The Admirable Tinker Part 29

At half-past eleven the two children went on board the _Petrel_, a little steam yacht of a shallow draught adapted to the shoals of the Gulf, which Septimus Rainer had hired from a member of the Bordeaux Yacht Club. They found Dorothy and Sir Tancred already on board, and were told that a cablegram from New York had given her father, his secretaries, and the telegraph office of Arcachon a day's work, and prevented him from coming with them. Tinker had known this fact all the morning, but he did not say so. His manner to his father showed a serene unconsciousness of any cloud upon their relations.

The _Petrel_ was soon crossing the Gulf in an immensely important way, at her full speed of eight knots an hour. In pursuance of his policy Tinker took Elsie forward, and left Dorothy and his father to entertain one another on the quarter-deck. The two children amused themselves very well talking to Alphonse, the steersman, and Adolphe, the engineer, thick-set, thick-witted men, who combined the picturesqueness of organ-grinders with the stolidity of agriculturalists; Nature had plainly intended them for the plough, and Circ.u.mstance had pitched them into seafaring.

An hour's steering brought them across the Gulf. They landed, and made their dejeuner at a little auberge, or rather cabaret, affected by fishermen, and the folk of the _Landes_, off grey mullet, fresh from the Bay of Biscay, grilled over a fire of pine-cones, with a second course of ring-doves roasted before it.

After their coffee Tinker suggested that they should cross over to the strip of sand which at that point separates the Gulf from the Bay, and the others fell in with his humour. They crossed over and landed in the yacht's dinghy. Tinker insisted on taking two rugs, though both Dorothy and his father objected that the sand was quite dry enough to sit on. However, when they came to the beach of the Bay, Sir Tancred spread them out, and he and Dorothy sat on them. The two children wandered away, and presently Elsie found herself holding Tinker's hand, and running hard through the pines towards the landing-place.

In answer to Tinker's hail, Alphonse fetched them aboard in the dingey, and the honest, unsuspecting mariners accepted his instructions to take them for a cruise, and come back later for his father and the lady, without a murmur. But no sooner was the _Petrel_ under weigh, than he strode to the middle of the quarter-deck, folded his arms, scowled darkly in the direction of his father and Dorothy, so heedless of their plight, and growled in his hoa.r.s.est, most piratical voice:

"Marooned! Marooned!"

Slowly he paced the deck, with arms still folded, casting the piercing glances of a bird of prey across the waters; then of a sudden he roared once more with the true piratical hoa.r.s.eness, "All hands on deck to splice the main brace!"

Alphonse and Adolphe did not understand his nautical English; but when Elsie came from the cabin with a bottle of cognac and two gla.s.ses, their slow, wide grins showed a perfect comprehension. Tinker gave them the cognac, and took the wheel. Then he became absorbed in steering, and sternly rejected all further consideration of his gift; he would have neither hand nor part in hocussing French agriculturalists posing as mariners.

But for all his absorption in his steering, and his care to look past them as they sat in more than fraternal affection on the deck, with the bottle between them, it was somehow forced on him, probably by the noise they made, that they proceeded from a gentle cheerfulness through a wild and songful hilarity, broken by interludes in which either described to the other with eloquent enthusiasm the charms of the la.s.s who loved him best, to a tearful melancholy, from which they were rapt away into a sodden and stertorous slumber.

At the third snore Tinker turned to Elsie, who sat by him looking rather scared by the changing humours of the agricultural mariners, and said with a sardonic and ferocious smile, "The s.h.i.+p is ours."

At once they divested themselves of the hats of civilisation, and tied round their heads the red handkerchiefs proper to their profession; then he gave her the wheel, and going to the cabin, came back with a black flag neatly embroidered in white with a skull and crossbones, Dorothy's work, and sternly bade an imaginary quartermaster run up the Jolly Roger. Then, as quartermaster, he ran up that emblem of his dreadful trade himself; became captain once more, and, with folded arms and corrugated brow surveyed it gloomily. Then he went down to the engine-room, put the yacht on half-speed, and, as well as he could, stoked the fires.

