The Happy Mariners (7 page)

‘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.'

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 man!' 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.'

Nobody did see what she meant. Perhaps she herself didn't quite know. And anyhow, the discussion having worn itself out, they said no more, but went in a body to worry Phineas with questions. They found him standing amidships staring at distance. He had deserted the helm, and the ship was lazily drifting on.

‘I say,' said Rex, ‘you know we want to go to our island, don't you?'

‘We told you about the buried treasure, didn't we?' added Guy.

‘Have you seen the map we drew of it?' asked Elizabeth.

‘It's a jolly good map,
I
can tell you!' declared Martin.

But Phineas wasn't saying anything. It was impossible, as always, to tell whether he was smiling or not. His face was creased in its usual multitudinous folds, and his bright penetrating eyes were perhaps a little brighter, a little more intent than ever. Certainly his mouth was not smiling. It was a large square mouth, set a long way from the blunt puggy nose, a long upper lip intervening; it was a mouth that gave nothing away.

‘Elizabeth drew some footprints on it.' Martin was in no mood to drop the subject of the map, for it interested him greatly.

Still no reply.

‘They were green footprints,' added Martin, less confidently.

Phineas raised one hand to shade his eyes from the sunlight. He appeared to have heard nothing.

‘Oh, well,' said Martin crossly, ‘if you don't want to see the map you needn't, that's all. But it's a jolly good map all the same.'

Then, quite unexpectedly, Phineas spoke. ‘Sail on the starb'd bow,' he announced. ‘One of you lads must get up into the crow's-nest with the spy-glass.'

‘That's me!' cried Guy, and ran for it.

Rex was first at the mizzen, but it was Guy who had the spy-glass.

‘The eldest!' called Phineas. His tone was commanding, and there could be no thought of disobedience. Guy yielded the spy-glass to his brother without a word, and stood aside. Rex climbed quickly up the mast.

‘What dost see, lad?' roared Phineas.

Coming after Phineas's deep bass, Rex's voice sounded very boyish and shrill: ‘A ship on the starb'd bow. Three-masted. A fine ship.'

‘Ay, and what flag does she fly?'

There was a pause. Rex stood with the spy-glass to his eye. Then he began waving his arms excitedly: ‘A black flag, a black flag!'

‘Pirates, by Saint Rumbo!' cried Phineas. His voice became sharp as a whip. ‘Down with 'ee,
sirrah! Take the helm, girl! Wind be rising. The rest of ye, man the guns!'

Phineas looked so hard and stern that Elizabeth was at the moment more afraid of him than of the pirates. She at once ran to do his bidding. Rex meanwhile was clambering down from his dizzy perch, and Guy and Phineas were getting the big gun into position and loading it with ball. Martin stood by, dancing and clapping his hands and shouting at intervals: ‘Down with the pirates!' He was in a terrible state of agitation because there was nothing he could do; he had been sternly told to keep out of harm's way. But Phineas at last made him happy by sending him to the cook's galley to get a lighted torch.

The pirate craft, her deck crowded with ragged and gesticulating ruffians, was now bearing down with all speed upon the little
Resmiranda.

‘East about!' commanded Phineas. ‘Larboard thy helm, lass!'

Martin snatched up the spy-glass, which Rex had put down, and gazed through it at the oncoming pirates. They were a fierce and hideous and dirty-looking crew, with cruel eyes and savage whiskers; their mouths were open so wide in their gloating triumph that Martin could almost see down their throats. Their cutlasses glittered in the sunlight; their pistols bulged at their belts; their brazen yells floated across the water and struck terror to the children's hearts. They all wore red kerchiefs knotted
round their heads, except the one who appeared to be their leader, who was taller and brawnier than the others, and had a long crooked nose and black teeth; this terrible fellow wore a black three-cornered hat with a skull-and-crossbones device worked on the brim in scarlet wool. They were, in fact, just Martin's idea of what pirates should be; and, frightened though he was, he couldn't help being thrilled by the sight of them.

Suddenly there came a flash of fire on the pirates' deck, a cloud of black smoke, and a loud explosion; and something whizzed past high over the topmost sail of the
Resmiranda.

‘The brutes!' shouted Rex indignantly. ‘Shall we fire, Phineas?'

‘Wait orders!' growled Phineas. ‘Starboard a little, starboard a little!' he called to Elizabeth.

Another flash, another cloud of smoke, another roar of the pirates' cannonry. At that very moment, by good chance, a great wave rolled along which the
Resmiranda
crested gracefully. The ball fell into the water five yards from her stern.

‘Let's have a bang at 'em, Phineas!' Rex implored. ‘Oh, do let's!'

Phineas was busy making ready a second gun. ‘Cease thy bibble-babble, manikin. Loose fire at 'em? Nay, if we answer them not, maybe they'll think we have no gunner aboard and venture too near. We'll bide our good time…'

Already the pirate ship was very near, and Elizabeth, standing at the helm with her wits busy on the task of doing quickly whatever Phineas told her, had scarcely time to entertain the dreadful thought that if the pirates fired again they might hit their mark. Not till the distance between the two ships had dwindled to less than thirty yards did Phineas give the word.

‘They be trying to ram us, lad,' he said. ‘Stand back.'

He took the torch from Martin's hand, waved him back, and then put it to the touch-hole of the gun. The deck shook with the thunder; the air filled with the acrid taste of gunpowder. When the smoke cleared away they saw that the main mast of the pirate ship was shot down. The pirates were running backwards and forwards yelling like devils.