing.
They were hailed shortly after by a pilot boat from Arendal, and he arrived there after dark the same evening, and went to Madam Gjers's unpretending lodging-house until the morning.
The following day was Sunday. And as he listened to the bells ringing, and watched the townspeople, great and small, going decorously up the street in their best clothes to church—most of them he recognised, and among them Elizabeth's old aunt going up by herself, with her psalm-book and her white folded handkerchief in her hand—an indescribable feeling came over him, and his eyes filled so that he could hardly see. Here passing before him were all the gentleness and the purity that he had once believed in, when his young faith had as yet received no shock, and when he was as joyous and credulous as the rest; and he could not resist the temptation of joining the stream, trusting to the alteration in his appearance to save him from recognition.
Beside him, almost, there walked a respectable family—he knew well who they were—with a couple of handsome daughters, in light dresses, who had grown up since he last saw them, and a younger brother whom he did not remember. The foreign, black-bearded sailor, with his fine cloth clothes, and his patent gold watch-chain, seemed to excite their curiosity; while he on his side was thinking how they would fly from him, as if a wolf had suddenly appeared in their midst, if they had any conception of the life that he had been leading for years, half-a-day of which would have filled them with more horror than they had ever imagined. They would not understand it if it was described to them, and the description would be too foul for their ears. As he quietly followed the stream up the hill, it seemed as if all the sunny houses in his beautiful native town were crying out against him, and asking whether it was possible that a man from the Stars and Stripes could be permitted to go to church as well as other people; and on entering the building he had to summon up all his self-command—he had a feeling that he was violating the sanctity of the place.
He took his seat in the last pew close to the door, and watched the people passing up the aisle. It was like a dream; they all seemed creatures of a purer world than his. The organ commenced to play, the singing was begun, and he leaned his head forward on his hands, completely overcome, and trying to conceal his sobs. In this position he remained during the greater part of the service, his past life coming up, scene by scene, before him. What a gulf he felt there was between the present condition of his mind and what it had been in the days when as a boy or lad he had gone to church like the rest. He had been familiar with more murder and blasphemy than the whole congregation together could conceive; and the simple faith he had once possessed he had been robbed of, he feared irrecoverably. His eyes flashed then with a sudden wildness as he thought who it was that had brought him to this; and it was with a deep hatred in his heart to one of the two at least, that he left the church. In a couple who were coming out at the same time, he recognised Captain Beck and his wife, and the sight added fuel to the flames. He hastened on; and was hardly to be recognised as the same man who had gone up the same way so quietly two hours before.
He had meant to go over at once to Sandvigen to see his father, but he thought that before going it would be as well to find out for certain all about Elizabeth; and his landlady seemed as likely a person to be able to satisfy him as any one. He remembered well that sharp, bright-eyed little woman, and knew that she was a regular magpie for chatter, and for repeating the gossip of the town.
At that time of the day on Sunday there were no other customers in the house, and while she was busying herself with preparations for his dinner, he asked casually if Captain Beck's son, the one in the navy, was married?
"To be sure he is," she replied, surprised to hear him speak Norwegian.
"He has been married for—let me see—about three years."
She looked fixedly at him.
"But who are you?" she asked; and then, as if the thought had suddenly flashed upon her, she said, "It's never Salvé Kristiansen, who—" She stopped here, and Salvé dryly finished the sentence for her—
"Who deserted from Beck at Rio?—the same."
Madam Gjers was agog with curiosity, and whispered, "I'll say nothing—you may trust me;" and waited eagerly then for further particulars which she might take the first opportunity of retailing.
Salvé assured her that he knew of old that a secret was always safe with her, and resumed then absently—
"So the lieutenant is married?"
"This long while," she replied. "The wedding was at the house of the bride's parents; and they are living now at Frederiksværn."
"Elizabeth had no parents," said Salvé, rather impatiently.
"Elizabeth?—oh! you mean the girl the Becks took to live with them. That is quite another story," she said, significantly. "No, the lieutenant's wife was Postmaster Forstberg's daughter. The other was just a passing fancy—the end of it was that she had to go to Holland, poor thing! It was said she had got a place there."
"Do you know anything for certain of this?" asked Salvé, severely, and with an earnestness that put the little madam out of countenance, and made her be careful of her words.
"It was all done very secretly, that's true," she replied. "But she went away in the greatest possible hurry, and the affair was well enough known, more's the pity—known and forgotten now, one may say."
"What was known?" asked Salvé, catching her up, angrily. "Did you see her, Madam Gjers?"
"Not I, indeed, nor no one else neither. The Becks were living out at
Tromö at the time; and there was just very good reason for—"
"Then neither you nor any one else who wants to take away her character know a jot more about the business than what you have chosen to invent," said Salvé, fiercely and contemptuously; for although he had slain Elizabeth himself in his heart, he must still defend her against the attacks of others. He felt quite sick and faint.
"I happen to know the rights of the case," he said, with a short laugh, looking her coldly and sharply in the face, "and—" he sprang up suddenly here, and striking the table violently with his fist—"and I don't taste another morsel in such a scandal-mongering house," he cried. "Do you understand, madam? Be good enough to take what is owing to you out of that," and flinging down a handful of silver on to the table, he sprang over it, and proceeded to drag his chest down-stairs himself.
Madam Gjers exhausted herself in a flood of deprecation, the gist of which was that she had only said and believed what she had heard from every creature in the town; but Salvé was unappeasable, and slinging his chest over his back with a rope, he went down with it to the quay, with the intention of chartering a boat to take him over to his father. For the present, however, he remained sitting upon the chest, gazing out abstractedly over the harbour.
The result of his reflections was that he gave up his idea of plying to
Holland.
He took a boat to Sandvigen, but while they were on the way, he suddenly made the boatman change his course, and put in to the slip on the other side of the harbour. He must talk to Elizabeth's aunt. There was something in his mind all the time that wouldn't let him altogether believe the worst.
When he went in to the old woman, she recognised him at once.
"How do you do, Salvé?" she said, quite calmly. "You have been a long while away—half a century almost."