For the next three hours the _Petrel_ forgot all the innocent traditions of her youth as a pleasure boat, and traversed the Gulf of Arcachon a shameless, ravening pirate, while Captain Hildebrand, the Scourge of the Spanish Main, issued curt, sanguinary orders to an imaginary but as blood-dyed a gang of villains as ever scuttled an Indiaman. The Jolly Roger and three or four blank shots from the little signal gun drove three panic-stricken fis.h.i.+ng boats from their fis.h.i.+ng-ground as fast as oars and sails could carry them, to spread abroad a legend of piracy in the Gulf which would last a generation.

It was nearly sunset before Captain Hildebrand returned to the serious consideration of his business as Cupid's ally. Then he set the _Petrel_ going dead slow, ran her gently on to a sandbank, and let fall the anchor, which was hanging from her bows. This done, again a pirate, he looked at the rec.u.mbent and still stertorous Alphonse and Adolphe with cold, cruel eyes, and said, "It's time these lubbers walked the plank."

[Ill.u.s.tration: It's time these lubbers walked the plank.]

"Ay, ay, sir!" said Elsie cheerfully; and then she added, in a doubtful voice, "But won't the poor men get drowned?"

"Not in four feet of water," said Captain Hildebrand; and he set briskly about the preparations for the fell deed. With Elsie's help he brought a plank to the gangway; and then, either taking him by an arm, they dragged the grunting Adolphe slowly down the deck, and arranged him on the plank. With a capstan bar, and many a hearty "Yo, heave ho!" they levered the plank out over the side till Adolphe's weight tilted it up, and he soused into the water.

For a moment he disappeared, then he rose spluttering and choking, sank again, found his footing, and stood up, roaring like a flabbergasted bull. Captain Hildebrand lay quietly down on the deck, and writhed and kicked in spasms of racking mirth; but his trusty lieutenant, after laughing a while, looked grave, and said, "The poor man will take cold."

"I have no sympathy with drunkards," said Captain Hildebrand with cold severity; but he rose, and, going forward, by kicking Alphonse hard and freely in the ribs, roused him from his dream of the la.s.s who loved a sailor, and said, "Adolphe has fallen overboard."

It took some time for the information to penetrate Alphonse's skull.

When it did, he was all vivid alertness, staggered swiftly aft to the gangway, and in rather less than five seconds, with no conspicuous agility, had precipitated himself into Adolphe's arms. They rose, clinging to one another, and both roared like bulls, while the shrieking Tinker danced lightly round the deck.

Presently he recovered enough to throw them a rope, and they climbed on board: no difficult feat, seeing that the deck was not two feet above their heads. Before they thought of the yacht they went to the forecastle and changed their wet clothes, while the dusk deepened.

Tinker went to the galley, and made tea. He had brought it to the cabin, and he and Elsie were making a well-earned and hearty meal, and discoursing with gusto of their blood-dyed career during the afternoon, when Alphonse, very sad and glum, came and told them that the yacht was aground, and Adolphe was getting up full steam to get her off. Tinker with great readiness said he would come up and help.

In half an hour he heard the rattle of the propeller, and, coming on deck, said he would go to the bows while Alphonse took the wheel, and Adolphe worked the engines.

He went right forward, and peered into the darkness. Adolphe set the engines going full speed, reversed, and Tinker cried, "She's moving!"

He saw the anchor chain slowly tauten, then the _Petrel_ moved no more.

The propeller thrashed away, but to no purpose, and to his great joy he was sure that the anchor held her. However, he cheered them on to persevere, and for nearly half an hour the propeller thrashed away.

Then they gave it up, sat down gloomily on the hatch of the engine room, and lighted their pipes. Tinker and Elsie went back to the cabin, rolled themselves in rugs, and were soon enjoying the innocent sleep of childhood.

