THE "STORMY PETREL."
"A boat, a boat is the toy for me,
To rollick about in on river and sea,
To be a child of the breeze and the gale,
And like a wild bird on the deep to sail--
This is the life for me."
The United Sea Urchins' Recreation Society usually met every morning
upon the strip of green common underneath the cliffs which they had
appropriated to their own use, and were prepared to hold against all
comers. The Rokebys, who were enthusiastic bathers, had a tent upon the
shore, and spent nearly half the morning in the sea, where they could
float, swim on their backs, tread water, and even turn head over heels,
much to the envy of the Wrights, who made valiant efforts to emulate
these wonderful feats, and nearly drowned themselves in the attempt. The
two little Barringtons were solemnly bathed each day by their mother in
a specially-constructed roofless tent, which was fixed upon four poles
over a hole previously dug in the sand, and filled by the advancing
tide. Here they were obliged to sit for ten minutes in the water, with
the sun pouring down upon them till the small tent resembled a vapour
bath, after which they were massaged according to the treatment
recommended by a certain Heidelberg doctor in whom Mrs. Barrington had
great faith, and whose methods she insisted upon carrying out to the
letter, in spite of Ruth's indignant remonstrances and Edna's wails.
"Ruth says bathing's no fun at all," confided Isobel to her mother; "and
I shouldn't think it is, if you can't splash about in the sea and enjoy
yourself. Mrs. Barrington won't let them try to swim, and they just have
to sit in a puddle inside the tent, while she flings cans of sea-water
down their backs. Edna says the hot sun makes the skin peel off her, and
she can't bear the rubbing afterwards. Her clothes fridge her, too; they
always wear thick woollen under-things even in this blazing weather,
their mother's so afraid of them taking a chill."
"Poor children!" said Mrs. Stewart; "I certainly think they have rather
a bad time. It must be very hard to be brought up by rule, and to have
so many experiments tried upon you."
"Ruth says she has one comfort, though," continued Isobel: "they're
allowed to speak English all the time during the holidays. At home they
have a German governess, and they talk French one day, and German the
next, and English only on Sundays. Ruth hates languages. She won't speak
a word to mademoiselle, but she says the Wrights simply talk
cat-French--it's half of it English words--although they're so conceited
about it, and generally say something out very loud if they think
anybody is passing, even if it's only _Il fait beau aujourd'hui_, or
_Comment vous portez-vous?_ The Rokebys poke terrible fun at them;
they've made up a gibberish language of their own, and they talk it hard
whenever the Wrights let off French. It makes Charlotte and Aggie quite
savage, because they know they're talking about them, only they can't
understand a word."
* * * * *
"What's the club going to do to-day?" asked Bertie Rokeby one morning,
looking somewhat damp and moist after his swim. ("He never _will_ dry
himself properly," said Mrs. Rokeby; "he just gets into his clothes as
he is, and he's sitting down on the old boat just where the sun has
melted the pitch, and it will be sure to stick to his trousers.")
"Don't know," said Harold Wright, lolling comfortably in the shade of a
rock, with his head on his rolled-up jacket; "too hot to race round
with the thermometer over 70 deg.. I shall stay where I am, with a book."
"Get up, you fat porpoise! You'll grow too lazy to walk. Unless you mean
to stop and swat at Greek like old Arthur."
"No, thanks," laughed Harold. "I'm not in for a scholarship yet, thank
goodness! I'm just going to kick my heels here. The _dolce far niente_,
you know."
"Let us go down to the quay," suggested Charlie Chester, "and watch the
boats come in. It's stunning to see them packing all the herrings into
barrels, and flinging the mackerel about. Some of the men are ever so
decent: they let you help to haul in the ropes, and take you on board
sometimes."
"Shall we go too?" said Belle, who, with her arm as usual round Isobel's
waist, stood among the group of children; "it's rather fun down by the
quay, if you don't get _too_ near the fish.--Are you coming, Aggie?"
"Yes, if Charlotte and mademoiselle will go too.--Mam'zelle, voulez-vous
aller avec nous a voir le fish-market?"
Mademoiselle shivered slightly, as if Aggie's French set her teeth on
edge.
"Qu'est-ce que c'est, chere enfant, cette 'feesh markeet'?" she replied.
"I don't know whether I can quite explain it in French," replied Aggie;
but seeing the Rokebys come up, she made a desperate effort to sustain
her character as a linguist. "C'est l'endroit ou on vend le poisson,
vous savez."
