CHAPTER IVI SAIL IN THEASTARTE
WE all went to bed early that night, but before we went there was a good deal of talk about my holiday on theAstarte.
Captain Welfare seemed keen on my going. Edmund kept himself curiously aloof from the conversation.
I had the idea that he wanted to dispose of the business side of the matter first. I was determined to become, if possible, a part owner of theAstarte, and all the enterprise associated with her. But it was impossible to discuss actual business until the three of us were alone.
The bishop was innocently emphatic on the subject of my voyage.
He insisted that I wanted a “change,” and that the longer I stopped away the better for his starveling protégé, who was to occupy my house, and preach sermons in my absence.
So the subject was bandied about until we came down to details, and I began to realise that I was really going to sail with them.
A fortnight’s yachting is no great enterprise; but I had somehow a kind of reluctance. I think this was determined by Edmund’s aloofness. He had been, I thought, a little “queer” all theevening, and I had a feeling that he did not want me to start.
But Captain Welfare was pressing in his invitation, and the bishop, in his kindness for me, backed him up.
So before we parted, the rather hazy project had become a definite plan, and I had promised to send the bishop due notice of the date when I should be ready for my locum tenens.
“Remember,” he said as he bade good-bye the next morning, “if you’re away six months it will be all the better for poor Snape. Much as I shall miss you personally, I give you indefinite leave.”
During the next fortnight Captain Welfare and Edmund were much away on business. The furnishing of the shop was completed, and the stock brought down from London.
A young Jew was installed as manager. He was sleek and ingratiating in his manner. I tried my hardest to persuade myself that I liked him, upbraiding myself for insular prejudices.
However, Captain Welfare vouched for his integrity and knowledge of the business. He had been born and bred in the Levant, he said, and was an expert in Oriental bric-à-brac. I was compelled to admit, when I saw our emporium as arrayed by him, that he had much of the artistic instinct of his race.
There was in the small window only a single very beautiful Shiraz rug, which hid the interior of the shop, and formed a background for a couple of brass and copper vases inlaid with hammered silver.
Inside, the polished floor was covered with a few more Shiraz and Khorassan rugs. There wasa large screen and some chairs of mesharabieh work. Small electric lights, hidden in imitation mosque lamps of Egyptian brasswork, depending from the ceiling, lit the room with a mysterious glow. In the background a couple of luxurious couches flanked a low table whose top was formed of an immense brass tray. Here Turkish coffee and cigarettes were always ready for visitors, whether purchasing or not. On shelves around the sides, the dim light was reflected in stray gleams from brass and copper-ware and pottery, and faintly lit up silks and embroidery, and a museum of native work, curios, and “anticas” from all the countries of the East.
“It’s not in the least like a shop,” I said with an involuntary note of relief, as I sipped a cup of excellent though syrupy coffee.
“It’s like an Eastern Shop,” Edmund explained. “And we’re going to run it on Eastern lines, bargaining, coffee, and a bit of rubbish as ‘backshish,’ and all.”
“There is very much money in that, sir,” said the Barber’s Block, so I had mentally christened our Hebrew manager. He had the delicate beauty of one of those waxen heads on which hair-dressers sometimes exhibit their wigs, and his teeth reminded me of those lovely designs in pearl and coral that one sees displayed in glass cases outside the doors of the humbler kind of dentists.
He had his own atmosphere too, like a perfumed asteroid. He revolted me, and I knew that there was something subtly, disgustingly attractive about him.
“We ask one pound,” he continued, “for something we can sell for eight-and-six and have our profit, and very often we get twelve or fifteenshillings, and the customer is more pleased than if we ask eight-and-six, and he pays it. So we give him some little thing, ‘backshish,’ and almost always he buys something more.”
This account of our business methods was extremely disagreeable to me and I remarked:
“I think it’s a rotten way of doing business.”
“It is always so in the East.”
His air of imperturbable finality made me feel merely foolish and fussy. I realised he had dignity in his way.
“He’s quite right,” Edmund agreed, “we’ve got to make this a little bit of the East. After all, throwing in the customs is one way of giving people the genuine article. They get a whiff of Cairo along with their purchase, and it’s well worth the money.”
“Well, I want to be the first customer anyhow. How much is this?” I asked, picking up a little Japanese netsuké in dusky ivory.
“That one I can sell for ten shillings and make a profit. This one I lose if I sell for thirty shillings.”
“But I like this one best.”
“No, it is not so good. See, it has not the signature of the artist. But it is here on this one.”
He pointed out some minute Japanese writing cut in a tiny square.
“Never buy any work of a Japanese artist without the signature. He signs only what is best—perfect.”
“All the same,” I said, “I’ll take this cheap one for luck and because I like it.”
He smiled as he gave me the change.
“I would have sold the pair for four guineas,” he said.
Edmund laughed.
“I think our friend Iscariot will manage very well for us,” he whispered.
He never called him anything else, and Mr. Schultz appeared to have no objection to his nickname.
During this period I learned an extraordinary number of things about some of the practical commercial affairs of life, and I was surprised and somewhat gratified at the energy and capacity displayed by Captain Welfare, and indeed by Edmund too.
