The Cruise of The Breadwinner

by H. E. Bates

  Gregson became excited too. “All right, why don’t we?” The rolls of flesh on his throat were suddenly tautened in an amazing way as he lifted his head and strained to look westward, bawling at the same time, “What in bleedin’ hell are we supposed to be for?”

  “There’s more firing!” the boy shouted.

  “I’m turning her round, Jimmy,” Gregson said, “as soon as you can git her away.”

  “Waste o’ bloody time, I tell y’ it’s practice firing,” Jimmy said, and went below.

  The boy, jumping back on deck and turning to see the gigantic face of Gregson still so tautly uplifted that it was like the face of a great bronze-red sea-lion straining to catch something, felt in that moment the beginnings of a new emotion about Gregson. He felt that he loved him. And he felt also that he came very near to despising the engineer.

  Chapter 2

  Gregson cruised The Breadwinner at three-quarter speed for about half an hour in a direction roughly opposite to the path of light made by the sun on the sea. It was Gregson’s impression as they went farther west that a haze was gathering low down against the horizon but far beyond the possible limit of patrol. It was nowhere thick enough to have any colour or any effect on the light of the sea. All the time the boy stood in the bows of the boat, shading his eyes. He had a sort of fierce and transfixed uneasiness about him. Jimmy had come on deck.

  “I don’t see much,” he said. “I don’t hear much either.”

  They were far enough westward now to be out of sight of land.

  “You want so much for your bleedin’ money,” Gregson said, and left his mouth open to emit a belch like a wet explosion. “Ah, belch-guts,” he said. “Tea coming up,” and heaved his belly forward to give a second belch that was like a wetter, deeper echo of the first.

  “What’s ahead, Snowy boy?”

  “Keep quiet! Keep quiet!” the boy said.

  “No wonder the kid can’t hear,” Jimmy said, and actually smiled.

  “What is it?” Gregson roared.

  “Can Jimmy shut off?” the boy said.

  “No wonder he can’t,” Gregson said. “What d’ye want shut off for?” he yelled.

  “I can hear something—a whistle or something—something like a whistle——”

  “A whistle be God!” Gregson said. “Shut her off, Jimmy! A whistle!”

  In the interval of Jimmy going below and the engine being shut off in a series of choked bursts of the exhaust, The Breadwinner travelled about a quarter of a mile. It was far enough to bring within the boy’s vision a new space of sea and within his hearing the faint but madly repeated note of the whistle he had already heard. He stood waving his arms as Gregson came blundering forward up the narrow deck like a groping and excited bullock. “Hey, what is it, Snowy, what is it? What ye twigged, Snowy boy?” His wind came belching up with his words in a wet gollop for which he was this time too surprised to have any comment.

  “Can you hear it?” the boy said. “Can you hear it? The whistle!”

  They listened together, Gregson leaning forward across the bows of the boat, his face almost instantly lit up. “Be God, Snowy, that ain’t fur off!” he said. “It ain’t fur off, Snowy!”

  By now the boy was not listening. He was mutely arrested by the conviction that far across to westward he could see something that might have been a floating cockle-shell. It had sometimes the appearance of a ring of transfixed sunlight, caught just below the short horizon visible from a boat that was herself only a few feet above the sea. He held his silence a little longer to himself before he was quite sure. Then he began shouting: “It’s a dinghy!” he shouted. “It’s a dinghy! I can see it. I can see it! A dinghy!”

  “Wheer?” Gregson said. “Wheer, Snowy boy?” He made a sort of mock effort to fling one leg over the side of the boat, and instead lurched fatly forward, breathing heavily under the pressure of his colossal belly.

  “Full ahead!” the boy said. “Full ahead!”

  He heard his words go aft like a bellowed echo, so loud that in about twenty seconds an answer came in the noise of the engine. Gregson marvelled acidly. “We got going fust bang! Don’t say nothing, Snowy. Don’t bleedin’ well breathe, boy. We got going fust bang!”

  Two minutes later the boy was shouting: “Now can you see it? Now, Mister Gregson, if you can’t see it now you’re as—— Oh! if we had the binoculars we would have seen it sooner.”

