The Happy Mariners (2 page)

‘Now, however did he know …' began their mother.

‘He's got,' said Nancy, ‘a ship in a bottle, or some such contraption, and he says it's for the Lady Elizabeth.'

Elizabeth's eyes were starry with delight. Rex said disdainfully: ‘What's a girl want with ships?' But, before she had time to be hurt or indignant with Rex, Guy put in quickly: ‘Come on, Elizabeth. Let's go and see.'

‘Wait a moment, my dears,' said Mrs Robinson. ‘I'll go first.'

She said it as though she meant it, so they had to obey. But it was a hard job to sit still, and pretend to eat bread and butter like good children, while just round the corner was that queer man from the sea with his splendid ship, and his curled hair, and his ear-rings, and his brown leathery face; and it was a great relief to their pent-up feelings when Mrs Robinson came back.

‘Yes,' said Mrs Robinson, ‘he's got a ship there in a bottle. It's the loveliest thing. He says it's a Spanish caravel called the
Resmiranda,
and he declares that Elizabeth is to have it. He wouldn't even let me take it in my hand. No one but Elizabeth will do.'

She smiled in a puzzled way; and Mr Robinson, catching her glance, hastily swallowed what remained in his teacup, and rose. ‘I suppose,' he said wearily, ‘
I
must look into this.'

But he was too late; for already Elizabeth, closely followed by Guy, and less closely by Rex, with Martin clinging to his sleeve, had darted out of the room.

‘And where be the Lady Elizabeth?' said the man from the sea.

His accent was strongly rustic, and his appearance, now that they could see him plainly, was even more outlandish than before. But they had no eyes to spare for him, being spellbound by the beauty of the burden that he carried in his arms. She was a two-masted vessel, with four brown sails; and, pent in a bottle though she was (how she had got there was indeed a mystery), the children could already in fancy see those sails bellying in the wind, could already taste the brine on their lips and feel, pulsing in their ears, the rhythm of high seas.

‘Where be the Lady Elizabeth?' repeated the seaman in a high chanting tone.

Guy nudged his sister. ‘
My
name is Elizabeth,' she ventured.

She spoke in so small a voice that Guy nudged her again. ‘Speak up, silly!' But the seaman had heard, and had turned his eyes upon her. They were smallish eyes, with a hint of green in their brown, and a suggestion of half-blindness that was a little terrifying. He could evidently see Elizabeth, however; and he appeared to like what he saw, for his face became creased in genial wrinkles that gathered round his eyes like the rays of the sun in an old picture-book.

‘Then, mistress,' he said, ‘this ship be thine, by right of conquest. She's the
Resmiranda,
taken from the Spaniards in a battle I knows on by a master I sailed under. And there's more in her, mark 'ee, than meets the eye.'

‘Hurrah!' piped Martin. He thought this was the most magnificent game that he had ever seen played. But Rex and Guy and Elizabeth could only stare in silence; they were awe-struck, especially Elizabeth, who, for some reason she couldn't have explained, almost wanted to cry. She felt this more than ever when the seaman suddenly went down upon one knee and with his two hands thrust the treasure towards her.

‘Am I really to have it?' she asked. It seemed almost like cheating, for she could hardly believe that this beautiful thing was indeed for her. ‘I'm not really grown-up, you know; I'm only ten and a half,' she added. But, in spite of herself, she held out her arms, and the seaman, having yielded to her his precious burden, stood up straight again, his face shining with happiness.

‘Oh,
thank
you!' said Elizabeth.

Four pairs of young eyes were fixed upon the lovely
Resmiranda
; and when, the moment afterwards, they looked up—

‘Where is he?' exclaimed Guy. ‘I didn't hear him go, did you?'

No one had seen or heard him go. But he was gone. And even when they ran out into the road they could see no sign of him.

Of all four, Martin alone seemed anxious to talk about the strange man from the sea; the others fought shy of the subject, for no reason that any one of them could have explained. I think they felt the whole affair to be a little more queer than was quite comfortable, it being perhaps in their minds that a man who could so suddenly vanish might at any moment reappear when you least expected or wanted him. Anyhow, it all needed a good deal of thinking out, and they were afraid to confess to each other, by word or by look, how deep an impression had been made on them. This hiding of their feelings was not altogether successful, however, because each one of them was aware of having found the others out; each was aware—secretly, as he thought, that is without knowing that the others knew—of the excitement that vibrated among them.