She offered him a chair, but he remained standing, and asked abruptly—
"Is it true that Elizabeth—left Beck's like that—and went to Holland?"
"How do you mean like that?" she asked, sharply, while her face flushed slightly.
"As people say," replied Salvé, with bitter emphasis.
"When people say it, a fool like you of course must believe it," she rejoined, derisively. "I don't understand why you want to come here to her old aunt for information when it seems you have so many other confidants about the town. But anyhow, she can tell you something different from them, my lad; and she wouldn't do it, if it wasn't that she knew the girl still loved you in spite of all the years you have been away, gadding about, God knows where, in the world. It's true enough she left Beck's one night and came here in the morning; but it was just for your sake, and no one else's, that she might get quit of the lieutenant. It was Madam Beck herself that got her a place in Holland, because she didn't want to have her for a daughter-in-law."
A wild gleam of joy broke over Salvé's features for a moment, but they relapsed almost immediately into gloom.
"Was she not engaged to Carl Beck, then?" he asked.
"Yes and no," replied the old woman, cautiously, not wishing to depart a hair's-breadth from the truth. "She allowed herself to be betrayed into saying 'yes,' but fled from the house because she didn't want to have him. She told me, with tears in her eyes, that she repented having said 'no' to you."
"So that was the way of it," he rejoined sarcastically. "The 'yes' and 'no' meant that the Becks wouldn't have her for a daughter-in-law, and bundled her out of the house over to Holland; and you want me to believe it was for my sake she went. God knows," he added, sadly, and shaking his head slowly, "I would willingly believe it—more willingly than I can say; but I can't, Mother Kirstine. You are her aunt, and want of course to—"
"I'm afraid it is your misfortune, Salvé," she broke in severely, "not to have it in your power to believe thoroughly in any one creature upon this earth; you'll be always doubting, always listening to folks' talk. With the thoughts you have now in your mind, you have at any rate no business any longer inside my door. But there is one thing I'll ask of you," she said, with a look of mildly impressive earnestness in her strong, clever face. "I know Elizabeth's nature well, and don't you attempt to approach her or try to win her as long as you have a trace of those doubts about her in your heart—it would only bring unhappiness to both of you."
He looked dejected; and as he said good-bye to her, offered to take her hand. But she would not give it to him, and merely added instead—
"Remember that it is an old woman who has seen a good deal in the world who tells you this."
He went away then; and while he was being rowed across to Sandvigen he changed his mind again, and determined that his plan of plying to Holland should be carried out.
CHAPTER XIX.
Skipper Garvloit, into whose family Elizabeth had come, occupied one of the many-storeyed houses, with green window-shutters, narrow entrance-doors, and polished brass knockers, after the usual Dutch fashion, in the lively street leading down to the dock in Amsterdam, with the canal on the other side, with its various bridges, and vessels and barges of all kinds unlading, running up from it into the heart of the town.
Madam Garvloit had four young children, and was not very strong, so that Elizabeth's robust, healthy nature had been a perfect godsend to her in the house, and she was content to overlook her occasional shortcomings of manner or temper in consideration of the assistance which she rendered in every department of the housekeeping.
Elizabeth had always had a pretty strong will of her own; and here, where she virtually had the control of everything, her tendency to self-assertion had been considerably developed. The force and decision with which she gave her opinion about everything seemed to Madam Garvloit sometimes (although she said nothing) rather like a reversing of their relative positions; and on days when she was in a captious humour—and those were her days of most feverish activity—she would even go so far as to set aside her mistress's orders altogether. In a general way her moods were very uncertain: one day she would be in tearing spirits, racing up and down the stairs with the children, as if she had been inhaling the wild air of Torungen again; and another she would be so pensive and taciturn that they thought she must be pining after home.
She had many admirers, both among young and old, her gay moods attracting the former, and her serious ones the latter. Among the former were two young gentlemen acquaintances of the house, relatives of Garvloit—one a smart young clerk from one of the larger counting-houses in the town, who rather affected the gentleman; and the other a light-haired, pink-complexioned, skipper's son from Vlieland. They both came regularly every Sunday, were frantically jealous of one another, tried to outbid each other whenever an opportunity offered, and were both fully convinced that they sighed in vain. She was so different, they felt, from the other specimens of femininity of their acquaintance to whom their weak attentions had sometimes proved acceptable. There was something almost imperious in Elizabeth's manner at times that made them feel quite small beside her; and however careless she might be of the convenances in her way of speaking to them, they had very soon found that wherever she chose to draw the line, so far could they go and no farther.
Madame Garvloit would take her to task sometimes for the scant courtesy with which she treated the young clerk. Elizabeth would answer that he bored her; and Madame Garvloit would insist that a young girl ought to have tact enough not to make this evident. Elizabeth, however, was not deficient in tact, but disliked putting a restraint upon her feelings; and it seemed to her on the whole unreasonable that a person should pretend that a thing was pleasant when in reality it was wearisome.
During the second autumn of her service with the Garvloits, the skipper, on his return from a trip to Norway, brought the intelligence that Lieutenant Beck was engaged to Postmaster Forstberg's daughter in Arendal, and he had many messages for Elizabeth from the latter. They were to be married in the spring.
Elizabeth was overjoyed to hear it, for the thought had often weighed heavily on her mind that Carl Beck might be making himself miserable on her account. She judged so from her own feeling for Salvé: and as she sat alone by her window at bedtime that night, gazing out over the canal and the shipping in the calm moonlight, the quiet afterglow of a holiday evening seemed to have shed itself over her thoughts. She knew from her friend's message that she was ignorant of what had passed between herself and Carl Beck; and although it was a relief to think that he had not taken his disappointment more to heart, the smile that played about her lips for a moment showed at the same time that his love had been duly appraised. As the shadow, then, of the window-frame in the moonlight, crept slowly over the wall above her bed, her thoughts glided off in the direction they loved best to take—over the world and far away to Salvé.
