“He may have sent one now,” said Dick. “Or he may have been bothered with the pigeons with nobody to show him how to fit messages on. Anyway, we ought to go there to let him know we’ve got Scarab and can come as soon as he wants me.”
They worked their way out past the foot of Long Island, gave a good berth to the little rock with a bush on it, and headed for Houseboat Bay. They failed to fetch it in one tack, but with the second they came sailing in towards the old blue boat that had had its share in so many adventures. Dorothea knelt amidships, steadying her elbows on the thwart, while she looked at the houseboat through the telescope.
“It doesn’t look as if anybody’s there,” she said.
Dick said nothing. He was trying to get well to windward of the houseboat and for the moment had to keep his whole mind on sail and tiller.
He cleared the houseboat’s bows with a dozen yards to spare and, at the first glance, saw that there was nobody aboard. No rowing boat was lying against the fenders.
“He may have gone to the mine,” said Dick.
“Or shopping,” said Dorothea.
“He can’t have sent a message for me, or he’d be here,” said Dick.
“Then we can go anywhere,” said Dorothea.
“Look out,” said Dick. “I’ve got to gybe. Keep your head down while the boom flies across … Now …” There was a moment of flurry, as he was not quite quick enough with the tiller and Scarab tried to come right round into the wind. He steadied her, brought the wind abeam and passed comfortably under the empty houseboat’s stern.
“Let’s go to Rio,” said Dorothea. “I want to get a cookery book. And I didn’t think about bringing any food.”
But one glance towards the crowded bay, with its trippers windmilling about in rowing boats, and a big steamer just leaving the pier, decided Dick. Once in there was enough for one day.
“Never mind about food,” he said. “Let’s take her for a real voyage.”
“North Pole?” suggested Dorothea. “There’s sure to be a bookshop at the head of the lake. Have we got time to go the whole way?”
“It’s a fair wind,” said Dick. “We ought to have that centreboard up.”
Dorothea pulled it up and put the peg in to hold it. With the wind aft and the sail well out, Scarab slipped along the island shore and out into open water. Rio Bay was left astern. They were off, past Cache Island to the head of the lake that they had visited only once when, sailing a sledge in blinding snow, they had been the first to reach the North Pole.
It was very different on this warm August afternoon, with the hills purple with heather and the woods green, blue water before them instead of ice and a blue sky over all. There seemed, because they were running before it, to be very little wind, though the beetle flag blew out bravely from the masthead and the sail pulled, and the little ship, their own at last, was slipping along, as they could see by the trees on shore moving fast against the hills. They took turns at keeping a straight wake and Dick at least, free now from the fear that he might be missing his share of the chemical work with Timothy, was ready to forget everything else in the pleasure of sailing. Even Dorothea, once they had passed the Beckfoot promontory and she could take her mind off the martyrs now back in the arena and doing their best to keep the Great Aunt purring, was thinking of her house and her housekeeping and the cookery book she wanted and not at all of the queer secrecy of the life into which they had been pushed.
She was reminded of it in the oddest way. She was at the tiller when some people in a big yacht, swooping past, gave them a cheerful wave.
“They don’t know we don’t exist,” she said.
“But we do,” said Dick.
“Not for the Great Aunt,” said Dorothea. “It’s like having a cap of invisibility and nobody except one person knowing you’re invisible.”
This was too much for the scientific Dick.
“But she doesn’t know we exist,” he said. “So she can’t know that we don’t exist. She just doesn’t know anything about us.”
“Well it makes it seem very funny when people wave to us as if we were like everybody else.”
“It isn’t queer really,” said Dick. “I say. I’d better steer for a bit, hadn’t I?” He glanced back at their wake that showed by a big curve that Dorothea had been thinking of something other than sailing.
On and on Scarab ran, as if she herself were delighting in being afloat on rippled water with a fair wind to keep her moving. Sooner than had seemed possible when they had looked up at the lake from off Rio, they were nearing the big hills at the head of it. Specks that they had seen from far away were turning into houses. Bay after bay opened up in the long wooded line of the shore and closed and disappeared as they sailed on.
