“He’s going to recover,” said Susan. She pushed the saucer under the kitten’s chin. A lurch of the Goblin spilt some of the milk on Titty, who did not even think of wiping it off. The kitten’s tongue shot out almost eagerly and began to lap.
“We mustn’t let him have too much at once,” said Susan. “Take another towel and go on drying him. I’ve got to go up to help John.” Titty and Roger were left alone with the kitten.
*
“I’m going to sit on the floor,” said Titty, when a little more milk had been spilt. “It’ll be easier to keep steady.”
“I will too,” said Roger.
“He isn’t half as cold as he was. Hullo. What’s that? Susan’s steering.”
“John’s gone forward,” said Roger. “He was going to let out the reefs. I saw his feet go past the portholes. I wonder if I ought to go and help?”
“They’ll shout if they want us,” said Titty.
There was a good deal of thumping and banging overhead, the creak of a block, a squawk from the reefing gear which could very well have done with a dab of grease. Susan’s voice rang out suddenly in fright … “Oh, do look out… You’ll be tumbling again … John!” But she said no more, and the ship’s doctors looking after the shipwrecked sailor down in the cabin knew that all was well. The block creaked again. They heard John’s feet on the foredeck. The noise of the water on the other side of the Goblin’s thin planking began to change its note. For a long time now it had been quiet, except for the slop-slop of a wave coming up and splashing as it went by. The loud rushing noise they had heard through the planking when they had gone below to sleep and the Goblin was driving before the storm had died utterly away. Now it came again, not so loud, but unmistakably the hurrying, stirring noise of a boat moving fast through the water. They knew that John had unrolled the reefs and set the full mainsail once more.
Roger climbed up on a bunk to look out of a porthole.
“She’s buzzing along like billy-oh,” he said.
“Anything in sight?”
He scrambled past Titty and the kitten and had a look through a porthole in the fore-cabin.
“Only water,” he said.
“Mix up some more milk,” said Titty. “Sinbad’s ready for another lot.”
“Sinbad?” said Roger doubtfully, standing between the two cabins, with a foot against a bunk on either side, steadying himself with both hands.
“Shipwrecked sailor,” said Titty. “Poor little Sinbad. Were you asleep on the chicken coop when it was washed overboard? Or did you find it just in time to save yourself from drowning?”
“It made a jolly good raft,” said Roger.
“Mix up that milk,” said Titty.
But just then there was a loud battering on the forehatch, and Roger, turning round, saw John’s face on the level of the deck, looking in through a porthole. He was saying something, but with the porthole shut they could not hear it. Susan shouted down from the cockpit.
“You’re to open the forehatch from below.”
Roger scrambled forward and loosed the catch that kept the forehatch closed. The hatch was lifted from above, and there was John, sitting on the deck for safety’s sake, with the life-line tied about his middle.
“Buck up,” said John. “Pass up that bundle … Staysail … It’s the top one … There … Just let me have an end of it. The end with all those brass hanks.”
With a terrific struggle, Roger pushed the end of that bundle of stiff canvas up through the hatch, John pulling at it from above. Up it went foot by foot.
“It won’t make much difference,” said John, “with the wind so far aft, but every little helps, and when we were putting it away Jim said it was the best pulling sail in the ship.” The last of the staysail went up on deck, and the hatch closed down over Roger’s head. It opened again an inch or two. “Don’t put the catch on,” said John, and down came the hatch once more.
Looking out from a porthole close beside the mast, Roger got glimpses of a mass of red canvas, of John’s legs, his head, and then his feet. John was lying flat on the deck right in the bows, hooking the hanks one by one on the forestay.
“Do hurry up with the milk,” said Titty. “Sinbad’s squeaked again.”
Roger left the porthole and hurried aft, and presently Sinbad’s pink tongue was flicking in and out of a fresh lot of milk and water, while Roger watched and Titty stroked the drying fur of the kitten’s back.
“You can almost see him getting fatter,” she said.
“You don’t think it’ll burst?” said Roger.