Unfortunately she pronounced _poisson_ like the English "poison," and
mademoiselle held up her dainty little hands with a shriek of horror.
"Vere zey sell ze poison! Non, mon enfant! You sall nevaire take me
zere! Madame Wright, see not permit zat you go! C'est impossible!"
"It's all right, mademoiselle," said Arthur, taking his nose for a
moment out of his dictionary. "Aggie only meant _poisson_. The mater'll
let the kids go, if you want to take 'em."
"Come along, mademoiselle, do!" said Charlie Chester cordially. "Venez
avec moi! That's about all the French I can talk, because at school we
only learn to write exercises about pens and ink and paper, and the
gardener's son, and lending your knife to the uncle of the baker; a
jolly silly you'd be if you did, too! You'd never get it back.
Suivez-moi! And come and see the _poisson_. You'll enjoy it if you do."
"I'm sure she wouldn't," said Charlotte Wright, who liked to keep her
governess to herself. "We haven't time, either--we must do our
translation before dinner; and Joyce and Eric can't go unless we're
there to look after them."
"All right; don't, then! We shan't grieve," retorted Charlie. "We'll go
with the Rokebys."
But the Rokebys, though ready, as a rule, to go anywhere and everywhere,
on this particular occasion were due at the railway station to meet a
cousin who was arriving that morning; so it ended in only Belle and
Isobel, with Charlie and Hilda Chester, setting off for the old town.
The quay was a busy, bustling scene. The herring-fleet had just come in,
and it was quite a wonderful sight to watch the fish, with their shining
iridescent colours, leaping by hundreds inside the holds. They were
flung out upon the jetty, and packed at once into barrels, an operation
which seemed to demand much noise and shouting on the part of the
fishermen in the boats, and to call for a good deal of forcible language
from their partners on shore. The small fry and cuttle-fish were thrown
overboard for the sea-gulls, that hovered round with loud cries, waiting
to pounce upon the tempting morsels, while the great flat skate and
dog-fish were put aside separately.
"They're second-rate stuff, you see," explained Charlie Chester, who,
with his hands in his pockets and his most seaman-like gait, went
strolling jauntily up and down the harbour, inspecting the cargoes,
trying the strength of the cables, peeping into the barrels with the
knowing air of a connoisseur of fish, and generally putting himself
where he was decidedly not wanted.
"They only pack the herrings, and they salt and dry the others in the
sun. You can see them dangling outside their cottage doors all over the
town, and smell them too, I should say. When they're quite hard they
hammer them out flat, and send them to Whitechapel for the Jews to
buy--at least that's what the mate of the _Penelope_ told me the other
day."
"They eat them themselves too," said Hilda. "I went inside a cottage one
day, and they were frying some for dinner. The woman gave me a taste,
but it was perfectly horrid, and I couldn't swallow it. I had to rush
outside round the corner and spit it out."
"You disgusting girl!" said Belle, picking her way daintily between the
barrels; "I wonder you could touch it, to begin with! Why, here are the
women coming with the cockles. What a haul they've had! There's old
Biddy at the head of them."
"So she is!" cried Charlie; "her basket looks almost bursting!--Hullo,
Biddy!--
'In Dublin's fair city,
Where girls are so pretty,
There once lived a maiden named Molly Malon
She wheeled a wheelbarrow
Through streets wide and narrow,
Singing, "Cockles and mussels alive, alive-O!"'
Change it into Biddy, and there you are! I've an eye for an 'illigant
colleen' when I see her!"
"Sure, ye're at yer jokes agin, Masther Charlie," laughed Biddy;
"colleen, indade, and me turned sixty only the other day! If it weren't
for the kreel on me back, I'd be afther yez."
"I'd like to see you catch me," cried Charlie, as he jumped on a heap of
barrels, bringing the whole pile with a crash to the ground, greatly to
the wrath of the owner, who expressed his views with so much vigour that
the children judged it discreet to adjourn farther on along the quay.
They strolled past the storehouse, and round the corner to where a
flight of green slimy steps led down to the water. There was an iron
ring here in the sea wall, and tied to it by a short cable was the
jolliest pleasure boat imaginable, newly painted in white and blue, with
her name, the Stormy _Petrel_, in gilt letters on the prow, her sail
furled, and a pair of sculls lying ready along her seats.
"She's a smart craft," said Charlie, reaching down to the painter, and
pulling the boat up to the steps. "I vote we get inside her, and try
what she feels like."