“We needn’t go near the steamer pier,” said Dick. “There’s a river on the map.”
“Could we go up it?”
“We might try,” said Dick, who did not want to go into a crowd of other boats if he could help it.
“If we can,” said Dorothea, “we’ll be nearer to where we saw all those lights when we were at the North Pole. You can see houses there now, a regular settlement. That’s where the bookshop will be.”
Dick steered away towards the other side of the lake, searching the shore for the mouth of the river.
“There’s the North Pole anyway,” said Dorothea, pointing to the little summerhouse with its flag staff.
“The river must be close here,” said Dick. “Bother those reeds.”
“There it is,” cried Dorothea.
Through an opening in the reeds they could see a long lane of smooth water.
“We’ll try it,” said Dick. “But I say, Dot. There may not be room to turn. We’d better be ready to get the sail down quick. …”
Dorothea took all turns but one of the halliard off its cleats, kept a firm grip of the rope, and crouched in the bottom of the boat, remembering how the sail had come down with a rush on Dick’s head. Already they had left the lake and were sailing with tall reeds on either side.
Dick, as nearly as he could, steered up the middle of the river. The reeds came to an end. There were high earth banks now, and fields with grazing cows. The wind seemed to have strengthened just when he wanted less of it and, though the current was against them, Scarab seemed to be moving much too fast.
“I’m going to stop as soon as I see a good place,” he said. He found that he was gripping the tiller. “Fingers! Fingers!” Nancy had said. This was much worse than sailing in open water. He learnt what every sailor knows, that it is near land that difficulties begin. For a moment he thought of stopping Scarab by putting the anchor down. He even said to Dorothea, “The anchor’s all ready to go over.”
“I can’t get the anchor out while I’m holding this rope,” said Dorothea.
“There ought not to be any need,” said Dick, clenching his teeth without knowing it, and looking at each foot of bank. He ought to be able to come alongside properly if only there was a good place. There … There was the sort of place he wanted, a clean bit of bank between two bushes. …
“There’s a bridge right ahead,” cried Dorothea.
“Let go the halliard, Dot … Quick!”
Down came the sail on the top of Dorothea.
“Quick! Quick! Grab that bush if you can.”
Dorothea scrambling from under the sail caught hold of a branch. It broke. She grabbed another. But Scarab was being swung round by the stream. Dick was only just in time to grab a branch as Dorothea had to let go of hers. Shifting his grip from bough to bough, and half out of the boat, Dick brought Scarab close under the bank.
“I can’t let go,” he said. “Could you get ashore while I hang on?”
Dorothea scrambled up the bank. Dick clung to a branch with one hand and held out the anchor as far as he could. Dorothea knelt on the bank and took it from him.
“Upstream,” panted Dick … “And jam it well in.”
“Anchored,” called Dorothea.
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Dick let go of his branch, bundled the sail together, and climbed ashore. Dorothea was stamping on the shank of the anchor to drive the fluke deeper into the ground. Dick stood, weak in the knees and hot as if he had been running a race in the sun. He took off his spectacles, but his hands shook so much that he did not try to wipe them.
“I did it all wrong,” he said.
“We’re here,” said Dorothea. “And we didn’t bump. We didn’t even scrape. I don’t believe Nancy would have done it any better. There’s a stile into the road by that bridge. And houses quite near. Let’s go and look for that bookshop and something to eat.”
“We can easily do without grub till we get home,” said Dick, who wanted to get afloat again at once and forget the unseamanlike flurry of landing.
“It’s that rabbit,” said Dorothea. “I simply must get a cookery book.”
“I’ll stay here,” said Dick, “and get things ready.”
“I’ll be as quick as I can,” said Dorothea. A minute later she waved to him as she crossed the bridge, smiled to herself as she saw that Dick was not looking at her but had climbed down again into the boat, and hurried off towards the village.