The kitten finished that lot of milk and water and then another.
The noise on deck had come to an end. John’s feet had passed the portholes. He was safely back in the cockpit, busy with the staysail sheets. Presently Susan came slowly backwards down the companion-steps.
“John says he’s all right by himself now,” she said. “I’m going to give the kitten some milk …”
Titty’s face fell. “We’ve given him a good deal,” she said. “Didn’t you mean us to?”
And then Susan saw the kitten. Its fur was dry. Its eyes were open. Its stomach was round. At that moment it got up on its feet and, uncertainly, because of the quick, swinging motion of the Goblin, it walked off Titty’s lap to the cabin floor.
“He’s all right,” said Susan. “I didn’t think we ought to give him too much at once. But anybody can see he’s all right.”
The kitten, its short, pointed tail jerking from side to side when it felt like flopping, was walking slowly along the floor.
“He’s exploring,” said Titty.
“Won’t Bridgie be pleased with it?” said Roger, and with that the three doctors remembered where they were, and that with every minute they were further away from Pin Mill, and that Mother and Bridget would be watching for them coming up the river, and that Jim Brading would be looking for his boat, and that Daddy might get to Harwich before they could get back to meet him, and that … The more they thought about things the worse they seemed, until they seemed so bad that it was impossible to think of them at all.
“No,” said Roger, putting a hand to head off the kitten. “Not down there. You’ll get under the engine and covered with oil and grease.”
The kitten turned, slipped, picked itself up again, and came unsteadily back along the cabin floor.
“Go on, Sinbad,” said Titty. “Better have a look at everything in the ship, and make sure she’s as good as your last. Probably not so big, but we’ll make you very comfortable all the same.”
She shifted her feet to let the kitten wobble past her.
It turned, came back, scrambled up on Titty’s lap and began to lick its paws.
“He’s going to live anyway,’’ said Susan, watching it.
“I wonder how many of its lives it really has got left,” said Roger.
“Perhaps the whole nine,” said Titty. “Look. Look. He likes the Goblin. He’s washing behind his ears, and they never do that unless they mean to stay in a place.”
She bent her head close to the kitten and listened. Yes, there was no doubt about it. The kitten was licking its paws and rubbing its face, and from somewhere inside it came a steady, quiet rumble.
“He’s purring.”
Susan and Roger bent to listen.
John looked down into the cabin.
“Come on deck somebody,” he said in a tense, eager voice.
“John,” called Titty, “Sinbad’s purred.”
“Come on deck,” said John. “Somebody come and have a look through the glasses. Fishing boats. A lot of them and very strange ones …”
“What about Sinbad?” said Titty.
“Bring him too,” said Susan.
The three of them, bringing the new passenger with them, came up out of the cabin into the bright sunshine. Goblin, with all her sails set, was racing along over a blue, sparkling sea, and John was doing his best to steer with one hand while holding the binoculars steady with the othe
r.
CHAPTER XVIII
LAND HO! WHAT LAND?
A THIN LINE of mist lay along the horizon, and out of that mist, away to the south of the Goblin’s course, had come a fleet of fishing boats.
“Have a look, Susan,” said John. “I can’t keep the glasses steady and steer at the same time.”
Susan took the glasses.
“What do you think they are?” said John.
“I’ve never seen any boats like them,” said Susan. “I don’t believe they’re English. You have a look and let me steer.”
She took the tiller. Titty, still thinking more of Sinbad than of anything else, wedged herself into a corner of the cockpit where the sunlight warmed the purring kitten on her knee. Roger sat beside her, holding on to the coaming and screwing up his eyes to see those distant boats. The Goblin was no longer alone on an enormous sea. Those boats were far away, but the mere sight of them, all sailing along together, made everything feel different.
“They’re coming up this way,” said Roger.
John, to see the better, stood on the top step of the companion and wedged himself in a corner of the open hatch, so as to have both hands free to manage the glasses.
“They aren’t English,” he said. “At least, if they are, I’ve never seen any like them.”
“My turn for the glasses,” said Roger.