She sat with her heavy hair falling loose over her well-shaped shoulders, and her face grew more and more sorrowful in its absent expression, and would twitch occasionally with pain. The bitter thought would recur that it was she who was the cause of Salvé's going out into the world and becoming a desperate man. The thought haunted her; and yet, much as she wished to free herself from it, she found a pleasure in dwelling on it. She saw him, in fancy, miserable and proud, with his pale face and keen, clever eyes fixed upon her in hatred, as the cause of his unhappiness, and then the idea occurred to her to put on sailor's clothes and go and seek him out in the world. But if she were to find him, she knew, on the other hand, that for very shame she dared not show herself before him, having as good as belonged to another; and she would not for all the world read her hard dismissal in his eye. She laid her head upon her arms on the window-sill and sobbed convulsively, until at length she dropped off to sleep where she sat.
She had been three years in the Garvloits' house when Garvloit had the misfortune to run his vessel aground out near Amland, where she became a wreck. He lost with her nearly all he had in the world, and what was worse, all prospect of livelihood for the future as skipper.
An uncomfortable feeling prevailed now in the house, and Elizabeth saw with regret that she would have to leave. Garvloit, who in figure resembled some thick, short-legged animal of the sea, a seal or walrus come on land, had become perceptibly reduced in flesh, and went about all day long in his shirtsleeves, fanning himself with a large silk pocket-handkerchief. On one particular afternoon it was observed that he indulged in this exercise with more than his usual vigour and restlessness; and it was not without cause. He had had an inspiration. If he could no longer follow his old trade, he would try a new one; he would set up a house of entertainment for sailors. His house being so close to the dock, could not be more favourably situated for the purpose, and they had ample accommodation. On the ground floor they could have a room for common sailors, and on the floor above they had one where captains and mates could be served.
He said nothing about it, however, to any one until the scheme had been fully matured; and then all of a sudden one day he came into the room where his wife was, with a bundle of printed placards and a large board in his hand.
"Good gracious, Garvloit, what is that?" she cried.
He turned the board round with an important air, and without saying a word. Upon it there stood in large gilt letters, "The Star."
"This is our new means of earning our bread, wife," he said. "Next month this sign hangs over our door, and these bills are to post on the walls, and distribute among the ships down in the harbour. Garvloit is not on his beam-ends yet," he concluded, with self-conscious satisfaction; and proceeded then to explain how he intended to be landlord himself, and how Elizabeth was to help him in the management of the whole.
Madam Garvloit only made one slight objection—
"You know that you can't drink ale, my friend."
Another objection, namely, what they would say at home in Norway when they heard that her husband had sunk into a mere tavern-keeper, she very wisely kept to herself. The important point was that they should find a way of living, and they had at all events the great consolation that now they would be able to keep Elizabeth. What feeling of pride still remained she got rid of in telling Elizabeth that at home they knew nothing of millionaires in wooden shoes such as were to be found in Holland; and her husband found her much more keen for his project than he had expected. Being accustomed to place great reliance upon her stronger understanding, he would not have been happy if she had been against the plan.
Thus it came about, then, that in the crowded street by the canal one Monday morning there appeared over one of the entrance-doors a sign-board with "The Star," in letters of gold on a blue ground. It was set up at a fortunate time and in a fortunate place, and almost as soon as the house was opened, customers from the vessels in the harbour began to gather in, both into the down-stairs and up-stairs rooms, so that there was a prospect of a steadily increasing traffic. Garvloit generally presided himself in the bar behind the counter, at the lower end of which there stood an array of stone mugs with tin lids; while in a recess of the wall there stuck out from beside canisters of tobacco, long and short Dutch clay pipes, a new one filled being handed to every customer, with whatever drink he ordered. Out of sight under the counter where the stone mugs stood was the ale-barrel, with its bright tap over a vessel that caught the drip; and after the same cleanly Dutch fashion, spittoons filled with sand stood in every corner of the room. The shelves above were filled in rows with a regular apothecary's shop of bottles and jars of spirits, and among them a goodly array of securely-fastened, dark-green flasks of Dutch hollands.
Elizabeth had as housekeeper quite as much as she could do, and did not directly busy herself with waiting, unless there was something particular required to be done for the up-stairs customers. Occasionally, however, she would come into the bar also, on some errand or another, or to make sure that nothing was wanted; and the fame of handsome Elizabeth of "The Star" contributed not a little to bring custom to the house.
Such Norwegians as came to Amsterdam with timber—the majority unloaded their cargoes up at Pürmurende or Alkmar—invariably patronised "The Star." Elizabeth used to talk to them as countrymen of her own; and if she heard that any of them had been across the Atlantic, she would quietly, and as if quite casually, ask if perchance they had come across or had heard anything of a sailor of her acquaintance called Salvé Kristiansen who hailed from Arendal. No one had ever heard of him, and she had begun to fear that he might be lost to her for ever.
One forenoon, however, when she had a great deal to do in the house, she was passing quickly through the room up-stairs, and there sat at one of the small tables, with an untouched mug of ale before him, a bearded man in a blue pea-jacket. In her hurry she had set him down as some mate or captain; but there must have been something about him that attracted her attention, for she turned again at the door for an instant, and looked at him before she went out. He was so pale—and he had sent her one look.
As she stood outside the door she knew it was Salvé, although she had always pictured him to herself as a common sailor. She stood there trembling all over, and fumbling with the latch of the door in the greatest agitation, evidently debating with herself whether she should dare go in again. She pressed upon the latch, in the certainty that it would go up before she had actually decided that she would go in; and it did so. The door opened again of itself, and Elizabeth entered with downcast eyes, and scarlet in the face, and passed through the room, making a slight inclination of her head, as if for greeting, as she passed him. She had reached the opposite door when she heard a quiet bitter laugh behind her.
At once she turned, with pride in every feature of her face, and looked at him.
"How do you do, Salvé Kristiansen?" she said, firmly and quietly.
"How do you do, Elizabeth?" he replied, rather huskily, getting up and looking confused.
"Are you lying here in Amsterdam with some vessel?"
He sat down again, for there was something in her manner that denied approach.
"No; in Pürmurende," he replied. "I only came in here to—"
"You are in the timber line, then, now?"
"Yes—Elizabeth," he ventured to add, in another tone, which had a whole volume of meaning in it. But she took her leave of him now in the same proud manner, and left the room.
