“He’s on his way home from China,” said John.
“He may be here almost any day,” said Susan … “Roger, that mug isn’t half dry.”
“He telegraphed,” said Roger, giving the mug another wipe. “He’s coming overland to save time.”
“We’re going to meet him at Harwich.”
“By yourselves?”
“Oh no. Mother and Bridget are here too. We’re all at Alma Cottage.”
“Miss Powell’s? You couldn’t be in a better place. Look here, what are your names? Mine’s Jim Brading.”
“Walker,” said John. “This is Susan. This is Titty. I’m John …”
“And I’m Roger,” said Roger. “Does your engine really work?”
“Jolly well,” said Jim Brading, “but I never use it if I can use sails instead.”
“Oh,” said Roger. It had been all very well for John to say that sails were the only things that mattered, but this last term at school Roger had once more begun to think a good deal about engines. He had a friend who thought about nothing else.
Titty had been making up her mind to ask a question.
“Do you live in the Goblin all the time?” she said at last.
“Wish I did,” said Jim. “I’m going up to Oxford in another month. But I’ll be living in her till then.”
“Do you live at Pin Mill?” asked Roger.
“Only in Goblin,” said Jim. “Pin Mill’s her home port. She’s always here when we’re not cruising. I’ve got my uncle coming on Monday and we’re going to have a try for Scotland. He always likes to start from Pin Mill. I’ve had her down in the South the last ten days, but the man who was with me had to go back to work.”
“What’s the furthest you’ve ever been in her?” asked John.
“Uncle Bob and I took her down to Falmouth and back one year.”
“We used to sail there with Daddy when he was on leave,” said John. “But only in an open boat. We never had one we could sleep in.”
“Like to spend a night in the Goblin?” said Jim, smiling.
“Rather,” said everybody at once.
“I don’t see why you shouldn’t,” said Jim. “No. Not there. Let’s get by. I know where the things go. Every plate has its place and each mug has its own hook.” He worked his way past the table while they pulled their legs out of the way.
“We’d love to come, if only we could,” said Susan. “Oh, I say, John, just look at the clock. Miss Powell’ll have had supper ready ages ago, and we promised we wouldn’t be late.”
Jim’s broad back was towards them as he stowed away the things in the cupboards under galley and sink. He slammed the doors to, latched them and turned round. “Well,” he said. “That’s that. Many thanks. Now for shore and breakfast. But what do you think? If I told your mother I wanted a crew for a couple of days? I could cram you all in, if I slept on the floor.”
“Oh gosh!” said Roger.
But at that moment they heard voices outside and the splash of oars.
“They’ll be aboard here, Ma’am.” It was Frank, the boatman, who had lent them their dinghy.
“Oh, I say,” said Susan. “Mother’s had to come off to look for us.”
Everybody jumped up.
“John! Susan!” That was Mother calling outside.
“Ahoy, Roger!” That was Bridget’s shrill yell.
For a moment Mother and Bridget and Frank, the boatman, had been lying alongside what had seemed to be a deserted ship, except for the two dinghies astern. Now, one after another, Roger, Jim Brading, Susan, Titty and John came climbing up out of the cabin.
“I do hope they haven’t been bothering you,” said Mother to the skipper of the Goblin. “You know,” she added to the others, “I didn’t mean you to go and make a nuisance of yourselves to strange boats.”
“We haven’t,” said Roger. “He’s said ‘Thank you’ several times. He’s even asked us to come and be a crew.”
“They’ve been no end of a help,” said Jim. “They’ve moored my ship, and done my washing up, and I’ve been very glad to have them.”
“His name’s Jim Brading,” said Roger, “and he’s sailed her from Dover since yesterday.”
“By himself,” said Titty.
“Single-handed,” said John.
“Then he must be very nearly dead,” said Mother, “and not wanting four of you getting in his way.”
“Did you have a good passage, Sir?” asked Frank.
“Not enough wind,” said Jim. “And a good deal of fog by the Sunk.”
