Maurice Drake - The Mystery of the Mud Flats

It didn’t seem so useful, though, when I came to tie up for the second winter. I chose Exmouth Bight for anchorage this time. You can’t play the fool without spending money and I was cleaned out down to the last fiver. Exmouth is a free harbour—no dues unless you go into dock—and so Exmouth looked the place for me. The winter before I’d had plenty of invitations ashore, but this time the wasters had got wind of my circumstances and invitations were off. On the whole it seemed a cheerful prospect.

I kept my one paid hand hard at it, lowering topmasts and stripping gear, and, when the lot was snugged down for the winter, paid him off and told him to clear out and go home. He was a stolid shockhead from Topsham, called Hezekiah Pym. The wasters used to laugh at him, and certainly he was the quaintest sample of a yachtsman I ever met. But he might have been born on the water, so handy was he afloat, and he had served my turn so well that I felt sorry to part with him. I had to pawn my watch to make up the money I owed him, and even then it was a near thing. It was a real good watch that my father had given me when I was twenty-one; but the pawnbroker wouldn’t advance me more than the value of the gold case because, he said, the crest and motto engraved on it spoilt its sale value. The result was that when I’d made up ’Kiah’s money I hadn’t half-a-sovereign to my name.

When I paid him he looked first at the money and then inquiringly at me.

‘That’s a fortnight’s brass extra because you haven’t had notice,’ I told him.

‘Aw,’ said he, and put the money in his pocket. Then, as an afterthought: ‘What be yu gweyn t’ du fer th’ weenter, sir?’ he asked.

‘Stop aboard and catch flukes.’

‘Aw,’ said he again meditatively, and went ashore, leaving me to moralise on rats and sinking ships. But I did him an injustice for once.

Next morning he was aboard again before I was out, and brought me my breakfast in bed.

‘What brings you back?’ I asked.

‘Come back t’ catch flukes ’long o’ you,’ he said.

‘Look here,’ I said, ‘I’m broke, ’Kiah, and I can’t afford to keep you. So you just slip off to Topsham again, and get another job.’

‘What for?’ said the fool.

‘Because I’m broke.’

‘I thought you would be, mighty soon,’ he said slowly. ‘Yu been kippin’ all they lot tu long.’

Not once had I ever caught him in the slightest act of incivility all the time I’d had the boat, yet that was how he regarded my guests—‘Yas, sir’; ‘No, sir’; ‘Surely, sir.’ Never a word out of place; but that blinking, stolid lump had all the wasters sized up, all the time. Like their own bogs, South Devon men are. They smile and look tranquil, but you never know what’s under the surface. There’s good rocky ground in them to stand on, though, sometimes, if you’ve the knack of finding it.

After I’d had my breakfast I went forward and told him again I hadn’t a job or pay for him and he must go. He only said ‘Aw’ protestingly; and he didn’t go, and hasn’t gone to this day. He never alluded to the matter again except one day in mid-winter when we’d had a good haul of flukes and could spare some to send ashore to sell. Then he looked up from the loaded dinghy alongside, blowing on his half-frozen fingers.

‘Nort doin’ up to Topsham now,’ said he. ‘I’m better off yere’n what I should be ’ome.’

The winter came in wet and cold, and I nearly went melancholy mad with the sheer monotony of it. With each rising tide we swung our nose towards the harbour mouth and watched the water cover the mud-flats. At flood, we laid up or down or cross-channel before the wind and cursed the swinging round because it tangled our fishing lines. At ebb, our bows pointed up river and the mud-flats became uncovered again. We could only fish at dead water, flood or ebb, and between times we went to sleep or watched the scenery—dirty water or dirty mud, according to the state of the tide.

On the whole I can’t say I was pleased with that winter, and indeed it would take a man with queer tastes to admire wet mud-banks with the thermometer at freezing point, and wind and rain enough to keep you in the cabin for days on end.

Man cannot live on flukes alone, and to get bread and matches and paraffin—to say nothing of an occasional orgy on butcher’s meat—I began to sell the boat’s fittings. First the side-lights went, the spare anchor, the compass—things I thought I could replace cheaply or do without; but by early spring we were pretty well stripped—the fittings and bedding, from the cabins, the saloon table, crockery, spare rigging, any blessed thing that was detachable and had a market value. The saloon and cabins had relapsed to their original condition as hold, the matchboard partitions having been chopped up and burnt in the after-cabin stove, to save buying coal. The hold was a picture with its broken bulkheads jutting from the sides and the floor littered with driftwood and rubbish—anything we could pick up ashore that we thought would come in handy. A marine store dealer’s shop was a fool to it. To save keeping two stoves going ’Kiah came aft and shared my cabin. He never sulked or lost his temper or grumbled once all the winter, and though he never had a word to say for himself, he was company for me of a sort.

Lying on Exmouth beach the day after the dinghy had gone, not the least sore thought I had was that I’d spent money to which he had as much right as myself. I groaned aloud as I tried to get to sleep again, and as the sun rose and warmed my aching bones I fell into a uneasy doze that brought some short forgetfulness.

WITH the sun warming me, I must have slept for over an hour; but, lying face downwards as I was, even my dreams weren’t pleasant. I thought I had fallen overboard from the Luck and Charity , and rising half drowned under her stern called to ’Kiah for a rope. He was steering, but, instead of throwing me the mainsheet, he reached over a long arm, caught me by the side and pushed me under again. Drowning, I gulped salt water, and woke with a jerk, to find a girl standing over me prodding me in the side with her toe. Stupid with sleep, I rolled over and sat up, blinking to stare at her.

The sun, just over her head, dazzled my eyes so that I couldn’t clearly see her face; but from her get-up I judged her to be the usual type of summer visitor to the town. A big straw hat, a light blouse and dark skirt, and a bathing towel in one hand; but with the towel she held her shoes and stockings, and I saw that the foot that she had stirred me with was bare.

I asked her what she wanted, sulkily enough.

‘We want to go across the river.’ She pointed to the yellow sand-hills on the Warren side.

‘Well?’ I said.

‘There doesn’t seem to be a ferryman here. Don’t you want to earn a sixpence?’ Her tone was not conciliatory.

I looked down the beach. A man and woman stood by the waterside, but the boatmen had gone—to breakfast, I supposed. For a moment I was minded to tell her she must wait till they came back, but the thought of ’Kiah came into my mind. I owed it to him to make up what I could for the money I’d spent overnight.

‘I don’t expect my boat’s smart enough for you,’ I said, scrambling to my feet.

‘I didn’t expect anything lavish,’ she snapped; and at her tone I looked down over my clothes and passed a hand over my head and face. I didn’t look prosperous. One boot was broken at the toe, and my serge coat and trousers were stained with every shade of filth, from dry mud to tar, by the winter’s ’longshoring. I wore one of ’Kiah’s jerseys, Luck and Charity in dirty white letters across the breast. Bare headed, my hair was full of sand, and there was a fortnight’s growth on my cheeks. My razor, an elaborate safety fakement, had been sold early in the winter to get ’Kiah an oilskin jacket, and though I considered I had a right to shave with his, it was a right not often exercised. He’d inherited the thing from a grandfather who’d been in the army, and I didn’t share his high opinion of it. But in bright sunlight, with this girl staring at me, I wished I’d done so more recently.