19

Sir Garnet Obliges Friends

THE TWINS HAD missed their ship, but what of that? They were aboard the fastest wherry on the river, and would catch the Teasel at Stokesby if they did not catch her before. They were extremely cheerful. Everything had been saved at the very last minute, and after all, they too would share in the voyage to the south, for which they had been training the Admiral’s eager crew.

They looked at the windows of the doctor’s house as the wherry slipped past it. ‘Our baby’ had not yet been moved into the garden. They caught a glimpse of somebody in a white apron in one of the upper rooms, but nobody looked out. Dr Dudgeon’s golden bream, high above the brown reed-thatching, was still swimming merrily north-west.

‘Couldn’t have a better wind,’ said Starboard.

‘We’ll need it,’ said Jim Wooddall shortly. He could not forgive old Simon for dawdling ashore and making him late in getting away.

Only the upper windows of their own house showed above the willows. But at the edge of the river, under the low boathouse roof, they could see the Flash with lowered mast, waiting all un-conscious that she had been deserted by her skipper and her crew.

‘Poor old Flash,’ said Starboard. ‘Hullo! Ginty’s waving at us.’

‘Only shaking out a duster,’ said Port. ‘Of course she isn’t waving. If she saw us going down the river on a wherry she’d be throwing fifteen different kinds of fit.’

They were relieved to see the duster disappear.

‘She’ll have spring cleaned the whole house by the time we come back.’

And then Jim Wooddall was asking them about the races, and they told him how it was that Flash was out of them, and that as soon as Mr Farland came back they were going to challenge the winner. Grizzled Skipper, Jim Wooddall thought, was the likeliest of the lot, ‘And I’d like to see her an’ Flash fight it out,’ he said. And then they talked of sugar-beet, that was keeping wherries busy at one time of the year, going round to Cantley on the Norwich River, and of other cargoes, such as grain, of which there was less than ever, and of the bungalows that were sent down by water all ready-made and needing only to be set up (‘Card houses, I call ’em’) and cargoes of planks for quay-heading and cut logs for piles. And all the time they were talking, Port and Starboard were looking eagerly down each reach of the river as it opened before them, until, at last, Jim Wooddall noticed it and laughed.

‘He’ve a long start of us, Tom have.’

Old Simon was steadily working away, making beautiful flat coils of the warps on the top of Sir Garnet’s closed hatches. He came aft now, and went into the little cabin, and came out with a bucket of potatoes and a saucepan half full of water.

‘Better give him a hand,’ said Jim Wooddall. ‘Workin’ yer passage, you are.’ And old Simon sitting on the hatch with the bucket between his knees made them laugh by opening an enormous clasp knife and offering it to Starboard.

But they had knives of their own, of a handier size, and were soon hard at work, though old Simon peeled four potatoes to every one of theirs, and did not think much of them as cooks.

‘Look ye here, Miss Bess,’ he said, ‘if you takes the topsides off that thick, what sort of a spud’ll ye have left for puttin’ in the pan?’

They were close to the mouth of the Ant when they heard and saw the Margoletta. She was coming up the river against the tide, and the wherry with wind and tide to help her was sweeping down. They were close to each other when the Margoletta swung round and into the Fleet Dyke, where, only yesterday, the Teasel had been.

‘Lookin’ for him in South Walsham, likely,’ said Jim Wooddall with a grin.

The assistant cooks of Sir Garnet stared at him.

‘But how do you know about it?’ said Starboard.

‘Easy,’ said Jim Wooddall, puffing at his pipe. ‘Them cruisers talk enough. There’s only one boy down Horning way what have a black punt and paddle her from the stern. Tom Dudgeon and his old Dreadnought. Tom say nothin’ about it to me that day he come to Wroxham, and there was me, readin’ that notice over his head. And after he go, up come that lot in Margoletta asking for a boy in a sail-boat. … Tom Dudgeon and his Titmouse for certain sure. And you missies know somethin’ about how they didn’t cotch him that day.’ And he grinned again.

‘Look here, Jim,’ said Port. ‘Nobody but George Owdon would have told them Tom was gone up the river in a sailing boat. And the night before last they came up to Potter Heigham, and we think George must have told them Tom was gone up the Thurne.’

‘They as good as said someone tell ’em, that day Tom come to Wroxham.’

‘But what we don’t understand is this,’ said Starboard. ‘If George wants them to catch Tom, why doesn’t he send them straight to Doctor Dudgeon?’

‘Simple,’ said Jim Wooddall. ‘Fare to me that George he want ’em to cotch young Tom, but he nat’rally don’t want to be in it hisself. So he send ’em where he think they can’t fail for to meet him. If they meet young Tom and know him, how be George Owdon to blame? But if them cruisers go to the doctor and ask for his son, why, how do they know the name of a boy they seen once in their life? Somebody must ’a told ’em. And everybody in Horning’d know who ’twas.’

‘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 mainsheet 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 mudflats 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 goodbye 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.