Maurice Drake - The Mystery of the Mud Flats

‘Voogdt.’

‘What a name! Dutch?’

‘My grandfather was. It’s a good enough name for me.’

‘No offence,’ said I, for he sounded testy. ‘Only we seem to have a rum collection of names here. Mine’s Carthew-West, the boat’s the Luck and Charity , the first mate is Hezekiah Pym, and now we’ve shipped a crew called Voogdt.’

‘Austin Voogdt, if you want the lot of it,’ he said, in perfect good temper once more. And so we came to Teignmouth with our full ship’s company.

WE took forty tons of clay from Teignmouth, and with fair weather all the way up Channel reached Terneuzen on the fourth day. We made a lighthearted crew, all three: for me, I was to continue the cruising, that had amused me for the past two years, and be paid well for it, to boot; Voogdt, for all his baresark philosophy, was well enough pleased to have a roof over his head, warm clothing and regular meals; and as for ’Kiah, give him three meals a day and tell him what to do next, and he asked nothing more.

Voogdt got on wonderfully well with ’Kiah. A bundle of nerves, he used to almost dance with irritation at his deliberate speech and gait, slanging him in many-syllabled terms of abuse, which ’Kiah, strangely enough, seemed rather to enjoy.

‘Move. Get a move on you, you slab-sided megatherium,’ he would say; or, ‘Gangway! Make way for your betters, you hibernating troglodyte’; and ’Kiah would grin as he shambled about his work, peaceful and undisturbed. ‘’E’s a funny blook, id’n’ ’er?’ he said to me once, almost admiringly, as he was doing his trick at the wheel. ‘Uses longer words’n what yu du. French, I reckon.’ I fancy he thought Voogdt complimented him by assuming him proficient in that foreign tongue.

Personally, I got on very well with the man, too. He was mad, if ever a man was; but he was a gentleman and a good sort as well. His attitude towards life was recklessly joyous. ‘I lost half-a-lung in a month,’ he told me once. ‘Any shift of wind may finish me—a drop or rise of temperature in the wrong direction, or a degree more or less of humidity or dryness. Nobody really knows much about tubercle—how it may flourish or die in any given individual. I’m like a child wandering in a whirling engine-room in the dark. A false step or a lurch, and—whisk I I’m gone. What’s the use of taking care?’

He couldn’t do the heaviest work, but, apart from that, was as good as any other man—better than most, because he was willing. In fact, he steered better than ’Kiah, who, having held a tiller before he could read, steered rather by instinct than conscious effort. ’Kiah would lean over the wheel as though half asleep, swaying to the motion of the vessel, and although he steered as well as the average fisherman, carelessness born of familiarity often let him half-a-point or so off his true course. He steered as much by the feel of the sails as by compass, and so rarely needed to exert himself. Steering well enough for all practical purposes, he didn’t try to do better. Not so Voogdt. His eyes never left the bows except for an occasional quick glance at the card, and he put his uttermost muscle and will-power into his work. It exhausted him, of course. I’ve seen him mop the perspiration from his face when he was relieved; but he steered to a hair-breadth nicety all the time.

I was thankful to have found him, and when I found out what manner of man he was, I offered him the spare bunk in my cabin, thinking he would be more in place there than sharing the forecastle, good chap though ’Kiah was. Voogdt said as much at once.

‘’Kiah’s an awfully decent sort. Think it’d hurt his feelings if I shifted?’

‘Ask him,’ I suggested, and Voogdt did so. I fancy he told him my bookshelf was the principal attraction aft. ’Kiah displayed no wounded feelings whatever and Voogdt’s thought for him only rendered him the more welcome in my quarters; so it was a very merry and bright ship’s company that entered the Scheldt the fourth morning after leaving Devonshire.

The Deutsche-West-Inde boats used to call at Antwerp, so I’d been in and out of the river often enough before. Terneuzen lies on the south bank, at the entrance to the Ghent ship canal, about a couple of miles from the mouth of the river, and as tide was making we managed to get there without a pilot. It seemed to me a queer place for an English company to open shop, yet there were the sheds, plain enough to see with ‘Isle of Axel Trading Company’ painted upon them as large as life. They were built on the big embankment that keeps the tide off the fields, a good mile from the town and lock-gates, flat Dutch pastures and tillage all around them, and I never saw a place that looked less like business in all my life. Four small sheds of wood and corrugated iron sufficed for office and warehouses, and a chimney smoking behind the office hinted at some sort of dwelling under the same roof. The wharf was a mere skeleton of wooden piles sticking out into the water, with a six-foot planked way along the top leading to the sheds. According to the chart, the whole lot, houses and wharf, would be half-a-mile from the river at low water, and separated from the stream by dreary mud-flats. It was just high tide when we got there, and so were able to float alongside the wharf, a red-faced youngish man with short curly hair shouting directions from the shore. We rode so high that we could look over the embankment right down on the cows feeding in the green pastures behind it. The place was as peaceful as a dairy farm, no houses nearer than the town, and I wondered more than ever what trade any company could do in such a deserted spot. As soon as we were made fast the curly-haired man came aboard, very busy about nothing.

‘My name’s Cheyne. I’m the manager. Capt’n West? With clay from Teignmouth?’

‘Forty tons,’ I said.

‘Good. May as well get your hatch cover off, Capt’n. Then come ashore’n have a drink. We’ll get it out of her tomorrow, ’n then ballast you to rights, ’n off to sea again, eh? Too long in port’s bad f’r th’ morals, eh?’

‘Shouldn’t think there was much chance of going on the bend here,’ I said. ‘Unless you go bird-nesting or chasing cows.’

‘Y’ can go on the bend anywhere, cocky,’ he said, and hiccupped, and I noticed he’d managed it all right. ‘Terneuzen’s a hot little shop, lemme tell you. ’T least I’ve livened ’em up a bit. Sleepy hole it was before they had me t’ liven ’em up. We’ll go into town this evening an’ shake a leg, what?’

I took my papers to his office—the untidiest hole I was ever in—sat among the litter for half-an-hour, had a drink and a chat, and then went aboard again.

Voogdt was stowing the foresail when I got back and looked at me inquiringly.

‘That cove full?’ he asked.

‘Full as an egg. Useful sort of manager, eh?’

‘Useful sort of business generally, I should say,’ he replied. ‘What the dickens are they going to do with this clay here? Feed cows on it? Is your money all right, skipper?’

‘I haven’t earned my advance of fifty yet. When I have, I’ll ask for another.’

‘I should, if I were you,’ said he, and then the matter dropped.

However, there were more signs of activity next morning. We rigged a rubbish wheel at the gaff-end, and with the help of four hired Dutch labourers started to get the clay ashore. Even Cheyne put on an old suit of clothes and bore a hand, but I never saw such slack methods as his in my life. The man worked like a navvy, I grant, but I should have thought he’d have been better employed in tallying the tubs of clay. As it was, he’d pull and haul with the rest of us, very noisy and hearty, and I admit he hustled those slow-bellied Dutchmen better than I could, knowing the language as he did. Then, when we’d got out a half-dozen or dozen tubs, he’d pick up his tally-book again.