The Mystery of the Mud Flats. Maurice Drake
‘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 Charity, 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