“Phew!” said Port. “I wonder if they met Tom sailing the Teasel today.”
“They didn’t cotch him,” said Jim Wooddall. “They’d be going to Horning or Wroxham to raise a bobbery else. Eh, Simon,” he broke off, looking at his huge old watch, “we’ll never get to Gorleston on this tide. They’ll be laughin’ at us when we go through Acle Bridge.”
Jim Wooddall, late with his tide, was as much in a hurry as the twins, and he was sailing Sir Garnet as if in a race, trimming her huge black sail, keeping always in the fastest water. Presently they came to Thurne Mouth, where the two rivers join, and had to jibe round the corner just as Tom had jibed in the Teasel, as they turned south for Acle. The huge black sail swung across with a clap and a creak of the gaff jaws, and a clang as the big blocks of the main-sheet shifted. Port and Starboard, themselves accustomed to racing in the little Flash, knew just how well their friend the wherryman was handling Sir Garnet.
“She jolly well can sail,” said Starboard.
“She can fly when she’ve a mind to’t,” said Jim.
And still there was no sign of the little white yacht they were looking for, the little white yacht with a white dinghy a good deal too large for her.
The potatoes were peeled now, and old Simon went down into the cabin.
Jim, half laughing, half serious, pushed out his chin at him as he passed.
“Can we go in, too?” asked Port.
“Ye’d better. He’ll ferget the salt else, the gormless old lummocks!”
“Sing out as soon as you see her,” said Starboard, and they slipped down to join old Simon, who was busy with the stove.
It was very pleasant, just for a while, to be down below in the dusk of the cabin. A wherry is a heavy boat to push through the water, and fast as Sir Garnet was moving, the twins were wanting her to go faster still and pushing at her in their minds. Down below they could not see what was happening and were no longer trying to see round the next bend in hope of finding the Teasel, moored perhaps, or just starting again after stopping for a meal. It was pleasant, too, to hear the noise of the water under another boat coming upstream, and Jim’s cheerful “Marnin’,” and other voices giving him “good day,” while, sitting on one of the narrow bunks in the little cabin they could see just a bit of blue sky now and then, and Jim’s sea-boots, and now and then his gnarled hand on the tiller, and, sometimes, a little floating cloud of blue tobacco smoke.
Old Simon stowed away some of the stores he had brought aboard at Horning. Port and Starboard were sitting on Jim’s bunk, and he made room for himself on his own, beside an Eastern Morning News, wrapping up a parcel of thick rashers of bacon, a big block of plug tobacco, two loaves of bread, a packet of matches and a bottle of milk. On the floor between the bunks was the small sack of potatoes into which he had already dipped. He set the potatoes on the little stove, altered the draught of it, and put more coal on, until Jim bent down and told him it was a good thing they had a black sail with all the smoke he was making.
“He’ll have his joke at me all day,” said old Simon quietly, “along of me keepin’ Sir Garnet waitin’ at the top of the tide.”
The potatoes were done to old Simon’s liking and were simmering in their pot. Port was prodding them to see how soft they were. Starboard was busy with the bacon and the frying-pan. Old Simon was digging in the back of the locker for a spare knife and fork when he sniffed suddenly at the good smell that was filling the little cabin.
“Hi,” he said, “missie, you be spilin’ good bacon.”
Starboard, turning the rashers quickly over, lowered the pan towards the flames.
“Gingerbread, I tell ye,” almost screamed the old man. “Who wants that stuff crackin’ and fiddlin’ down to nothin’.” He took the pan from her and turned the well-cooked browned rashers out. “Not half what it was,” he said. “Now you mind me,” he went on, slapping a few more rashers down on the pan, “and then when you get husbants they’ll have a good word for yer cookin’. Thick an’ soft an’ jewsy, that’s what’s good in bacon.”
“But we like it the other way,” said Port, defending her twin.
“Jim don’t,” said old Simon.
And sure enough when Jim came down into the cabin for his dinner, letting his mate take the tiller, he was on the point of throwing the well-cooked rashers overboard. “Wasters,” he said. “Don’t eat ’em. We’ve plenty more. Old Sim’s not hisself today. Crossed in love, that’s what he is. An’ we’ll be lucky, too, if we don’t have the tide against us before we come to ‘Six-Mile House’.”