It was twelve o'clock when Tinker awoke, and at once he went on deck and found that Alphonse, by way of keeping watch, had gone comfortably asleep in the bows, while Adolphe snored from the forecastle. He kicked Alphonse awake, and said, "Don't you think you could get her off if you hauled up the anchor?"

For a minute or two Alphonse turned the idea hazily over in his apology for a mind; then, with a hasty exclamation, he ran to the side, and saw dimly the taut anchor chain. He blundered below, lugged Adolphe out of his berth and on deck, and for five excited minutes they explained to one another that the anchor was embedded in the sandbank, and that it held the _Petrel_ on it. Then soberly and slowly they got to work on the capstan, and hauled up the anchor. A dozen turns of the propeller drew the _Petrel_ off the bank and into deep water. In three minutes they had her about and steamed off towards the marooned, while Tinker in the galley was heating water for coffee and making soup.

In the meanwhile Dorothy and Sir Tancred, ignorant of their plight, had spent a delightful afternoon exploring with a never-tiring interest one another's souls. For a long time she chided him gently for his aimless manner of living; and he defended himself with a half-mocking sadness.

At about sunset they rose reluctantly, sighed with one accord that the pleasant hours were over, looked at one another with sudden questioning eyes at the sound of the sighs, and looked quickly away. They walked slowly, on feet reluctant to leave pleasant places, through the pines, silent, save that twice Sir Tancred sent his voice ringing among the trees in a call to Tinker. They came to the landing-place, to find an empty sea, and looked at one another blankly.

"The children must have persuaded the men to take them for a cruise,"

said Sir Tancred.

"But they're late coming back," said Dorothy.

For a while their eyes explored the corners and recesses of the Gulf within sight, but found no _Petrel_. Then Sir Tancred said, "Well, we must wait"; and spread a rug for her at the foot of a tree. He paced up and down before her, keeping an eye over the water and talking to her.

The dusk deepened and deepened, and at last it was quite dark.

"We're in a fix," said Sir Tancred uneasily. "Of course, if we stay here they will come for us sooner or later, but goodness knows when.

If we set out to walk to civilisation we shall doubtless in time strike it somewhere, but goodness knows where."

"If we went along this strip and turned eastward at the end of it shouldn't we come to the railway?" said Dorothy.

"I don't know that we should. We should get into the _Landes_, and they're by way of being trackless. Anyhow it would mean walking for hours; and it is less exhausting for you to sit here. The _Petrel_ must turn up sooner or later."

Remembering her talk with Tinker in the morning, Dorothy believed that it would be later--much later; but as she could hardly unfold her reasons for the belief, she said nothing.

For a long time they were silent. Listening to the faint thunder of the Bay behind them, the lapping of the water at their feet, and the stirring of the pines, she filled slowly with a sense of their aloofness from the world, and a perfect content in being out of it alone with him. For his part, Sir Tancred was ill at ease; he foresaw that unless the _Petrel_ came soon a lot of annoying gossip might spring from their accident, and he was distressed on her account. On the other hand, he, too, found himself enjoying being alone with her out of the world.

At last she said softly, "I feel as though we were on a desolate, far-away island."

"I wish to goodness we were!" he cried, with a fervour which thrilled her.

"You'd find it very dull," she said, with a faint, uncertain laugh.

"Not with you," he said quietly.

She was silent; and he took another turn up and down before he said, half to himself, "It would simplify things so, we should be equal."

"Equal?"

"Oh, not from the personal point of view!" he said quickly. "You'd always be worth a hundred of me. But on a desolate island money wouldn't count."

"Oh, money!" she said with a faint disdain. "What has money to do with anything?"

He sighed, and continued his pacing.

"Money is always an obstacle," he said presently. "Either there is too little of it, and that's an obstacle; or there is too much of it, and that's an obstacle."

"I don't think papa would agree with you about too much money," said Dorothy.

"I'm wondering what he will say if we don't turn up before morning,"