The Happy Mariners (3 page)

Rex, being the eldest, was given first shot; but he missed the mark. ‘Now go it, Guy!' said he. ‘And if you do it you'll be captain.'

But Guy had no better luck.

Then Elizabeth, trembling with excitement, lifted her stone; and, though it is notorious that girls can't throw straight, the fact remains that Elizabeth's stone struck the bottle fair and square in the middle.

Her brothers opened their mouths to applaud her, but no sound came except three long gasps of astonishment. For suddenly the sun had gone down; the air was crisp and salt; and the four children were standing on a grassy cliff and gazing in wonder across a dim expanse of sea.

Something slim and dark, like a tall pencil, moved slowly to and fro between them and the dull red sky. ‘What's that?' cried Rex, pointing.

‘I know,' said Guy, after a moment of silence. ‘It's the mast of a ship. Look, there's another of them!'

‘
Our
ship!' murmured Elizabeth in a soft exultant tone.

‘What, a real one?' asked Martin.

They crawled—Elizabeth keeping a firm hold on Martin—to the cliff's edge and peered over; and in the dim rich afterglow of sunset they saw beneath them, ancient and queenly and proud, a two-masted vessel with four brown sails—the Spanish caravel.

‘It's the
Resmiranda
herself,' said Elizabeth.

As she spoke, the air filled with sea-gulls. They circled about widely, with strange half-human cries; and then, one by one, they came to rest in the ship's rigging and were silent.

They lost very little time wondering how it had happened: the important thing was to discover a way of getting on to the ship. It was on occasions like this that Rex's really useful qualities came into play, for while Guy and Elizabeth—with Martin a captive between them—peered over the cliff's edge and talked in excited whispers, they suddenly realized that Rex had disappeared. ‘Where's Rex? Where's Rex?' They jumped up and called out: ‘Coo-ee! Coo-ee!' Their voices floated out over the vast water, and came back to them in ghostly echoes. Two little stars, sharp like pin-points, began pricking and twinkling in the sky.

‘Where is he?' asked Elizabeth.

‘I don't know,' said Guy.

They both spoke calmly, but they were secretly very uneasy. After a silence they began calling again: ‘Coo-ee! Coo-ee!' And then they sang out, to the same little tune of two notes: ‘Re-ex! Re-ex!'

‘Here I am,' answered a voice from below.

‘Where?' said Elizabeth. And, ‘Are you down on the ship?' cried Guy.

‘No, I'm here.' It was the voice of Rex, already far away.

Then they saw him. He was descending the cliff with almost miraculous courage, digging his toes for support into the chalky surface and clinging with his fingers to any little projection, any tuft of grass or tangle of shrub that offered. Elizabeth gave a sharp sigh of fear, and turned away as if unable to bear the sight. But Guy and Martin watched with shining eyes. Rex was certainly, they thought, a leader worth following. At last they saw that he had gained a narrow ledge of rock that projected two-thirds of the way down the cliff-side. He stood for a moment looking down. It seemed impossible that he could descend further, for the face of the cliff below him was perpendicular—a sheer drop of twenty feet. ‘What will he do next?' his brothers asked each other. They were soon answered, for the next instant he jumped. They held their breath, and then … There was Rex on the deck of the
Resmiranda.
He was staring up at them and furiously waving.

‘Is he hurt?' asked Elizabeth.

‘Are you hurt?' shouted the two younger boys.

They heard him calling, but at that great height his words were indistinct, almost ghostly. Even their own voices, as they murmured together, sounded queer and somehow lonely in that dim quiet place,
where nothing else was to be heard but the beating of wings and the lapping of water.

‘What shall we do?' asked Martin; but, as so often happened, he wasn't listened to. He stood there, rather a forlorn little boy, with his precious cuckoo-clock still grasped firmly in one hand; but if he was inclined to wish himself home again with his mother he wisely held his tongue about it.

Presently the watchers saw Rex reappear on the deck, dragging a great coil of rope behind him. Then Guy was visited by an idea, and an alarming idea it was. ‘I'm going down to that ledge,' he announced.

‘Guy, you mustn't! You'll fall!' said Elizabeth.