*
When Dorothea came back with her cookery book Dick had climbed ashore again and was waiting impatiently on the bank.
“I’ve got the book,” she said, “and some buns and chocolate. Let’s eat them before starting.”
“Better while we’re sailing,” said Dick. “Everything’s ready. I’ve thought out what to do. It’s going to take us a long time to get home. Not much wind. It’s going to rain, too. Look at those clouds.”
“The man at the bookshop said it was going to, but not just yet.”
“I wonder if it’ll mean less wind or more.”
“We’ll be back before it begins anyhow,” said Dorothea, who knew when Dick had set his mind on anything. Two minutes later she was sitting in the stern and Dick was rowing Scarab out of the river. She did not even try to talk. She knew that until he had the sail hoisted again he would not be able to listen.
Everything went as he had planned. There was no hitch. Nothing had to be done twice, and when, outside the river, with her sail set, Scarab darted off on the first long tack of the voyage home, Dick was feeling a good deal better.
“It’s luck Timothy wasn’t ready for me,” he said. “We’re getting a lot of practice. It would have been awful to make a mess of coming alongside the houseboat. In the river it didn’t matter so much.”
Tack after tack, to and fro across the lake, they beat against the wind. They ate their buns and chocolate. Dick steered while Dorothea looked at the gaudy paper cover on her cookery book that was covered with coloured pictures of joints of meat with paper frills, a pheasant with a bunch of long tail feathers, a piece of pink salmon with some bright green parsley, a jelly, a pie, and a tremendously decorated cake.
“Of course, I’m not going to try anything really difficult,” said Dorothea. “Even Susan wouldn’t, not in camp. But there’s a lot about rabbits in it. And about ways of cooking eggs. It says three and a half minutes or only three if you want them lightly boiled.”
“Books always help a lot,” said Dick. “It would have been much worse if we hadn’t been reading the sailing book so much.”
He was trying how lightly he could touch the tiller with his fingers and calculating how many tacks they would have to make to reach the Beckfoot promontory.
Dorothea turned to the pages about rabbits. “Stew,” she said. “Fricassee … Boiled … Jugged … There are about a dozen ways of doing it … forty-five to sixty minutes according to age … I wonder how old that rabbit was?”
“I say,” said Dick. “They’ll have finished supper at Beckfoot long before we get into the river.”
Sailing against a gentle wind is very different from running with it. It had seemed to take no time going to the head of the lake. It took a very long time to beat back. Dick was getting a lot of pleasure out of doing the best he could with her and seeing her slide on straight into the wind at the moment of turning, just as Nancy said she would. But wet-looking clouds had hidden the sun and supper-time was long past when at last they were coming into the mouth of the Amazon river. Dorothea took the tiller, and, at the word, hauled in on the mainsheet as Dick lowered the sail. She grabbed the sail itself as the boom came within reach. The whole sail came quietly down into the boat.
“Good,” said Dick. He pulled up the centreboard, got out the oars and began to row.
“What time is it now?” asked Dorothea.
“Eleven minutes past nine … I say, I couldn’t help splashing with that oar when I looked at my watch.”
“Sorry.”
Dick rowed on doing his best to keep the oars from squeaking. They passed the boathouse. It was still daylight out of doors but, as the house came into sight, they saw the glimmer of a lamp or candles in the drawing-room. Someone was playing the piano.
“Nancy?” whispered Dick.
“No. That’s someone who knows how to play. Nancy makes much more noise. That must be the Great Aunt herself.”
They were half way between the boathouse and the coppice, Dick rowing, Dorothea watching that lighted window, when they were startled by the ringing of a bell. There was the long “Brrrrrr …” of the bell, but there was more than that. It was as if someone were rattling tin plates. They knew at once what it was. The piano-playing stopped short. The bell rang on and on.
“He’s sent a message,” exclaimed Dick. “That’s a pigeon gone into the loft. I ought to have reminded Nancy to take the tin tray off the bell to make it not so loud.”
