We Didn't Mean to Go to Sea

  “It’s the lightship on the edge of the chart,” said John. “It’s the Sunk, where Jim waited about when he was coming from Dover. It can’t be anything else … We’ve done it. We’re safe outside and we haven’t hit anything. Susan, don’t you see we were right?”

  “But we oughtn’t to be here at all,” groaned Susan. “Oh. … Ough … Oh.” It was as if she had swallowed an apple whole and the apple was trying to get back and finding her throat too narrow for it.

  It was blowing harder now, and the Goblin was racing through the fog, heaving high on the top of a sea and dropping down into the trough, only to be heaved high again as another rose under her. John had found out how to make things easier for steering by using a tiller line. At first he had not known what they were for, but for some time now he had hitched a line round a cleat and was letting it take some of the tremendous pull of the tiller. Roger was sounding the foghorn every now and then. He had been a good deal frightened but was already much less so. He could feel that John was less worried than he had been, now that they were outside the shoals. And with Titty stretched on her bunk below, and Susan being sick, he felt that he and John had charge of the ship. And anyhow, he was going to be a sailor some day, like Daddy, and being frightened was not going to do any good. Besides, time was passing and nobody could go on being frightened for ever.

  “I say, John,” he said. “She’s sailing faster than her fastest.”

  “Not bad,” said John.

  *

  Those two long hoots had sounded nearer and nearer, and then had been left astern and had sounded further and further away. They never saw that lightship at all, though they must have passed it fairly close.

  *

  Two hours later there was a change. For a moment it was as if there was suddenly more light.

  “I can see a lot further than I could,” said Roger.

  “Fog’s lifting at last,” said John. “With this wind I thought it was bound to blow away.”

  “It’s going,” said Roger, looking at wisps of mist that were blowing across grey white-capped waves.

  “There’s something else coming,” said John, glancing over his shoulder.

  “What is it?” said Roger. He, too, looked astern.

  The fog was certainly lightening all round them, but astern it was as if a dark cloud was pressing down into the sea.

  “Rain,” said John.

  “The wind came first,” said Roger cheerfully, remembering the old rhyme he had often heard from Daddy … “When the wind’s before the rain, Soon you may make sail again …” “Will we put the staysail up?”

  “Of course not,” said John. “We don’t want to go any further than we need, because of getting back. Anyway, she’s got all she can carry. She’s jolly hard to hold even now. Hullo! Listen! Can you hear anything?”

  They listened. The wind thrummed in the rigging. The seas rushed noisily by. Every now and then the top of a wave broke and crashed into white foam.

  “There it is …”

  Faintly ahead of them they heard it … Two long blasts and then a short one.

  “That’s another lightship,” said John. “It’s a long way off.”

  Susan lifted a weary head and looked round.

  “It’s clearing, John. It really is. I can see quite a long way. Aren’t we going to turn back?”

  John looked astern again.

  “Not clear enough to see anything yet,” he said. “And look what’s coming up … It’s no good turning just now …”

  As he spoke the first raindrops hit them. Ping … Ping … they sounded on the taut sail.

  “Oilskins,” said John. “Quick.”

  “I can’t go down,” said Susan.

  “Take the tiller,” said John. “No, look out. This is a tough one …” He forced the tiller up with all his strength as wind and rain leapt at him together. “Good man, Roger.”

  *

  Roger was already tumbling down the companion-steps into the cabin. He struggled forward. Titty’s white face looked at him from her bunk.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “They want oilies,” said Roger. “It’s rain …”

  “Have we turned back yet?”

  “No … But I think we’re going to, soon … Susan wants to, but John says it’s no good till the rain’s passed. It’s coming up inky.”

  Roger struggled on, squeezing between mast and bunk, and pulled an armful of oilskins out of a cupboard. He slipped and sat on the floor, and stayed there to sort them out.

