Drowned Ammet (24 page)

“Come and look at this!” Mitt yelled.

They left
Wind's Road
to sail herself and stood in a row with their clothes steaming, looking down at Old Ammet and his garland from the Festival. “I think we ought to thank him, and Libby Beer,” said Hildy.

Mitt was very self-conscious at the idea, but he made himself growl, “Thank you, sir,” with Hildy and Ynen, and then turn round and say, “Thank you, lady,” to Libby Beer. After all, he had seen Old Ammet with his own eyes.

Then Hildy started to shiver violently. Mitt knew what was needed. He waded through the soaked blankets on the cabin floor and fetched the bottle of arris. He made Hildy and Ynen have a good swig and then took one himself. They stood about in the well going
“Umpwaugh!”
and making awful faces.

“Shocking taste, isn't it?” said Mitt. “Wait a moment, though. There comes a sort of
boing
inside, and then it warms the insides of your ears.”

The
boing
came. It made them feel so much better that they got out the pies and fell on them ravenously. Their hands shook as they ate, and their fingers were white, wrinkly, and blistered, even Mitt's, which had got a little soft-skinned in Hobin's workshop.

“I can't sail all through the night,” Hildy said wearily.

“We've got a sea anchor,” said Ynen, and looked at Mitt to see what he thought.

Mitt was dog-tired, too. But he knew autumn storms could come one on top of the other. He did not know what to do.

“I know,” said Hildy, and she crawled forward to the mast. Mitt, with Ynen nodding and yawning beside him, stared at the soles of her feet and heard her say, “Please, Old Ammet, can you look after the boat tonight? But if there's another storm, could you wake Mitt up and tell him, please?”

“That's right! Pick on me!” Mitt called. “Tireless Mitt they call me. Think I don't wear out or something?” He turned to the figure of Libby Beer. “Excuse me, lady. She wants you to wake me if there's trouble. She thinks I'm made of the same stuff as what you are. So, if I'm needed, and you have to give me a nudge, do you mind waking her up, too? She can sit and feed me nips of arris.”

The cabin was crowded and close that night. Nobody needed blankets, so they hung them in the well to dry. They all slept like logs, even Hildy, who had the small forward bunk which had been designed for her when she was nine. If Old Ammet or Libby Beer had tried to call Mitt in the night, he did not hear them. But all seemed well in the morning. The sea was flat, and the sun made a liquid yellow path to the gently drifting
Wind's Road
.

“I think I hate pies,” said Hildy.

“You want to try mixing about a bit,” Mitt told her. “You know—cherry flan and steak. Makes a change.”

“You're cheating,” said Ynen. “Those were squashed together, anyway. Try oyster and apple, Hildy. It's—well, it's different.”

After this decidedly strange breakfast, they cleaned up
Wind's Road
and got very hot doing it. The heat told them all that they could not yet be very far North. None of them had the slightest idea where they were. As there was no land in sight, no chart Ynen could produce was any use to them. The only thing they were sure of was that they had been blown out into deep ocean, probably more west than north.

“I'll steer north and east,” Ynen said. “When we sight land, I'll keep it just on the horizon, until we see somewhere we can recognize. Tulfa Island should be easy to find. And we know that belongs to the North. Let's get the sails up.”

Shortly, with sails set again, in a light wind,
Wind's Road
was sailing on. Mitt sat lazily just above Old Ammet, listening to the water running past her sides and admiring the way her bows cut the sea sweetly asunder. In fair conditions
Wind's Road
was a beauty, he thought. He could hardly believe she had been doing her damnedest to drown them all yesterday.

“There's something to port over there,” Ynen called. “Can you see what it is?”

Mitt looked too far, then too near, and finally saw a small dark thing lolloping on the swell, about a quarter of a mile away. “Could be a boat,” he called.

“That's what I thought,” Ynen called back, and pushed the tiller over, with a fine
ruckle-ruckle
of water from
Wind's Road
's elegant bows.

“Hey! What are you doing?” Mitt called, jumping up.

“Going to look. If it's a boat, it will have been in the storm,” Ynen said and, for the first time for over a day, he gave Mitt a frankly unfriendly look. Hildy, beside him, gave Mitt the same look.

Mitt felt hurt, and irritated. “You don't have to look at me like that! I don't want to get seen and caught, do I?”

“If there's anybody in it, they can't possibly hurt you,” said Ynen. “But I have to make sure. It's the law of the sea.”

“Or weren't you brought up to keep to any law?” said Hildy.

Mitt felt Hildy need not have said that. He knew the rule as well as she did. “Don't talk so stupid!” he said. “Can't neither of you get it in your heads this isn't a pleasure trip?” Then, as Hildy went white and drew in her breath to make a powerful answer, Mitt added, “But please yourself—please yourselves. Don't mind me. I'm only the passenger.” He could see the thing was a boat now, but only a small one. It looked to be just a ship's cockboat, torn loose in the storm. No danger there, Mitt thought.