It was soon evident that the shop was going to be a paying concern. In the slang of the day “it caught on.” I had always had a general idea that shop-keepers made very large sums of money except when they failed altogether, but I never could understand how they did it. It seemed to me that if they sold expensive things their customers were too few, and if they sold cheap things their profits must be too small to afford them a comfortable interest on their capital. I do not understand this yet, except in the case of people like butchers, and publicans, and very large shops that are crowded with people all day.
But when I learned what our “takings,” as they called them, amounted to on the first day, my fear was that the whole stock would disappear in a week. But Captain Welfare assured me we could double our sales and carry on till long after the arrival of our next consignment from the East.
I asked him if he was quite satisfied to leave everything in the hands of Mr. Schultz.
“Oh yes. We’ve given him sufficient interest in the business to keep him straight. We shall take stock twice a year, so he could only swindleus for six months in any case. It will pay him better to be honest. Oh yes! he has plenty of good reasons for playing fair with me. I’ve done business with him since he was a nipper with bare legs doing conjuring tricks on the foot-walks of Port Said.”
“You think he is grateful?”
“No, I don’t. He’s a low-class Jew. But he’ll not run any rigs with me for the present.”
I dropped the subject, which was one I did not care to dwell on in any case.
We had come to a general agreement as to the terms on which I was to become a partner, and my lawyer came down to take my instructions and prepare the necessary deed.
Marshall was a personal friend of mine and I never transacted any business except through him, with the exception of the matters that were naturally in the hands of my agents in Ireland.
He had, I knew, a considerable affection for me, and respected my literary work as beseeming a man in my position. But he detested my pigeons, and always disapproved of any suggestions of mine concerning my own property. He had always disapproved too of Edmund, whom he had never met.
“Put him on an allowance and stick to it,” he always said.
It was in vain that I explained that Edmund refused an allowance. This only made Marshall snort.
I dreaded intensely telling him of my present proposals.
He listened to my story in absolute silence, which made me more and more nervous as I went on.
His lips stuck out in an unpleasant way which reminded me of the Psalmist’s description of those hateful people who used to say “tush” to the godly.
My account of the enterprise began to seem unconvincing even to myself as it had never done before, and the narrative tailed off on a note of apology, which for the life of me I could not keep out of it.
“That’s all you know about the business?” he asked.
“Yes. I think so.”
“My dear Davoren, you’ve wasted my time and your own money bringing me down here.”
“I’m sorry; but why?”
“You don’t want a lawyer, you want a doctor.”
“Oh! no thanks. I don’t care about doctors while I’m well. They talk shop and smell of iodoform, or whatever they call the stuff.”
“You want a mental specialist, what they call an alienist.”
“I’ve always wondered why they call them that?”
“You can look it up in the dictionary. But that’s not the point. You must consult one. You’re ill.”
“Oh? I hadn’t noticed it. Bates hasn’t said anything about it.”
“I presume you have not informed Bates that you propose to embark not only your capital, but your self, on a rickety old Levantine schooner with a crew of cut-throat niggers, a young scapegrace of a brother, and some kind of a sea-captain, about whom you know nothing whatever, except that he has spent his life trying to pick up a precarious living among all sorts of dagoes in the East.”
“Edmund is a pretty good judge of a boat, you know, and if she has come here from the Mediterranean she ought to be able to take me to the Channel Islands and back.”
Marshall only snorted in the way that I particularly loathed.
“Anyhow,” I continued, “my taking a trip for pleasure is no part of the business. It does not come into the agreement. As for the money, you know I should not be ruined by the loss of a couple of thousand pounds, though I don’t want to lose it, and I don’t believe I shall. I’m doing it to help Edmund.”
“Well, I won’t draft any such damned agreement!”
“I’m sorry. I shall have to get somebody in Brighton. Who is the best solicitor there?”
“I had better recommend you to the worst, I think. But, seriously, Davoren, are you going on with this?”
“Certainly I am. I’ve promised.”
“Well, in that case I had better protect you to the best of my ability.”
I was immensely gratified to find I had won a victory at such a comparatively small cost to my self-respect.
Marshall went to my desk and began to write hurriedly, and very soon “This Indenture Witnessed that Whereas &c.” I made a transitory appearance in the document under my proper name and title, being “herein-after known” as something else, as which I should never have recognised myself. I had always a difficulty in understanding this kind of composition, and Marshall’s essay was no exception to the rule. But I gathered that the payment to me of five per cent. on my capitalwas to be a first charge on the assets and profits of the concern, and was to be independent of any agreed share of such profits “if and when accruing.”
There was another clause empowering me at any time to have all “ships, vessels, premises, stock-in-trade, books, accounts,” and various other things which might or might not be our property, examined, inspected, valued, and various other things done to them, by an accountant to be nominated by me, and who was to make me an account, and do all sorts of other arduous things which would have conveyed nothing whatever to me.
I protested against both these clauses; against the first as showing avarice, and against the second as suggesting suspicion.
“I don’t think Captain Welfare would like it,” I said.
“I don’t expect for a moment that he will,” Marshall replied grimly, “but they’re going in all the same. That’s what I am here for.”