“He hasn’t had anything but soup and biscuits since yesterday,” said Susan.
“He’s going to have breakfast now, at the inn,” said Titty, “just when we’re going to have our supper.”
Mother looked at Jim. She liked what she saw of him and knew very well what they wanted.
“Our supper is waiting for us,” she said, smiling. “If he’d like to come, you’d better bring him with you. Miss Powell’s sure to have given us more than enough.”
“Do come,” said Titty.
“Please,” said Susan.
“We’d all like you to,” said John.
“I expect there’ll be soup,” said Roger.
“That’s really very good of you,” said Jim.
Frank pulled for the shore, so that Mrs Walker and Bridget might go on ahead and tell Miss Powell they had a guest. The others climbed down into their dinghy and followed, giving it up to Frank who waited for them on the hard. Jim, close after them, paddled ashore in the Imp. They watched him haul the Imp a long way up, because the tide had begun to come in again. Then they walked up the hard with their new friend in the midst of them, like four tugs bringing a liner into port.
CHAPTER II
SLEEPY SKIPPER
“WELL, MASTER JIM,” said Miss Powell, who was standing in the doorway of the cottage as they climbed up the steps out of the lane. “You want a bit of sleep by the look of you.”
“I didn’t have any last night,” said Jim Brading. “How are you, Miss Powell? Uncle Bob’s coming down next week.”
“Do you know him?” asked Titty.
Miss Powell laughed. “Know Jim Brading? I should think I do. I’ve known him since he was so high and his uncle used to wade ashore from his little boat with Jim Brading kicking under his arm. You’ll be taller than your uncle now, won’t you, Jim? Come along in now. Supper’s just ready and I dare say you’ll be ready for it.”
*
“’Sh!”
“Don’t wake him!”
Mother came into a strangely silent room.
Susan was standing by her chair, just ready to sit down. She had a finger to her lips. Titty and Roger were already seated at the round table on which a white cloth, plates, knives, forks and spoons had been laid for supper. John, holding Bridget by the hand, was standing with his back to the window. All five of them were looking at Jim Brading and keeping as quiet as they knew how. And Jim Brading, seated at the table between Titty and Roger, was fast asleep. They had chosen his place for him and sat down beside him. Jim had leaned on the table and, somehow, his head had dropped lower and lower, and now, from the doorway, Mother saw only a curly mop of hair, broad shoulders in a blue jersey, elbows wide among the plates. For Jim Brading the world had ceased to exist.
“We were talking to him,” whispered Titty, “and he just flopped.”
“He’s tired out,” whispered Susan.
Roger gently pulled a plate away from under one blue elbow that, if it had moved a little further, might have pushed it over the edge of the table.
“It must be after his bed-time,” said Bridget.
“’Sh!” said Susan.
John watched, wondering. So that was what you felt like after an all-night passage single-handed in a ship of your own. How soon would he have a ship himself, and sail all day and all night and bring her into port, moor her and tidy her and then, with nothing left to worry about, hold up no longer and let the tired
ness he had fought for hours close happily over his head?
Mother moved from the doorway to let Miss Powell come in with the supper.
Miss Powell laughed quietly, and put the tray down without waking Jim. “He’ll be all right when he’s had a bit of food,” she said. “Many a time I’ve seen him and his uncle asleep the both of them when they’ve come in from sea. I might have known he was coming, with the supper I’ve got for you … pea soup and a mushroom omelette … It was what they always asked for if they’d found time to let me know they were coming. They would send me a telegram, ‘PEA SOUP AND OMELETTE PLEASE,’ and I would know they were on their way.”
SH! ’SH!
John, Bridget and Susan slipped silently into their places as Mother sat down and began to ladle out the soup into blue willow pattern soup plates.
“Shall I wake him?” said Roger. “I bet he’s hungry.”
“The soup’s very hot,” said Susan. “No need to wake him for a minute or two.”