“Shut up for a minute, Roger,” said Susan. “What do you think they are, John?”
“They’ve got whacking great jibs,” said John. “And little short gaffs to their mainsails … And the gaffs aren’t straight, none of them … The sails aren’t like English sails … And the boats aren’t a bit like the fishing boats we used to see at Falmouth … Hullo … They aren’t all the same. There’s one with a sort of long snout pointing upwards. Most of them haven’t got pointed bows at all… round like apples … I do believe they’re Dutch … Gosh! How they roll … I say, Susan, we must be quite near land.”
“Let’s go and meet them,” said Susan. “They’ll tell us where we are.”
“Look here,” said John after a moment’s doubt. “We can’t. They’d grab the Goblin for salvage, just like Jim said. Remember how Jim’s friend had to sell his boat to pay the Ramsgate sharks. It’s bad enough to have lost his anchor and chain.”
“They’re coming up awfully fast,” said Titty.
“They must have come out from somewhere near,” said Susan. “And if we could ask them the way to the harbour …”
“It isn’t as if there was only one of them,” said John. “And they’re bigger than the Goblin …”
“We’d be like the Revenge in the middle of the Spanish fleet,” said Titty. “We wouldn’t have a chance.”
“And we haven’t any guns,” said Roger.
“But the harbour may be somewhere down there, where they’ve come from,” said Susan. “And there isn’t a sign of that lighthouse.”
John looked ahead and then once more over the starboard bow at the fishing boats that were working up almost as if they meant to meet the little Goblin, a dozen or so of them, rolling heavily, plunging along, every now and then taking a sea, thump, on their bluff bows with a sudden explosion of white spray.
“We couldn’t do a thing if they took us for salvage,” he said.
“But we aren’t wrecked,” said Susan. “It’d be piracy.”
“Oh I say,” said Titty. “It really would be.”
“They wouldn’t care,” said John. “And if we told them we were taking care of the boat for Jim, it would make it worse. They’d rescue us whether we wanted or not.”
“If we only knew for certain about the lighthouse,” said Susan.
“It must be there,” said John. “I’m going up the mast to see.”
“No … No,” said Susan. Even capture by piratical fishermen seemed better than that. She looked up the tall mast and the high red sail, swaying to and fro across the sky as the Goblin rushed along. She thought of John falling on the deck, breaking a leg, both legs, all his bones … and then, perhaps, rolling off into the sea.
“It’s no worse than a tree,” said John. “Easier, with the mast-hoops to help.”
“I’ll hold the glasses,” said Roger.
John had thrown off his oilskin and was climbing out of the cockpit.
“The life-line,” said Susan.
“In the way while I’m climbing,” said John. “It’s all right. There’ll be lots to hang on to. It’s only getting there.” Already he was sitting on the cabin roof, working his way forward, gripping the handrail as he moved along. A moment later he had reached the foredeck, and had hold of the halyards with one hand and a shroud with the other.
Open-mouthed, in the cockpit, they saw him take a grip of the halyards with both hands high above his head and swing himself up off the deck, gripping the mast with his knees. He got a foot on the lowest of the mast-hoops. Up he went, hoop by hoop, as if he were climbing a ladder. The mast-hoops made good steps and hand-holds, and if only the mast had not been swinging about, climbing would have been easy.
“Susan,” he shouted suddenly from half way up. “Don’t watch me. Watch the compass and keep her steady if you can. I’m all right so long as you don’t let her come round.”
“Sorry,” groaned Susan. She bent forward and kept her eyes on the compass card. Roger had long ago blown out the candle lamp, and the compass was lit now by the light pouring into the open companion. South-east by east … And she had let the Goblin come round south of south-southeast. Back on the course, she steadied her. John was climbing again. She would not look at him. She must not look at him, but, though she kept her eyes on the compass card, she could not help knowing what that was, that thing she would not let herself see, higher and higher on the swaying mast.
ON THE CROSS-TREES
“It’s all right, Susan,” said Titty at last. “He’s got a leg on the cross-trees. Oh, well done, John!”
