Drowned Ammet

  Mitt could not hold her straight. Wind’s Road went down into that valley of water and wallowed sideways, with every intention of never coming up. But the man was there against the foam-laced surface of sliding black water, wrenching Wind’s Road straight for him. Mitt wanted to thank him, but by that time Wind’s Road was on her sickening way upward again to lay herself sideways to the next wave top.

  And so it went on. Mitt thought they went from sudden death to sudden death so often that they lost count of how long. The world was a lathering uproar, and Wind’s Road hit and buffeted until she jerked all over. Mitt and Hildy were bashed by water until they hardly felt it. Water fizzed into the cabin and swirled round Ynen. The tarpaulin floated round the well, mashed up and neglected, and got in the way, but neither Hildy nor Mitt had time to get rid of it. Hildy’s attention was all for the rope, either yelling out or rattling in, and Mitt’s for battle with the tiller, Wind’s Road’s yawing death urges, and the gestures of the fair-haired man when the wind hit with a clap and a shout.

  He and Hildy got quite used to seeing him, up there in the bows, either gray with storming rain or whiter against the black side of a wave. They were glad to see him there. But the horses bothered them both. They were beautiful gray horses galloping, arching their necks under flying manes, dashing up the slopes of waves, frolicking and rearing on the crests. Mitt and Hildy never had time to look at them properly, but they saw them all the time out of the corners of their eyes. They knew they were imagining things. Sailors told stories of horses playing round doomed ships, frolicking at the death of mortals. Mitt and Hildy would much rather not have seen them. They kept their eyes ahead on the next danger coming. But there were still horses galloping on both sides of the boat, though ahead there was nothing but fizzing foam and shuddering waves and occasionally the man with the flying light hair.

  He’s doing us no harm, that’s for sure! Mitt thought.

  In the cabin Ynen got to his elbows and put a hand to the big tender lump on the side of his face. He could have sworn somebody had shaken him and told him to get up. But he was all alone, lying among sopping blankets. “Ugh!” he said. He could feel Wind’s Road yawing and staggering, and he wondered what was causing this awful sluggish movement.

  The cabin door slammed open against the stove, and a wave of dirty water rushed down on Ynen, soaking him to the bone. He stared uphill at two pairs of slithering feet and more water bashing across them. Ye gods! he thought. The water we must be shipping! He scrambled up while he was thinking it and climbed uphill into the well.

  The first thing that met his eyes was the lovely head of a thoroughbred gray horse, flying past among the rain and spray. It was gone at once, as if it was galloping faster than Wind’s Road could sail. Ynen was hit by the rain and gasped. It was lashing down. He could hardly see the withered and wind-whipped figures of Mitt and Hildy, let alone the woman kneeling on the stern behind them. It was as much as Ynen could do to make out that this woman had long red-gold hair, flapping and swirling in the wind. He saw she was giving Hildy a hand with the rope—or he thought she was, until he realized she was pushing at the tiller as Mitt braced his feet and shoved it. The rain made Ynen very confused. But he realized the woman was pointing at the locker where the pump was.

  “Yes, of course,” Ynen said to her. He was still dazed, but he clipped the lid of the locker up, moved the tarpaulin off the scuppers and began to pump.

  The storm raved on for another hour or more. Ynen pumped away, without a hope of emptying the boat, but perhaps doing just enough to prevent Wind’s Road’s swamping. Sometimes he wished, in the fretful way one does in dreams, that the lady in the stern would help him, too, though he knew she had enough to do with Mitt and Hildy. Sometimes he thought the man up in front might come back and give him a hand. He knew this was an ungrateful thought. The man had stopped Wind’s Road from turning over several times, and he was keeping off the horses, too. But Ynen’s arms ached so.

  At length the roaring and thundering grew less. Wind’s Road, from sliding up and down, went to heaving and lurching, and from that to a staggering slap-slap-slap, with only the odd spout of water coming aboard. They sailed through a brown light. The rain hissed down and seemed to flatten the tossing sea further. Then the rain stopped. Ynen, pumping and pumping, felt far too hot.

  “We did it!” Hildy said. “It’s over.” As she said it, Ynen heard the squelching that meant the bilge was nearly dry. He straightened his back thankfully.

