We Didn't Mean to Go to Sea

by Arthur Ransome

  A tremendous voice boomed down at them out of the sky, an officer on the bridge roaring into the darkness through a megaphone.

  “Yah! You blooming fishmongers! Why don’t you show yer lights in proper time?”

  “We tried to,” shouted John, but he had no megaphone to shout through and nobody aboard the steamer could have heard him.

  Already the second masthead light of the steamer was towering past, and the next moment the Goblin was caught by the steamer’s wash, smashing across the regular seas. The Goblin was tossed about like a cork in boiling water. Susan slipped on the companion-steps and all but lost torch and plate in saving herself from tumbling down into the cabin. Roger, Titty and foghorn were flung about in the bottom of the cockpit. John, thrown first one way and then the other, had the breath nearly knocked out of him by the tiller and bruised an elbow and grazed a wrist on the cockpit coaming. Two crests of waves, one after another, sloshed aboard. John, unable to speak, pushed desperately at the tiller. By the time he had managed to get the Goblin back on her course, with the wind on her quarter once more, the steamer was already far away. There could be no thought now of asking for a tow or of trying to put anybody aboard.

  “Gosh!” panted John, recovering his breath and looking over his shoulder at the steamer’s stern-light. “We might have had her mast shaken out of her in a wash like that.”

  “John,” said Roger, picking himself up off the floor. “I’ve got a good big bit of your pork pie. It was under your foot.”

  “Good,” said John. “Let’s have it.” His jaw was a little inclined to tremble, and he was glad to wedge a damp lump of pork pie into his mouth.

  “Why did they call us fishmongers?” said Titty.

  “Probably thought we were fishermen,” said John.

  “But fishmongers,” said Roger. “Jolly cheek!”

  “I suppose they wouldn’t have stopped anyway,” said Susan.

  “They jolly nearly sent us to the bottom,” said John.

  “If only we had some green plates too,” said Titty. “We could show a starboard light as well.”

  “If we meet any more steamers,” said John, “I’m going to get out of the way before they come anywhere near us. Do look out with that torch, Susan. If you go flashing it about I can’t see the compass or anything else.”

  “I was looking for your supper,” said Susan, who was shining the torch here and there about the floor of the cockpit. “Here are two more bits … Oh, I say. Where’s that blood coming from?” She turned the torch on John’s wrist.

  “It’s only a scrape,” said John. “Do put that torch out.”

  “I know where he keeps the iodine,” said Susan. “I’m sure Mother’d say you ought to put some on.”

  She scrambled down into the cabin, and found it a most comforting place. “Sent us to the bottom.” She thought of the great bows of the steamer crashing through the little Goblin … the steamer on the top of them … Titty … Roger … And instead, there was the cabin lamp swinging easily in its gimbals … shadows dancing along the row of Jim Brading’s books. The Goblin was all right, though a little water was again showing on the cabin floor. And surely she could not be mistaken. The motion was nothing like so bad as when she had last come down. She picked up the plates that were sliding about on the floor, and put them back into the cupboard. She found Jim Brading’s medicine chest, got out the iodine, and wedged the chest behind a pillow. She worked her way forward and pulled a clean handkerchief out of the knapsack on her bunk. On the way back, remembering Roger, she took a slab of chocolate.

  NIGHT ENCOUNTER

  Up in the cockpit John, holding the tiller with one hand, held out the damaged wrist. Titty, just for a moment, flashed the torch on it. Susan slopped iodine on it out of the bottle.

  “Yow,” said John. “I wish you hadn’t spotted it.”

  She bound up the wrist with the handkerchief.

  “There’s water on the floor again, but not much,” she said. “I’m going to do some pumping. And we’re going to have a ration of chocolate. And aren’t there a few bananas left in the bag in the starboard locker?”

  “Have a rest, Susan,” said John, after a bit.

  “Let me pump,” said Roger. “I’ve finished my supper. There can’t be much water left anyhow. There’s none showing in the cabin.”

  Roger was quietly counting his strokes at the pump. “Thirty-six … thirty-seven … thirty-eight …” “Thirty-nine” never came. That was a comfortable corner by the pump, and after the excitement of the steamer, counting pump strokes had been very like counting sheep.

