PAGE 11
"Their Lawful Occasions"
by
I heard the dinghy splash overboard ere I could cry “Murder!” Heard the rasp of a boat-hook along the wire-rope, and then, as it had been in my ear, Pyecroft’s enormous and jubilant bellow astern: “Why, he’s here! Right atop of us! The blighter ‘as pouched half the tow, like a shark!” A long pause filled with soft Devonian bleatings. Then Pyecroft, solo arpeggie: “Rum? Rum? Rum? Is that all? Come an’ try it, uncle.”
I lifted my face to where once God’s sky had been, and besought The Trues I might not die inarticulate, amid these half-worked miracles, but live at least till my fellow-mortals could be made one-millionth as happy as I was happy. I prayed and I waited, and we went slow–slow as the processes of evolution–till the boat-hook rasped again.
“He’s not what you might call a scientific navigator,” said Pyecroft, still in the dinghy, but rising like a fairy from a pantomime trap. “The lead’s what ‘e goes by mostly; rum is what he’s come for; an’ Brixham is ‘is ‘ome. Lay on, Mucduff!”
A white whiskered man in a frock-coat–as I live by bread, a frock-coat!– sea-boots, and a comforter crawled over the torpedo-tube into Moorshed’s grip and vanished forward.
“‘E’ll probably ‘old three gallon (look sharp with that dinghy!); but ‘is nephew, left in charge of the Agatha, wants two bottles command- allowance. You’re a tax-payer, Sir. Do you think that excessive?”
“Lead there! Lead!” rang out from forward.
“Didn’t I say ‘e wouldn’t understand compass deviations? Watch him close. It’ll be worth it!”
As I neared the bridge I heard the stranger say: “Let me zmell un!” and to his nose was the lead presented by a trained man of the King’s Navy.
“I’ll tell ‘ee where to goo, if yeou’ll tell your donkey-man what to du. I’m no hand wi’ steam.” On these lines we proceeded miraculously, and, under Moorshed’s orders–I was the fisherman’s Ganymede, even as “M. de C.” had served the captain–I found both rum and curacoa in a locker, and mixed them equal bulk in an enamelled iron cup.
“Now we’m just abeam o’ where we should be,” he said at last, “an’ here we’ll lay till she lifts. I’d take ‘e in for another bottle–and wan for my nevvy; but I reckon yeou’m shart-allowanced for rum. That’s nivver no Navy rum yeou’m give me. Knowed ‘ee by the smack tu un. Anchor now!”
I was between Pyecroft and Moorshed on the bridge, and heard them spring to vibrating attention at my side. A man with a lead a few feet to port caught the panic through my body, and checked like a wild boar at gaze, for not far away an unmistakable ship’s bell was ringing. It ceased, and another began.
“Them!” said Pyecroft. “Anchored!”
“More!” said our pilot, passing me the cup, and I filled it. The trawler astern clattered vehemently on her bell. Pyecroft with a jerk of his arm threw loose the forward three-pounder. The bar of the back-sight was heavily blobbed with dew; the foresight was invisible.
“No–they wouldn’t have their picket-boats out in this weather, though they ought to.” He returned the barrel to its crotch slowly.
“Be yeou gwine to anchor?” said Macduff, smacking his lips, “or be yeou gwine straight on to Livermead Beach?”
“Tell him what we’re driving at. Get it into his head somehow,” said Moorshed; and Pyecroft, snatching the cup from me, enfolded the old man with an arm and a mist of wonderful words.
“And if you pull it off,” said Moorshed at the last, “I’ll give you a fiver.”
“Lard! What’s fivers to me, young man? My nevvy, he likes ’em; but I do cherish more on fine drink than filthy lucre any day o’ God’s good weeks. Leave goo my arm, yeou common sailorman! I tall ‘ee, gentlemen, I hain’t the ram-faced, ruddle-nosed old fule yeou reckon I be. Before the mast I’ve fared in my time; fisherman I’ve been since I seed the unsense of sea-dangerin’. Baccy and spirits–yiss, an’ cigars too, I’ve run a plenty. I’m no blind harse or boy to be coaxed with your forty-mile free towin’ and rum atop of all. There’s none more sober to Brix’am this tide, I don’t care who ’tis–than me. I know–I know. Yander’m two great King’s ships. Yeou’m wishful to sink, burn, and destroy they while us kips ’em busy sellin’ fish. No need tall me so twanty taime over. Us’ll find they ships! Us’ll find ’em, if us has to break our fine new bowsprit so close as Crump’s bull’s horn!”