‘Are you much hurt, Phineas?’ asked Elizabeth anxiously.
‘Never a scratch, lady,’ returned the ancient mariner. ‘But ah, my poor old head be full of sleep, full of dreams. Seems I must go back where I came from, lady. Yonder.’ He waved a hand towards the hatchway. ‘There ’ee found me, there ’ee shall leave me. Yes, it all cooms back, the voyage us had, and the cupful of storm, and the black flag, and little Queen Elizabeth commanding, and a martal deal of queer fantastical talk. It all cooms back to me, lady. But now I must take a tot mebbe, or mebbe two, and lie down where I belong.’
‘But won’t you help us sail the ship home?’ said Rex. ‘Like you did on the way out. We’ve been counting on you, Phineas.’
‘The ship be right enough. Trust she,’ replied Phineas. ‘Her’s making good speed, lad.’ He passed a hand over his brow in a gesture of infinite weariness, moved slowly towards the hatch, and disappeared into it.
‘What did he mean?’ asked Guy.
‘Look!’ Elizabeth answered. ‘That’s what he meant. The ship’s moving fast. Perhaps we shall be home to tea after all.’
The children stared wonderingly about them. As far as they could see stretched the rippling dark green ocean, and above them, in a moon-washed sky, the stars seemed to race. No sign of the island. No sign of any land. The wind was fresh and strong, and the ship, with all her sails full and all her tackle strained and creaking, rode high and queenly over the rushing, churning, galloping water. The Robinsons stood on her deck, drinking in the lovely soft colours of night, feeling the fingers of the wind in their hair, dreaming of all their adventures and of the home towards which they were now being so swiftly borne. They did not exchange many words, for they were subdued by a deeper joy than they had known before, the joy not only of coming home but of coming home laden with rich memories, full of adventures that could be lived over and over again in their minds.
‘Pity we had to leave the treasure behind,’ remarked Rex. ‘But it doesn’t really matter.’
‘We’ve had the best of it,’ said Elizabeth. And nobody, not even the youngest, was silly enough to think that she meant the cake. ‘See,’ she added, ‘it’s getting lighter, Morning will soon be here.’
Even as she spoke, and the eyes of her brothers followed her pointing finger, the rose-flush deepened in the east, became crimson, became golden; the sun appeared over the world’s rim and poured himself, pure gold, into the sea; yet mounted the blue sky undiminished, travelling, it seemed to the children, as fast as the minute hand of a clock. A little way past noon he seemed suddenly to stop.
‘It’s tea-time,’ said Elizabeth. ‘And here are the cliffs of home.’
Yes, they were back at the point from which they had first set out; and Rex recalled how he had stood anxiously watching Guy descend that steep cliff-side. ‘We shall never be able to climb that cliff,’ he said, half to himself. ‘How shall we get back?’
But as the ship came nearer to the land he saw that the cliff which he had thought so high was in fact almost level with the deck. Every one seemed surprised at this except Elizabeth, who was too full of the prospect of seeing home again to have any thought to spare for other marvels. It was she who, taking everything for granted, was the first to jump out. Her brothers quickly followed.
‘Well, that’s funny!’ exclaimed Guy.
The others, whatever they may have felt, said nothing at all. In front of them stretched their familiar brickfield, with its scaffolding and its stack of new bricks. And there was their own back-garden fence. Moved by the same startling thought, they wheeled round to look at the ship from which they had just disembarked. They rubbed their eyes in bewilderment, and stared and stared; and every moment of staring made it more believable, more altogether natural, that they should now see, not a blue expanse of ocean, but their own small pond, and, floating on its surface, a beautiful little model ship measuring eight inches from prow to stern.
Rex was the first to break the spell of wondering silence that had fallen upon them all. ‘Well,’ said he, with an effort to speak naturally, ‘we’d better be getting in, I suppose. It must be quite tea-time.’ Dropping on one knee, and leaning over the pond, he lifted the little Resmiranda out of the water and wiped her dry with his handkerchief.
As the four children sauntered slowly, perhaps a little reluctantly, across that familiar brickfield bathed in the mellow sunlight of an autumn evening, they did not talk at all, but only exchanged bright glances, glad of their shared secret. At the gate in the garden fence they were met by Mother herself, come in search of them; and when they saw her pretending to be cross, and heard her say: ‘Now, children, you’re ten minutes late!’—they gazed at her, all four of them, with dreams in their eyes, and no one could think of an answer. As for Fandy, he was busy washing his face. There never was a cleaner cat than Fandy.
A Note on the Author
Gerald Bullet was a British man of letters. He was a novelist, essayist, short story writer, critic and poet, who wrote both supernatural fiction and some children’s literature.
Bullett was born in London in 1893 and was educated at Jesus College, Cambridge. After Cambridge, Bullett began reviewing for The Times Literary Supplement and other journals, and then embarked on a career as an assiduous short-story writer and poet, small-time publisher, and editor and author of some forty published books. Bullet's 1932 detective novel I’ll Tell You Everything was written jointly with J. B. Priestley. In 1956 he adapted his most popular novel, The Jury, into a film called The Last Man to Hang?
Politically, Bullett described himself as a “liberal socialist” and claimed to detest “prudery, Prohibition, “blood sports, central heating, and literary tea parties”. Bullett was also an anti-fascist, describing fascism as “gangsterism on a national scale”. He publicly backed the Republican side during the Spanish Civil War. During World War II Bullet worked for the BBC in London, and as a radio broadcaster after the end of the war.
Gerald Bullett died in January 1958.
For copyright reasons, any images not belonging to the original author have been
removed from this book. The text has not been changed, and may still contain
references to missing images.
This electronic edition published in 2013 by Bloomsbury Reader
Bloomsbury Reader is a division of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 50 Bedford Square,
London WC1B 3DP
First published in Great Britain 1927 by J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd
Copyright © 1927 Gerald Bullett
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eISBN: 9781448210992
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The Happy Mariners Page 16