  Gregson, seeing the yellow rubber dinghy at the moment, made no comment on the binoculars, and the subject even for the boy was instantly blown away by gusts of fresh excitement. He could see the man in the dinghy quite clearly now, and from that moment onward began to see him more and more sharply defined in the sunlight until even Gregson, straining forward over the bows more than ever like a raw-necked seal, could see him too. The sight broke on Gregson with the effect of sublime discovery. “I see the bloke!” he roared. “I see the bloke, Snowy. Clear as bleedin’ hell! I can see his head plain!”

  “He’s wearing his flying jacket,” the boy said. “And a red muffler with white spots.”

  To that Gregson had nothing to say, and three or four minutes later they came up with the dinghy and the figure which for the boy had long been so clearly defined. Gregson lumbered aft to yell down to Jimmy the order to stop, and then lumbered forward again in time to see the dinghy drifting close alongside. The young man in the dinghy had never stopped blowing his whistle. He was blowing it now, only taking it from his mouth at last to wave it at Gregson and the boy with a sort of mocking salutation.

  “Bloody good whistle!”

  “All right?” Gregson yelled over the side. “Ain’t hurt or nothing?”

  “Right as a pip. Wizard.”

  “Glad we seed you,” Gregson said. “A coupla feet closer, and we’ll git y’ in.”

  “Bloody good show,” the young man said.

  As the dinghy came nearer, finally bumping softly against the boatside, the boy remained motionless, held in speechless fascination by the figure in the flying jacket. It grinned up at him with a sublime youthfulness that to the boy seemed heroically mature. The young man had a mass of thick light-brown hair that curled in heavy waves, and a light, almost corn-brown moustache that flowed stiffly outward until it was dead level with the boundaries of his face. He seemed to have decided to check it there. It gave to his entire appearance and to whatever he did and said an air of light fancy. It proclaimed him as serious about nothing; not even about wars or dinghies or the menace of the sea; least of all about himself.

  Gregson and the boy helped to pull him on deck. The boy, looking down, brought to the large muffling flying-boots a little more of the wonder he had brought to the face.

  “Sure you’re all right? Cold?” Gregson said. “Cuppa tea?”

  “Thanks,” the youth said. “I’m fine.”

  Jimmy came up from below and walked forward: so that suddenly the small narrow deck of The Breadwinner seemed to become vastly overcrowded.

  “Sort o’ thing you don’t wanna do too often,” Gregson said; “ain’t it?”

  “Third time,” the young man said. “Getting used to it now.”

  “Spit pilot?”

  “Typhoon,” the pilot said.

  “There y’are, Snowy. Typhoons. What was you gittin’ up to?” he said to the young man. “Summat go wrong?”

  “One of those low-level sods,” the young man said. “Chased him all across the Marshes at nought feet. Gave him two squirts and then he started playing tricks. Glycol and muck, pouring out everywhere. Never had a bloody clue and yet kept on, right down on the deck, bouncing up and down, foxing like hell. He must have known he’d had it.” The young man paused to look round at the sea. “He was a brave sod. The bravest sod I ever saw.”

  “Don’t you believe it,” Gregson said. “Coming in and machine-gunning kids at low-level. That ain’t brave.”

  “This was brave,” the young man said.

  He spoke with the tempered air of the ma
n who has seen the battle, his words transcending for the first time the comedy of the moustache. He carried suddenly an air of cautious defined authority, using words that there was no contesting.

  Gregson, pondering incredibly on this remark about the bravery of enemies, said: “What happened to you then after that?”

  “Pranged,” the pilot said. “Couldn’t pull out. Hit it with a bang.”

  “And what happened to him?”

  The young man looked steadily over the sea, on which the yellow winter sunlight now lay with a sort of hazy unripeness, dissolving itself tenderly towards the almost colourless edges of sky.

  “That’s what I want to find out,” he said.

  “You better have a cuppa tea,” Gregson said. “Never mind about Jerry. If he’s in the sea we’ll find him plenty soon enough. He’ll wash up.”

  “I’d like to see what he’s like,” the boy said. “God, he was brave.”

  “You think you hit him?” Gregson said.

