Preventive Officer of Customs and Excise.
“There you are, Skipper,” he said, handing the form over to John, and putting the copy away. “You’re all clear now and can go where you want. I don’t know what your owner’ll be saying to you for taking his ship across to the other side, but we’ll leave that to him … Good day to you, Commander. Shall I let them know at Shotley you’re here?”
“I’ll telephone from Pin Mill,” said Daddy. “But, look here, young man (he turned to the turbaned figure of the owner on the starboard bunk), didn’t you say you’d bolted from that hospital of yours? There’ll be consternation and monkeyhouse when they find you’ve gone. Better let them have word at once, or they’ll be raising Cain, and I don’t blame them.”
“Could you tell them I’m aboard my boat and I’ll explain later?” said Jim. “But I’m not going back there …”
“We’ll give them a ring right away,” said the Customs officer. “And tell them you’re as fit as a fiddle.”
The Customs officers shook hands and went up the companion. Everybody but Jim went up too. The Customs launch slid alongside. The two men jumped aboard her, waved their cigars, and a moment later were foaming back to Harwich.
“That’s that,” said Daddy. “And now to make our peace with your Mother.”
Jim’s bandaged head appeared in the companion-way.
“I don’t know what I’m to say to Mrs Walker,” he said wretchedly. “I promised to look after them.”
“You leave it to us,” said Daddy. “Nobody’s drowned.”
CHAPTER XXVII
COIL DOWN
THE CUSTOMS HAD gone. The ship was cleared. John hauled down the yellow quarantine flag and gave it to Titty, who stowed it away in its proper pocket in the roll of signals.
“Look here,” said Daddy. “Tide’s turning. We’ll have it against us going up the river, and there isn’t enough wind to push us over it. We shan’t want the sails again. We’d better make a harbour stow while we’re about it.” He felt the canvas of the mainsail. “Dry as a bone. We’ll put the cover on. No, Jim. We’ll manage. You lie quiet and leave us to it.”
Everybody set to work. Susan and Titty went down below to ram the crew’s belongings into the knapsacks ready for going ashore. Daddy unrolled and re-rolled the jib, and went out on the bowsprit and put a tyer round it. John stowed the staysail away in the fo’c’sle. Together they flaked the mainsail along the boom, and rolled it neatly up with no wrinkles on the outside, and laced the long green sail cover over it to keep it dry till it should be wanted again.
“The barges are swinging already,” said Susan, bringing up a packed knapsack. “Sorry, Roger.” She had almost trodden on him as he lay on the cockpit floor reaching down to give a turn to the grease cap on the stern tube.
The barges were no longer pointing down the river. They were pointing all ways, slowly swinging round, the Goblin with them, till every vessel in the anchorage had its head upstream. The tide had turned. There was hardly wind enough to stir the reflections of the barges in the smooth water.
“Well, Skipper,” said Daddy. “What about it?”
“We’re ready,” said John.
Roger scrambled to his feet after forcing the screw cap round with a spanner.
“You’ve got a lot of grease on your face,” said Susan.
Roger wiped it with a handful of cotton waste.
“You’ve made it worse,” said Susan.
“What about dinner?” said Roger.
Susan laughed in spite of her worries.
“That’s right, Roger,” said Daddy. “Put the cook in her place. Engineers can’t help being greasy. Never knew a clean one yet.”
He slipped down and started the engine.
“Can you use the stove with the engine at work?” he shouted from the foot of the companion with the noise of the engine chug, chugging in his ears.
“I used it last night,” Susan called back.
“Of course you did,” said Daddy. “What about inviting Mother and Bridget to a meal aboard? If the owner doesn’t mind.”
“Do you think they’ll come?” said Jim dully, “after what I’ve gone and done.”
“Cheer up,” said Daddy. “Of course they will. The only thing you did wrong was to go ashore. Captain shouldn’t leave the ship … Not without a mate in charge with his master’s ticket in his pocket … You should have sent John in the dinghy for the petrol … But,” he added, looking at Jim’s bandaged head, “I’m jolly glad you didn’t. Ticking over all right, isn’t she? Fine engines, these Handy Billies. We’ll be home in no time now, as soon as I get the anchor off the ground.”
