The porpoises were already showing far ahead. Here and there a black fin cut the water, a black back rolled up into sight, hurrying, hurrying, and further and further away.
“Off to sea,” said Jim.
“Lucky black pigs,” said Roger. “Gosh! They’ll be bobbing up to look at steamers in the middle of the night. . . I wish we were.”
“What? Bobbing up from under water?” asked Jim.
“Going to sea,” said Roger.
“Well we aren’t,” said Susan, almost impatiently. “We’ve promised. Isn’t this good enough for anybody?”
Jim laughed. “I’d like to take you out myself. Perhaps, when your father comes and Uncle Bob and I get back. . . Look here, Mate Susan. We’ll go about now, and then when we go about again, we’ll be able to fetch the Fagbury buoy and have a look at Titty’s wreck.”
Susan looked at John, but John, Titty and Roger were all busy with the ropes they had to cast off or haul in. She bit her lip pretty hard. “Ready about,” she called, and swung the Goblin steadily round. There was a moment of frantic business in the cockpit as she came head to wind and the headsails blew across and the boom swung over. Then the Goblin, with all sails drawing, was heading across the river. There was a general coiling up of ropes, and everything was at peace once more.
But not for very long, once more it was “Ready about!” “Let fly jib. . . Backstay. . . Haul in jib. . . And staysail.” The Goblin never lost her way for a second as she swung round and headed for the red buoy off Fagbury Point, and that green boat that lay there, heeled over on one side with her boom down on the cabin top and her sails all anyhow.
“I wish we could go on for ever,” said Titty.
“You’ll have pretty sore hands,” said Jim, “handling ropes for the first time.”
Roger and Titty looked at their hands.
“Hot, but not sore yet,” said Roger, rubbing his tenderly together.
Nearer and nearer they came to the green boat that had gone on the mud. Two men were balancing themselves on her sloping cabin top, looking miserably at the water that was ebbing away and would presently leave their vessel high and dry. As the Goblin came nearer, first one man and then the other slid down and wriggled sideways through the door into the cabin.
“They’ll be awfully uncomfortable with the cabin all on one side,” said Roger.
Jim grinned. “They don’t want to talk about it,” said he. “I wouldn’t either. There’s no excuse for going aground in a place like that. Lucky for them they’re in the river.”
“Why?” said Roger.
“Easily lose the boat going aground outside. Let alone the chance of being salvaged by a lot of pirates, like poor old Ell-wright who had that boat before them. . . ”
“Pirates?” said Titty.
“Longshore sharks,” said Jim. “Same thing. That’s right, Susan. Carry right on. Carry right on for Shotley Spit buoy. Yes, the big one right ahead now. A shallow runs right out to it from the point. See that ripple and the gulls on the mud?”
“Do tell us about the pirates,” said Titty.
“Wait till we’re at anchor and I can get at the chart and show you just what happened,” said Jim.
“Where are we going to anchor?” asked John.
“Jolly good place,” said Jim. “Off Shotley Pier in the Stour, so that we can nip ashore and let your mother know I haven’t drowned you.”
“Telephone?” said Susan.
“Yes. There’s one close to the end of the pier. There’s the pier. You can just see it now. But we’ve got to get round the Spit buoy before turning.”
The Goblin had left the river now and was sailing out into the wide waters of Harwich harbour where the Stour and the Orwell meet before pouring out into the sea. Far away over blue rippled water they could see tall mills by Felixstowe Dock, and the green sheds which Jim told them were for seaplanes, and a huge gantry for lifting the planes out of the water, and a low fort of stone and earthwork on a sandy point. On the other side was another low point, and the houses of Harwich, and a white lighthouse on the water’s edge, and dark wooden jetties, and barges at anchor. Three big vessels were lying quite near them, near enough for them to see the flags on the jackstaffs. Jim pointed out a Dutch motor vessel, a Norwegian timber-ship with a tremendous deck cargo of golden sawn planks, and a rusty-sided Greek with a tattered flag of blue and white stripes.
“But where are the boats that go to Holland?” asked Titty.
Jim pointed away up the Stour, where, on the Harwich side, they could see the masts and funnels of the mailboats along the Parkeston quays.
A small dumpy steamboat came hurrying out from the Harwich jetties. Its deck was crowded with people.
“That’s the ferry,” said Jim. “It runs between Shotley and Harwich and Felixstowe.”
“We’ll be going by it,” said Roger. “We’ll be going to Harwich to meet Daddy’s steamer as soon as we know which day he’s coming.”
They sailed on as far as the first of the big anchored steamships, and then swung round to work their way up into the Stour.
“We’re hardly moving,” said Roger.
“Tide’s against us,” said Jim. “But it’s all right. She’s creeping over it.”
Slowly, though the water was swirling past the Goblin’s sides, they drove up, past the Spit buoy, past Harwich town, past the Trinity House steamer, past a group of anchored barges.
“See those vessels?” said Jim. “The red ones, with lanterns half-way up the mast, lightships in for repairs. There’s the Galloper. Her place is thirty miles out. . . There’s the Outer Gabbard. Each one shows a light of its own, you know, flashes so that you can tell which it is, and each has its own fog signal.”
“We’ve seen ones like them,” said Titty, “in Falmouth. Daddy used to say they came in for cough lozenges when their throats got sore.”
“I was forgetting you knew all about them,” said Jim. “Have you heard the Cork yet? That’s our local nightingale.”
“Four moos a minute,” said Roger. “John timed them, the evening we came. Miss Powell told us what it was.”
“If there’s any mist you’ll hear it better tonight,” said Jim. “It’s a good deal nearer when you’re down here. Close by those piers, Susan. We’ll anchor just beyond the last of them. Well, what do you think of Shotley? If your father’s going to be stationed here I expect you’ll get some sailing in some of those boats. They all belong to the Navy.”
They looked up at the buildings on Shotley Point, houses, a water tower, and a flagstaff on the naval school as tall as the mast of a sailing ship. On one of the black,