Salvé sat for a while with compressed lips, looking down upon the table before him. When she turned round the first time at the door, something told him that she would come in again; but he had expected quite a different kind of scene. A good deal of the tyrant had been developed in him since they had last met; and when she had come in so quietly and so humbly, with the acknowledgment of the great wrong she had done him written upon her face, he felt himself at once, with a certain bitter and devouring pleasure, upon the judgment-seat. He must first see her crushed before him; then he would have forgiven her, and loved her with all the passion of his soul.
But as she stood there by the door, looking so grand in her pride, and so pale with repressed mortification, and spoke so calmly, he had felt that in that moment he had been separated farther from her than ever he had been in all his wanderings at the other side of the globe.
He sat there with his mind in a chaotic state of desperation and sorrow, and of anger with himself. What a grand creature she was! and he—how pitiful and petty! He set down the mug, which he had been absently toying with, hard on the table, and went out.
For a long while he wandered about the quays in a state of gloomy indecision, stopping every now and then to run his eye over the shipping, and his expression becoming darker still every time he did so. From long practice he could tell by the appearance of every vessel what trade it was engaged in. One was a coffee ship from Java; the next carried general cargo to all parts of the world; there was another that brought sugar and rum from the West Indies; and a fourth, that from its square build and breadth of beam must be a whaler returned from Spitzbergen. He thought of their long voyages, and of the life without root or tie that was passed on board them—was he to go back to that life again? It depended on Elizabeth; and he had not much hope.
To his impatient nature delay was intolerable; and he had half made up his mind to have his fate decided at once. In spite of his agitation, however, he could still think with coolness; and he knew that if he was to have any chance at all, he must wait until the first unfortunate impression had had time to pass off.
It had been a grey, foggy autumn day, but was now clearing, and blue patches of sky were coming out; and as he crossed the bridge the afternoon sun shone out, and sent a ray of glittering light against the window-panes of the street along the canal. Up in Garvloit's house Elizabeth was standing at the open window—she, too, that day had needed to be alone with her thoughts. Salvé saw her, and stood still for a moment contemplating her as she leant out over the window ledge.
"That dear head shall be mine," he burst out then passionately, and without knowing it, aloud; and the next moment he was at Garvloit's door.
Elizabeth heard the door of the room open behind her; and when she saw Salvé unexpectedly standing before her, she sank down for a moment on to a chair, but got up the next with a scared look, almost as if he was some hostile apparition.
"Elizabeth!" he said, gently, "are you going to send me out again into the world? God only knows how I shall come back if you do."
She did not answer, but stood looking at him with a rigid expression, and pale as death; she seemed to have forgotten to breathe, and to be only waiting for him to say more.
"Be my wife, Elizabeth," he asked, "and I shall grow up into a good man again. What a pitiful creature I have been without you, you have already seen sufficiently this morning."
"God be my witness, Salvé," she answered, the tears bursting into her eyes with emotion which she tried to control, "you alone have always had my heart—but I must first know in perfect truth what you think of me."
"The same as I think of God's angels, Elizabeth," he said from his heart, and tried to take her hand.
"Do you know that I—was once very nearly engaged to young Beck?" she asked, reddening, but with a steady look. "I didn't know my real self then, but was thinking only of folly and nonsense, until I was obliged to fly from it all."
"Your aunt has told me all about it, Elizabeth. Don't let us mention the subject again."
"And you haven't a doubt about me in your heart? For that I never will bear, Salvé, like to-day,—I can't bear it, do you understand?" she said, with a shake in her voice, and looking as it were down into his very soul.
"Doubt!" he said; and for that moment, at all events, he was evidently convinced that she had never given her real heart to any one but himself.
A look of inexpressible happiness came into her face; he caught her into his arms, and they stood as if they never would let go of each other again, cheek to cheek, not speaking, not thinking even. There was something convulsive in their embrace, as if they could not believe in the reality of their happiness, and as if they felt an instinctive dread that they should lose it again.
Unobserved by either of them the door had opened, and in the doorway stood pursy Garvloit, gazing in helpless bewilderment at the scene before him. At last Elizabeth caught sight of him, and—not with any confusion, but only eager to communicate her happiness—exclaimed—
"It is my lover—"
"Your lover!" and he fell back a step, as if he did not know what he was doing.
"My name is Salvé Kristiansen, master of the Apollo," added Salvé, without letting her go, and feeling everything around him infinitely small at that moment.
Garvloit turned round and shouted several times from the top of the stairs, raising his voice at each repetition, "Andrea! Andrea!" to his wife; and as she did not come immediately, he stumbled as fast as his corpulence would allow him down the stairs, pausing, however, with a vacant look upon the last step.
Madam Garvloit came out with her work in her hand, and asked what the matter was.
"The matter is," replied her husband, dismally, "that I am ruined. There is Elizabeth up there sitting with some skipper, God knows whom, who she says is her lover."
"Is it possible?"
"Go and see for yourself;" and as his wife hurried past him up the stairs, he added in the same dismal tone—"Who shall we get to look after the house now? we shall never have another like her;" and he sighed profoundly.
When Madam Garvloit appeared at the door, Elizabeth finished her interrupted explanation.
"I have known him ever since I was a little girl," she said.
It was at once evident to her mistress that there must be a romantic story here; but though brimming over with curiosity, she deferred her questions until a more convenient season. In the meantime she manifested the most lively sympathy; and after winning Salvé's heart by telling him what a treasure Elizabeth had been to her, she begged that as long as he remained in Amsterdam he would come in and out of the house as he pleased.
CHAPTER XX.
When Madam Garvloit had made some excuse next morning to leave the two alone together in her sitting-room, Salvé took out of his pocket a small parcel, and opening it deliberately, said, with a certain solemnity—
"Five years ago, Elizabeth, when I was in Boston, I bought these rings." He took them out of the paper, and laid them in her hand. "I have had a good deal to bear since, but you see I have kept them all along notwithstanding."
She threw her arms round his neck, hid her face upon his breast, and he could feel that she was crying. She tried them on then, both on the same finger, and holding up the hand to show him, said—
"That is the first ring I ever possessed."