But Guy was determined to make the attempt: nothing would stop him. ‘Rex did it, so why shouldn't I?' demanded he. ‘And when I get there I can catch the rope and fetch it back.'

‘And supposing you do,' objected Elizabeth, ‘what shall we do with the old rope when we've got it?'

‘We shall all climb down into the ship,' said Guy airily. He knew perfectly well that what Elizabeth meant was that there was no means of securing the rope so that it might bear their weight; but he was now so obstinately set on his plan that he wouldn't listen to her. Besides, it was not his way to look too far ahead; he was content to deal with one difficulty at a time.

He lowered himself carefully over the edge, watched anxiously by Elizabeth and Martin from above, and by
Rex from below, and began the dangerous descent. The cliff was not, fortunately, anything like so steep as it had seemed from the top. Still it was quite steep enough, and Guy had many an anxious moment before he reached the safety of the ledge. From that point it was all comparatively plain sailing. Rex, after one or two tries, succeeded in throwing the rope to him; and Guy, with the rope tied round his waist, climbed doggedly back to the top, cutting steps in the cliff with his jack-knife as he went along, and hoisting himself up to them by clinging to the sinewy tree-roots and bits of bush that he found in its irregular surface. It was a long and difficult climb, but at last it was over, and when he arrived safely at the top he was surprised to see how pale and frightened Elizabeth looked. For, on the way up, busy as he had been with ways and means, he had almost forgotten his danger, thinking to himself that these tree-roots must mean that somewhere, not too far away, there were trees, and that a tree was the very thing they most needed.

And there it was, not ten yards away, a tall slim pine. If only they had been less intent on the ship and had troubled to look behind them they would have seen it at once. ‘Oh, Guy!' cried Elizabeth, clutching his hands; but he shook himself gently free of her and only answered: ‘Look! That's just what we want—a tree!'

They ran to the tree, and Guy twisted the rope two
or three times round its trunk. ‘I'll make a knot, of course,' he said. ‘But I'll hold on, too, just to make sure. Rex has tied the other end to the mast, so it's quite safe.'

‘Is it?' said Elizabeth.

They all stood waiting for what was to happen next.

‘Go on,' urged Guy. ‘Martin first, because he is the lightest.'

Martin said, in a very small voice: ‘I don't want to.'

‘Don't want to!' echoed Guy, pretending not to believe him. ‘Not want to go to sea!'

The situation was critical. Martin knew perfectly well that everything depended on him; that he could, if he stood out, wreck the whole adventure. And, being frightened, that was just what he wanted to do. At the same time he didn't want to spoil Elizabeth's fun.

‘Must I go first?' he asked.

‘Yes,' Elizabeth assured him, squeezing his hand to give him courage.

‘Down that rope?' said Martin, eyeing the rope very doubtfully.

‘Yes,' put in Guy. ‘Down that rope, old chap. Hand over hand, you know, like a sailor. What a lark, eh!'

Martin's lip quivered. But he managed to answer: ‘Yes, what a lark!' After a pause for thought he added: ‘Do
you
think it'll be a lark, Elizabeth?'

Elizabeth—who, I don't mind telling you, was on the point of tears—could only look unhappily at Guy.
He nodded energetically. ‘Of course I think so,' said Elizabeth.

‘Rex is waiting for you,' added Guy. ‘We'll see you don't fall.'

‘You're coming too, aren't you?' said Martin to Elizabeth.

‘Yes… afterwards.'

He looked from one to the other; then at the water; then at the rope; and for a few moments he stood, large-eyed and motionless, thinking things out.

At last he said ‘All right!' and walked bravely to the edge.

‘Hand over hand,' said Guy. ‘Don't forget. And, whatever you do, don't look down, because that's against the rules.'

The next three or four minutes were a terrible experience for Elizabeth, and scarcely less terrible for Guy and Rex; but Martin, once he had started on his way, seemed to lose all fear. Presently Elizabeth, who was watching Martin while Guy held the rope, called out: ‘He's there, Guy. Rex has got him!' Guy answered: ‘Your turn now. Be quick, Elizabeth.'

‘But, Guy,' she said, ‘who's going to hold the rope for you, if I go first?'

‘Nobody. That's all right. I shall make it secure enough, you bet.'

