We Didn't Mean to Go to Sea

  “I couldn’t think of anything else to do,” said John. “You see, she isn’t our boat, and we couldn’t see anything in the fog, and I didn’t want to go aground.”

  “Quite right, though perhaps your mother wouldn’t say so. Come on. Round this corner. But what made you keep on the same course once you were clear outside?”

  “We meant to turn round and get back when the fog stopped, and I thought if we kept on one course we’d be able to get back to where we started from by going the opposite way.”

  “And the wind wouldn’t let you?”

  “It wasn’t only that,” said Susan. “It was my fault. I was sea-sick, and when we turned round it was too awful …”

  “Head sea,” said Daddy. “Beastly. And then it would be getting dark …”

  “It was blowing much worse,” said John. “And I thought we ought to reef.”

  “Good … Manage all right?”

  “I had a life-line,” said John.

  “He nearly went overboard,” said Susan, paling even now as she remembered it.

  “But didn’t,” said Daddy. “Go on.”

  “We kept on like that all night. Susan steered a lot of the time. And then in the morning, before the dark went, we saw a light in the sky, and it was right ahead. And then when the day came we sighted the lighthouse.”

  “John went up the mast.”

  “And then?”

  “We saw the pilot steamer, and we signalled for a pilot. We were nearly sure it was the right thing to do.”

  “It was. This way …”

  “Wasn’t it lucky we kept going straight?” said Titty. “We’d never have seen Sinbad if we hadn’t …”

  “A lot of things were lucky,” said Daddy, and suddenly, while they were walking along, brought his hand down on John’s shoulder and gave it a bit of a squeeze. “You’ll be a seaman yet, my son.”

  And John, for one dreadful moment, felt that something was going wrong with his eyes. A sort of wetness, and hotness … Partly salt … Pleased though he was, he found himself biting his lower lip pretty hard, and looking the other way.

  They were walking now through the streets with little trees along the pavements. Here and there were cafés, with tables and chairs out in the open air. Girls with enormous fluttering white muslin sunbonnets and skirts like black balloons went by on bicycles. Men with flat caps, short jackets, and wide baggy trousers that came in at the ankles, strolled along, each one of them with a cigar in his mouth. A small boy, no bigger than Roger, was leaning against a lamp-post, and took a huge cigar out of his mouth, because he wanted to open his mouth to stare better as the crew of the Goblin went by.

  “He’s smoking,” said Roger.

  “They start them in their cradles,” said Daddy.

  A hand cart piled high with vegetables was rattling down the street at a good pace, pushed by an old man, who was puffing away at his cigar as he hurried along. He had almost passed them when they saw a large dog, harnessed, trotting along under the cart, between the two wheels, straining at the traces and doing its full share of the work.

  “Look at that dog!” exclaimed Roger.

  “Hard-working country,” said Daddy. “Even the dogs earn their living.”

  “Don’t let’s wait,” said Susan, as Titty turned to watch the dog.

  “You’ll see plenty more,” said Daddy, “and we’ll have those telegrams on their way in a minute.”

  They turned one more corner, and Daddy led the way into a big building. Inside it there was a large hall, and all round the hall were grilles with labels over them, some for telegrams, some for stamps, some for money orders. By each grille a queue of people were waiting.

  “Taking turns to see what’s in the cages,” said Roger.

  “That’s the animal we want,” said Daddy, and took his place at the end of one of the queues.

  “What about Dutch money?” said Titty.

  “I think I’ve got more than enough. I kept some to use aboard the boat, and I shan’t want it if I’m going to be a passenger in the Goblin.”

  “Hurry up. Hurry up. Hurry up.” Susan’s lips were moving, but no sound came out of them. She was secretly saying to herself what she would have liked to say to the old woman whose turn came before Daddy’s.

  The old woman was satisfied at last, and Daddy pushed his two telegrams through under the grille. The animal inside the cage gave no sign of excitement. He took them as calmly as if they did not matter at all, counted the words with a pencil, and then told Daddy that he must copy the telegrams out on proper telegraph forms.