"Will they let us?" asked Isobel.
"We won't ask them," laughed Charlie. "It's all right; we shan't do any
harm. They can turn us out if they want her. Come along." And he held
out his hand.
It was such a tempting proposal that it simply was not in human nature
to resist, and the three little girls hopped briskly into the boat,
Belle and Isobel settling themselves in the bows, and Hilda taking a
seat in the stern.
"It almost feels as if we were really sailing," said Isobel, as the boat
danced upon the green water, pulling at its painter as though it were
anxious to break away and follow the ebbing tide.
"She'd cut through anything, she's so sharp in the bows," said Charlie,
handling the sculls lovingly, and looking out towards the mouth of the
harbour, where long white-capped waves flecked the horizon.
"Can't you take us for a row, Charlie?" cried Belle; "it's so jolly on
the water."
"Yes, do, Charlie," echoed Hilda; "it would be such fun."
"Do you mean, go for a real sail?" asked Isobel, rather aghast at such a
daring proposal.
"Oh, we'd only take her for a turn round the harbour, and be back before
any one missed her. It would be an awful lark," said Charlie.
"But not without a boatman!" remonstrated Isobel.
"Why not? I know all about sailing," replied Charlie confidently, for,
having been occasionally taken yachting by his father, and having picked
up a number of nautical terms, which he generally used wrongly, he
imagined himself to be a thorough Jack Tar. "Wouldn't you like it? I
thought you were fond of the sea."
"So I am," said Isobel; "but I don't think we ought to go without
asking. It's not our boat, and the man she belongs to mightn't like us
to take her out by ourselves."
"I suppose you're afraid," sneered Charlie; "most girls are dreadful
land-lubbers. Hilda's keen enough; and as for Belle, she's half wild to
go, I can see."
"I should think I am; and what's more, I mean to!" declared Belle; and
settling the dispute as Alexander of old untied the Gordian knot, she
took her penknife from her pocket, and leaning over, cut the painter off
sharp.
"_Now_ you've done it!" cried Charlie. "Well, we're off, at any rate, so
we may as well enjoy ourselves.--Hilda, you must steer while I row. If
you watch me feather my oars, you'll see I can manage the thing in
ripping style."
There was such a strong ebb tide that Charlie had really no need to row.
The boat went skimming over the waves as if she had been a veritable
stormy petrel, sending the water churning round her bows. Although all
four children felt a trifle guilty, they could not help enjoying the
delightful sensation of that swift-rushing motion over the sea. Nearly
all Anglo-Saxons have a love for the water: perhaps some spirit of the
old vikings still lingers in our blood, and thrills afresh at the splash
of the waves, the dash of the salt spray, and the fleck of the foam on
our faces. There is a feeling of freedom, a sense of air, and space, and
dancing light, and soft, subdued sound that blend into one exhilarating
joy, when, with only a plank between us and the racing water, it is as
if nature took us in her arms and were about to carry us away from every
trammel of civilization, somewhere into that far-off land that lies
always just over the horizon--that lost Atlantis which the old
navigators sought so carefully, but never found.
Isobel sat in the bows, her hand locked in Belle's. She felt as if they
were birds flying through space together, or mermaids who had risen up
from the sea-king's palace to take a look at the sun-world above, and
were floating along as much a part of the waves as the great trails of
bladder-wrack, or the lumps of soft spongy foam that whirled by them.
Charlie rested on his sculls and let the boat take her course for a
while; she was heading towards the bar, straight out from the cliffs and
the harbour to where the heavy breakers, which dashed against the
lighthouse, merged into the rollers of the open sea.
"Aren't we going out rather a long way?" said Belle at last. "We've
passed the old schooner and the dredger, and we're very nearly at the
buoy. We don't want to sail quite to America, though it's jolly when we
skim along like this. If we don't mind we shall be over the bar in a few
minutes."
"By jove! so we shall!" cried Charlie. "I didn't notice we'd come so
far. We must bring her round.--Get her athwart, Hilda, quick!"
"I suppose if you pull one line it goes one way, and if you pull the
other line it goes the other way," said Hilda, whose first experience it
was with the tiller, giving such a mighty jerk as an experiment that she
swung the boat half round.
"Easy abaft!" shouted Charlie. "Do you want to capsize us? Turn her to
starboard; she's on the port tack. Put up the helm, and make her luff!"
"What _do_ you mean?" cried Hilda, utterly bewildered by these nautical
directions.