  “Pump sucking dry?” asked John.

  There was no answer.

  “Look here,” said Susan. “We’re going to be sailing all night. Roger and Titty had better get into their bunks and go to sleep properly.”

  Titty started and looked round in the darkness.

  “Let’s stay awake just for a little,” she said. “It’s clearing up. Bits of the sky are quite prickly with stars.”

  CHAPTER XIV

  AT PIN MILL

  (Thursday night and Friday morning)

  UPSTAIRS IN ALMA Cottage, Bridget stirred in bed. Slap, slap, slap … slap, slap, slap … Something was beating on the bedroom window. Bridget opened her eyes. It was black dark. She lay there listening. Slap, slap, slap … She turned over, pushed an elbow into her pillow and lifted her head.

  “Bridget.”

  A quiet voice in the darkness made the room seem comfortable and Bridget’s breath came less jerkily. Mother was awake too.

  “What’s that noise?” said Bridget.

  “Only the rose tree on the wall,” said Mother. “You know, that branch that hangs down across the top of the window.”

  “Did you hear the rain beating on the roof?” said Bridget. “Before I went to sleep.”

  “It’s stopped raining a long time ago,” said Mother. “But it’s blowing rather hard.”

  “Have you been awake all night?”

  “Oh, no. I expect I’ve been to sleep quite a lot really.”

  There was a long silence. At least, for a long time no one spoke in the little bedroom, but every now and then the rose branch beat, slap, slap, slap on the window, and the wind, rising in a sudden gust, made a hollow, blowing noise in the chimney.

  “Mother,” said Bridget at last.

  “Haven’t you gone to sleep again?”

  “No,” said Bridget. “I was wondering what noises they’ll be hearing in the Goblin … No chimney or roses or anything like that.”

  “They’ll be asleep,” said Mother. “And you ought to be asleep too.”

  “But if they aren’t?”

  “They’ll be at anchor in some sheltered place. If there are trees near they might be hearing the wind in the trees. And they’ll be hearing the lap, lap of the water against the dinghy, and there’ll probably be a rope tapping against the mast, and when it blows really hard … like that … they’ll hear the rigging thrum, and they’ll snuggle down in their blankets. But John and Susan’ll sleep through anything, and so will Roger.”

  “Titty won’t, will she?” said Bridget.

  “Titty’ll be enjoying herself,” said Mother. “She’ll be listening to the noises on deck, and the lapping of the water, and she’ll be imagining she’s really out at sea.”

  “It’s a pity the Goblin isn’t a little bigger,” said Bridget. “I wish we could have gone with them too.”

  “So do I. But I expect they’re better off without us. Quite all right anyway … with Jim Brading looking after them … He’s sure to have found a snug place for the night … And now, you just pretend you’re in the Goblin, curled up in a bunk, and you’ve heard Jim go on deck to see that the riding light is burning, and you’ve heard him come down again and lie down quietly so as not to wake anyone, because he wants his crew to have a good sleep. So naturally you mustn’t keep awake.”

  “I’m very nearly asleep,” said Bridget.

 
“Good,” said Mother. “Sleep well.”

  And Bridget dozed off, and half-waked and remembered she was pretending to be in the Goblin, and dozed off again. It was already much later when a rattle of the rose branch on the window pane and an extra loud whistle in the chimney woke her once more. Dimly now she could see the shape of the window. The night was not so black. Morning was on its way. Something was moving in the room. Yes, Mother in her white nightgown was out of bed and had gone to the window and was looking out into the night, listening to the wind.

  “I can see where the window is now,” said Bridget.

  “Oh, Bridgie,” said Mother. “And I thought you were asleep. Do go to sleep again. I’ll tell you when it’s time to wake.”

  *

  It was a long August night, but it came to an end at last, and though the wind was still whistling in the chimney and rattling the rose against the window, the sun kept breaking through the clouds, shining on the damp roofs of the boatsheds and the crowds of little yachts at anchor at the end of the hard.