“We cooked them,” said Starboard, “and we like them that way.”
“Well,” said Jim, “ye can have ’em an’ welcome.”
There was no time to finish that dinner in the cabin before old Simon called the skipper on deck. Sir Garnet was in the last reach before Acle, racing down towards the bridge with her great black sail full of wind.
“Can ye hold her steady between ye?” said Jim, “an’ I’ll give old Simon a hand.”
Port and Starboard knew what was going to happen, but never before had they been aboard a wherry when actually shooting a bridge.
“We’ll manage all right,” said Starboard. “They must have gone through,” she added.
“No sign on ’em here,” said Jim.
“They may have gone through and tied up below the bridge,” said Port.
There was the bridge, a single span across the river, and with wind and tide alike helping her, Sir Garnet was sweeping down towards it.
“They’ll be too late to get it down,” said Starboard. It did seem impossible that the mast would be lowered before it crashed into the bridge. But Simon and Jim, without a word to each other, seemed not to be hurrying at all. There was a long rattle of the winch paying out the halyard. The huge sail was down. And now, so near the bridge that the twins felt like screaming, the huge mast was dipping towards them, down and down.
“Right O, missie,” said Jim Wooddall, and his brown hand closed on the tiller.
“Overslept, eh?” said an old man looking down from the bridge as Sir Garnet shot through.
“That’s with our bein’ late on the tide,” said Jim.
And then Jim let them have the tiller again. The mast was lifting the moment they had cleared the bridge. The big black sail rose bellying in the wind. Sir Garnet had left Acle Bridge astern of her, and was sailing once more. And never a sign of the Teasel.
“He’ll have gone right through to Stokesby,” said Starboard, and went on steering the wherry, while the wherrymen finished their dinner, and old Simon made some very strong tea. The twins had had all the bacon and potatoes they could eat, but Jim would not be satisfied until he had made them huge sandwiches of bread and cheese and seen the sandwiches eaten. “I would’n have Mr. Farland think we starved ye,” he said.
Almost sooner than they expected, the windmill and the roofs of Stokesby showed above the reedy banks.
“What about putting us ashore?” asked Starboard.
Port dived down into the cabin and handed up the rugs and knapsacks that had been stowed there out of harm’s way.
“Anything to break in these?” asked Jim.
“No.”
“That’s lucky,” said Jim. “We’ll heave ’em ashore, an’ give you an easy jump an’ a soft landin’. Can’t stop now.”
“But where are they?” said Port. “Tom said he was going to moor at this end, by the windmill if he could. The wind’s just right for it, but he’s not there.”
“By Stokesby Ferry, likely,” said Jim.
But Sir Garnet swept on round the long Stokesby bend, past the windmill, and the farm, past the village, past the inn, past the ferry. Stokesby was astern of them, and one thing was clear to both of them. It was no use going ashore at Stokesby, for the Teasel was not there.
And now, for the first time, it came into the heads of the twins that nobody but themselves and the wherrymen knew where they were. Ginty and the A.P. thought
they were aboard the Teasel. Aboard the Teasel, everybody thought they were at Horning. It was one thing just to take a lift on a friendly wherry as far as Acle, or even as far as Stokesby, but here they were sailing on farther and farther from home with every minute and not knowing what was before them. What if the Admiral had changed her mind and put off going south, and Tom and the Teasel had gone up the Ant to Barton and Stalham, or made another trip to Potter Heigham? Some word might have reached Tom about the Margoletta and given him a reason for a change of plan.