The next moment there was a triumphant yell from aloft. John, safe, with a leg over the cross-trees, had been able to look round. There was triumph in that yell, joy, and he hardly knew himself how much relief. For hours he had been sailing, telling himself the thing was there. And there it was.
“LAND HO!”
“Hurrah!” shouted Roger.
“Hurrah!” shouted Titty. “Sorry, Sinbad, I didn’t mean to startle you.”
“The lighthouse?” called Susan.
“Bang ahead,” shouted John. “And there’s a church … And another lighthouse. And another … And a steamer right ahead. Hi! Susan!”
“What?”
“I’m going to stay up here till you can see the lighthouse from the deck.”
“All right.”
Even if only one of them could see it, up there at the top of the mast, it made the land seem near for all of them. Land, dry land, was actually in sight.
“If only it was Harwich,” said Susan.
“Never mind,” said Titty. “It’s somewhere, and we can’t be very far off.”
“I can see the steamer,” said Roger, “but I can’t see anything else.”
“Another steamer broad on the starboard bow,” shouted John from the cross-trees, and from the cockpit they saw a plume of smoke and a funnel and two masts beyond the fishing boats, and then the bridge and hull.
“We must be near a harbour,” said Susan.
Meanwhile the fleet of fishing boats was working up as if to cross the Goblin’s course, and even without the glasses, they could see the spirts of spray as their round bluff bows crashed into the waves.
“They’ve got leeboards,” said Roger, sparing a moment to look at them from sweeping the horizon far ahead, trying to be the first to see the lighthouse from the deck. “Like barges. But they’re not a bit like them in other ways.”
“We’re going to pass close to them,” said Titty. “Or will they get ahead of us? I say, Susan, you don’t think they’re really pirates trying to cut us off?”
“Of course not,” s
aid Susan, but she looked anxiously enough at those big, bluff-ended boats, wallowing to meet the little Goblin. It was going to be awful if she had to steer through the middle of the fleet. And, with the lighthouse in sight, she no longer wanted to take the risk of asking questions.
“That steamer’s coming this way too,” said Roger. “The other one’s sticking just where it was.”
“That’s all right,” said Titty. “The pirates wouldn’t dare to touch us with two steamers in sight. It’s all right, Sinbad. There isn’t any danger of anybody making you walk the plank. Did someone make you walk the plank when you fell into the sea? Perhaps you weren’t washed overboard at all. Anyway, it would be very unfair if it happened again.”
“LAND HO!” shouted Roger. “I say, I’ve lost it again. No. There it is. Like a pencil sticking up … And there’s another thing sticking up a bit to the left.”
“John,” called Susan. “Come down … We can all see it… Come down … But do be careful.”
John swung his leg off the cross-trees and let himself down by the halyards. He waited a moment at the foot of the mast. Yes. He could see that slender pencil himself, sticking up out of a thin line of mist along the edge of the sea. And that distant steamer, almost exactly in a line between the Goblin and lighthouse. He almost thought it must be anchored. He worked his way aft along the cabin roof and joined the others in the cockpit.
“All right, Susan, I’ll take her,” he said, as he forced his arms into the sleeves of his oilskin.
“Those fishing boats are coming very near,” said Susan, as she left the tiller. Titty and Roger watched John’s face.
“We won’t alter course unless we have to,” he said, and paused. “Look here. We’d better show we’re English, just in case.”
“Are we going to nail our colours to the mast?” said Titty eagerly.
“I’ll get the flagstaff,” said Roger. “The ensign’s on it. I saw it on a shelf in the fore-cabin.” He pushed the glasses into Susan’s hands and went down into the cabin like a monkey. A moment later the flagstaff, with the red ensign rolled about it, came poking up through the companion with Roger close behind it. Susan took it, unrolled it, stuck the staff in its socket at the stern, made the thin halyard fast to its cleat just inside the transom, and let the scarlet ensign with the union flag in the corner fly loose in the wind.
We Didn't Mean to Go to Sea Page 19
