The Happy Mariners Page 5

  ‘How did the Fandy cat get here, I wonder?’ he asked Elizabeth, when Rex had relieved her at the prow. And Fandy, comfortable in his arms, purred even more furiously than before.

  ‘He must have followed us out of the house,’ said Elizabeth, ‘and jumped into the ship when we weren’t looking Sly old thing!’

  ‘Well, shall we go down now’—he pointed with his left foot towards the hatch—‘and have a look round?’

  The two elder boys had at once run back to their posts; so Martin and Elizabeth, left to take care of each other (as Rex had teasingly said), once more went to the hatch and opened it. This time nothing occurred to alarm them; they arrived safely at the bottom.

  ‘This is a fine place, isn’t it?’ said Martin.

  Instinctively he spoke in a low tone, and Elizabeth returned only a murmur for answer. That was the effect the place had on them. It was a low dark room, so dark that for several minutes they could see nothing but four round windows or portholes (two on each side) that gave out a faint glow, a very faint and flickering greenish glow. The rest was just blackness until presently, when their eyes had become accustomed to it, vague shadowy shapes began to grow visible: a couple of huge barrels, a dozen or more muskets standing against a wall, a large black chest with heavy brass fittings, and a heap of blades-swords, daggers, cutlasses — lying disorderly in a corner. Hanging from a peg were a man’s cloak and feathered hat; and on the floor, flung carelessly down, was what looked like a suit of armour. The smell of the centuries was in that place: old timber, old sacking, old tarred ropes—a strange and powerful smell that tickled the nostrils. Yes, and the flavour of rough humanity was in it too. Men had lived here, fantastic Spaniards with fine pointed beards and long mustachios, laughing and cursing, quarrelling and carousing—so Elizabeth, in her mind’s eye, saw them. There had once been laughter and drinking and wild song where there was now silence. She could almost, it seemed, feel that silence, as an emptiness that seemed to persist, undisturbed, behind the sound of rushing water; and then, for one instant, it was as if she heard, rising from the past, faint echoes of those long-vanished voices. Long-vanished, centuries dead; yet Phineas had declared, and no doubt still believed, that it was only the night before that the decisive last fight against the great Armada had taken place.

  ‘Listen!’ said Elizabeth, half to herself.

  The Fandy cat, tired of being carried about by Martin, had jumped to the ground, and Martin’s hand again sought his sister’s; for he too was conscious of something strange, something strange and beautiful, about this dim place, this odd-shaped low-ceiled room in which they were racing through the sea.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ asked Martin.

  ‘Nothing. But listen!’

  The sound of the churned sea was here translated into a loud humming punctuated by the wash of falling water. Elizabeth could detect a kind of pulse in it, as though it had been the beating of the ship’s own gallant heart. At times the noise grew louder, menacing, thunderous; at times for an instant the crashing waters seemed to hold themselves in suspense, like an indrawn breath; but hum and wash, hum and wash, hummmm-sshshsh, went on unendingly, and Elizabeth became quite drowsy listening to it.

  ‘Elizabeth,’ said Martin in a tone of great urgency, ‘I wish the ship wouldn’t wobble like that.’

  ‘It’s not wobbling; it’s plunging,’ said Elizabeth.

  ‘Well, I wish it wouldn’t. I don’t feel at all nice inside me.’

  ‘Let’s lie down,’ said Elizabeth soothingly, ‘and try to get a little sleep.’

  Still holding Martin tightly by the hand, she lurched forward. At that moment the ship apparently began sliding at a terrific pace down a steep hill. Elizabeth found herself clinging with one hand to the man’s cloak that hung on the wall. Down, down, down, faster and faster—would they never come up again? Were they bound for the very bottom of the sea? Suddenly there was a tremendous crash and boom, as if a thousand giants had banged a thousand drums; and then, for a while, all was comparatively quiet. Clinging together, they waited, trembling, for what should happen next; but the ship sailed bravely on, they could see the wild water rushing past the portholes, and presently, having unhooked the cloak from its peg, they lay down and wrapped themselves up in it.

  ‘Are you warm, Martin? The cook’s galley would have been cosier than this.’ Elizabeth’s voice was very sleepy. ‘I ought to go and look at Guy’s things. They may be scorching.’ After a silence she added dreamily: ‘Do you think they will be scorched, Martin?’

  There was no reply. Martin, lucky boy, was already asleep. And so, the next moment, was Elizabeth.