"You little idiot, don't tug so hard! You'll be running us into the
buoy. Look here! you can't steer. Just drop these lines. I'd better ship
the oars and hoist the sail, and then I can take the tiller myself.
There's a stiffish breeze; I can tack her round, you'll see, if I've no
one interfering. Now let me get my bearings."
"Are you sure you know how?" asked Belle uneasily.
"Haven't I watched old Jordan do it a hundred times?" declared Charlie.
"I'll soon have the canvas up. I say, look out there! The blooming
thing's heavier than I thought."
"Oh, do be careful!" entreated Belle, as the sail went up in a very
peculiar fashion, and beginning to fill with the breeze sent the boat
heeling sharply over.
"She'll be perfectly right if I slack out. The wind's on our beam,"
replied Charlie; "I must get her a-lee."
"You're going to upset us!" exclaimed Belle, for the sail was flapping
about in such a wild and unsteady manner as seemed to threaten to
overturn the little vessel.
"Not if I make this taut," cried Charlie, hauling away with all his
strength.--"Hilda, that was a near shave!" as the unmanageable canvas,
swelling out suddenly, caught her a blow on the side of her head and
nearly swept her from the boat.
Hilda gave a shriek of terror and clung wildly to the gunwale.
"O Charlie!" she cried, "take us back. I don't like sailing. I want to
go home."
"Oh! why did we ever come?" shrieked Belle, jumping up in her seat and
wringing her hands. "You'll send us to the bottom."
"Sit still, dear," cried Isobel. "You'll upset the boat if you move so
quickly.--Charlie, I think you'd better take down that sail and try the
sculls again. If you'll let me steer perhaps I could manage better than
Hilda, and we could turn out of the current; it's taking us straight to
sea. If we can head round towards the quay we might get back."
"All serene," said Charlie, furling his canvas with secret relief.
"There ought to be several, really, for this job; it takes more than one
to sail a craft properly, and none of you girls know how to help."
He gave Isobel a hand as she moved cautiously into the stern, and
settling her with the ropes, he once more took up the oars.
"I shall come too," wailed Belle. "I can't stay alone at this end of the
boat. Isobel, it's horrid of you to leave me."
"Sit still," commanded Charlie. "It's you who'll have us over if you
jump about like that. We can't all be at one end, I tell you. You must
stop where you are."
He made a desperate effort to turn the boat, but his boyish arms were
powerless against the strength of the ebbing tide, and they were swept
rapidly towards the bar.
"It's no use," said Charlie at last, shipping his sculls; "I can't get
her out of this current. We shall just have to drift on till some one
sees us and picks us up."
"O Charlie!" cried Hilda, her round chubby face aghast with horror,
"shall we float on for days and days without anything to eat, or be
shipwrecked on a desert island like Robinson Crusoe, and have to cling
to broken masts and spars?"
"We're all right; don't make such a fuss!" said Charlie, glancing
uneasily, however, at the long waves ahead. They were crossing the bar,
and the water was rough outside the harbour.
"I _know_ we're going to be drowned!" moaned Belle. "It's your fault,
Charlie. You ought never to have brought us."
"Well, I like that!" retorted Charlie, with some heat, "when it was you
who first thought of it, and asked me to take you. I suppose you'll be
saying I cut the painter next."
"You want to throw the blame on me!" declared Belle.
"No, I don't; but there's such a thing as fair play."
"O Charlie, it doesn't matter whose fault it was now," said Isobel. "I
suppose in a way it's all our faults for getting in, to begin with.
Couldn't we somehow raise a signal of distress? Suppose you tie my
handkerchief to the scull, and hoist it up like a flag. Some ship might
notice it."
"Not a bad idea," said Charlie, who by this time wished himself well out
of the scrape. "You've a head on your shoulders, though I did call you a
land-lubber."
Between them they managed to tie on the handkerchief and hoist the oar,
and as their improvised flag fluttered in the wind they hoped
desperately that it might bring some friendly vessel to their aid.
They had quite cleared the harbour by now; the sea was rough, and the
current still carried them on fast. Isobel sat with her arm round poor
little Hilda, who clung to her very closely, watching the water with a
white, frightened face, though she was too plucky to cry. Belle, who had
completely lost self-control, was huddled down in the bows, shaking with
hysterical sobs, and uttering shrieks every time the boat struck a
bigger wave than usual.
"I wonder no one in the harbour noticed us set off," said Isobel after a
time, when the land seemed to be growing more and more distant behind
them.