But Jim Brading stirred suddenly, and flung out one hand, knocking over a glass which Titty caught just as it was rolling off the table.
“North half West for the Long Sand Head,” muttered Jim, as if he were repeating to himself something he had learnt by heart. That flung-out hand was feeling for the tiller. He lifted his head with a jerk and stared about him. “Oh, I say … I’m dreadfully sorry … Look here … I’m not fit to … How long have I been asleep?”
“Only a minute or two,” said Titty.
John and Susan looked at Mother, almost as if to say, “He really couldn’t help it.” After all, he was their guest really.
But you could always count on Mother to understand. She was laughing.
“That’s all right,” she was saying. “I know just how you feel. Why, when I was a girl in Australia I’ve often fallen asleep on horseback, riding home after a dance, and been waked by the horse stopping and snuffing at the stable door. You’ll feel better when you’ve had some hot soup.”
And really, though they did not know it at the time, Jim’s falling asleep was the best thing that could have happened. You cannot think of someone as a stranger when you have seen him sprawling asleep across your supper table. There was a smile in Mother’s eyes when she looked at their new friend after that. Big though he was, with his schooldays behind him, she was thinking of him much as she thought of John. Those few minutes when, with his head among the plates, he had been thinking he was still steering the Goblin through the night, had somehow made him one of the family.
Presently they were talking as if they had known him all their lives, and he had told them to call him Jim and not to bother about the “Mr Brading.” Nor was it only John, Susan, Titty and Roger who asked questions. Mother asked them too, and Jim, waking up with the help of the soup and Miss Powell’s beautiful omelette, found himself talking of his first long voyages with his uncle, and of how gradually his uncle had let him do more and more of the work of the ship, and of how at last he had given him the Goblin for his own, on condition that now and then, when his rheumatism let him, he might join her again and be crew for her new skipper.
“Jolly good uncle,” said Roger.
“He is,” said Jim. “You see I left Rugby last term and I had a bit of luck with a scholarship to Oxford, and he promised her to me if I did. Not much rheumatism about him either. That was only his joke. He’s coming cruising next week.”
Not another word had been said about their spending a night in the Goblin. Perhaps, they were thinking, it had been just politeness when Jim Brading had said he didn’t see why they shouldn’t, so there was really nothing to be disappointed about. And then, suddenly, the offer was made again, and Mother was there to hear it, and somehow, now, after Jim’s falling asleep on the table, it sounded different, more real, more as if it were meant, more possible altogether.
“What are you going to do till he comes?” asked Roger.
“Hang about,” said Jim. “And look here, I meant what I said. Why shouldn’t you join for a few days? I can cram in four of you …”
“Sleeping on board,” said Titty. “Oh, Mother …”
“They’d love it, of course,” said Mother, “but I can’t let them go just now. Their father’s on his way home, and we’ve come here on purpose to meet him at Harwich, and I can’t meet him and have to explain that most of his family’s gone off to sea.”
“I wouldn’t take them to sea,” said Jim. “There’s the Orwell and the Stour and Harwich harbour. If you’ll let me have them for three days there’s lots we could do without ever going outside the Beach End buoy.”
“I say, Mother, couldn’t we?” said John.
“He’s got an engine,” said Roger.
“You go right down into a real cabin,” said Titty.
“I’ve four proper bunks,” said Jim. “The only trouble is I’m a bit short of bedding. I’ve only got blankets for two … But I’m sure I could borrow some …”
“Roger!”
But Roger was out of the room already, and the higher notes of eager talk could be heard from the other end of the passage. Almost at once he was back.
“Miss Powell says it’s quite all right,” he said. “We can take the blankets off our beds.”
“Oh, Roger!” laughed Mother. “I never said you could ask her. I really can’t take the risk. We may get a telegram from Daddy any day, and you don’t want to miss being at Harwich to meet him.”
“But you said you didn’t think he could be here before Saturday?” said Titty.
“And what if Saturday comes and you are all floating about on the river?”