  “I know I hit him.”

  “Then that’s bleedin’ good enough, ain’t it?” Gregson looked round, heaving his belly, with an air of heavy finality. “Snowy, git us all another cuppa tea!”

  The boy turned and went instantly down the hatchway, sliding the last four steps on the smooth heels of his sea-boots. The largeness of the world of men on deck seemed now to narrow down and diminish the already awkward spaces of the tiny cabin below. It oppressed him terribly. He lumbered about it as if he were as large as Gregson, partly stupefied with excitement, partly trying to listen through the cabin-roof to whatever might be going on above. He found an extra cup in the cupboard under the bunks and put it on the table with the two others. He saw it was slightly dirty, and wiped it with his sweater. Then he filled the cups with tea that was in colour something like dark beer. The teapot held about three pints of it, and he filled it up from the big tin kettle before putting it back on the stove. Then he spooned quantities of soft sugar into the cups and stirred each of them madly before taking it upstairs. The whole business took him about three minutes, and he did not think that in this time anything of great importance could have happened on deck.

  He was astonished, coming up into the sunlight with the three cups of tea skilfully hooked by their handles into the crook of his first fingers, that even in those few moments a change had taken place. He came up in time to hear Jimmy saying:

  “I never knowed it was part of the game to go cruisin’ round picking Jerries up.”

  “I don’t know that he’s there to pick up,” the pilot said. “The bastard is probably dead. All I’m saying is he was a brave bastard.”

  “That suits me,” Gregson said. “If he’s dead he’s dead. If he ain’t he ain’t. Have it which way you like, it’s all I care.”

  The boy came with the tea and stood silent, fascinated, while each of the three men took their cups from him. He watched the young pilot, holding his tea in both hands, the fur collar of his flying jacket turned up so that the scarlet muffler on his neck was concealed, look away southward over the sea. It was very like a picture of a pilot he had once cut out of a Sunday paper. To see it in reality at last held him motionlessly bound in a new dream.

  “How far do you cruise out?” the young man said.

  Gregson had a superstitious horror of cruising down Channel to the west. Fifty years of consistent routine had taken him eastward, fishing in unadventurous waters somewhere between South Foreland and Ostend. He did not like the west for any reason he could say; he did not, for that matter, like the south either. There lurked within him somewhere the cumbrous superstition born of habit, never defined enough to be given a name.

  “Well, we’re out now about as far as we reckon to go. Don’t you wanna git back?”

  The pilot, not answering, seemed to measure the caution of Gregson as he gazed across the water. And it occurred suddenly to the boy, watching his face, that he knew perfectly that there were no limits to which Gregson, in human need, would not go. But eastward or westward it was the same as far as enemy pilots were concerned.

  And then suddenly the boy remembered something. He spoke to the pilot for the first time.

  “How far out did you fire?” he said.

  “Smack over a Martello tower,” the pilot said, “on the shore.”

  “Then it wasn’t you firing,” the boy said. “What we heard was right out to sea.”

  “Be God so it were,” Gregson said. “So it were.”

  “Mean there was someone else having a go?” the pilot said.

  “Sounded like gun-testing,” Jimmy said.

  “Don’t take no bleedin’ notice of him,” Gregson said. “Was they any more of your blokes out?”

  “A whole flight was up.”

  “There y’are then!” Gregson said. “What are we farting about here for? Warm her up, Jimmy. Let’s git on!”

  As The Breadwinner swung round, turning a point or two south-eastward, sharp into the sun, the boy went forward into the bows and discovered a second or two later that the pilot was there beside him, still warming his fingers on the tea-cup and sometimes reflectively drinking from it, balancing the two wings of the ridiculous corn-ginger moustache on its edges. It did not occur to the boy that he did not look like a fighting man; it occurred to him instead that he might be a man with binoculars. “If we had a pair o’ glasses we might pick things up easier,” he said.

  “Never carry any,” the pilot said.