  There was a blinding sun right in front of the bows, low on the edge of the sea. The storm clouds were above the sun in a heavy black line, getting smaller and smaller. It was hot. Wind’s Road had steam rising from her decking and salt crystals forming like frost on her. The small triangle of sail sagged. There was a mess of tangled ropes everywhere, and Wind’s Road was riding with a surge and swing unlike any Ynen or Hildy had ever experienced. Mitt knew it for the surge and swing of deep ocean. He looked back, across the little salt-coated figure of Libby Beer, away and away over empty sea. There was no land.

  Weak and trembly though they all were, they burst out talking and laughing, in overloud hoarse voices, telling one another what each had thought the worst bit was. Ynen said it was when he saw the boom on its way to hit him. Hildy said it was the horses.

  “No,” said Mitt. “It was that first time she tried to capsize, just before we saw the man.”

  “I thought that, until the horses kept being there,” said Hildy. “And I tried to tell myself I was just imagining them because I was so scared and tired. But I knew they were there.”

  “I saw one quite close to, just before Libby Beer told me to pump,” Ynen said. “Didn’t they go fast!”

  “Hey, look,” said Mitt. “We haven’t all run mad, have we?”

  “Of course not,” said Ynen. “Libby Beer was sitting behind you, helping you sail her, and Old Ammet was standing in the bows stopping her sinking and keeping the horses off. I saw both of them.”

  Hildy looked anxiously at the big purple bruise on the side of Ynen’s face and then at the tiny, salt-coated figure of Libby Beer on the stern. “I didn’t get a chance to turn round, but isn’t she rather small?”

  “Old Ammet got carried away in that first big wave, for sure,” Mitt said, and hoisted himself weakly on the cabin roof to see.

  He could see a bundle of whitish straw, gently rising and falling in the bows. He crawled forward, hardly able to believe it. Old Ammet was still there, contrary to all reason, every plaited wheat stalk of him, miraculously in one piece. There were strips of seaweed wrapped about him and tangled in his wheaten hair, as if he had got his lost ribbons back, changed by the sea to green and brown. But round his neck, broken and sodden, was draped a garland made of wheat, burst grapes, and drooping flowers.

  “Come and look at this!” Mitt yelled.

  They left Wind’s Road to sail herself and stood in a row with their clothes steaming, looking down at Old Ammet and his garland from the Festival. “I think we ought to thank him, and Libby Beer,” said Hildy.

  Mitt was very self-conscious at the idea, but he made himself growl, “Thank you, sir,” with Hildy and Ynen, and then turn round and say, “Thank you, lady,” to Libby Beer. After all, he had seen Old Ammet with his own eyes.

  Then Hildy started to shiver violently. Mitt knew what was needed. He waded through the soaked blankets on the cabin floor and fetched the bottle of arris. He made Hildy and Ynen have a good swig and then took one himself. They stood about in the well going “Umpwaugh!” and making awful faces.

  “Shocking taste, isn’t it?” said Mitt. “Wait a moment, though. There comes a sort of boing inside, and then it warms the insides of your ears.”

  The boing came. It made them feel so much better that they got out the pies and fell on them ravenously. Their hands shook as they ate, and their fingers were white, wrinkly, and blistered, even Mitt’s, which had got a little soft-skinned in Hobin’s workshop.

  “I can’t
sail all through the night,” Hildy said wearily.

  “We’ve got a sea anchor,” said Ynen, and looked at Mitt to see what he thought.

  Mitt was dog-tired, too. But he knew autumn storms could come one on top of the other. He did not know what to do.

  “I know,” said Hildy, and she crawled forward to the mast. Mitt, with Ynen nodding and yawning beside him, stared at the soles of her feet and heard her say, “Please, Old Ammet, can you look after the boat tonight? But if there’s another storm, could you wake Mitt up and tell him, please?”

  “That’s right! Pick on me!” Mitt called. “Tireless Mitt they call me. Think I don’t wear out or something?” He turned to the figure of Libby Beer. “Excuse me, lady. She wants you to wake me if there’s trouble. She thinks I’m made of the same stuff as what you are. So, if I’m needed, and you have to give me a nudge, do you mind waking her up, too? She can sit and feed me nips of arris.”

