6

Home Is the Sailor

KIRSTIE WAS SO excited at the thought of Father coming home on leave that she could not manage to eat much. Angus was excited too, but that didn’t keep him from finishing his own breakfast and Kirstie’s leftovers.

Because they knew what time the bus arrived at the stop at the bottom of the glen, they were ready and waiting on the road outside the small white house when the distant blue-clad figure appeared, duffel bag on shoulder, packages under one arm, waving happily with the other.

“Home is the sailor, home from sea,” said Grumble contentedly to himself as he watched Mother and the children running to greet him.

At first it was all excitement in the house as the packages were opened, presents from far, distant lands. For Mother there was a length of beautiful silk, for Grumble a packet of strange foreign seeds to plant in the garden, for Kirstie a necklace made of sharks’ teeth, and for Angus a four-masted ship with a full spread of canvas, sailing eternally within its bottle.

“How you’ve grown!” said Father to the children. “Why, last leave I was carrying you about easily, Angus. I wouldn’t be able to now.”

“He likes his food,” said Mother.

All this reminded Kirstie of the Water Horse and how he had grown too heavy to carry.

“Grumble!” she cried. “We haven’t fed Crusoe yet!”

“Who’s Crusoe?” said Father.

“He’s our monster!” shouted Angus. “We found him on the beach and he hatched in the bathtub, and he lives in the goldfish pond, and we catch fish for him every day, and he gobbles them up, chomp, chomp, chomp. You should see his teeth, Father, miles bigger than the ones on Kirstie’s necklace, they are!” and Angus made frightening chewing faces.

“Whatever’s the boy talking about?” said Father, and the others explained everything to him.

“You couldn’t have come home at a better time,” said Grumble. “We must get him into the lochan, the quicker the better, and he’s too heavy for me to manage. Getting him out of the goldfish pond won’t be easy, to begin with, so my idea is not to feed him at all today, and then he’ll be so hungry that he might manage to climb out himself if we tempt him with something tasty.”

“Come and see him, Father,” said Kirstie, and they all went out to the pond where Crusoe was calling hungrily.

They took off the wire frame, and Kirstie said “Crusoe!” and the Water Horse came and laid his head on the rim of the pond.

“Holy mackerel!” said Father. “I’ve sailed the seven seas and never seen such a creature! Is it some kind of sea serpent?”

“A Water Horse,” said Grumble.

“I’ve heard you speak of such a thing. Was there not one in Loch Morar, I think you told me once?”

Grumble nodded. “Gentle him,” he said. “He’s an amiable beastie.”

And Father bent down and scratched and pulled at Crusoe’s ears. “When shall we try to move him, then?” he said.

“In the morning, I thought,” said Grumble. “Between us we can maybe get him into my old wheelbarrow and wheel him down the road to the lochan. It’s a Sunday, so Postie will not be coming and there’s no bus and not likely to be anyone else about.”

—

Crusoe had been swimming rapidly up and down the length of the goldfish pond, as he always did as midday approached, raising his horse head at intervals to gaze in the direction of the top of the cliff path. It was at this time that he received his first meal of the day. Now, when he saw the giants approaching, he began to call out impatiently. He could no longer be said to chirrup, for his voice had broken, so that he made a kind of rough bellow, like a cow with a sore throat calling for its calf. It was a hoarse noise, you might say.

But when the giants arrived and removed the wire frame, he could see that they had brought no food. Moreover, there were now not four of them, but five. One of the smaller ones called his name, and at the sound he came, as he was now accustomed, and laid his head upon the rim of the pond. The new giant—another very large one, with a good deal of hair on its chin—bent down and scratched and pulled pleasantly at his ears, and they all made their usual medley of sounds, some deep, some shrill.

Then they went away, and as they disappeared, a steady cold rain began to fall. By evening the rain had stopped, but by then Crusoe was very hungry. He had had nothing at all to eat for twenty-four hours now, and his mind was filled with tantalizing visions of food—tender spotted dabs and fat little brown rockfish, and crunchy green crabs and juicy pink starfish. As for mussels, he could have eaten a barrel of them.

For the first time in his life he felt the need to go looking for food instead of waiting for it to be brought to him, and for the first time he actually tried to get out of the goldfish pond. After a great deal of clumsy effort, he managed to lift the wire frame with his head and get both front flippers up onto the rain-soaked concrete rim, but it was too steep and already frozen, and he slipped back with a moan of disappointment.

