He yawned desperately.
Susan went on.
“It isn’t as rough as it was. I wonder if I’ll be able to get them something hot for breakfast. They’ll be pretty hungry when they wake up …”
“Roger always is …”
“I say, John, do you know that today is the day we ought to be back at Pin Mill? In time for tea. It’ll be too awful if Daddy comes back and Mother doesn’t know where we are … John … JOHN!”
He started violently. Already the flashes of the lightship had shifted back to the port bow.
“Sorry.”
Again he brought the Goblin back to her course.
“It’ll take ages to get back,” said Susan. “We must have come a very long way.”
“She’s jolly fast,” said John. “And she steers beautifully. Some day I’ll have a boat like her. She steers nearly as easily as old Swallow. Do you remember how we used to watch for waggles in each other’s wakes … when we were … when we were learning, I mean … ow!”
A sharp pain caught him just above the knee. Susan had reached out and pinched him as hard as she could.
“Good,” he said, when he knew what had happened. “Go on. Do it again. Do it every few minutes. What was I saying?”
“You’d stopped saying anything,” said Susan. “You were asleep.”
“Well, go on pinching,” said John. “OW! You needn’t do it quite so hard while I’m awake.”
“I can’t see in the dark whether you’re awake or not.”
“Pinch whenever those lights get on the wrong side of the bowsprit. I want to keep them on the starboard bow.”
“There’s another steamer,” said Susan.
Far away to the south they could see the two masthead lights. For some time John kept awake, watching anxiously to see the steamer’s red and green navigation lights. But she was too far away and presently even the masthead lights disappeared.
John found Susan jerking at his arm.
“Look here, John. It’s no good. You’d better let me steer for a bit. You can’t go on for ever.”
He hesitated.
“See if you can,” he said at last, and made room for her in the steerman’s seat. He was so stiff that he could hardly move. “That’s right. Here’s the tiller rope. It helps a lot when she’s really pulling. Don’t try to hold her too hard. Keep her going as we are. Can you see the compass? Keep it about south-east … That’s right … south-east and a bit east … With the lightship on the starboard bow … We’ll be up to her quite soon.”
“I can manage all right,” said Susan after a minute. “You go to sleep for a bit.”
“No,” said John. “I don’t want to now … I’ll keep a look out …”
“When we come to the lightship, what shall we do next?”
“We’ll go straight on till daylight. We’ll still be in sight of the lightship and then we can come back till we’re near enough to shout … I’m not going anywhere near her in the dark.”
“You’d much better go to sleep,” said Susan. “I’ll wake you the minute I want help.”
“No … No …” said John. He lifted his arms and stretched them. Lovely it was, just for a few minutes, not to be steering. And Susan was doing quite well. He peeped in at the compass, and then settled down in Susan’s old place, in the corner of the cockpit, looking forward at the flashes from the lightship … Just for a few minutes … not steering … And then he would take on again … His head fell forward against the cabin, cold and damp … He let it rest there … Just for one minute … It wouldn’t matter even if his eyes did close …
CHAPTER XVI
DAWN AT SEA
SOMETHING HARD WAS pressing against his forehead. Someone was talking … saying his name. John woke with a jerk.
“John … John.”
That was Susan’s voice. He sat up and stared about him.
“Gosh!” he said. “Have I been asleep?”
“I’ve been keeping her going about south-east and a bit east,” said Susan. “But we passed the lightship a long time ago. I kept straight on like you said. It’s still dark, but there’s something else to steer by now. A sort of glimmer right ahead. And there are searchlights in the sky right away over there … in the south-west … I put off waking you as long as I could.”
John heard the pride in her voice. Everything had changed since he had let her take the tiller while he had a few minutes’ rest. A few minutes? Why half the night had gone. When he had changed places with Susan they had had to feel their way about in the cockpit. He had had to take her hand and put it on the tiller. She had been just a lump of blackness in the dark. And now, though it was still night, he could see exactly where she was. He looked astern for the flashes of the lightship. They were gone. But ahead of them, dead on the bowsprit end, the loom of a light showed in the sky, though he could not see the sparkle of the light itself. It must be still below the horizon. He looked away to the south-west, over the starboard quarter. Quick, one after another, two faint beams swung across the sky like the hands of a clock chasing each other round and round.
THE LOOM OF A LIGHTHOUSE
John stared at them, and then again watched for that sudden pale glow right ahead that gleamed and died and presently gleamed again.
“Gosh!” said John. “Those searchlights must be on land, and I bet that thing ahead’s a lighthouse.”
“Hadn’t we better turn back at once?” said Susan. “It’ll be daylight by the time we get back to that lightship.”
John faced the wind and then looked in at the compass. South-east by east they were heading. With the wind as it was they would never be able to head north-west by west to get back over the same course.
“We’ll keep on till daylight,” he said. “We’d only get into a mess if we tried tacking before we can see the ropes and things. Look here, I’ll take the tiller again. Are you all right in your inside?”
“Quite,” said Susan. “Only a bit cold. Aren’t you?”
“Rather.”
“I’m going to try making tea,” said Susan.
“What about cocoa?” said John.
