‘The boat isn’t fit for sea as she is,’ I explained. ‘I’ve sold all my spare stores, and shall have to pay for labour as well as fit her out. If you’re in a hurry, that is. I daresay my man and myself could get her rigged in a month or five weeks.’
‘That won’t do,’ he said. ‘I want you to get under way just as soon as you can. We’ll advance you fifty pounds. Will that be enough?’
I nodded. ‘That’ll be ample. As to security? I’ll give you a mortgage on the boat herself.’
He seemed to approve of the suggestion. ‘That’s business,’ he said. ‘I’ll get the mortgage prepared at once, and you can have the cheque when you please. You’ll want to take on another man or two, won’t you?’ He got up and went on deck, me feeling almost dazed with my good luck.
He shook hands as he was going over the side. ‘By the way, I shall want your name and address.’
‘My name’s West—James West.’ It didn’t seem quite the occasion to drag in the Carthew hyphen part of the business. ‘As to address, I haven’t one ashore. You’d better describe me as master and owner of the ketch Luck and Charity, registered at Plymouth.’
‘That’ll be good enough,’ said he, and went down into his boat and was rowed away, leaving me fit to jump with delight.
‘What du he want?’ ’Kiah asked.
‘Sir,’ I shouted at him. ‘Say “sir,” you uncivil Topsham dab.’
‘Yu ’eaved flukes at me for callin’ ’ee “sir” yes’day,’ he protested.
‘That was because you were my partner then. Now you’re my crew, my first orficer, my navigating loo-tenant, my paid wage-slave. We’ve got a job, ’Kiah. Your wages are doubled as from last October. You’ll have a lump of arrears to draw tomorrow. Go and wash your face, and then go ashore and spend the money I got for the dinghy last night. In meat, d’ye hear? A duck, and green peas, and a cold apple tart at Crump’s, and cream to eat with it. Us’ll feed like Topsham men when the salmon comes up river, ’Kiah. Us have got a job, ’Kiah—a twelvemonth charter-party at good money—and us draws fifty quid tomorrow. D’ye understand, you plantigrade?’
‘Caw!’ said ’Kiah cheerfully, and went forward to wash himself before going ashore.
When I woke mext morning it struck me I’d been in rather a hurry to take the man Ward at his word; but the confidence wasn’t misplaced, for he came aboard at eleven with the cheque in his pocket and the mortgage deed ready for signing. That was soon done, and he handed me the money and my first instructions. I was to get the topmast up; replace the missing stores and victual the boat; hire an extra hand and proceed to Teignmouth, there to load clay for Terneuzen. My consignee was a Mr Willis Cheyne, the company’s representative on the spot, and I must look to him for further instructions.
The rigging once started we worked double tides. I took on two men instead of one, and drove them for all I was worth, intending to take whichever proved the better of them to sea with me. They turned out to be a pair of crawling slugs, and I sacked them the third day and looked for another couple to take their place. But the tourist season was beginning, all the best men on the beach were busy, and the report spread by my two failures discouraged the others. In the end ’Kiah went to Topsham one evening and returned with a cousin of his, a Luxon—everybody in Topsham is called either Pym or Luxon—and we three finished the job in a week from the day the other two were sacked. Ward was aboard nearly every day, and once he brought his womenfolk with him. I was aloft, too busy to do the polite, so I shouted to him to make use of the cabin and went on reeving the peak halliards. The Pamily girl scowled up at me till she must have nearly got a crick in her neck, but I gave her a friendly wave of the hand and after that saw no more of her than the top of her big straw hat. Foreshortened, she looked like a mushroom wandering about the deck.
Luxon was just such a silent shockhead as ’Kiah himself. I never learnt his other name; ’Kiah always called him ‘Banny,’ which was obviously impossible. The job done, he drew his money arid went ashore without a word to me of his future intentions, but ’Kiah explained he wouldn’t come to sea with us. ‘’E reckons ’e’d ruther stay ’ome,’ was all I could get out of, him.
The evening before we left Exmouth I was in the dock entrance, filling our water-breakers from the hose where the ferry steamers water, when a voice hailed me from the top of the steps and asked if I was the ferry.
‘What ferry?’ I asked, without looking up.
‘Across the river. To—Dawlish, is it? I want to keep along the coast road.’