  The cabin was crowded and close that night. Nobody needed blankets, so they hung them in the well to dry. They all slept like logs, even Hildy, who had the small forward bunk which had been designed for her when she was nine. If Old Ammet or Libby Beer had tried to call Mitt in the night, he did not hear them. But all seemed well in the morning. The sea was flat, and the sun made a liquid yellow path to the gently drifting Wind’s Road.

  “I think I hate pies,” said Hildy.

  “You want to try mixing about a bit,” Mitt told her. “You know—cherry flan and steak. Makes a change.”

  “You’re cheating,” said Ynen. “Those were squashed together, anyway. Try oyster and apple, Hildy. It’s—well, it’s different.”

  After this decidedly strange breakfast, they cleaned up Wind’s Road and got very hot doing it. The heat told them all that they could not yet be very far North. None of them had the slightest idea where they were. As there was no land in sight, no chart Ynen could produce was any use to them. The only thing they were sure of was that they had been blown out into deep ocean, probably more west than north.

  “I’ll steer north and east,” Ynen said. “When we sight land, I’ll keep it just on the horizon, until we see somewhere we can recognize. Tulfa Island should be easy to find. And we know that belongs to the North. Let’s get the sails up.”

  Shortly, with sails set again, in a light wind, Wind’s Road was sailing on. Mitt sat lazily just above Old Ammet, listening to the water running past her sides and admiring the way her bows cut the sea sweetly asunder. In fair conditions Wind’s Road was a beauty, he thought. He could hardly believe she had been doing her damnedest to drown them all yesterday.

  “There’s something to port over there,” Ynen called. “Can you see what it is?”

  Mitt looked too far, then too near, and finally saw a small dark thing lolloping on the swell, about a quarter of a mile away. “Could be a boat,” he called.

  “That’s what I thought,” Ynen called back, and pushed the tiller over, with a fine ruckle-ruckle of water from Wind’s Road’s elegant bows.

  “Hey! What are you doing?” Mitt called, jumping up.

  “Going to look. If it’s a boat, it will have been in the storm,” Ynen said and, for the first time for over a day, he gave Mitt a frankly unfriendly look. Hildy, beside him, gave Mitt the same look.

  Mitt felt hurt, and irritated. “You don’t have to look at me like that! I don’t want to get seen and caught, do I?”

  “If there’s anybody in it, they can’t possibly hurt you,” said Ynen. “But I have to make sure. It’s the law of the sea.”

  “Or weren’t you brought up to keep to any law?” said Hildy.

  Mitt felt Hildy need not have said that. He knew the rule as well as she did. “Don’t talk so stupid!” he said. “Can’t neither of you get it in your heads this isn’t a pleasure trip?” Then, as Hildy went white and drew in her breath to make a powerful answer, Mitt added, “But please yourself—please yourselves. Don’t mind me. I’m only the passenger.” He could see the thing was a boat now, but only a small one. It looked to be just a ship’s cockboat, torn loose in the storm. No danger there, Mitt thought.

  But when Wind’s Road had leaned nearer, in a pleasant riffling of water, they saw the boat was larger than that, about a third the size of Wind’s Road herself. There was a mast in it, still flying tag ends of rope and some fluttering pieces of sail. There was no sign of life in it.

  “It was in the storm,” Hildy said, rather hushed.

  “I’ll go alongside,” said Ynen.

  Mitt stood up to offer to do that for him. Ynen pretended not to see. Wind’s Road was his. Mitt sat down dourly by the mast. So Ynen did not trust him not to sail straight past then? Very well. Mitt grinned as Ynen went about too soon and hit the smaller boat a fair old wallop. Ynen winced at the damage to Wind’s Road’s paint. The smaller boat simply bobbed about. It was salty, battered, and draped with seaweed. It had to be hard to sink, Mitt thought, to have survived the storm. It was empty, except for a tangle of tarpaulin in the bottom. Ynen had scraped Wind’s Road for nothing, by the look of it.

  Hildy read the name painted on the stern of the derelict. “Sevenfold II.”

  “Funny!” said Mitt, coming to look. “That’s a big merchant ship out of Holand. She was tied up in harbor there the day of the Festival. What’s her boat doing here with a sail in it?”

  “She must have sailed out later and got caught in the storm,” Ynen suggested. “I suppose her crew took to the—Oh, dear!”