  “I’ve got John’s and mine,” he said. “And here’s Jim’s …”

  “Oh, I say,” said Titty. “He’ll get awfully wet without it.” For a moment she saw the skipper of the Goblin sitting on a bollard on the pierhead in the pouring rain.

  “Is this Susan’s?”

  “No. It’s mine,” said Titty. “It’s got a green tab. Hers is brown.”

  “Got it. I say, Titty, how’s your head?”

  “Better. Don’t shove my oilie away. I’m coming too.”

  Roger staggered to his feet and worked his way back through the leaping cabin. Overhead, the rain was already spattering on the cabin roof. He lurched against the table, tripped, and fell with the oilskins in his arms. He picked himself up. Rain was dripping from the companion-steps. He must hurry. He pushed the oilskins up through the companion. Someone took them from him. He scrambled after them.

  “Titty’s better,” he said. “She’s coming up …”

  “No she isn’t,” said Susan. “No good everybody getting wet. Titty! You stay where you are, lying down.”

  Titty heard her, just as her feet were on the floor. For a moment she hesitated. A lurch of the ship and a sudden throb behind her eyes decided her. It was no good going up there to be ill and make things worse for everybody. She lay down again in her bunk, listening to rain overhead, and the swish and swirl of the water on the other side of the Goblin’s thin planking … Jim on the pierhead … Mother and Bridgie … Awful … But a real voyage at last … If only Captain Nancy knew …

  *

  “You too, Roger,” said Susan. “You’d better keep dry.”

  “Who’s going to keep a look out?” said Roger. “Who’s going to sound the foghorn? And my oilskin’s a new one. No leaks at all.”

  “Oh let him stay,” said John. “Look here, Rogie. Hang on to this tiller rope for all you’re worth, just while I get my arms in. No. Finish getting into your own oilies first.”

  It was no easy job getting into oilskins while the Goblin, leaping along, threw him first to one side of the cockpit and then to the other. Roger managed it, and then, for one moment of mixed joy and terror, hung on to tiller and tiller rope and felt he was steering the ship. Susan had not bothered to put her oilskins on. She had wrapped them round her shoulders like a cloak, without trying to push her arms into the sleeves, as she sat miserably in a corner and felt the rain trickling down her neck. John, leaning with his back against the tiller to help Roger, struggled into his, pulled his sou’wester from the pocket and crammed it firmly on his head.

  “Put your sou’wester on, Susan,” he said. “No good getting your hair wet for nothing. Tie yours under your chin, Roj, or you’ll be losing it. All right now. Here it comes properly. Just listen to it on the water …”

  It came, a white wall of rain beating down into the sea.

  In one moment the red mainsail had darkened, soaked through from head to foot. The water poured from it, running along the boom, dripping on the cabin top. The rain seemed to come in bucketfuls, splashing noisily on the decks, sluicing through the scuppers of the lee rail. The ropes darkened and stiffened. Waterfalls spurted down from the cabin roof into the cockpit. Susan roused herself to pull to the sliding hatch in the cabin roof and to close the doors, but already there was a pool at the foot of the steps.

  “It’s a pity the water tank’s full,” said Roger, turning to face wind and rain, and opening his mouth as if he were a shipwrecked sai
lor on a raft, seeking to wet his parched throat.

  John gave him half a grin, no more, for the wind that had come with the rain had made it a good deal harder to keep the Goblin on her course. He wriggled his shoulders as, in spite of his sou’wester, the cold rain found its way somehow down the back of his neck. He peered through the porthole at the compass, but could hardly see it because of the water streaming down the glass.

  Roger undid the thumbscrew and swung the porthole open, the porthole that Susan had polished so carefully not a thousand years ago, though it seemed as long, but only this morning, while anchored in the shelter of Harwich harbour. John felt easier again. At least he could see the compass card, though not very well, now that the slide in the roof was shut and both doors at the top of the companion. He had to get his head close to it to make sure.

  “The rain’s as bad as the fog,” he said. “Better sound that horn again.”

  “Aye, aye, sir,” said Roger.