‘But suppose it doesn't bear you! You're heavier than me. I tell you what'd be fun. You go first and I'll hold the end, to prevent it slipping.'

Elizabeth brought all this out very airily and innocently, as though it were no more than an amusing idea that she had just thought of. But Guy was not deceived.

‘No time to argue,' said Guy. ‘Off you go, Elizabeth.'

She came closer to him. ‘Are you sure you'll be all right?'

She looked at him so strangely and so unhappily that Guy, for one startled moment, thought she was going to kiss him or something. So he answered scornfully: ‘Of course I'll be all right. Do hurry up, Elizabeth.'

Elizabeth turned away. Guy took a firm grip on the rope's end. But the rope was wound so many times round the tree-trunk that there was no difficulty at all in holding it, and before very long he heard Rex shouting that Elizabeth had safely arrived. So now, feeling lonely, and eager to be with the others, Guy quickly knotted the rope a second time, and running to the edge of the cliff let himself over and began going down hand over hand.

It was giddy work, for the rope swayed alarmingly under his weight; and once, quite forgetting his good advice to Martin, he could not resist the temptation to look down. That made his head swim, and his breath came in little gasps. He was getting frightened, and he knew it, and he knew, too, that it was because he was thinking about what might happen instead of
going stolidly on with the job in hand. I think it must have been his being the last one, and his having had the ordeal of watching both the others descend, that made him more nervous than usual. And he certainly felt more than a bit lonely.

By now his legs had lost their grip, so loose had the rope become; so he had to go slowly on his way, clinging by his hands only. Suddenly, when he was quite near the deck and the others were dancing and shouting encouragement to him, he felt himself falling. The rope was still in his hands, and by instinct he clung to it. Splash! Ugh! He was in the water, gasping with the sudden cold shock. The breath seemed to rush out of his body in a little squeal of fright. And then his mouth filled with salt water; there was a great thunder at his ears; he went down, kicking for all he was worth.

He must have been worth a good deal, and his kicking was perhaps of more or less the right kind, for he quickly came to the surface again and struck out in the direction of safety. To his surprise he found that he was really swimming. He had had a few lessons in swimming from his father and from Rex, but never before had he succeeded in doing more than half a dozen consecutive strokes. But now he discovered that he was making a habit of it. The trouble was that he put so much fury into his swimming, taking short quick strokes instead of those leisurely well-timed sweeps of arm and leg that do
the trick most neatly and easily, that he was soon utterly exhausted. He would not give up the struggle, but it flashed into his mind that in all probability he would be drowned before many minutes had passed. His movements became frantic; he caught another mouthful of brine, and another. He sank again, his hands desperately clutching.

And then, in this darkest moment, he realized that he had got hold of something solid. It was the rope. He grasped it with both hands, and the next moment his head emerged into the air. The rope was tight and was pulling him forward. With hope renewed he began swimming with his legs once more.

‘Go it!' cried a voice from the deck. ‘We've got you.'

It was Rex. Poor Guy was so bemused by his recent duckings that he had almost forgotten Rex; had almost forgotten, so intent had he been on not getting drowned, that his brothers and sister were watching him and trying to help.

Very soon he was climbing, with Rex's help, up the ship's side. He stepped on to the deck and stood there smiling ruefully. He felt foolish and grateful and awkward. ‘Sorry I was such an ass!' he said.

At that Elizabeth ran forward and, before he could stop her or dodge or anything, gave him a little peck of a kiss on the cheek. ‘Oh, Guy, what a fright you gave us! Now we must get you dry.'

Rex said magnanimously: ‘It wasn't your fault, you know. The rope came undone up there.'

‘But I tied the rope,' argued Guy.

He seemed determined to take as much blame as he could, but Elizabeth would have no more of it. ‘You go and get to bed, Guy. Do, please.'

‘Bed? Where's that?'

Elizabeth pointed. ‘In that cabin. There's a bunk, and the blankets are quite clean. You must wrap yourself up while we dry your clothes in the cook's galley.'

Her brothers stared in astonishment. ‘You seem to know a lot about this ship,' said Rex, almost complainingly. ‘You haven't been on her before, have you?'