Jim Brading looked round the table at the eager faces of his would-be crew. He had made that first suggestion almost in fun, but now it did seem rather a pity if they couldn’t come. He rather liked the idea of having for once a crew a little younger than himself.
“If you say when you want them to be back, I’ll promise they shall be at Pin Mill in plenty of time,” he said. And then, “We could report by telephone every day, from Ipswich, or Felixstowe Dock, or Shotley, wherever we happened to be…”
“Can’t I go too?” said Bridget.
“You’re not old enough,” said Mother, “and there isn’t room for you anyway.”
John half jumped up from his chair.
“She’s going to say ‘Yes,’” he almost shouted.
“Well, I don’t think it’s fair,” said Bridget. “I’ve been growing up as fast as I can.”
“I’m not asked, either,” said Mother. “And, Bridget, somebody’s got to stay and take care of me.”
“I could sleep in the cockpit all right,” said Jim doubtfully, “but even if I did there wouldn’t really be room for six.”
“No. No. No,” said Mrs Walker. “I didn’t mean that. Bridget and I have a lot to do. But, mind you, I haven’t said they can come …”
“But you’re going to,” said Roger.
“Daddy always says, ‘Grab a chance and you won’t be sorry for a might-have-been,’” said Titty.
“We’d learn an awful lot,” said John.
“I’m going to sleep on it,” said Mother. “And Mr Brading must sleep on it too. He may wake wiser in the morning and not want to clutter his boat up with a cargo of children.”
“Mother!” said Susan who, so far, had not put in a word.
But Mother was not to be moved. “We’ll sleep on it,” she said, “and think about it again in the morning … if he hasn’t sailed away in a hurry to be rid of you. And now, Bridget ought to be in bed, and so ought Mr Brading … Remember he was at sea all last night.”
“We’ll see him off,” said Roger, as Jim Brading, who at the thought of sleep was once more feeling his eyes closing, got up and thanked Mrs Walker for his supper.
It was growing dark outside, very dark, and they used their pocket torches to find the Imp, and to help Jim Brading to launch her off the hard.
“Thank you very much for letting us come on board,” said John. br />
“Thank you,” said Jim Brading.
Not one of them, not even Roger, said a word about joining the Goblin. They felt, somehow, that it would not be fair. Mother had said that he was to sleep on it, and sleep on it he must.
“Good night!” they called as he pushed off.
“Good night!” he called back.
The four of them stood on the hard in the darkness as he rowed away. It was a still, quiet night, and they heard his oars long after they could no longer see him. Then they heard a slight bump and the noise of oars came to an end.
“He must be jolly sleepy or he wouldn’t have bumped,” said John.
A moment later a light shone out through the portholes of the Goblin. He had lit the lamp in the cabin. They lingered, watching. The light went out.
“I say,” said Roger. “Do you think he had time to undress?”
CHAPTER III
“WE’VE ALL PROMISED”
“WHERE’S MOTHER?”
Mother’s bedroom door was open, but there was no one inside. John banged on the door of the room in which Susan, Titty and Bridget were finishing their dressing.
“We’re just coming down,” shouted Bridget. “Susan’s nearly done my last plait.”
“Mother’s gone out,” cried Roger, as John came down into the little parlour. “And her toast’s getting cold.”
They went to the door that opened into the garden and saw Mother coming across from the boatsheds. They ran down the steps to meet her.
“Hullo!” she said, and then, as she saw them look out beyond the hard to make sure that the Goblin was still lying there moored among the other yachts in the morning sunshine, she told them something that filled their hearts with hope. “I’ve been collecting testimonials for that young man.”
“Good ones?” asked Roger.
“Everybody here seems to think a lot of him. Miss Powell says he’s the best-heartedest young man she ever knew. Frank, the boatman, says, ‘What he don’t know about handling that boat of his won’t help anyone.’ The boatbuilder says he’d trust him anywhere, and that old man scraping spars says, ‘They don’t fare to come to no harm along of Jim Brading.’”