  “Oh!” said Susan in despair as she saw the telegrams pushed back.

  Daddy said nothing at all. He went to a table, took two forms, copied out the telegrams, and took them back to the cage, where, luckily, no one else was waiting a turn at the moment. The animal inside counted the words all over again. Daddy handed through what seemed a lot of money and turned away.

  “Now,” he said. “We’ve done all that can be done to put things right, and we’ve got another two hours before starting back. It’s no good worrying when worrying won’t help. Cheer up, Susan. Let’s enjoy ourselves. What about a bit of stowage?”

  “Stowage?” said Titty. “Where?”

  But Roger grinned up at his father. “I’ve got room,” he said.

  “Thought you might have. And we may not be able to do much cooking under way.”

  They went out, and down the steps of the Post Office. Something seemed to have happened to the day. The sun was brighter. Everybody in Flushing seemed to be smiling or laughing. Even the colours of the shops shone out more clearly. The crew of the Goblin stood, looking up and down the street, as if they had just come out of school to begin an unexpected holiday. Already those telegrams would be flashing along the wires to let Mother know that nothing had gone seriously wrong.

  They sauntered along the pavement till they came to an open square, with a forest of masts sticking up out of a harbour at one side of it. They looked down over a low wall on a crowd of Dutch fishing boats, like those they had seen in the early morning, packed side by side, close together, with red nets hauled up above the decks to dry in the sunshine. Dutch fishermen, two and three together, were leaning on the wall above their boats, talking and smoking their cigars. Dutch women with those big spreading muslin sunbonnets, and gold ornaments at each side of their foreheads, were doing their marketing, chaffering over the fish, and filling their baskets from the wooden booths in the square.

  At the far end of the square was another of those cafés with an awning out over the pavement, and tables with white cloths under the awning. Here they stopped, and in a moment a Dutch waiter (who looked quite like an English one) had put two of the small tables side by side, making a big one, and they had sat down, and Daddy had pointed to things on the menu, and the Dutch waiter was hurrying off into the café.

  “Can’t go far wrong with soup and steak,” said Daddy. “You never know what you get when you try something with a fancy name.”

  Roger had known he was hungry before, but the others knew they were as hungry as Roger the moment they were sitting at that café table. They began at once, nibbling the crackly brown rolls that looked like English rolls but tasted different. Their mouths were watering for food. After all, it was a long time since they had had hot cocoa and tinned tongue and seen the sun come up out of the sea. It seemed almost as long, though it was only a few minutes, before the waiter came out again with a huge tray and plumped a deep plate of steaming soup before each one of them.

  “Set to,” said Daddy, and five tongues were burnt at the same moment. The soup was nearly boiling.

  They nibbled more bread and waited. And then, altogether unexpectedly, John felt his eyes closing. He opened them and looked all round him. They closed again. His head felt somehow much heavier than usual. He propped it with a hand … with both hands. Nothing would keep it up. Down it went, down … down. Daddy reached out just in time to move John’s plate bef
ore he dipped his hair in it. John had fallen asleep with his head on the table.

  “Skipper’s been a long time on the bridge,” said his father quietly.

  “That’s what happened to Jim Brading when he came to supper,” said Roger.

  “He’d sailed all the way from Dover,” said Titty.

  “And you’ve sailed a lot further than that,” said Daddy, and smiled as he caught the eye of a Dutchman who was sitting at one of the other tables and had seen John’s nodding head go down.

  Susan, who was herself very sleepy, had been on the point of waking John, but if Daddy didn’t mind John going to sleep in public, she knew it didn’t really matter. The waiter came with four glasses of lemonade and one of lager beer. No one could have told from looking at him that people did not go to sleep with their head on his tables every day of the year.

  “It’s not too hot now if you blow it a bit,” said Roger presently.

  John started, opened his eyes and sat up very straight. He began to say “Sorry,” but found himself biting on a yawn.

  “All right, old chap,” said Daddy. “You’ll feel better when you’ve had some soup.”