‘You’ll find the Warren ferryboat on the outer beach. There’s a steam ferry leaves here for Starcross in half-an-hour or thereabouts.’
‘What good’s a sixpenny steam ferry to me? I’m on the road;’ and the owner of the voice came down and sat upon the steps just above me.
He was on the road and no mistake about it. I never saw such a long, lean, broken-down tramp in my life. His coat and shirt were worn through at the elbows, showing his thin, bare arms. The holes in his ragged tweed trousers showed he had on another pair of blue serge underneath, both pairs frayed to fringes at the heels. He wore no hat, and his boots were past even a tramp’s repairing. As he sat, he took one off, looked at it whimsically with his head on one side, and threw it into the dock, and then served the other in the same way.
‘It’s a pity to separate ’em,’ he said cheerfully. ‘True, they never were a pair, but they’ve done a good few miles in my company.’
‘You’re a chirpy bird,’ I said.
‘Of course I am,’ said he. ‘Why not? Six months ago I wasn’t given as many weeks to live, and yet here I am, fit and well, thanks to God’s fresh air and a sane life. I’ve neither house nor farm nor fine raiment to bother me, nor woman, child nor slave dependent on me. I’ve even half-a-lung less to carry than you have, by the healthy look of you. My hat once on, my house is roofed.’ He put his hand to his head. ‘I forgot. It blew over the cliff a few miles back. All’s for the best in this best of worlds. That’s another worry the less.’
‘You’ve got two pairs of trousers,’ I suggested.
‘True, O seer. A concession to public tastes. They are selected so that the holes in the inner pair do not correspond with those in the outer, and thus decency is observed. And now what about this ferrying business?’
I had got my water-breakers aboard the boat and was stowing them between the thwarts. ‘Jump in,’ I said. ‘I’ll put you across.’
‘I may as well warn you that I haven’t a sou to my name,’ he said. ‘You’ll have to work for love. I’ll take an oar and work my passage, if you like.’
It wasn’t the first time he’d been in a boat, evidently, for he came aboard neatly, without stumbling or awkwardness, took the oar I proffered him, and handled it very fairly.
Half-way across I asked him what he was doing at Dawlish.
‘Nothing, I expect. I’ve given up asking for jobs. It’s much easier to ask for grub. Almost anybody’ll give you that in this dear land of mine—poor folk especially—but work isn’t so easy to get. Besides, I’m an unhandy fool at the best. I never learnt any trade worth knowing.’
‘Have you a trade?’
‘Bless you, yes. I’m a pressman—or was, before my lungs began to go. The doctors ordered me fresh air and exercise in a mild climate and I’m getting them tramping the South of England. Then I was fat and flabby and unhealthy and morose; now I’m the lightest-hearted wastrel on earth, and I’ve stopped spitting blood these last two months.’
‘What are you going to do when the winter comes?’
‘Don’t know. Same thing as before, I suppose, unless I can ship south in some packet or other.’
I pricked up my ears. ‘Ship south, eh? Are you a sailor man?’
‘I used to report the big regattas for The Yachting Gazette,’ he said. ‘I had to know one end of the boat from the other to do that.’
‘Feel like supper aboard my boat?’ I pointed to where lay the Luck and Chari
ty, just visible in the gathering dusk.
‘Nothing I should like better,’ he said airily, so we went aboard and I set before him cold fried sausages and baked mackerel.
The man was ravenous—almost starving—and he ate like a shark, I watching him across the table. In the lamplight one could see him better, and upon examination he wasn’t such a bad looking tramp. He had a short black beard and moustache, his hair was close-clipped, and, for a wonder, he was clean, save for the dust of the roads upon his tattered clothing. Lean as a lath, his cheekbones stuck out and his eyes were sunk in their sockets, yet he looked like what he had claimed to be, fit and well and sunburnt to a healthy brown.
After he wiped the dishes dean he got up.
‘Shall I wash up after myself?’ he asked.
‘No hurry. Sit down and chat. D’you smoke?’
‘When I get the chance. Thanks.’ He produced cigarette papers from some corner of his rags and rolled and lit a cigarette of my tobacco. Inhaling a few breaths luxuriously, he began to look about him. ‘Books—books,’ said he, and got up again to run his nose along my little shelf. ‘Practice of Navigation, Ainsley’s Nautical Almanac, South of England Cruises. Hullo! Pecheur d’Islande. D’you read Loti?’