  “Ready for your breakfast?” said Mother, as they came downstairs, “or how would you like to come along the hard and back to make sure of an appetite?”

  Bridget wondered a moment, because one of the rules of ordinary days was, “Breakfast before everything.” If people once got loose out of doors, Mother used to say, you never knew how much time you would have to waste before you could catch them again. Today, Mother herself was suggesting going out. Porridge was steaming on the round table in the little sitting-room. Mother glanced at it, and looked away.

  “Good morning, Miss Powell. Good morning … Do you think we’ve time to run out and look at the hard before the kettle boils?”

  “That’s on the edge of boiling now,” said Miss Powell. “But it’ll do the tea no harm to stew a minute or two. So run along together. The wind blew the fog away last night and it’s nice to see the sun again. Well, child, and did you sleep through it all?”

  “Part of it,” said Bridget.

  “Most of it,” said Mother.

  “Mother kept awake,” said Bridget.

  “A lot you know about it,” said Mother with a laugh, and went out of doors, taking Bridget with her, while Miss Powell came to the doorway and stood looking after them, with a slice of bread in one hand and the toasting-fork waiting for it in the other.

  “Worrying about those children,” she said to herself. “I must tell the men not to …”

  But it was already too late.

  “Good morning, ma’am,” said one of the young carpenters from the boatsheds, as Mrs Walker and Bridget came down the steps from Alma Cottage. “That was a wild night and no mistake.”

  “You think it was really bad,” said Mother anxiously.

  “Cruel bad,” said the man. “Why, more’n once I thought we’d be having the chimney pots about our heads and the roof lifted off us. When that blow like that blow last night, dry land and a snug house is the best place for anybody …” He looked at the crowded anchorage. “Funny to think some people go to sea for pleasure.” And then, perhaps because he saw Miss Powell signalling to him from the door of the cottage, or perhaps because he saw something in Mrs Walker’s face, and remembered that last night four of her family had been neither on dry land nor in a snug house, he broke off suddenly … “Not but what they’ll have been all right with Mr Brading to look after them. Having the time of their lives, I reckon. Coming back today, I hear Mr Brading tell Frank.”

  “Hurry up, Bridget,” said Mrs Walker. “Let’s run along and see if they’re in sight.”

  The tide was at half ebb, and the mudflats were mostly uncovered. The sun shone on the wet mud, and the patches of green weed, and the little boats lying here and there on the mud waiting to float when the tide should rise again. It shone on the big steamer moored between the buoys, and on the forest of masts about her, belonging to the barges tied alongside and loading grain out of the steamer. Nearer, the sun lit up the yachts that were tossing in the anchorage, the ruddy brown sails of three barges sailing down with the ebb to join the others by the moored steamer, the glistening new tar on the sides of a barge that was high and dry on the hard and the gleaming gold of her new-scraped sprit and mast.

  Mother and Bridget picked their way along the wet gravel of the hard under the black shining sides of the barge. The farther they went the wetter it was, and they stopped at last at the edge of the water. The stern of the barge was just above their heads, and a man was sitting on a plank slung out with ropes over the taffrail, busy with bright blue and yellow paints picking out the carved scroll work about her name, “ROSEMARY of HARWICH.” Bridget looked up at him and down at a small puddle of blue paint in the wet gravel. On any ordinary day Mother would have been interested in that painting too, but today she did not seem to notice it. She was looking far away down the river, past anchored yachts and unloading steamers, hoping to see the red sails of the Goblin coming home.

  There was a crunch in the gravel beside them and they turned round to see Frank, the boatman.

  “Oh, good morning,” said Mother.

  “Good morning, ma’am,” said Frank, and paused before going off in his boat to fill up the water tank in one of the moored yachts. “You won’t be looking for them yet,” he said kindly. “Tide’s still ebbing, and they’ll wait for the flood before coming up the river.”

  “I ought to have thought of that,” said Mother gratefully. “But I really was a little worried about them in that fog yesterday, and then when it came on to blow …”

  “They’ll have come to no harm with Jim Brading,” said Frank. “He could find his way about the river blindfold, if he needed.”

  “When does the tide turn?”