  How long she slept she could not tell. Nor, when she woke, had she time to think of such things. She woke with nothing in her mind but the thought of danger. Everything, to outward appearance, was very much as before: to hearing, the same rhythmic hum; to sight, the same darkness and the same dimly glowing port-holes. Yet Elizabeth was somehow aware that the ship was in dire peril. Was it a dream that she had had, or was it …? Before the question was formed in her mind there came a mighty and deafening crash. The ship seemed to stop dead, seemed to shudder and shake herself and await the end. ‘I wonder if the boys are safe,’ thought Elizabeth in terror. ‘I must go to them, I must go to them.’ She gently disengaged herself from Martin’s arms, and rose unsteadily to her feet. Luckily she had chosen for their bed a small safe space between the wall and the great sea-chest, so that if she wrapped Martin up carefully, she thought, it was impossible that he should roll far, however wildly the ship tossed. She did her best with him, heaved a sigh of relief to find that he still slept soundly, and crawled on her hands and knees to the hatchway.

  She reached the deck in time to hear Phineas bellow out: ‘Come ye to the helm, lads, one of ye, while I reef all sails!’ Rex, who was nearest, rushed to do his bidding, while Guy remained on duty at the prow. Elizabeth saw the sailor bend down and speak close into Rex’s ear; and Rex, nodding his head in answer, seized the tiller and bent over it grimly, evidently putting all the strength of his young body into the task. Phineas bellowed instructions to Guy, and then flung himself like a tiger into the rigging, so quickly, so recklessly, so bravely, that Elizabeth found herself crying out to him in fear and admiration. Higher and higher he climbed, and the wind blew, and the ship plunged and swayed and tossed, until it seemed that he could not possibly escape being blown into the raging sea. And when for one instant Elizabeth’s glance wavered away from him, she was astonished to find herself alive in so wonderful and terrible a world as now she saw heaving and thundering about her. From the distance great green mountains came leaping towards them, mountains green and black and silvered with phosphorescent foam; near at hand, ready to engulf the little ship, rose high walls of water, green in moonlight, black in shadow, furiously crested with white. Into these huge waves the ship magnificently moved. Up them she climbed, and down them, on the other side, she plunged. The sea had become a mad moving switchback upon which they giddily tossed. Elizabeth ran eagerly to talk to Guy at the prow. It needed all her courage to leave the mast to which she had been clinging, and that journey of a few yards was a terrifying ordeal, for she expected at any moment to be swept away by the fierce wind, or struck down and drowned by a tremendous wave. But she could not bear her loneliness any longer. In spite of her terror she was calm enough to realize that everything depended on their facing the waves. If one of those waves should catch the ship broadside on, she would be smashed and sunk in a trice.

  Guy, when she reached him, was too deeply absorbed even to look at her. But at sound of her voice he said: ‘Elizabeth, what are you doing here? You ought to be down below.’

  Elizabeth made no answer.

  ‘Are you all right?’ asked Guy. ‘Where’s Martin?’

  In her relief at being with her favourite brother again Elizabeth found nothing to say but: ‘Oh Guy, I‘m so glad you’ve put on your clothes again. Are you sure they’re dry?’

  Guy glance
d back over his shoulder. ‘Where’s Phineas?’

  ‘Reefing all sails,’ said Elizabeth.

  ‘Good!’ shouted Guy. ‘Soon we shall be scudding under bare poles.’

  Elizabeth liked the sound of that.

  ‘Is that …’ asked Elizabeth; but her question was blown away, and she had to repeat it with her mouth close to Guy’s ear—‘is that one of Father’s expressions, the one about scudding under bare poles?’

  Guy did not answer. He only said: ‘I hope Phineas is coming back. Can you see him anywhere, Elizabeth?’

  ‘Yes. He’s coming down now.’

  ‘Sails reefed?’ asked Guy.

  ‘Not a stitch to be seen,’ said Elizabeth proudly.