‘With a dictionary handy.’
‘Good man. Pecheur d’Islande takes a bit of beating, don’t it? Henry James’s American, too.’
‘I’m trying to break myself in to him. The American’s readable.’
‘Readable! You savage. Half-a-mo’, though. Balzac. Marcus Aurelius. What sort of ship d’you call this?’
‘The Luck and Charity, coasting ketch.’
‘The Luck’s mine, the Charity yours. Extend it to a night’s shakedown, will you? A heap of old sails in any lee corner’ll do me well. I’m dog tired—and I give you my word I’m not verminous.’
‘You’re welcome,’ I told him. ‘Turn in when you like. I’ve got to be about early tomorrow morning—we’re going round to Teignmouth to load.’
As luck would have it, the Teignmouth tug brought up a vessel next morning, and as she was going back alone I bargained for a cheap tow round. In the hurry I forgot my guest, and when he came on deck we were passing the harbour mouth.
‘Shanghai’d me, have you?’ he said.
‘I forgot you. We’re only going as far as Teignmouth this trip. That won’t take you off your road, will it?’
‘Any road’s my road,’ he said philosophically. ‘Can I be of any use?’
‘Can you cook?’
‘Near enough, I expect,’ said he, and set ’Kiah free by frying the breakfast, which he did very well.
I was messing about the deck afterwards, tidying up a little, and took a pull on the topsail halliards, which were new stuff and were loosening in the sun. The other end of the rope was insecurely hitched, and my down haul pulled it off the pin and just out of reach. It began slowly to slide aloft over the sheave and was quickening pace when the tramp went up the shrouds like a lamplighter and caught it at the crosstrees.
‘You’ve done some sailoring,’ I said, when he came down, the free end in his teeth.
‘Yachting,’ he said shortly. ‘Just enough to know my own uselessness.’
‘Good talk,’ I said. ‘Care to ship with me aboard this packet. We want a man.’
‘What’s the trade?’
‘South Coast to the Scheldt, I understand.’
‘Sounds good enough,’ he said. ‘But I’m supposed to be an invalid of sorts. I may not be up to the mark, but I’ll try it for a bit, if you’ll have me, on one condition. I’m to chuck it any day I please without any nonsense about giving notice on either side.’
‘All right. We’ll see how it works. If you can’t stick it, you can’t; if you can you’ll be company for me. What’s your name, by the way?’
‘Voogdt.’
‘What a name! Dutch?’
‘My grandfather was. It’s a good enough name for me.’
‘No offence,’ said I, for he sounded testy. ‘Only we seem to have a rum collection of names here. Mine’s Carthew-West, the boat’s the Luck and Charity, the first mate is Hezekiah Pym, and now we’ve shipped a crew called Voogdt.’
‘Austin Voogdt, if you want the lot of it,’ he said, in perfect good temper once more. And so we came to Teignmouth with our full ship’s company.
CHAPTER III
CONCERNING A COMPANY OF MERCHANT ADVENTURERS
WE took forty tons of clay from Teignmouth, and with fair weather all the way up Channel reached Terneuzen on the fourth day. We made a lighthearted crew, all three: for me, I was to continue the cruising, that had amused me for the past two years, and be paid well for it, to boot; Voogdt, for all his baresark philosophy, was well enough pleased to have a roof over his head, warm clothing and regular meals; and as for ’Kiah, give him three meals a day and tell him what to do next, and he asked nothing more.
Voogdt got on wonderfully well with ’Kiah. A bundle of nerves, he used to almost dance with irritation at his deliberate speech and gait, slanging him in many-syllabled terms of abuse, which ’Kiah, strangely enough, seemed rather to enjoy.
‘Move. Get a move on you, you slab-sided megatherium,’ he would say; or, ‘Gangway! Make way for your betters, you hibernating troglodyte’; and ’Kiah would grin as he shambled about his work, peaceful and undisturbed. ‘’E’s a funny blook, id’n’ ’er?’ he said to me once, almost admiringly, as he was doing his trick at the wheel. ‘Uses longer words’n what yu du. French, I reckon.’ I fancy he thought Voogdt complimented him by assuming him proficient in that foreign tongue.