The wherrymen were troubled, too. The one thing on which a wherryman prides himself is making the best use of the tides. There is no sense in sailing against the tide when an hour or two earlier or later you might be sailing with it. A wherryman sailing with the tide is always ready to laugh when he meets another struggling against it. Bad seamanship is what it seems to him. And now here was Sir Garnet leaving Stokesby with ten miles to go to Yarmouth, and Jim and his mate knew that if they had been an hour earlier they would not have been a minute too soon. Jim kept taking a look at his big watch, and at the mud that was showing below the green at the sides of the river. Once the tide turned it would be a long time before they could get down to Gorleston against it. And besides all this, Jim was thinking that perhaps he had been a bit hasty in taking Mr. Farland’s twins aboard. “If Tom Dudgeon hadn’t knowed they was coming, why should he stay waitin’ for ’em? That boy’d use his tides right, and not go foolin’ ’em away like some folk, darn it.”
Things grew more and more grim aboard Sir Garnet as the old wherry hurried on her way down those desolate lower reaches of the Bure. Before they got to “Six-Mile House” the ebb had slackened. At Runham Swim it was beginning to flow the other way. They met two sailing yachts coming up with the first of the flood. From Mautby down to Scare Gap there was a hardish stream against them, and Jim and his mate had stopped talking together. At Scare Gap, the twins thought that far away beyond the narrow neck of land and the mud-flats on the other side a white sail moving on Breydon Water might have been the Teasel’s. They knew already that if Tom had come this way at all he must have got right down to Yarmouth. The mud was showing on both sides of the river, and the wherry was twisting this way and that to keep in the narrow channel. There was no place here for a little vessel like the Teasel to bring up snug against the windward bank.
The good wind and her big black sail kept Sir Garnet forging through the water. But she moved more and more slowly past the banks as the flood strengthened against her. Yarmouth chimneys were in sight, and rows of houses, and they could hear the steamers down by Gorleston where Jim could no longer hope to take the wherry till the tide turned again. Slowly Sir Garnet drove round the big bend by the racecourse. Clear ahead of them was the first of the Yarmouth bridges. Twice the twins had their hopes raised at the sight of other little yachts. Twice their hopes fell again. The Teasel was not there.
“We can’t go no further,” said Jim Wooddall at last, as he brought Sir Garnet quietly alongside some mooring-posts. “This’ll do for us.” For a few minutes Simon and he were busy stowing the big sail. Then he stood, rubbing his chin and looking at the worried faces of the twins.
“Tom may be down by the Yacht Quay,” said Starboard.
“Sure he come this way?” said Jim.
“They said last night they were going down to Stokesby.”
“If he come this far, he’d be taking the flood up Breydon,” said Jim. “You can’t catch him.… Best be takin’ a bus to Horning if ye can get one.”
What would Mrs. McGinty say if they came home with a tale like that, or even Mrs. Dudgeon … sailing off on a wherry to Yarmouth to look for a boat that might be anywhere?
“We’ve simply got to find them,” said Port.
“Ye’ll be gettin’ me into trouble with Mr. Farland.”
And then, suddenly, Starboard saw that old Simon was pointing down river towards the bridge. A yacht with lowered mast was coming through, towed by a little motor-boat with a big red-and-white flag.
“Ye’re right,” said Jim suddenly. “If young Tom go down here, old Bob see him. Comin’ and goin’, old Bob see all.”
The Come Along, with the tide to help her noisy little engine, was soon passing close by the wherry. Port and Starboard saw a little old sailor in a blue jersey, by himself in the little tug, looking back every now and then over his shoulder because the people in the yacht he was towing were not steering very well. It needs practice to steer well standing on the counter of a yacht and reaching the tiller with a foot through a lot of shrouds and halyards draped about the lowered mast.
“Ahoy!” shouted Starboard. “Have you seen the Teasel?”
“Hi!” shouted Jim. “Half a mo’, Bob.”
The little old sailor could not hear a word because of the chug-chugging of his motor. But he saw that he was wanted, and he made a signal with his hand, up the river and down again, to show that he would be casting off his tow and would be coming back.
“Old Bob’ll know,” said Jim.
“He’ll know,” said Simon.