When they all trooped back into the kitchen, Elizabeth ran at once to her mother, who put the bottled ship on the mantelpiece so that it might be out of danger. Elizabeth's eyes were still alight with pleasure, but she had not yet recovered the use of her tongue. For her thoughts had already gone
a-voyaging. In fancy she sailed under a copper sky down a broad river that ran through the dark sleeping heart of a forest; she saw panthers gliding among the trees, and monkeys leaping from branch to branch pelting each other with coconuts, and scarlet parrots that started up screaming at her ship's approach.

Looking across the tea-table she caught Guy's eye upon her and exchanged with him a smile of understanding.

Meanwhile young Martin was strutting round the room, saying, half to himself: ‘There's more in her, mark 'ee, than meets the eye!' But nobody paid him much attention; least of all Rex, who was listening, enthralled, to a discourse on the art of navigation from his father.

Mr Robinson, who had frequently taken the family for a row round the Crystal Palace lake, knew a great deal about ships and seafaring, treasure islands, buccaneering, sea-fights, storms, pirates, being marooned, Flint's fist, pieces of eight, and the rest of it. Set
talking by his admiration of the
Resmiranda,
he kept it up all the evening, to everybody's satisfaction; and it was not until the afternoon of the next day, which was Saturday, that Rex had an opportunity of unfolding his great plan to Guy and Elizabeth. They were in the play-room together. The parents were elsewhere, and Martin was nowhere to be seen, so a fellow could speak his mind freely. It wasn't that Martin was a tale-bearer: it was simply that, being so young, he sometimes failed to understand the importance of holding his tongue.

‘What do you say to that?' finished Rex triumphantly.

Guy and Elizabeth hardly knew what to say. They were in fact a little doubtful about Rex's motives. I don't think we can blame them for their suspicion, for he had already, we must remember, made it clear that he thought the
Resmiranda
wasted on a mere girl.

‘Oh,' said Elizabeth, ‘we couldn't. Could we, Guy?' Guy guessed by the wistful note in her voice that she was secretly pleased with their brother's idea, but he did his best to look very severe and judicial. He, too, fancied there might be a catch in it somewhere.

‘Well, to begin with,' he answered, ‘it's impossible.'

‘How is it impossible?' demanded Rex.

‘Well, silly, we can't sail her, obviously, because she's corked up in a bottle.'

Rex, thrusting two hands mannishly into his
trousers pockets, gave a scornful laugh that was very impressive. ‘Hasn't it occurred to you, my little man, that we can take her
out
of the bottle?'

‘Little man yourself!' retorted Guy, but quite without rancour. ‘
How
can we get her out? That's what I want to know.'

‘Yes, how?' echoed Elizabeth hopefully.

‘How?' Rex smiled at them pityingly. ‘Poor babies! Why, by breaking the bottle, of course!'

The thing was so obvious, so undeniable, that Guy blushed to think that it should have escaped him. But Elizabeth, more timid than her brothers, was lost in fear and admiration of the idea. Its bold simplicity staggered her. She had been thinking that before the ship could be extracted from the bottle they would have to find out precisely how it had been put into it. To break the bottle, to remove the ship from its shell as though it had been an egg—why, it seemed almost a wicked thing to do. And yet … ‘If only we dared!' she thought. Aloud she said: ‘Dad would be awfully wild.'

‘Rubbish!' said Rex. ‘It's ours, isn't it, to do what we like with?'

‘No,' said Guy. ‘It's Elizabeth's.'

Rex shrugged his shoulders. ‘Well, anyway, it's not Dad's.'

‘We can all share it,' said Elizabeth dreamily; and while the boys argued the matter this way and that, at intervals generously offering to punch each other's
head, she stood very still, listening to something that was neither near nor yet far away: something in her mind that was like the sound of the wind in a ship's rigging and of surf booming and washing against a distant shore. A smile as of recognition lit up her intent, dreaming face; and her lips parted a little as though the wonder of what she saw made her breathless. Her brothers, glancing at her, knew at once that she hadn't heard a word of their dispute; and they caught fire from her eyes. Guy, without words, flashed at her a question to which he already knew the answer.