A shadow passed across his face, and it flushed slightly; and she only then perceived what connection of ideas her remark might have suggested.
He had three days to spare before he was obliged to be back at Pürmurende on board the old brig of which he was now master, and with which, patched and leaky though she was, after his sailor's pride had been overcome, he had grown to be well satisfied enough—more particularly, perhaps, because she was his own. The happiness of these days was not marred by a single further incident to remind him of the past; and it was only on the day that he was to leave that the foul fiend Distrust was again awakened in his unlucky heart.
It was a Sunday, and after the morning service there was to be a sort of popular fête in Amsterdam. At the famous town-hall, where, in Holland's great days, when De Ruyter's and Van Tromp's guns were thundering in the sea outside, the great merchant princes used to sit round the republican council-board, was to be exhibited that day, for the first time, the new picture of the young Dutch hero, Van Spyck, who blew up his ship in the war of 1830 against Belgium.
Salvé and Elizabeth joined the stream, and even caught some of the national enthusiasm prevailing in the crowd that was swaying backwards and forwards in the courtyard, where a band was playing the stirring national air, "Wien Neerlands bloed door de aders vloeit."
At last they found themselves before the canvas. It represented the young cadet of seventeen years on the gunboat at the supreme moment.
Elizabeth stood with her hands clasped before her silently engrossed, while Salvé kept her from being pressed upon behind.
"Look!" she said, turning half round to him, but without taking her eyes off the picture,—"the Belgian captain is inviting him to surrender. He has no choice—they are too many for him. But don't you see the thought he has in his mind?—you can read it in his face. And what a fine fellow he looks, with his handsome uniform, and his epaulets, and his short sword!" she said, in a lower tone, with a revival of her old childish enthusiasm for that kind of show.
Her last words were like a dagger's thrust to Salvé. She still had a hankering, then, for all this, and he stood behind her pale with suppressed feeling, while she continued to gaze at the picture and think aloud to him.
"Poor, handsome lad! But he never will surrender—one can easily see that; and so he must go down," she said, in a subdued voice, involuntarily folding her hands, as if in fancy she went with him; "and he blows up Belgian and all into the air, Salvé," she said, turning to him with a fine spirited look in her face, and with moistened eyes.
He made no reply; and supposing that, like herself, he was lost in the scene before them, she turned again to the picture. But while, after giving vent to her feelings, she stood there with a smile on her face, thinking that she knew one who would have been quite as capable as Van Spyck of such an exploit—the man, namely, who was then standing behind her—to him the picture had become a hateful thing; and he could have shot Van Spyck through the heart for his uniform's sake.
The whole of the way home he was silent and serious, and it was not until late in the afternoon that he at all recovered his spirits.
As this was to be his last trip for the year, the following spring was fixed for their marriage; and when he took his leave, it was with the gloomy presentiment that he had a dreary winter before him.
Certainly, for the development of a morbid state of mind, no conditions could have been more favourable than the enforced inactivity to which, with many another, he was condemned for the long dark months during which the ice put a stop to navigation. To his restless, energetic nature, such prolonged inaction was little suited under any circumstances, and in his present condition of mind it was little less than disastrous.
"If she was only here!" he would sometimes inwardly exclaim, as if crying out for help against himself and the thoughts which he felt to be unworthy, but which nevertheless he could not shake off.
He often thought of writing to her, but was so afraid of saying something which he might afterwards regret, that he kept putting it off from time to time, until at last he could restrain himself no longer.
His letter ran as follows:—
"To much esteemed Miss Elizabeth Raklev—
"As concerning the Apollo, she lies in a row of other ships up in Selvig Sound, and the ice is about a foot thick, and will be late in breaking up this year, they all prophesy: she is well looked after, and has a watchman on board, and storage room has been taken for her rigging in Pettersen's rigging-loft. But as touching her captain, to whom you said in Amsterdam you had given your full and first heart so firmly that it couldn't be moved by any might or power in the world whatsoever—he has thought much and often about this, and would like to hold out and see you again before all his shore cable is chafed away. It seems as if it was holding by its last threads, and these half-scraped through. But if I could see you, it would become so strong again that it could hold against any stream; and you must forgive me for my weakness when you think of those five years; but I won't say that it is your fault, neither make myself out better than I am, for I have confidence in you, Elizabeth, if I have not the same reliance upon myself, and I can't help it if I haven't. When you read this letter, Elizabeth, you must remember the poor sailor who is frozen up here, and not forget it afterwards till we meet again, which I would give half my life-blood or more for, if it was any use, as I am consuming away with impatience up here—I have such a longing to see you again. And now, farewell from my heart, and God bless you. I will trust you and hope in you till my last hour, come what may. Farewell, my dearest girl, with fond love from
"SALVÉ KRISTIANSEN."
This letter cost Elizabeth many a tear. She sat over it in the evenings before she went to bed, and felt so poignantly that it was she who had brought him to this—that he could not trust her; for she understood but too well what lay between the lines. "If I could only be with him," she thought, and she longed to be able to send him an answer; but she had never learnt properly how to write or to compose a letter.
With some difficulty, however, and after several ineffectual attempts, she managed to put two lines together which she remembered from the Catechism:—
"To my lover Salvé Kristiansen—
"You shall put your trust in God, and after Him, in me before all others, who careth for you in all things, and have faith in me. That is the truth from your ever-unforgetting "ELIZABETH RAKLEV. And in the spring, "ELIZABETH KRISTIANSEN."
She folded the letter, and got one of Garvloit's sons to write the address; but, that it might be certain to go, she went with it herself to the post-office.
Salvé received it one day with great surprise. He guessed from whom it came, and delayed opening it in the fear that it might contain a breaking off of their engagement occasioned by his own letter: he remembered that first morning in Amsterdam. What was his joy, then, when he found what the contents actually were; he seemed to have the thing now in black-and-white. He put the letter carefully back into his pocket-book every time after reading it, and for a while was quite another man. Still, it was high time that the ice should begin to break up, and that he should find occupation for his thoughts in work; he had begun to be afraid to be alone with them.