  Guy and Elizabeth stood huddled together. Most of the time it was impossible to exchange a word, so furiously the sea thundered, crashed, drummed. They had to wait for a lull in the noise, watch their chance, and then shout in each other’s faces. Every minute, too, it was growing darker. The leaping green mountains, the high dark walls, shut them away from what little light was left in the sky, where, already, a black cloud hid the moon—it was as though some malicious giant of the sky had covered it up with his cloak. ‘We’re like the three sisters,’ said Elizabeth aloud. But Guy didn’t hear her; she hadn’t particularly wanted him to hear. Perhaps she was still half dreaming, in spite of the fact that her teeth were chattering with cold; or perhaps she was becoming a little hysterical. For she herself didn’t at first know what the remark meant. It was the darkness that had made her say, ‘We’re like the three sisters.’ But why? It was the darkness, and the queerness of being within hand’s touch of her brother and yet unable to see his features. Presently it all came back to her: she remembered that in one of Father’s stories, the story of Perseus and the Gorgon’s Head, there were three sisters who had but one eye between them, which they passed from hand to hand; and she remembered—with a shudder of delight even now, storm-tossed and frightened though she was — that wonderful moment when Perseus snatches the eye, and the three dreadful old creatures grope for each other and paw each other, muttering in an agony of fear, whispering, screeching: ‘Have you got it, sister? Where is it? Give it to me!’ And, evil though they were, she couldn’t help pitying them, left out in the darkness for ever. And she wished with all her heart that the moon would shine again, and the stars come out, and the storm cease.

  ‘Good lads!’ cried a voice behind them. ‘The wind be falling and the ship’s as trim as may be.’ Phineas Dyke’s brawny hand fell, none too gently, on Elizabeth’s shoulder.

  ‘Oh, Phineas!’ Elizabeth turned and clutched his arm. ‘I thought you were drowned!’

  ‘By Saint Rumbo,’ cried the mariner, ‘here be little Queen Elizabeth! Let Your Majesty get under hatches, and yarely to it, begging Your Majesty’s pardon.’

  ‘Are we out of danger?’

  ‘At sea, in danger,’ said Phineas sententiously. ‘But no more danger, maybe, than ye may find in your own feather bed. ’Twas a pretty little squall, but she’s dying down; there’s but a pocketful of breath left in her. Down below with ’ee, lady. Warm thyself and rest thyself and dream of them that love ’ee, as the song goes.’

  ‘What about you, Phineas, and the others?’

  ‘The lads can sleep in turns. I shall need but one of them here. As for me, I’ve had a long enough sleep.’ It was lighter now, the sea less turbulent, the sky clearing. Elizabeth, looking up at the ancient man of the sea, this man newly wakened from a sleep of three and a half centuries, saw that his eyes, deep and penetrating but clear blue like a babe’s, seemed to be fixed on an infinite distance. What memories, what visions, what inarticulate questions were in that dreaming gaze? Sunk treasure and sunlit isles, hardship and terror, drudging days and nights of loneliness, perplexity, and the pull of ancient loyalties. ‘Where,’ ended Phineas, ‘be the bantling, the young fighting cock?’

  ‘Martin’s down below,’ said Elizabeth. ‘I must go and see to him. I expect he’s scared to death, poor lamb! Can Guy come too?’

  Guy stumbled over to tell Rex of the proposal. ‘You go, Rex,’ said Guy.

  ‘No, you go,’ said Rex. ‘Bags I first turn of duty. Phineas says I’m to go up into the crow’s-nest if I like, with a spy-glass. Don’t you wish you were me?’

  So Elizabeth and Guy made their way carefully—for the ship was still rolling enough to make care necessary—to the hatchway. They found Martin just where Elizabeth had left him. He was sitting up rubbing his eyes with his knuckles and yawning luxuriously.

  ‘Hullo!’ said Martin. ‘Where have you been, Elizabeth? I thought you were sleeping here with me.’

  ‘We’ve been on deck,’ said Elizabeth.

  ‘You can get up if you want to,’ Guy added. ‘But we’re going to have a rest, so don’t make a beastly row, will you? The storm’s practically over now. But I’ve got to relieve old Rex at six bells.’

  Martin was wide awake now. He seemed really interested. ‘Has there been a storm?’ he asked innocently.

  Guy grinned. ‘What you might call a bit of dirty weather. Nothing to speak of.’

  ‘And what does six bells mean?’

  ‘You’d better ask Rex,’ said Guy. ‘He knows all about it. I’m going to have a nap.’