“All right. If only the kettle’ll stay put.”
“I say,” said John. “The night’s nearly over. It’s going to be daylight quite soon.”
“I know.”
Susan opened the doors at the top of the companion and, holding tight, went backwards down the steps into the warm glow of the lighted cabin. John steered for that glimmer in the sky that kept showing far ahead. South-east by east … Southeast … South-east by east … East-south-east … Could they really have come right across? Were those searchlights somewhere in France … or Belgium … or Holland? He wished he could remember what the map looked like. Jolly cold it was, but who cared? Dawn was coming. Susan was all right again. The wind had gone down. The sea wasn’t half as bad as it had been. And the Goblin was still afloat, swinging comfortably along just as if she had not found out that Jim Brading was not at her tiller. John’s hands might be a bit cold, but there was a pleasant glow in his inside at the thought of how much worse things might have been. Things were very different now from what they had been in those dreadful moments when Susan and he had nearly quarrelled, when she had wanted to do one thing and he had known that they ought to do another, and Susan had cried, and Titty had had one of her heads, and Roger had been on the edge of being frightened, and Susan had been so dreadfully ill. He leaned forward and looked down into the cabin. Susan had got rid of her oilskin and was at the foot of the companion-steps, busy with the methylated spirit can, getting ready for the starting of the cooking stove. She was squirting the spirit into its little cup below the burner. She was putting the can in the sink. She was striking a match to light the stove. She was pulling to one of the doors to shield the blue flame from the wind. Now she was stooping at the foot of the steps, filling the kettle from the fresh-water tap. Good old Susan.
The stove in the galley burst into a roar. He saw Susan’s ha
nd putting the kettle carefully in its place on the top of it.
Voices sounded below.
“Yaw … aw … aw …. aw … aw … aw …” Roger was giving one of his best and loudest morning yawns.
“Go to sleep!” That was Susan.
“Is it nearly morning?” That was Titty. And then, “She isn’t bobbing about like she was. Are we back in harbour?”
“No.”
“Shall I get up?”
“No. You lie still and keep warm. How’s your head?”
“It wants to get up.”
“How is it?”
“Not aching.”
“It’s still dark outside,” said Roger.
“You lie down. There’s no need for either of you to get up yet.”
“What are you doing?”
“Boiling a kettle.”
“Breakfast?”
“Cocoa.”
“Good.”
“You won’t have any if you don’t lie quiet till it’s ready.”
John, listening, smiled in the darkness outside. This was the old Susan indeed. If she was once again feeling like a ship’s mate and keeping the crew in order she couldn’t have been pretending when she said she wasn’t ill any more.
He smiled in the darkness and at the darkness, which was quickly growing less dark. It was jolly cold all the same. He tried standing to steer with the tiller in the crook of his arm and one hand in his pocket getting warm while he used the other to steady himself with a grip on the cockpit coaming. After a few minutes he shifted to the other side of the tiller to give the other hand a chance.
That glow in the sky, that he was sure must come from a lighthouse on land, kept on coming every few seconds, but it was feebler than it had been. The lighthouse couldn’t be a ship and moving away? No. Of course, the loom of it was growing dimmer because over there in the east the dawn was coming. He could no longer see those revolving beams crossing the sky in the south-west. Gosh! When the dawn did come they might be in sight of land. And what land? Land that they had never seen before. He stared all round him, trying to see what there was where sky and sea met each other.
Susan was arranging four of the red Woolworth mugs in a row along one of the steps in the companion. John grinned again, remembering, now that it was safely past, that awful moment when the steamship had been heading for them in the night and they had flashed the big torch through the red Woolworth plate. Steam was coming from the kettle. Little comforting clouds drifted away from it, showing that the stove roaring away beneath it was really doing its work. Susan was sitting on the starboard bunk at the foot of the steps, with a foot up against the opposite bunk to keep her steady. She had got out the bread-tin and was cutting thick slices, buttering each slice before she cut it. John knew suddenly that he was very hungry. Hullo, she was coming up to talk to him.
“John, let’s have the ham … Paper parcel in the open locker behind you.”
He felt for it and could not find it. He saw something pale on the cockpit floor. He stooped and found a flabby lump.
“I say, it must have fallen out ages ago. I’ve been treading on it. I thought I felt something soft. And it’s pretty well sopping wet.”
There was a pause. Susan had gone back into the cabin to look into the cupboard behind that starboard bunk. There she was again.
“John.”
“Yes.”
“They’d better not have it if it’s all wet. Do you think I ought to open one of Jim Brading’s tongues?”
“Why not?”
“Do you think he’d want us to?”
“Jolly good idea,” came Roger’s voice from behind her.
With every minute now it was getting lighter. That faint glimmer under the bowsprit end was going to disappear altogether when darkness turned to dawn. And with the light they would have to bring the ship about and try to go the other way. All the time, though he had tried not to think of it, John had been dreading the moment when he would have to begin to find his way back. It was going to be very difficult. Wasn’t there something better he could do? A new tremendous idea was forming in his mind. But what would Susan say to it? He looked back into the darkness and then forward again at that faint, promising glimmer.