"They were busy packing the herrings," replied Charlie, "and you see we
started from round the corner. Our only chance now is meeting some boat
coming from Ferndale. I say! do you think that's a sail over there?"
"It is!" cried Isobel. "Let us hold the flag up higher, and we'll call
'Help!' as loud as we can. Sound carries so far over water, perhaps they
might hear us."
"Ahoy there!" yelled Charlie, with the full strength of his lungs. "Boat
ahoy!" And Hilda and Isobel joining in, they contrived amongst them to
raise a considerably lusty shout.
To their intense relief it seemed to be heard, as the ship tacked round,
and bearing down upon them, very soon came up alongside.
"Well, of all sights as ever I clapped eyes on! Four bairns adrift in an
open craft! I thought summat was up when I see'd your flag, and then you
hollered.--Easy there, Jim. Take the little 'un on first. Mind that lad!
He'll be overboard!--Whisht, honey! don't take on so. You'll soon be
safe back with your ma.--Now, missy, give me your hand. Ay, you've been
up to some fine games here, I'll wager, as you never did ought. But
there! Bairns will be bairns, and I should know, for I've reared seven."
"Mr. Binks!" cried Isobel, to whom the ruddy cheeks, the bushy eyebrows,
and the good-natured conversational voice of her friend of the railway
train were quite unmistakable.
"Why, it's little missy as were comin' to Silversands!" responded the
old man. "To think as I should 'a met you again like this! I felt as if
somethin' sent me out this mornin' over and above callin' at Ferndale
for a load of coals, which would 'a done to-morrow just as well. It's
the workin's of Providence as we come on this tack, or you might 'a
been right out to sea, and, ten to one, upset in that narrer bit of a
boat."
It certainly felt far safer in Mr. Binks's broad-bottomed fishing-smack,
though they had to sit amongst the coals and submit to be rather
searchingly and embarrassingly catechised as to how they came to be in
such a perilous situation. Their plight had been noticed at last from
the harbour, where the owner of the boat, missing his craft, had raised
a hue-and-cry, and there was quite a little crowd gathered to meet them
on the jetty when they landed, a crowd which expressed its satisfaction
at their timely rescue, or its disapproval of their escapade, according
to individual temperament.
"Praise the saints ye're not drownded entoirely!" cried Biddy, giving
Charlie a smacking kiss, much to his disgust. "And it's ould Biddy
Mulligan as saw the peril ye was in, and asked St. Pathrick and the
Blessed Virgin to keep an eye on yez. Holy St. Bridget! but ye're a
broth of a boy, afther all."
"I'm main set to give you a jolly good hidin'," growled the owner of the
boat, greeting Charlie with a somewhat different reception, and
fingering a piece of rope-end as if he were much tempted to put his
threat into execution. "Don't you never let me catch you on this quay
again, meddlin' with other folk's property, if you want to keep your
skin on you."
"He really was most dreadfully angry," Isobel told her mother in the
graphic account which she gave afterwards of the adventure. "But Charlie
said how very sorry we were. He took the whole blame to himself, though
it wasn't all his fault by any means, and he offered to pay for having
borrowed the boat. Then the man said he spoke up like a gentleman, and
he wouldn't take his money from him; and Mr. Binks said bairns would be
bairns, and it was a mercy we hadn't gone to the bottom; and the man
shook hands with Charlie, and said he was a plucky little chap, with a
good notion of handling a sail, and he'd take him out some time and show
him how to do it properly. And Mr. Binks said I'd never been to see him
yet, and I told him you'd sprained your ankle and couldn't walk, but it
was getting better nicely, and you'd soon be able to; and he said, would
we write and give him warning when we'd made up our minds, and his
missis should bake a cranberry cake on purpose, and if we came early,
he'd row us over to see the balk. I said we should be very pleased,
because you'd promised before that you'd go. So you will, won't you,
mother?"
"I shall be only too glad to have an opportunity of thanking him," said
Mrs. Stewart. "I feel I owe him a big debt of gratitude to-day. Perhaps
in the meantime we can think of some pretty little present to take with
us that would please him and his wife, as a slight return for his
kindness. You would have time to embroider a tea-cosy if I were to help
you."
"That would be lovely," said Isobel. "And then they could use it every
day at tea-time. We could work a teapot on one side and a big 'B' on the
other for Binks. I'm sure they'd like that. May I go and buy the
materials this afternoon? I brought my thimble with me and my new
scissors in the green silk bag. I feel as if I should like to begin and
make it at once."