  Chapter 8

  Skull and Crossbones

  Day dawned in such splendour as to make that night of storm and terror seem like a bad dream. Guy relieved Rex at the prow in time to see the first faint flush on the eastern horizon. The dove-grey satin of the sky changed before his eyes to mother-of-pearl, and the pearl deepened to an opaline blue, and the blue became suffused with gold. The changes were so gradual, one colour dissolving through infinite gradations into another, that Guy did not know where they began and where they ended. He did not know and he did not care to know: it was sufficient for him that he was seeing something very interesting and splendid that he had never seen before. Almost by stealth—for he was too shy to dream of mentioning such a thing to Phineas, who was at the helm—he was discovering that daybreak can be as impressive as a storm, as exciting as a battle. Indeed it was not unlike a battle. The eastern sky glowed with red light from the torches of an advancing host that climbed irresistibly, silently, with no thunder of drums, up to the world’s rim. The water rippling in the distance became a sea of molten gold; darkness faded from the sky; and at last, when all was made ready, the sun himself lifted his ruddy head and claimed his kingdom. The sea, the sky, the ship herself, all were made one in a golden community.

  But Guy, although he felt very important with the spy-glass under his arm, soon got tired of doing nothing but stare about him; and he was glad when, a few hours after daybreak, the other three joined him. They were in high spirits but very hungry; and it was the sight of them greedily devouring ship’s biscuits that brought home to Guy what was the matter with him. Food! Radiant thought! Food would put everything right.

  ‘Where did you find the biscuits?’ said he. ‘And have you got anything to drink?’

  ‘In one of the barrels down there,’ explained Elizabeth, answering his first question. ‘And there’s water in the other.’

  ‘Jolly handy,’ said Rex, with his mouth full of biscuit. ‘Almost as if we had been expected.’ He grinned cheerfully. ‘We should have been in a pretty fix if there hadn’t been any grub. Biscuit’s not fancy food, but it’s better than nothing.’

  ‘But,’ objected Guy, incredulously, ‘it’s impossible. There can’t possibly be biscuits in that barrel.’ He received the biscuit that Elizabeth held out to him. ‘Thanks awfully.’ He set his teeth into it. ‘There can’t be, you know. You’ve imagined it. You‘re pulling my leg. And water, you say, in the other barrel? I don’t believe it.’

  ‘I’ve spilt some,’ said Martin. ‘I couldn’t help it. But there’s quite a little drop left for you, Guy.’

  Martin held out to him, carefully between his two small hands, a horn tumbler half full of water.

  ‘Good ma
n!’ cried Guy. ‘This is corking!’ He put his lips to the tumbler and drank with rapture and not entirely without noise. ‘I was absolutely parched, and I didn’t know it.’ As soon as his thirst was quenched he became, between mouthfuls of biscuit, argumentative again. ‘But where did it all come from? That’s what I want to know.’

  ‘We’ve told you,’ said Rex. ‘Out of the two barrels.’

  ‘But don’t you see, dear old ass, it simply couldn’t have. I’m sorry and all that, but it simply couldn’t have. At least,’ he added generously, ‘I don’t quite see how. What I mean to say is, how did it jolly well get there?’

  ‘How do I know!’ Rex was not interested in origins. It was sufficient for him that he had been fed.

  ‘Guy means,’ explained Elizabeth, ‘that the biscuits and the water couldn’t have been in the barrels since the time of the Spanish Armada. Don’t you, Guy?’

  Guy, his mouth too full for words, nodded furiously. Swallowing hastily he managed to splutter out: ‘That’s just exactly what I do mean. Now could it, Rex?’

  ‘Why not?’ asked Rex calmly.

  ‘Why not!’ echoed Guy excitedly. ‘Well, if you don’t see why not, of course …’ He shrugged his shoulders and muttered something about Colney Hatch.

  ‘Now you mind what you’re saying, young Guy,’ Rex warned him. ‘You know what happened last time.’

  Elizabeth intervened. ‘Don’t quarrel, you two.’

  ‘But really, Rex,’ Guy said in a last patient attempt to make his brother see reason, ‘don’t you realize that the stuff would have gone all mouldy and rotten in that time, and the water dried up or something?’

  ‘Well, Phineas didn’t dry up or go mouldy, did he? And he’s been on the ship just as long as the blessed biscuits. So sucks!’

  ‘Yes, but that’s different, silly!’ Guy almost screamed in his despair. ‘Phineas was asleep all the time.’

  ‘Perhaps the biscuits were asleep too,’ suggested Martin.

  All the boys laughed, Martin loudest of all. He hadn’t meant to be funny, but he was quite ready to recognize that he had made a good joke unawares. But Elizabeth did not laugh. She looked very thoughtful and said: ‘And that’s why they didn’t go rotten. And the water too. I don’t know about asleep, but they might perhaps, in some way, sort of skipped the centuries, if you see what I mean.’