Maurice Drake - The Mystery of the Mud Flats

The evening before we left Exmouth I was in the dock entrance, filling our water-breakers from the hose where the ferry steamers water, when a voice hailed me from the top of the steps and asked if I was the ferry.

‘What ferry?’ I asked, without looking up.

‘Across the river. To—Dawlish, is it? I want to keep along the coast road.’

‘You’ll find the Warren ferryboat on the outer beach. There’s a steam ferry leaves here for Starcross in half-an-hour or thereabouts.’

‘What good’s a sixpenny steam ferry to me? I’m on the road;’ and the owner of the voice came down and sat upon the steps just above me.

He was on the road and no mistake about it. I never saw such a long, lean, broken-down tramp in my life. His coat and shirt were worn through at the elbows, showing his thin, bare arms. The holes in his ragged tweed trousers showed he had on another pair of blue serge underneath, both pairs frayed to fringes at the heels. He wore no hat, and his boots were past even a tramp’s repairing. As he sat, he took one off, looked at it whimsically with his head on one side, and threw it into the dock, and then served the other in the same way.

‘It’s a pity to separate ’em,’ he said cheerfully. ‘True, they never were a pair, but they’ve done a good few miles in my company.’

‘You’re a chirpy bird,’ I said.

‘Of course I am,’ said he. ‘Why not? Six months ago I wasn’t given as many weeks to live, and yet here I am, fit and well, thanks to God’s fresh air and a sane life. I’ve neither house nor farm nor fine raiment to bother me, nor woman, child nor slave dependent on me. I’ve even half-a-lung less to carry than you have, by the healthy look of you. My hat once on, my house is roofed.’ He put his hand to his head. ‘I forgot. It blew over the cliff a few miles back. All’s for the best in this best of worlds. That’s another worry the less.’

‘You’ve got two pairs of trousers,’ I suggested.

‘True, O seer. A concession to public tastes. They are selected so that the holes in the inner pair do not correspond with those in the outer, and thus decency is observed. And now what about this ferrying business?’

I had got my water-breakers aboard the boat and was stowing them between the thwarts. ‘Jump in,’ I said. ‘I’ll put you across.’

‘I may as well warn you that I haven’t a sou to my name,’ he said. ‘You’ll have to work for love. I’ll take an oar and work my passage, if you like.’

It wasn’t the first time he’d been in a boat, evidently, for he came aboard neatly, without stumbling or awkwardness, took the oar I proffered him, and handled it very fairly.

Half-way across I asked him what he was doing at Dawlish.

‘Nothing, I expect. I’ve given up asking for jobs. It’s much easier to ask for grub. Almost anybody’ll give you that in this dear land of mine—poor folk especially—but work isn’t so easy to get. Besides, I’m an unhandy fool at the best. I never learnt any trade worth knowing.’

‘Have you a trade?’

‘Bless you, yes. I’m a pressman—or was, before my lungs began to go. The doctors ordered me fresh air and exercise in a mild climate and I’m getting them tramping the South of England. Then I was fat and flabby and unhealthy and morose; now I’m the lightest-hearted wastrel on earth, and I’ve stopped spitting blood these last two months.’

‘What are you going to do when the winter comes?’

‘Don’t know. Same thing as before, I suppose, unless I can ship south in some packet or other.’

I pricked up my ears. ‘Ship south, eh? Are you a sailor man?’

‘I used to report the big regattas for The Yachting Gazette, ’ he said. ‘I had to know one end of the boat from the other to do that.’

‘Feel like supper aboard my boat?’ I pointed to where lay the Luck and Charity, just visible in the gathering dusk.

‘Nothing I should like better,’ he said airily, so we went aboard and I set before him cold fried sausages and baked mackerel.

The man was ravenous—almost starving—and he ate like a shark, I watching him across the table. In the lamplight one could see him better, and upon examination he wasn’t such a bad looking tramp. He had a short black beard and moustache, his hair was close-clipped, and, for a wonder, he was clean, save for the dust of the roads upon his tattered clothing. Lean as a lath, his cheekbones stuck out and his eyes were sunk in their sockets, yet he looked like what he had claimed to be, fit and well and sunburnt to a healthy brown.

After he wiped the dishes dean he got up.

‘Shall I wash up after myself?’ he asked.

‘No hurry. Sit down and chat. D’you smoke?’

‘When I get the chance. Thanks.’ He produced cigarette papers from some corner of his rags and rolled and lit a cigarette of my tobacco. Inhaling a few breaths luxuriously, he began to look about him. ‘Books—books,’ said he, and got up again to run his nose along my little shelf. ‘ Practice of Navigation, Ainsley’s Nautical Almanac, South of England Cruises. Hullo! Pecheur d’Islande. D’you read Loti?’

‘With a dictionary handy.’

‘Good man. Pecheur d’Islande takes a bit of beating, don’t it? Henry James’s American, too.’

‘I’m trying to break myself in to him. The American’s readable.’

‘Readable! You savage. Half-a-mo’, though. Balzac. Marcus Aurelius. What sort of ship d’you call this?’

‘The Luck and Charity, coasting ketch.’

‘The Luck’s mine, the Charity yours. Extend it to a night’s shakedown, will you? A heap of old sails in any lee corner’ll do me well. I’m dog tired—and I give you my word I’m not verminous.’

‘You’re welcome,’ I told him. ‘Turn in when you like. I’ve got to be about early tomorrow morning—we’re going round to Teignmouth to load.’

As luck would have it, the Teignmouth tug brought up a vessel next morning, and as she was going back alone I bargained for a cheap tow round. In the hurry I forgot my guest, and when he came on deck we were passing the harbour mouth.

‘Shanghai’d me, have you?’ he said.

‘I forgot you. We’re only going as far as Teignmouth this trip. That won’t take you off your road, will it?’

‘Any road’s my road,’ he said philosophically. ‘Can I be of any use?’

‘Can you cook?’

‘Near enough, I expect,’ said he, and set ’Kiah free by frying the breakfast, which he did very well.

I was messing about the deck afterwards, tidying up a little, and took a pull on the topsail halliards, which were new stuff and were loosening in the sun. The other end of the rope was insecurely hitched, and my down haul pulled it off the pin and just out of reach. It began slowly to slide aloft over the sheave and was quickening pace when the tramp went up the shrouds like a lamplighter and caught it at the crosstrees.

‘You’ve done some sailoring,’ I said, when he came down, the free end in his teeth.

‘Yachting,’ he said shortly. ‘Just enough to know my own uselessness.’

‘Good talk,’ I said. ‘Care to ship with me aboard this packet. We want a man.’

‘What’s the trade?’

‘South Coast to the Scheldt, I understand.’

‘Sounds good enough,’ he said. ‘But I’m supposed to be an invalid of sorts. I may not be up to the mark, but I’ll try it for a bit, if you’ll have me, on one condition. I’m to chuck it any day I please without any nonsense about giving notice on either side.’

‘All right. We’ll see how it works. If you can’t stick it, you can’t; if you can you’ll be company for me. What’s your name, by the way?’