His first voyage was to Pürmurende, and thence to Amsterdam; and they determined to be married there and then, although he had but four days to stay while the brig was loading in Pürmurende. Out of consideration for the Garvloits, whom they wished to spare the expense of the wedding as much as possible, they insisted that they would be married on the day they were to leave for Pürmurende.
The morning on which the wedding took place, Garvloit's house put forth all its splendour. Dress suits from former days of better circumstances were brought out from old boxes for the occasion; and Madam Garvloit appeared in a green-silk dress of stiff brocade, with a massive brooch, and a huge gilt comb that shone over her forehead like a piece of a crown. Garvloit, too, did his best; but his utmost endeavour had only availed to adapt one article of his grandfather's state dress to his corpulent person—a gold-laced waistcoat namely, which was much too long for him, and which appeared to occasion him extreme discomfort in the region of the buttons.
A couple of old friends of the family and the children went with the pair to church, and also the skipper's son from Vlieland, over whose round soft cheeks there trickled a regretful tear or two as the bride, with her myrtle wreath and long white veil, was led up to the altar by Garvloit. Elizabeth wore that day a pair of particularly handsome shoes with silver buckles, which Salvé, with glad surprise, recognised as the ones he had presented to her many years before.
There was an entertainment provided by Madam Garvloit when they returned from church, which was not a very lively affair, the Garvloits not being in spirits at the prospect of losing Elizabeth, and she, notwithstanding all her present happiness, being really sorry to go.
A couple of hours after, they were on their way to Pürmurende, and later on in the mellow evening, were standing together on the deck of the Apollo, as she was being towed up the wide canal. The bells were ringing out from Alkmar as they passed—ringing a sweet old chime of other days; and as they stood together by the ship's side, silently listening to the changing tones from the tower as they mingled in the air above them, they pleased themselves with the thought that it was their wedding chime.
CHAPTER XXI.
In a small house at Tonsberg, at the entrance to the beautiful Christiana fjord, the first summer of their married life passed without a cloud upon its sky. The house and all about it, with its flowers in each window, were a model of neatness and Dutch polish; and with Elizabeth herself as a centre to it all, it was no wonder that Salvé's crew found him indifferent to all weathers when it was a question of getting home.
The charming young skipper's wife, however, during her husband's frequent absences, had attracted the notice of some of the leading families of the town, and had come presently to be if not exactly on intimate terms, at all events on a footing of acquaintanceship with many of them; and Salvé's enjoyment of his home ceased then to be so perfectly unalloyed.
When Elizabeth recounted to him the flattering proofs of appreciation which she received, he listened in silence; and her social successes, instead of giving him pleasure, had a precisely opposite effect. He would not for the world have said a word to express his dislike of her making such acquaintances; and he even, when they went to church together on Sundays, liked her to be as well-dressed as any of these fine friends who now seemed to share his wife with him. But if he said nothing, and was even angry with himself for thinking about the subject, still he did think about it, and with increasing irritation. He could not get the idea out of his head that Elizabeth must now be always contrasting him unfavourably with these people; and as he paced the deck of his brig alone out at sea, he would picture them to himself as constantly in his house, and always talking on the subject which he could least endure—the sacrifice which Elizabeth must have made to become his wife.
When their son Gjert was born in the spring following their marriage, he had been sitting by Elizabeth's bedside unable to tear himself away from her and the cradle, until a small present arrived from one of her friends in the town, who with others had often sent to inquire after her, when he got up and went straight out of the house and paced backwards and forwards with his hands behind his back outside, as she could see through the window, thoroughly out of humour, though when he came in again he was even more affectionate and attentive to her than before.
As she never for a moment imagined that he could think her deep love for him could be in any way affected by the slight surface interest which her new acquaintances afforded her, she looked upon his jealousy of them, of which she had had indications often enough before, as a weakness merely to which he ought to have been superior; and as he said nothing himself on the subject, she also let it pass without comment on her side, but determined at the same time that she would see less of them in future, at all events while he was at home.
It happened however, unluckily, some weeks afterwards, that she had just been talking to some of them when he returned from an expedition to Notterö to hire a crew for his next voyage to Amsterdam, on which she was to accompany him. "Herr Jurgensen and his wife," she said, "had just passed, and she had been talking to them; they were to start for Frederiksvoern on the following day."
"And fancy!" she went on with animation, "Fru Jurgensen knows Marie
Forstberg. So I asked her to remember me to her."
"Marie Forstberg?—who is she?" asked Salvé.
"She who was so kind to me,"—she stopped here, and the colour came and went in her face as she continued—"it was she who married—Beck's son—the lieutenant."
"You ought to have asked Fru Jurgensen to remember me to Beck then at the same time," he said, cuttingly, and went past her into the house without looking her in the face.
Elizabeth followed him, feeling very uncomfortable, and after standing for a moment in indecision, went over to him, and sitting down on his knee, put her arm round his neck, saying—
"You are not angry with me, are you? I didn't think you would mind, or I wouldn't have done it."
"Oh! it's quite immaterial to me, of course, who you send your love to."
"She was my best friend when I was—in Arendal," Elizabeth said, avoiding the mention of Beck's name again.
"I don't doubt you are on the best possible terms with all these people," Salvé said, impatiently, and making a movement as if he would get up from his seat.
It was Elizabeth who rose first.
"Salvé!" she exclaimed, and was about to add more, when he pulled her down to him again, and said in a gentle tone of remorse—
"Forgive me, Elizabeth. I didn't mean what I said. But I do so hate hearing you talk of these people."
Elizabeth burst into tears, protesting against his want of confidence in her; and Salvé, now thoroughly distressed at the result of his want of self-control, overwhelmed her with tenderness in his endeavours to appease her. He succeeded after a while, and the evening was passed in such sunshine as only succeeds to storm.
After a quarrel of the kind, however, there must be always something left behind, and though Salvé was doubly affectionate for many days, afterwards he grew more and more silent, and presently even irritable and moody, and would not go to church on any of the succeeding Sundays while he remained at home.
CHAPTER XXII.