But when
Wind's Road
had leaned nearer, in a pleasant riffling of water, they saw the boat was larger than that, about a third the size of
Wind's Road
herself. There was a mast in it, still flying tag ends of rope and some fluttering pieces of sail. There was no sign of life in it.

“It
was
in the storm,” Hildy said, rather hushed.

“I'll go alongside,” said Ynen.

Mitt stood up to offer to do that for him. Ynen pretended not to see.
Wind's Road
was his. Mitt sat down dourly by the mast. So Ynen did not trust him not to sail straight past then? Very well. Mitt grinned as Ynen went about too soon and hit the smaller boat a fair old wallop. Ynen winced at the damage to
Wind's Road
's paint. The smaller boat simply bobbed about. It was salty, battered, and draped with seaweed. It had to be hard to sink, Mitt thought, to have survived the storm. It was empty, except for a tangle of tarpaulin in the bottom. Ynen had scraped
Wind's Road
for nothing, by the look of it.

Hildy read the name painted on the stern of the derelict.
“Sevenfold II
.”

“Funny!” said Mitt, coming to look. “That's a big merchant ship out of Holand. She was tied up in harbor there the day of the Festival. What's her boat doing here with a sail in it?”

“She must have sailed out later and got caught in the storm,” Ynen suggested. “I suppose her crew took to the—Oh, dear!”

The tangle of tarpaulin heaved and humped. A wet and unkempt head was thrust out, as if its owner was shakily on his hands and knees. A hoarse and wretched voice said, “Take us aboard, for pity's sake!”

No one had expected this. Hildy and Ynen were quite as dismayed as Mitt. In fact, it was Mitt who first pulled himself together and said, “Up you come, then. How many are you?”

“Just me, guvnor,” said the man, and seemed to fall flat on his face again.

Mitt exchanged a resigned and dubious look with Ynen and swung himself down into the bobbing derelict. The worst of it was it could be someone who knew him. He heaved back the tarry canvas. Underneath were several inches of water and, lying sprawled in it, a soaking, unshaven man in sailor's clothes. He was a square, powerful sort of fellow—the kind of man you could trust to survive a storm, Mitt thought, taking the man under the arms and trying to heave him upward. He was no one Mitt knew. But when Mitt had wrestled the fellow to his knees, he thought the man had a faintly familiar look. He must have seen him around on the waterfront. One thing was certain about him. The man was a good deal better nourished than most people in Holand. Mitt simply could not lift him.

They only got him aboard
Wind's Road
because the man seemed to come to his senses enough to help a little. Mitt boosted. Hildy leaned over and dragged. The man, groaning and feebly scrambling, pulled himself over the side into the well and collapsed again. It took them some time to pull and push him into the cabin and get him onto a bunk. Meanwhile, Ynen left
Sevenfold II
's boat to bob by itself and sailed on.

“Would you like a drink of water?” Hildy asked, thinking the man must be parched with thirst.

The answer was a growl, in which the only words they caught were “little lady” and “arris.”

“Give him a nip of it,” Mitt said. “Bring him around.”

Hildy fetched the bottle and put it to the man's pale, waterlogged lips. He took such a long drink that she was alarmed. When at length she managed to drag the bottle away, the man made a feeble pounce after it. “Arragh!” Hildy backed away quickly. He seemed like an angry wild beast. But he became calmer almost at once and mumbled something else with “little lady” in it. “S'some sleep,” they heard him say.

“That's right. You drop off. Do you good,” Mitt said heartily. He took Hobin's gun off the rack above the bunk, where he had left it, and put it in his belt, just to be on the safe side.

Hildy, in much the same spirit, put the arris bottle in a locker and shot the bolt. She looked back as they left the cabin and saw that the man's eyes were wide open. He could have been watching. But he could also have been half unconscious. “Do you think he's all right?” she whispered.

“You do get rough types,” Ynen said, very much wishing he had left
Sevenfold II
to drift.

“He'll survive,” said Mitt, “if that's what you were asking. Must be made of iron to be still alive. Let's hope he'll be more agreeable when he's had some sleep.”

“So do I,” said Hildy. The man's eyes were still wide open, staring from a broad pale face covered with long black stubble.

15

For the rest of that day, the new passenger slept, with his face turned to the wall. Everyone felt this was the best thing he could do. They left him alone and almost forgot he was there.

Ynen stayed at the tiller. It was his way of claiming
Wind's Road
back after the storm. He did not exactly resent Mitt's taking charge then, but
Wind's Road
was
his.
She was the loveliest and the luckiest boat out of Holand, and Ynen loved her passionately. This left Hildy and Mitt nothing much to do but lounge on the cabin roof. Hildy understood Ynen perfectly. Mitt was amused, though he had to admit that if he had had the luck to own
Wind's Road,
he might well have been just the same. And a bit more careful of my paint, he thought.