We Didn't Mean to Go to Sea

  Very soon after the Cork lightship was clear for all to see there was such a general shout of “Land ho!” that the only thing to do was to hand out shillings all round, if only there had been enough shillings. But as there were no more, they agreed to trust Daddy until he could change some money at Pin Mill. The tall wireless masts at Bawdsey were showing, and a chimney behind Harwich, and then the cliff just north of Felixstowe.

  “Better get up the quarantine flag,” said Daddy.

  “We’ll have to be cleared by the Customs, coming in from foreign.”

  “I’ll get it,” said Titty.

  “Know which it is?”

  “Of course,” said Titty. “It’s the yellow one. We had to hoist it when Nancy was having mumps.”

  She dived below for the roll of signal flags, and came back with the little square of yellow bunting. John went forward, and presently it was fluttering from the cross-trees.

  “Ship on the starboard bow,” yelled Roger.

  “It’s a sailing ship,” cried Titty.

  “With a tug,” said Roger.

  Coming out beyond the Cork was one of the last of the old sailing ships, a four-masted barque, being towed out clear of the shoals before setting sail for the Baltic.

  “In ballast,” said Daddy. “See how high she is out of the water. She’ll have left her grain at Ipswich. She’ll have come round the Horn from Australia, and now she’s going home.”

  “So are we,” said Titty. “Oh, Daddy, do you think there’s a chance that we’re going to get home before Mother knows we’ve been to sea?”

  “Not much,” said Daddy. “Two days and two nights away … That young man of yours’ll be bound to have told her he’s mislaid you.”

  With grave, disturbed faces they watched the barque, with the sailors out on the yards of her, ready to loose her white sails. They read her name through the glasses … “Pommern.” They listened to Daddy telling them of the island harbour of Mariehamn in the Baltic to which the barque belonged. They read the name “CORK” in huge white letters on the red hull of the lightship whose bleats had frightened them into heading out to sea. They saw the buoys they had so nearly run into. They watched the houses of Felixstowe growing clearer, the long pier, Landguard Point running out into the sea, Harwich church … One by one they passed the buoys that mark the outer shoals. Daddy had brought the boom over by the Cork, and they were running along the land towards a big conical buoy that seemed far out to sea.

  “Got to go outside that one,” said Daddy. “That’s Beach End buoy …”

  “Beach End buoy.”

  They looked at each other, remembering the awful moment when they had last seen it.

  “It came charging at us in the fog,” said Roger.

  “That was how we knew we were at sea,” said John.

  Little else was said as they hurried towards it. Sinbad alone was not thinking of Jim Brading who had lost his ship, and of Mother who … if Jim Brading had told her, not one of them could bear to think of what she must be feeling.

  “Cheer up,” said Daddy at last. “She’ll have got our telegrams yesterday.”

  Sinbad mewed loudly for more milk.

  CHAPTER XXV

  LOST! TWO DAYS AND A BOAT

  JIM BRADING WAS coming to himself. There had been a sudden burst of light into his room as the curtains were drawn … He remembered that … and someone with an arm round his shoulders while someone else was pushing pillows in behind his back… a tray with a white cloth on a bed-table across his knees … a spoon pushed into his fingers … A bowl of bread-and-milk … It was nearly empty … Had someone been feeding him? He scooped up the last spoonful … There was still a drop of milk in the bottom of the bowl. He chased it round with the spoon, but could not catch it, and gave it up, feeling very tired. The spoon slipped from his fingers. For some minutes, hardly seeing it, he looked at a glass with a bright orange liquid in it. Raw eggs beaten up? Orange juice? He reached for it and brought it to his lips. He tried to sniff at it. Gosh, what a headache! Whatever that orange stuff was, he wanted it. With a shaking hand he tipped it into his mouth, and drank it off, spilling a little down his chin and on … What on earth was he wearing? A white nightgown? Jim looked at his sleeves with great disgust. He had never worn a thing like that. Had he turned into somebody else without knowing it?

  The door opened and a nurse bustled in.

  “That’s better,” she said. “Now, I’ll take that tray, and you’ll lie quiet till the doctor comes to say good morning to you.”