He went on deck, up through the forehatch, and John hurried forward to help coil down the warp as Daddy hauled it in.
“Anchor’s atrip,” said Daddy presently. “Better go to the helm and tell your engineer to put her half ahead.”
Roger pushed the gear lever forward. The noise of the engine changed. There was a clank under the bobstay, and they saw the anchor come aboard. The Goblin was moving.
Presently Daddy came aft. “What about washing the mud off the foredeck?” he said. “Ready for visitors. Don’t worry about the cooking for a few minutes, Susan. Straight up the river, John. Leave that black buoy on the point to port. I’m going down to have a talk with Jim.”
“But I say …” said John at the tiller.
“Carry on, Skipper,” said Daddy. “If you can take this ship to Holland under sail, you can take her up the river under power.”
*
Chug, chug, chug. The little engine settled to its work. The Goblin moved slowly up the river over the ebb. John stood at the tiller, hardly able to believe that only three days had gone by since he had sailed in the Goblin for the first time, past these very shores, listening eagerly for orders. And now, he had been to Holland and back, and Daddy and Jim were down below, Jim lying on his bunk, Daddy sitting opposite to him, smoking a Dutch cigar, and neither of them seeming to take the least interest in what was happening on deck, but trusting the ship to him as if he had been sailing her all his life.
Susan, remembering how awful it had been to see John clinging to the heaving deck, could hardly believe that it was the same deck as that on which she herself was standing up, dipping a bucket over the side on the end of a lanyard and sluicing Orwell mud off the anchor. Titty was going round the side decks with a mop, spinning the mop sometimes, to see the sunlight make rainbows in the flying drops of water. Roger was fiddling with the throttle-lever, finding the point at which the engine seemed to be happiest. Gosh, when he got back to school, he was going to have something to talk about to that engineering friend of his.
Presently Susan went down through the fore-hatch. A few minutes later, her plans made for dinner, she came up the companion-way and began to start the stove.
“We’re going to have tea going anyhow,” she said. “And grog for anybody who wants it, and there’s a huge glass of brawn we never found, and Jim says it’s just the thing he feels like eating. And I thought of hotting up some peas.”
“And we’ve still got about a mile of that Dutch loaf,” said Roger, “and eleven oranges. More than enough to go round.”
Titty, her swabbing done, stowed the mop and sat herself on the cabin top, watching the smooth water go by, watching the Goblin’s wash go rippling through the reflections by the shores. A cormorant, spreading its wings like a German eagle, was perched on the buoy at the bend.
“John,” cried Titty. “There’s a steamer coming down.”
“I’ve seen it,” said John.
It was a little cargo steamer, and they met it just after rounding the buoy. For a moment John thought of calling Daddy. The steamer hooted twice. He remembered … “Two hoots … Turning to port.” He turned a little to port himself, to show the steamer he had understood. Looking down into the cabin, he saw his father half get up, glance through a porthole and settle again to his talk and his cigar.
Two yacht
s were motoring down in the calm, their sails flapping. One of them he did not know. The other was the blue Coronilla, with the natives aboard it who had seen them start.
He heard a hail.
“Ahoy! Goblin! Have a good time?”
“Yes, thank you,” shouted John, and he and Titty and Roger waved back to them.
“They don’t know where we’ve been,” said Roger. “Shall I tell them?”
“No,” said John, and the Coronilla went on down the river, little thinking that the Goblin was coming home from foreign parts.
Again they saw porpoises plunging down with the tide.
“We never saw any at sea,” said Roger.
“They were probably keeping down below out of the storm,” said Titty.