  Susan shuddered as those three long deafening roars came from close beside her.

  They heard the siren of a steamship far away, and the regular fog signal from a lightship, two long hoots and a short one, that had been bothering John for some time.

  One rain-squall followed another. One would pass, and for a few minutes the sea seemed to widen out around them. Then another came sweeping after them, and the sea narrowed till they were sailing in a little circle of water walled in by pouring rain.

  “I say, Susan,” said John. “You can see it’s no good turning back while it’s like this.”

  “You’ll turn back as soon as it stops, won’t you?” said Susan. “It’ll be dark before we know where we are.”

  “We’ll turn back the moment it clears enough to see things,” said John. “You don’t want to turn back before …”

  “So long as we turn back at the very first chance,” said Susan.

  “We will,” said John.

  Susan, holding firmly to the cockpit coaming and the cabin roof, got to her feet. Lakes of water splashed from her oilskin to the cockpit floor. She got first one arm into a sleeve and then the other. John, for all his careful steering, watched her hopefully.

  “Better now?” he said at last. “Good old Susan.”

  “Daddy says lots of sailors are sick every time they go to sea,” said Roger.

  “It was partly because we oughtn’t to be at sea at all,” said Susan. “How many hours have we been sailing?”

  “Hours and hours,” said Roger.

  “My watch is in the cabin,” said John. “Have a look at the clock, Roger.”

  Roger opened one half of the door to the companion and craned in. “Gosh,” he said. “It’s nearly seven …”

  “It’ll take us just as long to get back,” said Susan.

  “Longer,” said John. “Going against the wind … It’ll be dark long before we get back …”

  “Will it be tacking?” said Susan.

  “It’ll be like that night on the lake in the Swallow, when we counted a hundred first on one tack and then on the other.”

  “The night we nearly ran into an island,” said Roger.

  John was silent. There was no need to remind him of that. He remembered it very well indeed, and how Mother had said that he had very nearly been a duffer, and how all-night sailing had been forbidden. For some time he had been worrying about how he would have to steer to get back on the same course if they had the wind against them. It was going to be a good deal worse if it was dark. He told himself that the wild night in the dark on the lake had been two whole years ago, so that he was now a great deal older. But this was the sea and not a lake. There would be no friendly landing-stage to which they could tie up while they had a sleep.

  “Perhaps the wind’ll change,” he said at last.

  But the rain-squalls came one after another from the same direction, and they drove on and on, with the rain beating on the sails, the deck, the cabin roof and their oilskinned backs. The noises from the lightship that had been ahead of them, came from somewhere to the north, and then grew fainter and fainter astern.

  *

  By the time the last of the rain-squalls had blown away over a grey tossing sea the sky ahead of them was already darkening.

  “It’s stopped raining,” said Roger.

  They looked astern, and could see grey water, white tops of waves, and a strip of pale sky under grey clouds. Of the land there was nothing to be seen at all. The Goblin was utterly alone, racing along, up and down, up and down. Fast as she was sailing, the seas moved faster still. Wave after wave swept up on her quarter, lifted her, and passed on. Wave after wave came rolling up, broke with the loud noise of churning water, and left a long mane of foam.

  “Let’s turn back now,” said Susan.

  John took a deep breath and looked at the compass for help. Somewhere near south-east they had been sailing all this time. To get back they must go somewhere near north-west. He turned for a moment and stood facing the wind, getting it to feel the same on both cheeks at once, so that he knew he was facing directly into it. Worse than he had thought. The wind had veered a little. It was going to be nearly in their teeth on the return voyage. They would have to tack all the way, zigzagging to and fro along their course. And he could not be really sure even of what their course ought to be. The tide must have made that course quite different from the one shown by the compass. The ebb-tide must have swept them one way and the flood would be sweeping them the other, and then the ebb would come again. And the dark was close upon them. Well, in the open sea the dark would be no worse than the fog. But what about closing with the coast and all its shoals in the middle of the night? And there was Roger looking at him, and Susan trusting in him to bring them back as he had brought them out. He had to keep his doubts to himself. Anyway, he would try to get back to the lightships. What had Jim done? Hung about till he could see his way in. If they could find the Sunk lightship as Jim had done and keep in sight of it till dawn …

  “All right,” he said. “I’ll bring her round now. We’ll have to haul in the mainsheet as she comes round. Sing out as soon as you’re ready.”