  Jim stared at her. Doctor? What doctor? And what was this neat white room?

  “Where am I?”

  “In hospital,” said the nurse. “And you’ve come off very lucky, too. Good hard skull, you’ve got, the doctor says. Now you’re not to start talking till he’s seen you.”

  And she was gone.

  Jim felt his head, a mass of thick bandaging. What had happened to him? Suddenly he remembered that he had come ashore to get petrol for the Goblin. But when … WHEN? There had been no petrol in the dock. He had taken a bus to the nearest petrol station. Just time to nip across the road and get his can filled and catch another bus back. He remembered an old lady getting up in the bus and blocking the gangway when he had been in such a hurry to get out. After that … But was that yesterday or this morning? A dim memory of someone in the darkness, talking, told him it must have been yesterday. Had he been in this place all night?

  And those children aboard the Goblin by themselves … Oh, how his head ached. By themselves in the Goblin … All night … And he had promised Mrs Walker to look after them.

  He threw off the blankets. Again that nurse came into the room.

  “No, no, no,” she said, putting the bedclothes back and tucking them in at the sides. “You must lie quiet a little longer.”

  “But I can’t,” he spluttered. “I can’t. I’ve got to go at once. To the harbour … I’ve left them all alone …”

  “The doctor’ll be coming presently,” said the nurse kindly. “He gave you an injection last night. You mustn’t stir till he comes. He won’t be pleased if he finds you feverish …”

  “But…”

  The nurse smiled at him and closed the door behind her. He was alone.

  He threw the bedclothes off once more. Why, every minute mattered. He must go now, at once. They had no right to stop him. He got out of bed, slowly, but as fast as he could. Why couldn’t the room keep still, instead of spinning round him?

  “Steady,” he muttered to himself, and got somehow to the window and looked out. Bright sunshine flooded a street of red-brick houses. He knew that street. He tried to remember the name of the hospital. “But I never came here,” he muttered. “Where are my clothes?”

  He tottered back and caught hold of the rail at the foot of the bed. There was a card hanging from it, a printed form. He read: “Patient’s name …” Someone had written in ink, “Unknown Seaman.? Dane?? …” Then he saw the word “Pulse,” and after it a row of figures … “Temperature,” and another lot of figures. “Notes.” Under that someone had written, “Injection A.2,” and “Sleeping Draught, 9 p.m.” Then he saw that someone had drawn a line in pencil from the space for “Patient’s Name” down to the bottom of the card, where, in round, clear handwriting, he read the words, “Talks English.”

  “Well, I do like that,” said Jim Brading.

  There was no furniture in the room except the white hospital bed, and a washing basin, and the white bedside table with a glass and a carafe of water, and one white chair. Had they stolen his clothes? And then, in the white wall, he saw a white-painted door, with a lock and a key in the lock. He opened the door and found a built-in cupboard, with hooks in it, and there -oh, thank goodness for that! – his sea-boots, his jersey, and his flannel trousers.

  He tottered across to the door of the room. It had no lock on it, and he knew that the nurse and perhaps the doctor might come in at any moment. He tried to put on his trousers, and foun
d he had to sit on the chair to do it. Usually putting on trousers was a matter of a swift left and right, first one leg and then the other, haul up and buckle tight. Today he somehow could not make a good shot with one foot while trying to balance on the other, and if he hung on to the end of the bed he was a hand short for holding the trousers. Sitting on the chair he managed it, but it was a slow business and he was in a desperate hurry.

  That horrible white nightgown came off easily enough, but it was a painful, slow job to work his huge bandaged head through the neck of his jersey. A steam hammer seemed to be pounding inside that head of his. Then his sea-boots. When he stamped his heel down it was as if someone had hit him on the point of the chin.