Elizabeth carried out her intention of accompanying him to Amsterdam, where she paid a visit of several days to the Garvloits, and the pleasure of the trip was only alloyed for her by the change which had come over Salvé's manner, and to which she had now to try and accustom herself as one does to a less brilliant light after having seen the sun.
They were on their way home again, sailing before a light breeze, and under a soft blue sky, out of the busy, shallow Zuyder Zee. Elizabeth was sitting on deck with little Gjert, blooming as a rose, and asking animated questions of the pilot, whom they had been compelled to take on board, about the various flat sandy islands and towns which came in sight from time to time, Salvé occasionally stopping in his walk to listen.
By Terschelling the channel from the Zuyder Zee to the North Sea is marked out like a narrow strait with black and red buoys; and even in that calm weather there were foaming breakers the whole way close to the ship on either side. "What must it be like," Elizabeth asked, in a sort of terror, "in a storm, when the whole sea was driving in?"
"That is a sight it's better not to see," replied the pilot.
"But you have to be out, storm or not, pilot?"
"It is my way of getting a living," he answered, shortly.
Salvé stood and listened, as the conversation took this turn.
"We have pilots in Norway, too," she said, "who don't mind a wet jacket either. It is a fine life!"
The Dutchman merely observed, coldly, in reply—
"In two successive years—it is three years ago now—they lost out here off Amland a total of fifty pilots."
"Still, it is a fine life!" she said; and Salvé resumed his walk.
A couple of evenings after, the Apollo was pitching out on the Doggerbank in the moonlight, with a reef in her topsails. Elizabeth had not yet gone below, and was sitting with her child warmly wrapped up on her lap, while Salvé paced the deck and looked at her from time to time. A little farther off, near the main-hatch, Nils Buvaagen (whom Salvé had met again at Notterö, and persuaded to take service with him) and a couple of the crew who were off duty were engaged in story-telling, the others lounging about near them to listen. Elizabeth, too, was listening.
They had crossed that day a long stretch of dead water, and the carpenter had several mysterious incidents, of which he declared he had been an eyewitness, to recount on the head of it. Meeting dead water like that out in the open sea generally meant that something was going to happen.
Nils Buvaagen, like all fjord peasants, had a strong leaning towards every kind of superstition; and in his many voyages across the North Sea, he had had more than one experience of the kind in question. He had sat quite silent so far.
"H'm!" he remarked now, thoughtfully taking a pull at his pipe. "I dare be sworn there's many a one out here on the Dogger. Where we are now, I tell you, is as it might be an old burial-ground."
With that he retired into himself, and began to pull away vigorously at his pipe, as if he had unintentionally said more than he exactly liked. But being pressed to go on, he was obliged to satisfy the curiosity he had excited, and resumed accordingly in a hushed tone, after cautiously looking round first.
"Do you know," he asked, mysteriously, "how all the old fish come by their deaths?"
None of his audience were able to give an answer to this unexpected question.
"You don't?" he continued; "nor no one else neither. But all the same, such myriads die every day that, if all was right, the whole surface of the sea would be covered with their white bellies—we should be sailing all day long through dead fish. It is a 'mystery,' the same as it is what becomes of all the old ships in the world." Coming from him, that word "mystery" had something very weird and uncanny about it.
"Yes, the Dogger can be ugly enough, and may be so perhaps before we are clear of it," he concluded, and leant back against the spar behind him to look up at the clouds. Some scud was driving at the moment across the full moon.
"But about the old fish and the old vessels, Nils?" said the carpenter, recalling him to the subject.
"Yes, it is here, to the Dogger Bank, that they resort for the most part, and to one or two other places perhaps in the world besides. That is the reason that there is always a sort of corpse sand in the water here, and so many noises and things that one can't explain."
There was a general start as he said this, and they looked at one another in silence; for it seemed as if the vessel had suddenly stopped with a shock in the middle of her course, and the spray from a heavy sea came pouring down over the deck.
"She heard it," said the carpenter, involuntarily; "she is an old craft, and doesn't like going over the churchyard."
Elizabeth thought that last proposition sounded so uncomfortable that she got up and went below to bed.
The sea ran high in the night, and the vessel kept pitching with dull thuds as if they were in very shoal water, which, however, the lead showed not to be the case. In the morning the chain-cable of the anchor was found tossed by the force of the sand-laden seas right over the deck, and arranged there with a certain regularity. To many of the crew it seemed clear that other than natural causes must have been at work; there were evidently "dead hands" upon the bank, and this was a warning. Nils shook his head and said nothing.
All the morning they were enveloped in a thick sea fog that surrounded them like a wall; but towards noon the sun began to appear like a sickly gleam above them, and by dinner-time they were sailing under a clear sky, and in a fresh green breezy sea, with sails on every side.
It was an exhilarating sight, and reminded Elizabeth of the days of her childhood. She called Salvé over to share her enjoyment of it.
Of all the vessels in sight, the handsomest, without comparison, was the North Star, a Norwegian corvette, well known along the coast of Norway, and which had often aroused Elizabeth's enthusiasm in earlier days. She was crossing their course, and standing under full sail for the Channel. Elizabeth recognised her at once, and exclaimed decisively—
"That is the North Star—isn't she a magnificent ship, Salvé! See, they are taking in the topsails; they look like a flock of birds up there on the yard among those beautiful big sails. Did you ever see anything so grand as her shape? and how majestically she ploughs through the sea! When she has all her canvas spread like that, I could fancy Tordenskjold himself on board of her in full chase."
Salvé looked straight before him and didn't answer. He knew, what Elizabeth had not the faintest suspicion of, that Lieutenant Beck was on board the North Star, as third in command for that year's cruise in the Mediterranean, whither she was now bound; and a host of unpleasant associations were raised by Elizabeth's innocent admiration of her.
"It was the North Star," she continued, "that beat through the straits of Gibraltar against the current when none of the others could." The North Star had long ago taken the place of the Naiad as her heroine ship, and she related the performance with a certain pride.
"How would you like to be in command of a ship like that, Salvé?" she asked, determined to wake him up and get an answer.
