giving a hall. “What’s become of that man with the ear-rings? Oh well, come on, John. Let’s take him across to the Wild Cat and then he can run round. It’s no good his trying to get up here without a ladder.”
She shook some of the wet off her, lugged the oars out from under the jumble of sail, and pulled across towards the green schooner. Titty had not quite done coiling in the fishing-line. She was going slowly towards the end. She knew the sort of things boys used for fishing in harbours. Far worse than worms. But when she came to the end she found nothing but two bare hooks.
Captain Flint had heard the splash and seen the rescue. He was waiting for them at the top of the rope ladder. Peter Duck was there too, and caught the painter which Roger, showing off a little to the red-haired boy, coiled and threw up to him.
“Up you go, “ said John.
The boy took hold of the ladder and went up as easy as a monkey. It was clear that rope ladders were nothing new to him. Water dripped from him as he climbed. Titty went up next, not very easily, because she was carrying the fishing-line. Then Roger, who was beginning to tell the story of the rescue before he even got his head level with the rail. Nancy and John unstepped the mast, made all fast, and hurried after him.
On the deck of the Wild Cat the red-haired boy was standing in a pool of water from which little rivers trickled over the clean white planking to find their way into the scuppers. Peggy and Susan had come out from their galley, hearing that something was happening. Peter Duck was making fast the Swallow’s painter, and looking over his shoulder at the boy.
THE RED-HAIRED BOY GOES OVERBOARD
The red-haired boy was shifting uneasily from foot to foot, with all this crowd looking at him.
“Why, it’s young Bill,” said Peter Duck. “Everybody knows young Bill. Born on the Dogger Bank, he was. He ought to know enough not to fall overboard.”
The red-haired boy blushed hotly.
“He was fishing,” said Roger.
“And a big one pulled him in,” said Captain Flint. “What do you catch in the inner harbour? What sort of baits do you use?” His eye fell on the hooks and sinker at the end of the line that Titty was still holding. “What have you done with his baits, Titty?”
“There were none,” said Titty.
The red-haired boy looked more uncomfortable than ever.
Peter Duck laughed. “It’s the first time in his life young Bill’s fished without bait,” he said. “That I’ll be sure.”
“Let him have a mug of hot tea, somebody,” said Captain Flint. Susan was off into the galley and back in a minute with a mug of steaming tea and a hunk of cake.
“Look here, my lad,” said Captain Flint. “What’s the trouble? You needn’t be afraid of anybody in this ship. You’ve nothing to worry about. It’s no crime to go bathing. . . “
Peter Duck was looking carefully at the hooks.
The red-haired boy burst out. “Well, I tell him there was nothing on them hooks, and he threw the line himself and made me get up on the rail, and then he tell me to tumble in natural . . .”
“Oh, look here,” said Captain Flint.
“It’s all along of Mr. Duck there,” said the red-haired boy miserably. “They wants to know if he’s shipping with you, and where you’re bound for. And they’ll wallop the life out of me if I don’t find out.”
“That’s all, is it?” said Captain Flint. “No trouble about that, though you’ve taken a funny way of asking. But we’ve got no secrets. I’ll tell you, and you can tell them. Mr. Duck is shipping in the Wild Cat as able-seaman and acting bosun. And as for the rest of our crew, you can say we’ve three captains aboard and two mates, to say nothing of the others.”
“Oo,” said the red-haired boy.
The Swallows and Amazons looked at each other, but nobody even smiled.
“Drink that tea while it’s hot,” said Susan. “It’s not too hot. There’s a lot of milk in it. And you ought to have something hot at once after going in like that.”
The red-haired boy drank it up, gulp after gulp, while the others watched him do it.
“As for where we’re bound for,” Captain Flint went on when the mug seemed to be empty. “We don’t yet know ourselves. Now then, my lad, you skip along, get into some dry clothes, and tell that skipper of yours that if there’s anything else he wants to know, he’d better come and ask. Got another slice of cake there, Susan? And give him his hooks and line, Titty.”
The red-haired boy grinned for the first time.
“Thank you, sir,” he said.
“Skip along,” said Captain Flint. “You know as much as we do now. And you could have learnt it all without going swimming.”
“And take a word from me, young Bill,” said Peter Duck. “You’ll come to no good shipping with Black Jake.”
The boy looked round the little group. “I must go to sea somehow,” he said. “And if the others won’t take me . . . ”
“Well, skip along,” said Captain Flint. “We’re busy. Sailing in the morning.”
And with that the boy, munching one hunk of black juicy cake and carrying another, given him by Peggy, for future use, climbed up the ladder to the quay and went slowly off towards the bridge, on his way round to the other side of the harbour and the black schooner that lay there without a sign of anybody being aboard her.
“As for where we’re bound, we don’t know ourselves,” and “Three captains aboard and two mates . . .” If Captain Flint had been trying to find the very words that would make Black Jake more curious than ever, he could not have chosen better.
“I’d think twice about jumping in like that just for the sake of asking a question,” said Captain Flint when the red-haired boy had gone.
“But he was pushed in,” said Titty. “I’m sure he was.”
“Oh, rubbish,” said Captain Flint, but a minute or two later he spoke to Peter Duck. “Who does that boy belong to?” he asked.
“He don’t belong to anybody, properly speaking,” said Peter Duck. “He was born in a trawler. His mother died when he was a baby. His dad was lost in a gale a year or two back and young Bill looks after himself mostly. There’s hardly a vessel out of Lowestoft that hasn’t found him stowing away to get to sea.”
“H’m,” said Captain Flint, and glanced across the harbour. “I wonder if we ought to have let him go back.”
But