  The hot soup, with scraps of carrot and potato and onion floating about in it, cleared sleep away like magic. Everybody was ready to talk about the voyage, and things that had seemed awful at the time seemed almost jolly now, as they sat with Daddy under the awning on the pavement, while the sunshine poured down on the busy square and little puffs of wind tried to lift the corners of the table-cloths. Bit by bit, Daddy, without asking a lot of questions, pieced the whole tale together. “Fishmongers, they called you, did they? … That lightship must have been the North Hinder … You must have passed fairly near Thornton Ridge buoy … Lucky you didn’t turn south after those searchlights … Much further away than you thought. They were the big light at Ostend … And a nasty lot of banks between you and them … Sinbad? … I don’t suppose your mother’ll mind …” And then he looked at his watch. “It’s that Jim Brading of yours I’m worried about… If he’s gone and told your mother he’s lost you … Well, hurry up, Roger. The sooner we put to sea the better …”

  Steak had followed soup, and pancakes had followed steak, and as Roger scooped up the last drops of pink liquid left from a strawberry ice he felt he could quite well last till teatime.

  Daddy paid the bill. Titty picked up the milk-can that she had put under her chair, and they were off on their way back to the inner harbour and the Goblin.

  “We must keep a look out for a milk-shop,” said Titty.

  “What about our own suppers?” said Daddy.

  “We’ve eaten all the bread,” said Susan. “But there’s lots of tins of pemmican, and steak and kidney pudding, and fruit and things. All belonging to Jim. He’s got plenty of tea and sugar, and we’ve still got half a tin of cocoa.”

  “We must make sure about water,” said Daddy. “And we must fill up that petrol tank. No waiting about in calms for us on this trip. What sort of an engine is it?”

  “Handy Billy,” said Roger. “And it always starts first buzz. At least it did …”

  “Good … Come along in here, Susan, and, buy some bread for us.”

  They came out from a little bakery with a loaf of bread long enough to make not only Roger but everybody laugh.

  “Now for the milk,” said Daddy. “Bound to find a milk-shop somewhere near.”

  They found something better than a milk-shop. Round the corner of the street came a milk-cart, with an enormous dog between the shafts and a man in wooden shoes walking beside it. Daddy handed out some money, and Titty and Roger raced across the road. They had forgotten that they did not know Dutch, but the man seemed to understand. He stopped his cart, and the dog looked gravely round at them, while the man began drawing milk into a jug from a tap at the side of his cart. There was a hole there, as Roger pointed out, and the tap of a milk-churn poked through it. “When one churn’s empty, he simply puts another in the same place,” said Roger. Jug by jug the man measured out the milk into the can. When it came to paying, Titty simply held out her hand with all the Dutch money in it, and the man poked it about with a finger and picked out the bits of money he thought right.

  THE MILK-CART

  They came back to Kanaal Street, which runs alongside the inner harbour, and there was the Goblin where they had left her, tied up to the piling, just ahead of the pilot steamer like the one they had met at sea. But something seemed to be happening. There was a crowd of children on the grass between the street and the water, and … no … yes … there was someone actually aboard.

  “Hi,” said Roger. “Pirates.”

  “Steady,” said Daddy, and the next moment they saw it was their friend the pilot, who was sitting on the cabin roof with a rolled up chart across his knees, smoking a cigar and talking to a row of Dutch boys and girls who were looking down at him. He may have been telling them about the voyage of the Goblin, for all the Dutch children turned round as the crew of the Goblin crossed the road and came to the gangplank, and they heard the words “Nord See” said several times with great respect.

  “Well, Capten,” said the pilot to John. “These boys and girls dey not believe you bring your ship across de Nord See. Hey? But I tell dem. And here I have a chart for your fader. De wind go round and you will have fine passage home.”

  And then he unrolled the chart on the cabin roof, and pointed out the lightships marked on it, and told Daddy that he had put right the descriptions of the lights. “Some dey change last year. It is an old chart, but you will find it marked right now.”