"It would be a very different thing from having such an old tub as the Apollo under one—there's no disputing that," he replied bitterly; and quitted her side abruptly, as if to give orders to the crew.
Elizabeth remained standing where she was, utterly puzzled. What could there possibly have been in what she had said to offend him? and offended he certainly was by the tone of voice in which he was giving his orders, and the expression of his face as he stood there by the wheel with his hand in the breast of his pea-jacket—she felt certain it was clenched there. It was really too unreasonable—the idea of his being jealous of a ship! This uncertainty about every word she spoke now was getting absolutely insupportable, and with a toss of her head she determined that she would stand it no longer, but would speak her mind to him once for all, whether it should lead to a scene or not.
No opportunity, however, for carrying out her intention occurred during the remainder of the afternoon. There appeared to be bad weather coming up, and many of the sails had to be taken in; and afterwards he paced up and down by the round-house forward for a couple of hours, purposely, as she could see, avoiding her. The crew apparently had an impression, too, that it was as well to keep out of his way, as they left him that side of the deck to himself, and stood talking in knots about the capstan, with their oilskin coats and sou'westers on, in anticipation of dirty weather, and casting anxious glances from time to time at the banks of cloud that were rolling up darkly from the horizon to leeward, and sending already a whine through the old rigging above them. They waited impatiently for the word to take in more sail, as it was obvious that they must go with storm sails only for the night.
It was only at the last moment apparently that Salvé made up his mind, for when he suddenly shouted over to them to take in topsails and put a couple of reefs in the mainsail, the storm was already upon them. He sprang aft at the same time and seized the trumpet, saying shortly and harshly to Elizabeth as he passed her hurriedly, and almost without looking at her—
"This is not weather for sitting up on deck, Elizabeth. You had better take the child below and lie down."
Elizabeth saw that he was right, and went; but there was a look of pained surprise in her face as she lingered for a moment and looked after him. He had never spoken to her like that before.
The crew had supposed that he would of course keep away and run before the gale, and not strain the old brig by beating to windward in such a night as they saw before them; and it was under mute protest, therefore, that they proceeded to carry out his orders to clap on preventer braces on the rags of sail which they were carrying. The old blocks creaked and screamed in the increasing darkness above the rattle of the hail squalls, and the vessel careened over and went plunging into the head seas with successive shocks that seemed likely very soon to shake her to pieces.
Nils Buvaagen was standing in moody silence, with another, at the wheel, and he could see by the light from the binnacle, which occasionally fell upon Salvé's face as he walked up and down near them to leeward, that he was ashy pale. He would have liked to say something, but it didn't seem advisable.
"Topsail's flapping!" came from forward, "she'll be taken aback!"
"She's an old craft, captain—her topmasts'll not bear a great deal,"
Nils ventured to observe.
"I'll show you that I can make the old tub go," muttered Salvé between his teeth, affecting not to have heard what was said.
"Keep her away, Nils—she must have more way—and so over on a new tack," was his reply in a peremptory tone.
"Stand by to 'bout ship!"
Nils sighed: such sailing was quite indefensible; and there was not one of the crew who had not the same feeling.
Through the darkness and the blinding dash of the seas came then at intervals—
"Haul in the boom—hard a-lee—brace forward—brace aft!" and here there was a longer interval, for one of the ropes on the foremast had apparently got foul, and there was a difficulty in bracing the yard, the sail flapping with a dull noise above and making the whole mast tremble. One of the crew had to mount the old rigging at the risk of his life, and feel over the unsteady yard in the dark for the rope and disentangle it, with the white tops of the seas breaking not far under his feet.
"Sharp up aft—sharp forward!" came then again. "Haul the jib-sheet!" but no sooner was the jib hauled taut and made fast, than it broke loose and hung fluttering wildly about the stay until it gradually twisted itself up into a tangle.
The sails filled on the new tack; but they were not much better off than before, the sea breaking over them with such violence that the deck, from amidships forward, was only passable with the greatest difficulty and danger. The crew began to think the captain must have taken leave of his senses; and, in fact, Salvé was not himself that night. He was sailing in this reckless way in a mere fit of temper intensified by the consciousness of his own unreasonableness. Elizabeth made a mistake, he told himself by way of justification, if she thought that he on board his poor brig gave in to any officer in the navy, let him be who he might. She should see that he, too, was a man who could beat—he required no North Star under him, he would perform the same feat in a leaky old barge.
A couple of times when the cook, who looked after Elizabeth's wants, came up the cabin stairs, Salvé inquired how she was getting on, and heard each time that she was sitting up not yet undressed. The last time the good-natured cook had added—
"She wants badly to see you, captain—she isn't accustomed to this sort of thing."
He made no reply further than a scornful contraction of his features which was not visible to the other, and resumed his staggering walk to leeward, between the companion and the wheel.
Elizabeth meanwhile had been sitting a prey to most distracted thoughts. When she went below with her child, she had a dull feeling at her heart that some great sorrow had come or was coming over her, and she had sat for some time almost without the power to think. He had never treated her like that before.
She set about putting the child to bed then in her usual way, as if she had been a mere machine. For him the rolling berth was only a rocking cradle, and he was soon sleeping quietly without an idea of danger. She stood with her arm leaning over the edge of the berth, supporting him, and gazing on his dimpled face; the lamp that swung to and fro under the beam, shedding a dim light over the narrow cabin, with its small table, and pegs full of seamen's clothes, moving solemnly backwards and forwards on the wall. Between the creaking of the ship's timbers and the noise of ropes being dragged across the deck, Salvé's voice could be heard in harsh tones of command, and every now and then there would be a sudden concussion that would make the whole vessel shake, and the floor would seem to go from under her feet, so that she had to hold on by the rail of the berth, and keep the child from falling out as best she could at the same time. Whenever they had had such weather before, Salvé had always come down from time to time to see her. Now—she didn't know what to think. From what the cook had told her, she gathered that they were beating with unjustifiable recklessness, and from the tone of Salvé's voice she knew that he was in a savagely defiant mood, and that she, for some reason or other, was the cause of it. Her expression gradually changed to one of deeper and deeper anxiety of soul.