  “Ready now,” said Susan. “The sooner the better …”

  “Now,” said John, glancing over his shoulder at the white-capped seas. He cast off the tiller rope, let the tiller swing down, and, with Susan helping, hauled in the mainsheet hand over hand.

  The next moment things began to happen.

  It was as if, suddenly, the strong wind had risen to a hurricane. You never know quite how hard the wind is blowing when you are sailing with it. It is a very different thing when you come to turn against it.

  As the Goblin came round, broadside on to the waves, she was flung over on her side. Water poured along the lee deck. John and Susan together were flung against the coaming of the cockpit. John, who was trying to make the mainsheet fast, found his hands under water fumbling at the cleat. Susan lost her grip of the sheet. John hung on, making the sheet fast while the water sluiced over his elbows.

  “Push the tiller down,” he shouted, but Susan had slipped and could not get hold of it. Roger, luckily, had been thrown from his seat into the bottom of the cockpit, and stayed there. “I might easily have been thrown right overboard,” he said afterwards. At the time he said nothing at all.

  John pulled the tiller down himself, as the Goblin picked herself up and rushed along the deep furrows of the sea. Round she came.

  Crash!

  Her bowsprit plunged into a wave. A lump of water hurled itself into the jib. Up she came again, her bowsprit pointing high in the air. Down she dived once more.

  Crash!

  A sea broke over her bows, and sheets of water flew up over the cabin roof, into the mainsail, and splashed down over the struggling figures in the cockpit.

  They came too near the wind and the jib flogged as if it would tear to pieces or pull the mast out of the ship. Another sea burst over the bows and came sluicing aft over the cabin roof. They were kne
e deep in water. John wrestled with the tiller. The thunder of the jib stopped, and the Goblin again darted forward, met a sea as if it had been a rock, dived, and rose heavily, only to meet the onrush of another breaking crest.

  Roger, in the bottom of the cockpit, with water sloshing round him, did not try to get up. John, white-faced and desperate but still thinking of how they were to get back, tried to see the swinging compass, to ease the mainsheet, and to steer against a force that was too much for him.

  “Stop it, John! Stop it! I can’t … I can’t … Ough! … Oughgulloch! … Ough! … Oh! … Oh! …” And Susan, shaken almost to pieces with this new violent motion of the battling ship, lay half across the cockpit, with her head over the coaming, and was sick. A wave broke across the cabin roof and a lump of green water hit her on the side of the head.

  “John! John!” she cried. “I can’t bear it. Stop it! … Stop it just for a minute!”

  And John, frantically feeling under water for the cleat to which the mainsheet was fast, cast it off, lost hold of it, caught it again, paid it out, and leaned back with all the weight of his body against the tiller, bracing himself against the side of the cockpit. Would she answer, or wouldn’t she? Slowly, wallowing in the trough of the sea, the Goblin turned away from the wind and back on her old course. She gathered speed once more. The wind seemed suddenly to have dropped to half its strength. Once more, running before wind and sea instead of punching into them, she was making easy weather of it, swinging on her way. It was a return to peace after a raging, desperate struggle.

  “Oh … Oh … Oh.” Susan’s spasms of seasickness were subsiding.

  Roger pulled himself up from the cockpit floor and looked back at the following seas. “Gosh!” he said. “That was pretty awful.”

  A wail for help sounded from inside the cabin. Titty had been calling before, but in the turmoil of those last few minutes nobody had heard her. Now she was beating at the cabin door from inside. Roger opened a flap of the door and Titty’s frightened face looked out from below.