MY DANISH SWEETHEART

A Novel

BY W. CLARK RUSSELL

AUTHOR OF 'THE WRECK OF THE GROSVENOR,' 'THE LIFE OF ADMIRAL LORD COLLINGWOOD,' 'A MARRIAGE AT SEA,' ETC., ETC.

IN THREE VOLUMES

VOL. II.

Methuen & Co.
18, BURY STREET, LONDON, W.C.
1891
[All rights reserved]

CONTENTS OF VOL. II.

MY DANISH SWEETHEART

CHAPTER I.

THE 'EARLY MORN.'

I told my story, and the three fellows listened attentively. Their eyes glowed in the lamplight as they stared at me. The weak wind raised a pleasant buzzing noise at the cutwater, and the lugger stole in floating launches through the gloom over the long invisible heave of the Atlantic swell.

'Ah!' said the helmsman, when I had made an end, 'we heerd of that there Tintrenale lifeboat job when we was at Penzance. An' so you was her coxswain?'

'Were the people of the boat drowned?' cried I eagerly. 'Can you give me any news of them?'

'No, sir,' he answered; 'there was no particulars to hand when we sailed. All that we larnt was that a lifeboat had been stove alongside a vessel in Tintrenale Bay; and little wonder, tew, says I to my mates when I heerd it. Never remember the like of such a night as that there.'

'What was the name of the Dane again?' said one of the fellows seated opposite me, as he lighted a short clay pipe by the flame of a match that he dexterously shielded from the wind in his hand as though his fist was a lantern.

'The Anine,' I answered.

'A bit of a black barque, warn't she?' he continued. 'Capt'n with small eyes and a beard like a goat! Why, yes! it'll be that there barque, Tommy, that slipped two year ago. Pigsears Hall and Stickenup Adams and me had a nice little job along with her.'

'You are quite right,' said Helga, in a low voice; 'I was on board the vessel at the time. The captain was my father.'

'Oh, indeed, mum!' said the fellow who steered. 'An' he's gone dead! Poor old gentleman!'

'What is this boat?' said I, desiring to cut this sort of sympathy short.

'The Airly Marn,' said the helmsman.

'The Early Morn! And from what part of the coast, pray?'

'Why, ye might see, I think, sir, that she hails from Deal,' he answered. 'There's nothen resembling the likes of her coming from elsewhere that I knows of.'

'And what are you doing down in this part of the ocean?'

'Why,' said he, after spitting over the stern and passing his hand along his mouth, 'we're agoing to Australey.'

'Going where?' I cried, believing I had not correctly heard him, while Helga started from her drooping posture and turned to look at me.

'To Sydney, New South Wales, which is in Australey,' he exclaimed.

'In this small open boat?'

'This small open boat!' echoed one of the others. 'The Airly Marn's eighteen ton, and if she ben't big enough and good enough to carry three men to Australey there's nothen afloat as is going to show her how to do it!'

By the light shed by the dimly burning lantern, where it stood in the bottom of the boat, I endeavoured to gather from their faces whether they spoke seriously, or whether, indeed, they were under the influence of earlier drams of liquor than the dose they had swallowed from our jar.

'Are you in earnest, men?' said I.

'Airnest!' cried the man at the tiller in a voice of astonishment, as though he wondered at my wonder. 'Why, to be sure we are! What's wrong with us that we shouldn't be agoing to Australey?'

I glanced at the short length of dark fabric, and up at the black square of lugsail.

'What is taking you to Australia in a Deal lugger?' said I.

The man styled Abraham by his mates answered: 'We're a-carrying this here craft out on a job for the gent that's bought her. There was three of us an' a boy, but the boy took sick at Penzance, and we came away without him.'

He paused. The man sitting next him continued in a deep voice:

'A gent as lives in Lunnon took this here Airly Marn over for a debt. Well, when he got her he didn't know what to do with her. There was no good a-leaving her to pine away on the beach, so he tarns to and puts her up to auction. Well, there was ne'er a bid.'

'Ne'er a bid!' echoed the man who was steering.

'Ne'er a bid, I says,' continued the other, 'and whoy? First of all, there ain't no money in Deal; and next, the days of these luggers is nombered. Well, this here gent was called upon by an Australian friend who, gitting to hear of the Airly Marn, says he's a-willing to buy her for a sum. What that sum might be I'm not here for to know.'

'Fifty pound, I allow,' said the man named Tommy. 'Some says she was guv away. I've heerd speak of thirty pound. But fifty's what I call it.'

'Call it fifty!' exclaimed the fellow who steered.

'Well,' continued the first speaker, whose voice was peculiarly harsh, 'this here gent, having purchased the Airly Marn, comes down to Deal, and gives out that he wants some men to carry her to Sydney. The matter was tarned over. How much would he give? Well, he'd give two hundred an' fifty pound, and them as undertook the job might make what shares they chose of the money. I was for making six shares. Abraham there says no, fower's enough. Tommy says three an' a boy. That's seventy-five pound a man, and twenty-five pound for the boy; but the boy being took sick, his