Those few minutes of waiting after Sir Garnet had been moored were much worse than all the hours of hurrying down the river. Then, at least, they had been moving. Now they were keeping still, and, perhaps, at that very moment, Tom might be hoisting sail below the bridges … if, indeed, he had not gone some other way and never come down the Bure at all. It was horrible to see how far up the river that yacht was towed, how slow her crew were in making fast, and then how unwilling they seemed to say good-bye to the old sailor. Someone was paying him. Good! They were hoisting the yacht’s mast. And still the little motor-tug waited alongside. Why couldn’t he hurry? What could there be to talk about? And then, at last, they saw a bow wave flung suddenly out on either side of the tow-boat as she started off towards them.
“Eh? What’s that?” The little old sailor was trying to quiet his engine without stopping it altogether.
“Friends of ours,” Jim was explaining. “Joinin’ a little yacht, the Teasel, with Tom Dudgeon from Hornin’ aboard. Seen her go through?”
“Boat full o’ children with an old lady an’ a dog? I see ’em. Went through at low water, they did. Wouldn’t take help from no one. Last I see of ’em they was away through Breydon Bridge.”
Jim bent lower. The old man shut his engine off.
“They got to do it,” Port heard Jim say. “Can’t send ’em back now.”
The old man looked at the twins.
“Hop in,” he said suddenly. “I got to go up Breydon to fetch a yacht down what’s missed her tide. Hop in. We’ll catch that Teasel for you if she’ve not gone too far. Easy now.”
In another two seconds the twins and their knapsacks and their rugs were aboard the Come Along. Jim and Simon were wishing them good luck. The twins were thanking the wherrymen. The old man had started his engine again and they were off once more, chug, chug, chug, chug, against the muddy tide that was pouring up under the town bridges.
CHAPTER XX
WHILE THE WIND HOLDS
A STRANGE peace filled the well of the Teasel. There was a good wind, and they felt it more on the open water of Breydon than sheltered between the banks of the river. But that was pleasure only, and the good wind was helping them on their way. The thing that Tom had been worrying about for a week was safely over. They had got through Yarmouth. Everybody felt the same. It was as if by passing Breydon railway bridge they had passed from a turbulent day to one of settled weather. They began looking at things afresh, with the eyes of people who have no longer a care in the world. There was the enormous sheet of Breydon Water, spreading up over its wide mudflats. There were the great wooden posts marking the channel, black on the northern side, red on the southern, almost every post with its perching gull, who flapped off as the Teasel sailed by. Here and there, far away over the mud, were the little black tarred houseboats of fishermen and fowlers. Far ahead of them they could see a steamship, the same that had gone through the bridg
e before them, pouring out a long whirling feather of black smoke. A small motor-boat, with a big red and white flag in its bows, was coming to meet them, towing a yacht with lowered mast. A woman was sitting on the cabin roof of the yacht, and a man was standing on the counter leaning on the lowered mast and steering with his foot. But it was not at them that the crew of the Teasel were looking.
“That must be the Come Along,” said Dorothea.
“I can read it,” said Dick, who had again got out the glasses.
“There’s our friend,” said the Admiral.
The little old sailor with the white beard was sitting in the stern of his little tow-boat, and waved as he passed them.
It was somehow very pleasant to see him again, now that they had come through Yarmouth by themselves.
“Come down all right?” he shouted to them, but they could hardly hear him above the loud chug, chug of the Come Along’s motor. They waved back joyfully.
Mrs. Barrable was looking eagerly about her, and had pulled out her sketch-book and was making little rough notes in coloured chalks. She had never been on Breydon since the building of the railway bridge across it, and she was remembering the old Breydon of forty years ago, and old regattas, and boats with bowsprits as long as themselves racing round a mark-buoy close above Yarmouth harbour. Dorothea was feeling she was at sea, looking forward over that great sheet of water at the distant smoke of the steamship. Dick, busy with the binoculars, was looking at the birds on the mudflats, watching the herons paddling in the shallows as the water rose, and the gulls, who felt the place belonged to them, mobbing the herons. Tom, too, was free to think of birds once more. And even William, now that the bustle was over, had come out of the cabin, climbed on a seat and was looking out with both forepaws on the coaming. It was as if the voyagers were beginning a new day instead of coming to the end of one that had started very early.
Nor was it only getting through Yarmouth that gave them so light and holiday a feeling.