Far up the creek on the northern side of the river, they saw the gleaming bodies of bathers. On and on they went, fast through the water, but slowly past the land, because of the outgoing tide. It was so soon after high water that the mudflats were still covered, and the shining river stretched from the woods on one side to the woods on the other. The same big steamer from the River Plate was still moored between the buoys, unloading into barges. The Goblin passed close by her, so that they heard the rattle of the derricks and the shouts of the stevedores at their work.
Daddy came up from below, driving Susan before him, to have a private word.
“Your owner,” he said, “seems to have made up his mind that fourteen tugs won’t get him back to that hospital. We’ll have to have a word with the doctor there when we get in, but it looks to me as if he’s not much the worse. Tough skull he must have got. Hurt the motor-bus a bit, I should think. Anyhow, he’s made up his mind to stay aboard, and I don’t see why not, if some of you people come and cook his meals for him.”
“Of course we will,” said Susan.
“Susan’s got her first-aid box at Miss Powell’s,” said Titty. “We’ll make the Goblin into a hospital ship.”
“He won’t mind that,” said Daddy, “but he gets all of a stew when he thinks of that place at Felixstowe and starts worrying about two days he says he’s lost. He’ll be better lying quiet in the cabin.”
“The water’s boiling,” said Susan. “I’ll put the peas in now, and we’ll be able to give them dinner as soon as we get tied up.”
Daddy looked ahead. Already they were passing the boats anchored below the hard. They could see the boat-builder’s sheds, and the old Butt and Oyster Inn at the water’s edge, and the crowd of moored yachts.
“Do you know where to look for the Goblin’s buoy?” asked Daddy.
But Jim Brading’s big white-bandaged head was coming slowly up out of the companion.
“I’m going to take her in,” he said. “I know just what she’ll do.”
“There’s Mother and Bridget on the shore,” shouted Roger. “Can’t I hoot the foghorn to make them look this way.”
“They’ve seen us,” said Titty.
Daddy ducked suddenly down below the cabin top.
“Look here,” he said. “We don’t want to give her too many shocks at once. Can you manage without me?”
“I can take her in all right, sir,” said Jim, “if John’ll get the buoy aboard.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” said John.
“Better not show that bandaged head of yours more than you can help,” said Daddy. “Not right away. You’ll have to leave John to moor her.”
“I’ll take her up to the buoy and then come below,” said Jim. “But I wish I knew what to say to Mrs Walker.”
“Cheer up, man,” said Daddy. “She isn’t a dragon. And a chap like you who doesn’t mind ramming motor omnibuses …”
Jim grinned doubtfully.
“I’ll be standing by in case of trouble,” said Daddy, and disappeared into the cabin.
“You go forrard, John,” said Jim Brading. “Get hold of the buoy with the boathook. Haul away on the buoy rope, and make fast as soon as you’ve enough of the chain aboard.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” said John, very glad to be skipper no more, as the Goblin threaded her way in among the moored boats.
He went forward, freed the boathook from its tyers, and stood, waiting.
They were in the middle of that crowd of yachts. They passed between a ketch and a yawl, close by a tall Bermudian cutter, close by a big motor cruiser all glass deckhouses, high above the water. The chug, chug of the motor softened. Jim had shut down the throttle. There seemed to be a boat on every mooring in the anchorage. John looked in all directions for the black buoy with the name GOBLIN painted on it in green. Hullo! That must be it. Two more boats to pass. He glanced back. Yes, Jim had seen it. The noise of the engine changed again and it seemed to be running much quicker. Jim had told Roger to throw it out of gear.
“Mother’s got a dinghy,” cried Titty. “They’re just getting into it.”
John glanced towards the shore, but only for a moment. Jim never turned his head. Roger was standing by with his hand on the gear lever, waiting for orders. Susan and Titty had eyes only for Mother and Bridget, pushing off in the borrowed dinghy. Titty held Sinbad up to see them.
The Goblin passed the first yacht, and the second, that lay between her and her buoy. She was moving more and more slowly.
“Ahead,” said Jim quietly.
Roger pushed the lever forward.
“Enough.”
He pulled it back again.