  He swayed across the room to the door, and opened it a chink, with one hand on the doorpost and the other on the handle. They had no right to keep him here. He had never asked to come. And the Goblin anchored out in the harbour all night, with those children all by themselves. He listened. Someone was coming. The steps passed his door. He waited a moment, and tottered out, just as the nurse turned a corner somewhere away to the right. To the right. He turned left, and, with a hand against the wall, hurried weakly along the corridor. At the end of the long corridor there was a landing and steps down into the hall. People were talking down there. A flood of sunshine poured in from the open door. He heard a nurse say, “If you will just wait in here, I’ll go and fetch the matron.” Dimly he saw someone go into a doorway, and then a flurry of white as the nurse came towards the foot of the stairs. For a moment he thought she was coming up, but no, the matron must have been somewhere on the ground floor. Now was his chance. He must get down those stairs and out before the nurse and the matron came back. If only he were not so wobbly at the knees.

  Down he went, almost losing his balance halfway, but saving himself with a hand on the banister and another on the wall. Through a doorway on the right he saw someone, a patient or a visitor, sitting on the edge of a chair staring at him as if he were a sort of monster, as indeed he must have looked, in jersey, flannels and sea-boots, with a huge white-bandaged head.

  Footsteps sounded behind him on a concrete floor. The matron and the nurse were coming. He had not a moment to lose. He crossed the hall and went out through the open door. The sunlight was like a blow in the face for him. He blinked, stumbled, but found himself in the street. He hurried along it. His feet were beginning to behave as if they were his own. He turned a corner and was out of sight from the hospital.

  This street came down to the main road to Felixstowe Dock. He came to the corner just as a motor-bus was pulling up to set down a passenger. He clambered in.

  “Hold tight now,” said the conductor, and the bus was off again on its way to Felixstowe Dock.

  Jim felt in his pockets. Yes, his money was still there, and he took out a penny for the fare.

  “Glad to see you’re no worse,” said the conductor, smiling at him. “And Bill’ll be glad too. That he will. They tell him that might be a long whiles before you’d be about again …”

  “Bill?” said Jim, who did not know what the conductor was talking about.

  “He drive that bus you try to capsize,” said the conductor. “Police at him about it, and you’ll have to tell them you run into him. Lucky you didn’t smash that bus. It wasn’t Bill’s fault. But he’s been in a taking about it. He think he’d killed you first go off. But he hadn’t a chance, Bill hadn’t, not with you running into him like that…”

  And then, while Jim was thinking all the time of the Goblin, and those four children alone aboard her in the harbour, the conductor went on to tell the other passengers all about it. “He get out of my bus in a hurry, with his petrol-can, and run right across, that he do, bang wallop into old Bill’s coming t’other way. Might have been killed, that he might. Made a proper dint in old Bill’s mudguard. And old Bill, he turn white as a sheet and empty his breakfast out in the road like it were him what were hit. And this young man laid out flat, till they take him round to hospital on a door from the garage. Look like croaking any minute if they wait for the ambulance. All’s well as ends well, as they say. Good job he’s come through sound in mind and limb … Here you are … Felixstowe Dock … Yes … That’s the way to the ferry … No, ma’am. It’ll be ten minutes before we leave … Thank you …” He helped Jim out. “Good day to you. You’re safe here. Terminus. You ain’t got old Bill’s bus to run into this time.”

  Jim, as fast as he was able, crossed the wide square in front of the Pier Hotel. Had the Goblin shifted? When he had come ashore with the petrol-can, surely he had been able to see her through those railings. He hurried round the dock offices and out on the little pier, hardly looking at the steam ferry that was taking aboard passengers for Harwich at the float below him in the dock. He dodged round a railway truck and a heap of coal, and looked across the harbour, and looked, and looked again.

  She had gone.

  Jim Brading steadied himself with a hand on a bollard on the edge of the pier. She must be there somewhere. He looked across to Harwich town, trying to see her among the fishing boats anchored beyond the Guard buoy. He looked up towards the mouth of the Orwell. Nothing by Shotley Spit but anchored barges. He looked at the mouth of the Stour. There was the Trinity House steamer on her moorings, an anchored dredger, a big white steam yacht, but never a sign of his own little ship.

  The Goblin was gone as if she had never been there.

  Jim staggered back to the dock. The ferry was just casting off to go across to Harwich town.