‘Yes,' she said. ‘Let's go at once. Oh, do let's. But we must take Martin with us, you know.'

‘Here I am,' cried Martin.

He stood in the doorway gravely regarding them, in his hand an ancient cuckoo-clock that was one of his most faithful companions.

‘Here I am,' repeated Martin, ‘and ready for you, my hearties.'

He had remembered this expression from his father's talk of the previous evening, and he was inclined to be offended when the others burst out laughing at him; but he allowed Elizabeth to take possession of his disengaged hand, and quite forgot his grievance when Rex, jumping on a chair, lifted down the bottle-ship from its place on the mantelpiece and hid it under his jacket.

In high excitement they filed out of the play-room, into the corridor, into the kitchen, into the scullery,
and so to the back garden. ‘What mischief now?' called Nancy, from the back door. ‘You're all too quiet to be up to any good.' But they took no notice of Nancy, though their hearts beat quick with anxiety lest someone, some parent or other, should take it into his head to surprise them and forbid the expedition. As the last of them was squeezing through the little gap in the fence at the bottom of the garden, they heard the ominous sharp sound of a window being pushed up, and Mrs Robinson's voice called urgently: ‘Children, where are you going?'

Having now gained the field beyond, they crouched down behind the shelter of the fence. ‘Don't answer!' whispered Rex. ‘She'll think we didn't hear.'

‘Elizabeth!' The attack was beginning. Mrs Robinson was not so easily deceived.

‘Yes, mummy?' answered Elizabeth meekly, peeping through the gap.

‘Ah, there you are!' Mrs Robinson laughed. ‘Is Martin with you?'

‘Yes, mummy.'

‘Well, take good care of him. And don't be late for tea, mind!'

It was over. The crisis was past, and they could all breathe freely again, and freely enjoy this burning September afternoon. A shimmer of heat danced over the surface of the meadow and set quivering its long fine grasses; the air was musical with a drowsy hum and rich with the flavour of dried turf. The
whole world seemed to be soaked in the strong sunlight, and the children could feel its warmth entering them at every pore, so that presently, it almost seemed, they must become luminous and transparent like bubbles. With something of the airy grace of bubbles they ran lightly across the field, their eager feet scarcely touching the ground. At one point Martin hung back and persuaded Elizabeth to stop and watch with him the adventures of a red soldier that was bravely climbing to the very top of a tall blade of grass; but Rex called to them impatiently to come on.

‘Is there enough wind for sailing, do you think?' asked Elizabeth anxiously, as she and Martin caught up with the others.

Rex wrinkled up his nose and looked extremely weather-wise. ‘I shouldn't wonder if we ran into a bit of very nasty weather before long,' he remarked.

This magnificent retort made Elizabeth feel so small that she didn't venture another word until they reached the pond.

The moment had now come for the ship to be launched into those perilous waters, and the three elder ones glanced at each other a little uneasily. Even Rex, usually ready for anything, seemed to be for a moment at a loss. Nobody, to tell the truth, quite liked the idea of breaking that bottle; and Martin didn't help matters by saying, to no one in particular: ‘There's more in her, mark 'ee, than meets the eye,' But it wasn't that that worried the
others: what they were thinking, in spite of the bold face they had put on it ten minutes before, was that Mr Robinson would certainly have something to say when he heard what they had done.

Guy was the first to pluck up resolution. ‘We'd better do it with a stone,' he said. He picked up a large stone from the ground. ‘Look, here's a whopper. This'll do fine. Now if Rex holds the bottle and I have a whack at it…'

‘Better look out!' advised Elizabeth, thinking of Martin. ‘The glass will fly all over the place if we aren't careful.'

‘I know a better way than that,' said Rex. ‘We'll put it in the water just as it is, bottle and all. It'll float all right because it's corked. And then we'll all have a pot at it and the one that smashes the bottle will be captain for this cruise.'

Elizabeth objected to this scheme on the grounds that they might break the ship as well as the bottle, or perhaps even sink her; but Guy, excited by the mere possibility of winning his first command, for once supported his brother. So they placed the bottle carefully in the water, well within reach of their hands, and retired a few paces to take aim; while Martin ran to and fro with shrill cries, busily collecting ammunition.