A door slammed in the house.
“Don’t stop rowing,” urged Dorothea.
They were slipping into the shelter of the trees when that loud, insistent ringing came suddenly to an end.
“Nancy’s run out and cut it off,” said Dick.
“However will she explain it to the Great Aunt?” said Dorothea. “That terrific noise, I mean.”
“We ought to have cut the bell out altogether,” said Dick. “Last year we wanted it to make as much noise as possible, but this year there was no need for it to make a noise at all. They had only to keep on looking to see if a pigeon had come home.”
“It isn’t your fault,” said Dorothea. “Nobody can think of everything.”
“We’d better get home quick,” said Dick. “Nancy’s got the message and she’s sure to get out and let us know what it is.”
A minute or two later they were working Scarab through the channel cut in the waterlilies and through the narrow lane between the reeds. They hauled down the flag, made a rough stow of the sail, took a turn with the rope round a tree trunk before planting the anchor in the ground, dodged through the trees along the edge of the wood, climbed into the road, and hurried up the path in the dusk.
It was twilight out of doors but much darker in the hut, and Dorothea had lit the lantern before she saw that they had had a visitor.
“Cook,” said Dorothea, reading a scrap of paper by the flickering light. “And I’ve gone and missed her.” She gave Dick the scrap of paper and he read:
“Hope your makin do. If owts wanting you can tell Jacky.
M. Braithwaite.”
“Look what she’s brought us,” said Dorothea.
There was hardly room for the lantern on the top of the packing case. There was a cardboard box with a dozen eggs in it, a blue paper bag of sugar, a basket of peas, a large loaf of brown bread, and two chops, ready cooked.
Dorothea sighed with relief. “I won’t have to cook the rabbit tonight,” she said. “No need with those chops. And we’d better not wait to do potatoes.”
“Let’s get supper over quick,” said Dick.
They lit the fire and made a hurried meal. All the time Dick was listening for footsteps, hoping to hear someone racing up the wood with Timothy’s message. Would it say “Come in the morning” or “Come in the afternoon”? Well, Scarab was r
eady now and he could start at any time. Pretty awful it would have been if Timothy had sent for him the day before. But no messenger came. After supper, Dick waited in the doorway, and Dorothea read about the cooking of rabbits by the light of the dancing flames. They made up their minds at last that the martyrs would hardly escape from Beckfoot before the morning. Tired after their long voyage, they made up the hammocks and went to bed, planning an early breakfast.
It must have been about midnight when the rain began. Dorothea was the first to hear a steady drip, drip somewhere close to her. Then she heard the pattering on the roof and then rain-drops that had come down the chimney hissing on the hot embers of the fire.
“Dick!”
“Yes.”
“Is it dripping on you?”
“I was sure it was going to rain,” said Dick with the happiness of the successful weather prophet.
“But is it dripping on you?”
Dick sat up in his hammock.
“No,” he said. “I can feel the drips if I stretch out far enough. There’ll be a puddle on the floor. Are you dry, too?”
“Yes,” said Dorothea. “Hadn’t we better put a saucepan under the drips?”
‘It’ll make more noise,” said Dick. “And the floor’s only earth. We can’t do anything now. I’ll drain it in the morning and mend the roof if there’s time. But look here, Dot, we ought to go to sleep. The rain won’t make any difference. We’ve got mackintoshes. We’ll be able to get to the houseboat just the same.”
CHAPTER XVII
WAITING FOR THE MESSAGE
DICK woke first, and almost before his eyes were open, reached up for his watch and his spectacles that he had put for the night on the top of the beam above his head. It was still raining. The drips from the roof were splashing as they fell in a lake that was widening over the floor of the hut, but he hardly noticed them. “Dot,” he called. “Quick. We’ve overslept. It’s long after time to get up.”
Dorothea woke to a very different worry. “I wonder what we ought to do,” she said, watching the steady drip and listening to the beating of the rain on the roof.