*
A strong jet of steam was pouring across the companion from the spout of the kettle on the stove. John, looking down into the cabin, saw the lid of the bread-tin on the floor, with four thick slices of bread and butter on it and four large hunks of tinned tongue. Susan came to the companion again, lifted the kettle from the stove and began to pour boiling water into the mugs waiting in a row on the top step.
“Don’t fill them too full,” said John.
“Not going to. But she’s ever so much steadier than she was.”
She shovelled a heaped spoonful of powdered milk and cocoa out of a tin into each mug. She stirred them one by one and added a little more hot water.
“Can’t we get up now?” came Roger’s voice.
“All right. Come on, Titty. You’ll both have to sit on Roger’s bunk. Here you are, John.”
John reached down for his mug, and put it carefully on the seat, close against the coaming so that it should not slide about. Lovely it was, just to feel the warmth of the mug with a cold hand. Susan handed up his slice of bread and butter with a hunk of tongue. Dawn was certainly coming. He could quite easily see the pale square of bread and butter when he put it down by the mug.
COOKING AND STEERING
In the lighted cabin he could see Titty and Roger sitting side by side on the port bunk, with their mugs of boiling cocoa cooling between their feet on the cabin floor. Susan, with her mug in her hands, was sitting on the bottom step of the companion. The Goblin was swinging easily along, but she had decided not to take the risk of putting things on the table. John grinned again, burnt his lips with his first sip of cocoa, cooled them with a bite of bread and butter and another of tongue, and attended to his steering. South-east by east … Already the sky ahead of them was paling along the edge of the sea and it was hopeless to try to see the glimmer of the lighthouse. Never mind. South-east by east. He had only to keep her so and sooner or later he would see the lighthouse itself.
*
The sea was changing colour. It had been black as the night, so black that even the white crests of the waves had been invisible. Then they had shown like grey ghosts of themselves when a wave turned over and foamed by close to the Goblin’s side. It was still dark astern, but ahead, pale green sky showed on the horizon. The little world in which the Goblin had been moving all night was growing wider. He could see the waves alongside. He could see them ten yards away, twenty yards away. Even beyond that he could see their ghosts. The waves were the colour of the old pewter mug on the kitchen mantelpiece at Holly Howe. Further and further he could see. Waves everywhere, but waves somehow kindlier than they had been. The white crests were not roaring after each other. Wave after wave rolled by smooth-topped and harmless. Even where there were white crests, they were low and short, just little sudden churning bits of foam that turned to lacework on the back of a wave and slipped down into the trough behind it. Why, sailing out of Falmouth with Daddy when he had been quite a little boy, they had been among waves like these and Daddy had thought nothing of them at all.
Where was Daddy now? Lying in a train perhaps, jolting along, bang, bang, bangetty bang, getting nearer England every minute? But was he? You never knew with Daddy. What if he had managed to get across Asia and Europe quicker than he had expected? What if Roger had been right and Daddy had been sleeping in his cabin in that very steamer that had so nearly run down the Goblin in the night? He might be already at Harwich, where they were to meet him, and with every minute the Goblin was further and further away. The skin on the backs of John’s hands went all tickly as he thought of it. How long would it take them to get back? Even if they could … He was more than ever certain that that new idea of his was right. But what would Susan say to it? He tried hard to see further tha
n the light would let him over that pewter-coloured sea.
“Ready for some more cocoa?”
Susan’s voice, now that she was back at housekeeping, giving people meals, sounded calm and cheerful. What would it be when he told her what he had in mind?
John passed down his mug.
“Hullo!” “Hullo!” shouted Titty and Roger from the cabin, both feeling much more like themselves with hot cocoa inside them and all that tongue and bread and butter.
“Hullo!” said John.
“We’re coming on deck after our second mugs,” said Roger.
“Finish your breakfasts first,” said Susan.
*
Ten minutes later Mate and Able-seamen climbed up the companion-steps and out into the cockpit. Turning up the collars of their oilskins against the cool morning wind, for they were coming up warm out of the snug cabin, they looked about them. A long, narrow strip of cloud hung above the horizon. In the north-east the sky was brightening above it. The stars were fewer than they had been. They were going out one after another, vanishing even while they looked at them.
“Where’s the land?” said Susan.
John pointed straight ahead.
“What land will it be?” asked Titty.
“France,” said Roger. “Don’t you remember? ‘The further ’tis from England, the nearer ’tis to France.’”
“It may not be France at all,” said Titty. “It may be just anywhere. It might even be uninhabited. You never know. There are uninhabited bits all over the place, even in England.”
“It isn’t uninhabited,” said John. “There’s a lighthouse. You can’t see it now, but I could see the loom of it in the sky while it was still dark. Susan saw it too.”
The brightness in the sky spread upwards. The darkness dropped towards the sea astern of them. A faint pink glow showed in the green. The cloud above the horizon ahead of them looked as if its edges had caught fire. They stared this way and that over a dull grey sea that seemed to stretch for ever. Fog, rain-squalls and then the night had shut them in with their ship. Now for the first time they felt how very large the sea was and how very small the Goblin.