  “Half a minute,” he called, and, with most uncertain feet, got down the steps to the float and aboard. The harbour-master at Harwich would know where she was. But, already, dreadful thoughts were beating in his aching head. Run down? A barge might have put her under in the night. Would John have lit the riding light? Was there any oil in it? He flopped on a seat, looking in all directions as the little ferry boat steamed across the harbour. The mate of the ferry boat came for his ticket. He had not got one, but the man knew him and told him to buy a ticket at the other end.

  “Been in the wars?” he said.

  “Where’s the Goblin?” said Jim.

  “Haven’t seen her,” said the mate.

  “But I left her anchored on the Shelf yesterday morning.”

  “I was off duty yesterday,” said the man. “She’s not been in the harbour today … Hey, Bob, seen anything of the Goblin? Little cutter anchored on the Shelf yesterday morning.”

  “Never see her,” said the skipper.

  Jim’s head felt as if it were going to crack across the top. How could they not have seen her? It was no use arguing. He said no more. The harbourmaster would know. As the little steam ferry throbbed her way across the harbour, he stared up the Orwell and up the Stour, looking for that white hull with the slightly raking mast, looking for that well-known triangle of dark red sail. But surely that boy John would never have had the cheek to hoist sail on her alone. Surely he would have known that he had nothing to do but wait till her owner came back. Ten minutes he had said, and that was yesterday morning … A long time for them to wait … But still … Oh, if only his head would let him THINK.

  The little ferry steamed into the camber at Harwich, and Jim pulled himself up, went ashore and up the wooden steps to the top of the pier and so to the harbourmaster’s office.

  The harbourmaster was at his desk, and looked up as Jim came in. He laughed.

  “That’s a fine lot of bandaging you’ve got on. Somebody cracked your head with a marline spike?”

  But Jim could make no jokes about cracked heads.

  “Where’s the Goblin?” he asked.

  “The Goblin?”

  “My boat. Bermuda cutter. Seven tons, Thames. 4.86 registered. No. 16856.”

  “Came in from Dover on Tuesday,” said the harbourmaster.

  “No. No. Since then,” said Jim. “I brought her down from Pin Mill to Shotley, and anchored her on the Shelf yesterday morning while I went ashore …”
br />   “Leave anybody in her?”

  “Four children,” groaned Jim.

  “I remember her now,” said the harbourmaster. “But that wasn’t yesterday. There was no cutter on the Shelf yesterday. That was the day before. You were anchored off Shotley pier for the night. I saw you bathing off her next morning. And pretty early you took her down harbour and anchored off Felixstowe Dock when it come calm. Just before the fog that was. But not yesterday. That was the day before …”

  “The day before yesterday …” repeated Jim. “Fog? But there’s been no fog.”

  “No fog,” laughed the harbourmaster. “We had a proper thick’un come in with the tide day before yesterday, before that blow. That blow pretty fierce in the night. Why, where have you been not to know it?”

  Fog. And a night of wind. He must have been two whole days in hospital instead of one.

  “Got knocked down,” said Jim. “I’ve been in hospital. But the Goblin? What about the Goblin? Where did she go after the fog?”

  “She’d cleared out before the fog lifted,” said the harbourmaster. “I was across twice that night, and there was no yachts about at all. They’ll have felt their way up the river when it began to come thick. Or gone into Felixstowe Dock out of harm’s way. You didn’t look there, did you?”

  No. He hadn’t. His eyes had been all for the harbour. He remembered that there had been some small craft anchored at the top of the dock. There often were, but he had never thought of looking that way.

  He never knew how he got out of the harbourmaster’s office. He remembered only the loud ringing of a telephone bell somewhere close by. He got back to the camber in time to buy his ticket and get aboard the ferry.

  “Found her?” asked the mate.

  “No,” said Jim, and then, “That fog … When was it?”

  “Day before yesterday,” said the mate, and Jim groaned. Had he really been two days and two nights in that white room? What could have happened? They couldn’t have got ashore without a dinghy. Had they hailed another boat to tow them back to Pin Mill? Or to take them into the dock? Why, it was yesterday he had promised they should be back. And what if they were not in the dock, or at Pin Mill? In a fog anything might have happened.