  “Not till close on ten,” said Frank. “You may look for them any time after eleven, but not before.”

  “Come along, Bridgie,” said Mother. “Let’s go and have our breakfast.”

  “What are they doing now?” asked Bridget, and Mother, who felt a little more cheerful after talking to Frank, told her just what was happening. “They’ve anchored in a nice snug place at the mouth of the river,” she said, “waiting for the tide to turn. And Susan’s cooked their breakfast, and they’ll be sitting in the cockpit to eat it in the sunshine. And then they’ll be washing up and swabbing down the decks, and then they’ll come sailing up the river to tell us all about it. Come on, Bridget. Miss Powell’s toast’ll be getting cold. I’ll race you home to our breakfast.”

  “Five yards start,” said Bridget, and she and Mother made a dead heat of it, off the hard, across the road by the inn, up the steep steps of the little garden of Alma Cottage and came to the door together. A boy with a leather belt outside his jacket was standing in the doorway talking to Miss Powell.

  “There’s a telegram for you, Mrs Walker,” said Miss Powell.

  Mother took the orange envelope and tore it open. Inside was a telegram dated from Berlin the day before, “MRS WALKER C/O MISS POWELL PIN MILL IPSWICH GETTING ALONG TED.”

  “Is it from Daddy?” said Bridget.

  “Yes,” said Mother. “And he sent it off yesterday. Bridgie! He must be crossing today. Oh dear, oh dear, I ought never to have let them go sailing. It’s from my husband, Miss Powell. He was in Berlin yesterday. And there are all those children of mine afloat with Mr Brading. What bus shall we have to catch to Shotley to get over to Harwich in time to meet the boat?”

  *

  After breakfast, Mother took Bridget out on the hard again. The tide was well out, nearly low water, and they walked to the very end of it, where there was a narrow cement causeway, slimy with mud.

  “I think I’d better hold your hand,” said Bridget.

  “All right,” said Mother. “Then if one of us falls we’ll both fall together, for company.”

  “You might be able to hold me up,” said Bridget.

  They stood on the end of the hard waiting for the tide to turn. At last the water began to creep in again over the mud.

>   “They may be starting any time now,” said Mother, looking away down the river as far as she could see.

  “Will John be steering?” asked Bridget.

  “I should think perhaps Jim would let him. It’s not blowing today like it was last night.”

  They waited a long time. The tide covered the end of the causeway and crept higher and higher, driving them back, foot by foot. One after another the loaded barges by the steamer, that had been waiting for the tide to help them, came beating up the river, the water foaming under their bows and the sun lighting their brown sails and the scarlet flags at their mastheads.

  “There they are,” cried Mother.

  Far away down the river a little triangle of red sail had come into sight.

  “There they are,” cried Bridget.

  The triangle of red sail came slowly nearer. It disappeared behind the moored steamer, showed again, disappeared and showed once more.

  “It’s no good waving to them just yet,” said Mother. “They couldn’t see you.” Her voice dropped a note. “Even if it’s them.”

  ‘It’s sure to be them,” said Bridget, who had been trying to hurry them up.

  Frank’s boat slid alongside the hard, bringing some gear ashore from one of the yachts. Mother pointed to those red sails down the river.

  “You know her better than I do,” she said. “Is that the Goblin coming up?”

  Frank screwed up his eyes and looked.

  “That’s the Emily, ma’am,” he said. “They went out fishing the day before yesterday. Should have been back last night. Held up by the fog, I reckon.”

  For a moment Bridget thought that Mother was going back to Alma Cottage. But she stopped and turned again to the boatman.

  “Will they be coming in here?” she asked, “or going on to Ipswich?”

  “That’s their mooring,” said Frank. “Just ahead of Coronilla. The big blue boat. They’ll be coming in.”

  “We’ll wait and talk to them,” said Mother. “They may have seen something of my sailors. Of course, she isn’t the Goblin. She’s a yawl, and the Goblin’s a cutter. But she did look rather like the Goblin because she hasn’t got her mizen set. Take care, Bridget. If you stand there, you’ll have the tide wetting your shoes.”