  If there was any disappointment in the boy’s face it was lost in the ardent gleam of steady and serious wonder which he now brought to bear on the sea. Gradually the sunlight everywhere was losing its lemon pallor, but it was still low enough to lay across the water the long leaf-broken path of difficult and dazzling light. The boy shaded his eyes against it with both hands. He desired to do something remotely professional; something to impress the man of battles standing beside him. He longed dramatically to spot something in the sea. They stood there together for about five minutes, not speaking but both watching with hands framing their faces against the dazzle of sea-light, and nothing happening or moving except The Breadwinner lugging slowly south-eastward out of sight of either shore, the sea emptier and more peaceful than on a peace-time day, until suddenly far behind them Gregson called the boy:

  “I’m gittin’ peckish, Snowy boy. Ain’t peeled them taters yit, ayah?”

  “No, mister,” the boy said.

  “Well, you better git in and peel ’em then. Peel a double dose. Pilots eat same as we do.”

  The boy said, looking up at the pilot: “I gotta git below now. I’ll take your cup down if you’ve finished.” Hating to go, he came also within a short distance of hating Gregson. The pilot finished the tea. “Want another cup? I can bring it,” the boy said. “Easy bring it.”

  “No,” the pilot said. “That was fine.”

  The boy went below, stumbling about the gangway and the cabin as if partially blinded by sun. The remoteness of the world above him was exaggerated by the sound of Jimmy going up the hatchway, leaving him alone with the fire in the toy galley, a sack of potatoes and a jack-knife. He glanced about the box of a cabin, hating it without really seeing its dingy and confined outlines. He thought dismally that nothing ever went on below, that nothing could ever happen there. He longed passionately to talk to the pilot, up in the sun.

  Sometimes as he sat there peeling potatoes at the cabin-table he could hear the voice of Gregson from up above, always huge and violent, never articulate except for strong half-words that the noise of the engine did not drown. He was driven by the maddening isolation of this to go and stand at the foot of the hatchway, and one by one peel the potatoes there. If Gregson’s order were to be taken literally he would peel about forty of them. He stood there looking up into the shaft of sea-light, peeling his fifteenth potato, when Jimmy came sliding down the hatch without any warning except a violent and wordless sort of bellow. The boy watched him disappear into the tiny and confined engine-cradle that was not big
enough to be called a room, and then bawled after him: “What’s up, Jimmy? What’s up now?”

  “Somebody in the sea!” Jimmy said.

  The boy went up the hatchway with a half-peeled potato still in his hands. The engine died behind him as he went, and Jimmy followed him a moment later.

  On deck Gregson and the pilot were up in the bows. Gregson was lumbering about in a state of heavy excitement. The pilot seemed, to the boy coming up into the sharp winter sunlight out of the gloom of the cabin, about seven feet tall and crowned by a crumpled hat of coffee-brown fur. He was at that moment about to pull his flying jacket over his head. The sharp released pressure of it shocked the wide moustache into a dishevelment that was for some reason more serious than even its bushy correctitude had been. The pilot took off his white under-sweater, and then began to take off his boots. He seemed to hesitate about his thick grey under-socks and then decided to take them off too. “Is he still coming in?” he said to Gregson; and Gregson, leaning heavily over the side bawled, “He’s floatin’ on his back. He’s a Jerry all right too.”

  “Yes, he’s a Jerry all right,” the pilot said, and stood ready, side by side with Gregson and the boy, watching about sixty feet away the floating and feebly propelling body of a man awkwardly moving across the face of the sea like a puffing yellow crab.

  “Want a line?” Gregson said.

  “Want a line?” the young man said. “I could swim to France.”

  He went over the side a moment later in a smooth and careless dive that took him under and brought him up, fifteen or twenty feet away, with the shaking howl of a dog having fun. He began to strike out with strokes of deep power, turning backward with each of them a moustache that looked suddenly as if it had been pasted on to the strong wet face. All the fancy oddities of the man became in those few moments washed away. He seemed to be feeling forward to grasp the solid fabric of the sea so that he could tear it with his hands. He reached the other man, now moving with spidery feebleness parallel to the boat, in about twenty seconds, and rolled over beside him, coming up a moment later underneath and slightly to one side. The blue sleeve of his arm came up across the yellow inflated German life jacket, and then sleeve and jacket and the yellowish heads of both men began to move towards the boat together.