That night the frost was much more severe. But the surface of the pond had no chance to freeze over, because Crusoe’s hunger pangs kept him swimming around urgently.

Dawn came, and the sun rose and climbed in the sky and shone down without warmth, and the ravenous Water Horse bellowed his hunger to the frozen world. And then at long last, four of the giants appeared again, and as they came closer, he could smell the food that they were carrying!

Father and the others could see that though there had been a hard frost, Crusoe had kept the pond ice-free, paddling hungrily about. But everything else was ice-covered, for the previous afternoon’s rain had frozen solid upon every surface. Even the branches and twigs of the trees were coated in ice.

Crusoe came eagerly to the side without waiting to be called. He could smell the fish that Kirstie was carrying on a plate.

To everyone’s surprise (and to Angus’s dismay), Mother had donated a small can of herring as bait to lure the Water Horse out of the pond. Actually, she was delighted to think that he was going somewhere where he could catch his own food from now on, freeing her from the endless washing of clothes covered in slimy fish scales.

“Hold one of the herring in front of his nose, Kirstie,” said Grumble. “Not too near, mind. Don’t let him get it yet.”

Frantically Crusoe tried to haul himself out, but the icy rim was too slippery.

“Right,” said Father. “We’ll have to help him.” The moving of heavy weights in and out of ships’ holds was something he well understood, and now he took charge.

“Angus,” he said, “take station abaft me. I reckon this fellow weighs closer to two hundred pounds than a hundred, and we don’t want anyone getting hurt. Kirstie, keep the fish right in front of his face but be ready to go full astern as he comes out.” And to Grumble he said, “Next time he comes up on the rim, I’ll take ahold of one front flipper and you take the other and wait for my word. Ready? Now, Kirstie!” And as Crusoe reared up once again, Father and Grumble each grabbed a flipper.

“Heave!” shouted Father, and “Heave!” while Angus danced around, yelling, “Come on, my hearties!” And at last, with much grunting and sloshing, the Water Horse came out of the goldfish pond and lay dripping on the frozen grass.

“Belay!” said Father to Grumble, and to Kirstie, “Give him the fish.”

“Phew!” said Grumble. “He is heavy! I doubt we’ll get him into the wheelbarrow.”

“If we did,” said Father, “and it didn’t break under him, I doubt we could push him. Let’s see first if he’ll sail under his own steam.”

And so began a slow procession, from the pond, across the lawn, toward the road. Crusoe’s grace and speed on or under water was equaled only by his clumsiness and sluggishness on land. But driven on by his hunger, he followed Kirstie and her herring, slowly, oh, so slowly, inching along at tortoise speed.

“What a rate of knots!” said Father, looking at his watch. “Half an hour to travel fifty yards!”

“We’ll be here all day and night getting him to the lochan,” growled Grumble. But then something happened that changed the whole picture.

Kirstie, walking backward still, reached the road at last and stepped off the shoulder onto the tarmac surface. Immediately, her legs shot from under her, and, as she fell, the last few herring flew off the plate and landed right in front of the grateful Water Horse.

“Are you all right, Kirstie?” everyone shouted.

“Yes,” she said, struggling to her feet, “but he’s eaten all the fish now. What else can we tempt him with?”

“We shan’t need to,” said Father, grinning.

“Why not?”

“Look,” said Father, and he found a smooth pebble and skimmed it down the slight slope of the road. On and on it slid, for the rain on the surface of the road had frozen into a thick slippery surface like a skating rink.

“We can slide him!” said Grumble. “Like a curling stone!”

And that’s exactly what they did.

The road was so glassy that Father made Grumble and the children walk on the shoulder, for young bones and old bones are easily broken in a fall, he knew, and he took upon himself the job of pushing Crusoe.

Now their progress was ten times as fast. Slipping, sliding, slithering, and skidding, the Water Horse glided down the icy road with no effort on his own part and very little on Fathers, and in another half hour or so they had reached the lochan, a quarter of a mile away. Then it was easy. The edge of the lochan was close to the road and a little below it, and with one last concerted shove they launched Crusoe into his new home.

It was easy to see his delight at being back in his element again, and at finding so much space to swim in. Away he went, head and neck showing above the surface like a periscope, a V-shaped wake streaming out behind him, until he reached the middle of the lochan. There he turned, and for a moment looked back at them standing on the shore.

Then he slid silently beneath the surface and was lost to their sight.