  Daddy spoke of petrol and water, and the pilot turned to the crowd of children at the waterside. In a moment two of the boys were racing each other along the street, and two more had run across and into the little shop where the wooden shoes were hanging in the doorway.

  A man came to the door of the shop and shouted something in Dutch to the pilot. The pilot shouted back.

  “All right,” he said to Daddy. “Dis man give you all de water you want.” He shouted again, and the man went back into his shop, and presently a boy came staggering across the road with a can of water that slopped over in the dust about his feet. He carried it along the gangplank, and passed it on board, and Susan and John between them poured it down into the water tank under the cockpit floor. The Dutch children fought for the can when they passed it back, and two small girls brought the next load. Then another boy had a turn, and so on, till the water showed in the bung-hole of the tank, and the Goblin had no room for any more.

  There was very nearly an accident with the petrol. Daddy had said “Petrol” to the pilot, and the pilot had shouted “Petrol” to the children ashore, and the boys came back with a young Dutchman carrying two big green tins. Daddy unscrewed the cap of one of them, opened the empty petrol tank, and began to pour the stuff in through a funnel, when he noticed that instead of being clear, like water, the petrol was bright blue. He stopped pouring instantly and sniffed.

  “But this is paraffin,” he said. “Where’s the paraffin tin, John? We’ll want some of this for our navigation lights.”

  The pilot roared with laughter. “Ah,” he said. “It is benzine you want … not petrol …,” and the young Dutchman who had brought the tins laughed too, and went off and presently came back with two more.

  This time Daddy sniffed before pouring. “That’s the stuff,” he said.

  “Some engines take petrol,” said the pilot, “and some take benzine, and what you call petrol we in Holland call benzine … dat is de difference.”

  “Well, I’m glad you colour it blue,” said Daddy. “We’d have been in a mess if we’d filled the tank with the wrong stuff.”

  At last everything was ready and the benzine paid for. Daddy looked across the road where the shopman was smiling in his doorway. “What about paying for the water?” he said.

  “He give you dat,” said the pilot. “Eh?” He shouted across the road, and the man smiled still wider, and threw out
his hands in a manner that said clearly without any words at all that he was not going to charge them anything.

  “Half a minute,” said Daddy. “Didn’t somebody say he’d like wooden shoes? You’d better take something back from Holland now you’re here. Let’s see if he’s got anything that would do for Bridget.”

  All four of them went ashore by the plank. “It’s a good plank to walk,” said Roger, “and no sharks.” Daddy went too, counting up how much Dutch money he had left. There was just enough for five pairs of wooden shoes (one pair two sizes smaller than Roger’s, which Susan thought would be about right for Bridget), one toothbrush, a box of cigars and a small Dutch doll dressed exactly like one of the little Dutch girls who stood and giggled in the doorway of the shop, watching Roger try on his wooden shoes.

  They went back, laden, to the Goblin, and Roger put childish things, like wooden shoes, behind him. He had to explain to Daddy just what Jim Brading did before starting the engine.

  “There’s plenty of oil in it already,” he said. “He’d only just filled up with oil when the petrol ran out. But he said never to start it without having a look at the stern tube and screwing in more grease.”

  “Well, have a look at it,” said Daddy. Roger lifted a door in the floor of the cockpit, and reached down to give a turn or two to the greaser. “Better you than me,” said Daddy. “These clothes aren’t meant for engine-rooms. Now then. All clear there.” He slipped down into the cabin. “Petrol on. Here goes … Well, that’s an engine worth having aboard.” The little Handy Billy under the companion-steps went off at the first swing, chug, chugging away as if it had been only waiting for its chance.

  Daddy came up again.

  “Cast off forrard, John … Stern rope … Thank you.”

  One of the small Dutch boys handed the stern warp aboard.

  “Well, goodbye, pilot, and thank you very much.”

  “I come wid you to de lock,” said the pilot. “See you drough. Perhaps I take de tiller. Yes?”

  The Goblin, her engine chug, chugging quietly, slid away from the piling. The pilot headed out into the harbour and then turned towards the locks. “You must give de signal,” he said. “Sound de horn.”