Personally, I got on very well with the man, too. He was mad, if ever a man was; but he was a gentleman and a good sort as well. His attitude towards life was recklessly joyous. ‘I lost half-a-lung in a month,’ he told me once. ‘Any shift of wind may finish me—a drop or rise of temperature in the wrong direction, or a degree more or less of humidity or dryness. Nobody really knows much about tubercle—how it may flourish or die in any given individual. I’m like a child wandering in a whirling engine-room in the dark. A false step or a lurch, and—whisk I I’m gone. What’s the use of taking care?’
He couldn’t do the heaviest work, but, apart from that, was as good as any other man—better than most, because he was willing. In fact, he steered better than ’Kiah, who, having held a tiller before he could read, steered rather by instinct than conscious effort. ’Kiah would lean over the wheel as though half asleep, swaying to the motion of the vessel, and although he steered as well as the average fisherman, carelessness born of familiarity often let him half-a-point or so off his true course. He steered as much by the feel of the sails as by compass, and so rarely needed to exert himself. Steering well enough for all practical purposes, he didn’t try to do better. Not so Voogdt. His eyes never left the bows except for an occasional quick glance at the card, and he put his uttermost muscle and will-power into his work. It exhausted him, of course. I’ve seen him mop the perspiration from his face when he was relieved; but he steered to a hair-breadth nicety all the time.
I was thankful to have found him, and when I found out what manner of man he was, I offered him the spare bunk in my cabin, thinking he would be more in place there than sharing the forecastle, good chap though ’Kiah was. Voogdt said as much at once.
‘’Kiah’s an awfully decent sort. Think it’d hurt his feelings if I shifted?’
‘Ask him,’ I suggested, and Voogdt did so. I fancy he told him my bookshelf was the principal attraction aft. ’Kiah displayed no wounded feelings whatever and Voogdt’s thought for him only rendered him the more welcome in my quarters; so it was a very merry and bright ship’s company that entered the Scheldt the fourth morning after leaving Devonshire.
The Deutsche-West-Inde boats used to call at Antwerp, so I’d been in and out of the river often enough before. Terneuzen lies on the south bank, at the entrance to the Ghent ship canal, about a couple of miles from the mouth of the river, and as tide was maki
ng we managed to get there without a pilot. It seemed to me a queer place for an English company to open shop, yet there were the sheds, plain enough to see with ‘Isle of Axel Trading Company’ painted upon them as large as life. They were built on the big embankment that keeps the tide off the fields, a good mile from the town and lock-gates, flat Dutch pastures and tillage all around them, and I never saw a place that looked less like business in all my life. Four small sheds of wood and corrugated iron sufficed for office and warehouses, and a chimney smoking behind the office hinted at some sort of dwelling under the same roof. The wharf was a mere skeleton of wooden piles sticking out into the water, with a six-foot planked way along the top leading to the sheds. According to the chart, the whole lot, houses and wharf, would be half-a-mile from the river at low water, and separated from the stream by dreary mud-flats. It was just high tide when we got there, and so were able to float alongside the wharf, a red-faced youngish man with short curly hair shouting directions from the shore. We rode so high that we could look over the embankment right down on the cows feeding in the green pastures behind it. The place was as peaceful as a dairy farm, no houses nearer than the town, and I wondered more than ever what trade any company could do in such a deserted spot. As soon as we were made fast the curly-haired man came aboard, very busy about nothing.
‘My name’s Cheyne. I’m the manager. Capt’n West? With clay from Teignmouth?’
‘Forty tons,’ I said.
‘Good. May as well get your hatch cover off, Capt’n. Then come ashore’n have a drink. We’ll get it out of her tomorrow, ’n then ballast you to rights, ’n off to sea again, eh? Too long in port’s bad f’r th’ morals, eh?’
‘Shouldn’t think there was much chance of going on the bend here,’ I said. ‘Unless you go bird-nesting or chasing cows.’
‘Y’ can go on the bend anywhere, cocky,’ he said, and hiccupped, and I noticed he’d managed it all right. ‘Terneuzen’s a hot little shop, lemme tell you. ’T least I’ve livened ’em up a bit. Sleepy hole it was before they had me t’ liven ’em up. We’ll go into town this evening an’ shake a leg, what?’
The Mystery of the Mud Flats Page 4