John was holding on to the forestay, watching the buoy. Nearer and nearer it came. It was close under the bows. The Goblin was hardly moving. Was she going to reach it? Just as she stopped, John reached down with the boathook, caught the buoy, lifted it aboard, put down the boathook, and began hauling in hand over hand. Headache or no, Jim Brading had made a beautiful job of picking up his moorings.
The rope was in the fairlead at the stem. In it came. There was a sudden rattle. Chain, muddy wet chain, was following it aboard, a yard of it, two yards. John took a turn with the chain round the winch, another, and made fast.
“All fast,” he called, and looked round in time to see a large, white turban disappear. The engine coughed and stopped. The Goblin was at home again. John, Susan, Titty, and Roger were alone on deck.
*
John looked towards the shore. Mother and Bridget in the dinghy were already half-way out to them. He looked aft at Susan, Titty and Roger, waiting in the cockpit. The forehatch was pushed up close beside him.
“Don’t try to tell her everything at once,” said Daddy from below.
*
Mother was rowing hard, as if she was in a hurry. Bridget, sitting in the stern of the dinghy, was waving, but only Roger waved back. The others were thinking of all that had to be explained. It was a good thing that Mother had not known that they had been at sea alone, and that Jim had been knocked down and in hospital. But she would have to be told now. And except for yesterday’s telegram, she had heard nothing from them since they had talked with her on the telephone that first evening. And they had all promised not to go to sea, and to be back in time for tea the day before.
Mrs Walker steadied the dinghy a few yards from the Goblin, and turned to see the four of them looking gravely down from the cockpit. She spoke very quietly, but they knew at once that she was dreadfully upset.
“John, Susan, didn’t you promise me that you would be back yesterday? I should never have let you go if I hadn’t been sure I could trust you. I know you couldn’t come up the river in the fog, but it was a wild night and you must have known we’d be worried about you. You could have telephoned in the morning. And you had no excuse for not coming home yesterday afternoon. It was rather too bad, don’t you think, just to send a telegram. You could have telephoned first thing, and then you could have come back by bus from Shotley if Mr Brading didn’t want to bring his boat …”
“But we couldn’t,” said John. “We really couldn’t …”
“We weren’t at Shotley at all,” said Roger. “Not yesterday.”
“Do you know I
had a telegram from Daddy the day after you left, a telegram from Berlin? He might have been here yesterday morning. And then yesterday there was a telegram from Flushing. He must be on his way now. He may even have arrived already … Oh, what have you done to your head?”
Jim’s monstrous bandaged head had come slowly up out of the companion.
“It wasn’t their fault, Mrs Walker,” he said. “It was all mine.”
“What are all those wooden shoes?” asked Bridget, looking up at the shoes, which Roger had arranged in a neat row, five pairs of them, beside the handrail on the cabin roof.
“Of course,” went on Mrs Walker, “if you had an accident and hurt your head, you were quite right not to sail. But they ought to have come home from Shotley … And you could have telephoned instead of just sending a telegram to say they were going to stop an extra day …”
Mother turned again to John. “Daddy may have crossed by the night boat. He may be waiting, wondering why there’s nobody to meet him …”
“He knows all about it,” said Titty. “And he doesn’t mind, and he says he doesn’t think you’ll object to Sinbad … Oh! where is Sinbad? He’s gone …”
The kitten had been climbing about on the knapsacks piled on one of the seats in the cockpit. It had climbed over the coaming and wandered along behind the cabin top.
“Oh, look!” cried Bridget. “They really have got a kitten.”
Mother looked away from those wretched children of hers who had caused her such dreadful worry in the fog and the storm, and then, instead of coming home in time, had calmly broken all their promises and sent her a telegram to say cheerfully that they were going to stop away another twenty-four hours. Like Bridget, she saw the fluffy Sinbad come unsteadily round from behind the cabin and out on the foredeck. And then she saw something else. Someone must have seen Sinbad go past the cabin portholes. A hand, a lean, brown hand, came up out of the forehatch and felt this way and that for the kitten.