  The tangle of tarpaulin heaved and humped. A wet and unkempt head was thrust out, as if its owner was shakily on his hands and knees. A hoarse and wretched voice said, “Take us aboard, for pity’s sake!”

  No one had expected this. Hildy and Ynen were quite as dismayed as Mitt. In fact, it was Mitt who first pulled himself together and said, “Up you come, then. How many are you?”

  “Just me, guvnor,” said the man, and seemed to fall flat on his face again.

  Mitt exchanged a resigned and dubious look with Ynen and swung himself down into the bobbing derelict. The worst of it was it could be someone who knew him. He heaved back the tarry canvas. Underneath were several inches of water and, lying sprawled in it, a soaking, unshaven man in sailor’s clothes. He was a square, powerful sort of fellow—the kind of man you could trust to survive a storm, Mitt thought, taking the man under the arms and trying to heave him upward. He was no one Mitt knew. But when Mitt had wrestled the fellow to his knees, he thought the man had a faintly familiar look. He must have seen him around on the waterfront. One thing was certain about him. The man was a good deal better nourished than most people in Holand. Mitt simply could not lift him.

  They only got him aboard Wind’s Road because the man seemed to come to his senses enough to help a little. Mitt boosted. Hildy leaned over and dragged. The man, groaning and feebly scrambling, pulled himself over the side into the well and collapsed again. It took them some time to pull and push him into the cabin and get him onto a bunk. Meanwhile, Ynen left Sevenfold II’s boat to bob by itself and sailed on.

  “Would you like a drink of water?” Hildy asked, thinking the man must be parched with thirst.

  The answer was a growl, in which the only words they caught were “little lady” and “arris.”

  “Give him a nip of it,” Mitt said. “Bring him around.”

  Hildy fetched the bottle and put it to the man’s pale, waterlogged lips. He took such a long drink that she was alarmed. When at length she managed to drag the bottle away, the man made a feeble pounce after it. “Arragh!” Hildy backed away quickly. He seemed like an angry wild beast. But he became calmer almost at once and mumbled something else with “little lady” in it. “S’some sleep,” they heard him say.

  “That’s right. You drop off. Do you good,” Mitt said heartily. He took Hobin’s gun off the rack above the bunk, where he had left it, and put it in his belt, just to be on the safe side.

  Hildy, in much the same spirit, put the arris bottle in a locker and shot the bol
t. She looked back as they left the cabin and saw that the man’s eyes were wide open. He could have been watching. But he could also have been half unconscious. “Do you think he’s all right?” she whispered.

  “You do get rough types,” Ynen said, very much wishing he had left Sevenfold II to drift.

  “He’ll survive,” said Mitt, “if that’s what you were asking. Must be made of iron to be still alive. Let’s hope he’ll be more agreeable when he’s had some sleep.”

  “So do I,” said Hildy. The man’s eyes were still wide open, staring from a broad pale face covered with long black stubble.

  15

  For the rest of that day, the new passenger slept, with his face turned to the wall. Everyone felt this was the best thing he could do. They left him alone and almost forgot he was there.

  Ynen stayed at the tiller. It was his way of claiming Wind’s Road back after the storm. He did not exactly resent Mitt’s taking charge then, but Wind’s Road was his. She was the loveliest and the luckiest boat out of Holand, and Ynen loved her passionately. This left Hildy and Mitt nothing much to do but lounge on the cabin roof. Hildy understood Ynen perfectly. Mitt was amused, though he had to admit that if he had had the luck to own Wind’s Road, he might well have been just the same. And a bit more careful of my paint, he thought.

  Wind’s Road clipped her way elegantly northeast. No land came in sight. While they watched for land, they fell to talking, mostly about Holand. Mitt irritated Hildy because he would seem to think that life in the Palace was one of perfect bliss. So she told him what it was really like. It was beyond her to describe properly the emptiness and the lonely, neglected feeling she and Ynen had lived with, but she could tell Mitt how Hadd was as much of a tyrant in his own home as he was in his earldom.

  “Everybody was so—so obedient that they’d no characters,” she said. “The aunts were just fine ladies. And those cousins! All ‘Yes, Grandfather,’ and ‘No, Grandfather,’ and pretty dresses and despising people who didn’t feel like being obedient.”