I had gained so much of my own way that I did not care to contest the point. Besides, I reflected, I could explain to Edmund that I didn’t intend to act on either of them.
When the drafts of the agreement came down for signature, however, Welfare took them quite as a matter of course and assured me he would have insisted on them himself.
I wrote and told Marshall this, but he had conceived an inveterate prejudice against Welfare.
We were now in the beginning of April, with the spring coming in like a flood-tide and all was ready for our start. Mr. Snape was coming to be introduced to the parish, and a boyish feeling of emancipation and excitement was making me feel rather absurd to myself.
I wanted to go with them to Tilbury, so as to have as much sailing as possible, but it appeared that there were objections to this. They agreed that theAstartewould want a lot of furbishing up before she was ready to receive a guest.
“I want you to see her at her best,” Edmund said.
It was almost the first time he had spoken cordially about my going at all, so I readily gave up the point.
“What about Newhaven? It’s the nearest port,” I said.
“Oh, Newhaven or Dover would be all right,” said Edmund.
“I’ll tell you what,” said Captain Welfare. “I’ve been looking at the beach down below here. It’s a nice handy cove for landing, and there’s soundings enough for theAstarteup to within a quarter mile of the shore. Why not let us lie to and take you off right here? We’d save time and harbour dues, and economy’s the motto for theAstarte.”
“That’s an A1 idea, Welfare,” said Edmund.
It appealed to me too in my new-born spring mood of adventure. I agreed at once.
“And we’ll have your kit taken down by the famous tunnel and so make some use of it.”
Even my repugnance to the idea of that passage had vanished, and I consented to this arrangement also. It added a touch of mystery to the adventure.
“Talking of that passage,” said Captain Welfare, “we’d save railway freight if we brought the rest of the stuff for the shop along with us. If Mr. Davoren wouldn’t mind storing it till Schultz can fetch it?”
“Not a bit. It would be all right in the cellar, I suppose?”
“Oh, certainly. The men will carry it up the passage and store it till it can be fetched. It’ll save a lot of handling, as Schultz can have it all brought straight to the shop by road.”
It all seemed to me a perfectly natural and convenient arrangement, and I remember laughingly stipulating with Edmund that he should drive away the bats before I ventured down the passage.
They left the next day, expecting to be away about a week.
I was to receive a post-card telling me as nearly as possible when theAstartewould fetch up.
I was left alone with my locum tenens, Mr. Snape. I fear he found me an uneasy host.
He was a terribly earnest young man, who had made himself ill by overworking and under-feeding in slum parishes.
He was the kind of clergyman who is always described as a “good organiser.” In certain circles this is the highest praise that can be bestowed on a clergyman. I never quite understood what it meant, or what these people organised. I always vaguely associated it with having printed tickets for things, and lists of names.
He was very polite and agreeable, and even inclined to be deferential to me, I suppose regarding me as a man of comparative wealth, and possibly impressed by my position as a Justice of the Peace, a position that had been forced upon me, for which I was quite unfitted, and of which I certainly was not proud. I only supposed these were the reasons for his deference, because he had never heard of my historical researches, or of my reputation as a pigeon-fancier.
In spite of this, and without at all intending it, he made me feel that he was shocked.
The modest comfort of my habits shocked his ascetic instinct. He was shocked by my not saying grace before dinner, and bowed his head and crossed himself in silence before he took his soup. I knew this would upset Bates, who is an Evangelical of rather strong views. If I had only thought of it, I would have said some ordinary sort of grace myself, which Bates would not have minded nearly so much.
But it was worse when he began to question me about the “parochial organisation,” and discovered that there was no communicants’ guild, no G.F.S. (I had to think hard before I could remember what a G.F.S. was), no lads’ brigade, no mothers’ union—none of the things he thought there ought to be. I had never before realised the utter nakedness of my parish in the paraphernalia of organised soul-saving.
Poor Snape, who was a gentleman, was more embarrassed than myself.
“Is there much debt on the church?” he asked after a pause.
“Not a penny,” I said, brightening up, for the moderate debt that I had found I had myself paid off, and I thought our solvency at least was in our favour.
But it was not so. Snape looked more than ever depressed.
“I have always found that a debt is such a stimulus to the laity,” he said mournfully. “It unites them in organised efforts.”
“Yes, perhaps, in some places, but I’m afraid bazaars and things would never go well in Borrowdean. People would not understand about gettingthem up, or know what to do with them. They have a great idea of getting value for their money.”
“But how do you work your parish, Mr. Davoren? What do you do in it, without any of the usual methods?”
“Oh, I just—potter about. They don’t behave badly as a rule, and I try to make them behave better. I’m always here if any of them want to see me, or want me to visit them. I don’t think they’d care for a parson strolling into their houses as if he had a right to do so. Then there’s the church. Our service is really restful and harmonious. And of course we have a Sunday School.”
“Oh, of course.”
“Then the publican is a tenant of mine and I insist on his selling honest liquor. I also try to stop fellows drinking too much of it.”
“But do you think that the church should countenance the public-house?”
“Oh yes! I think it’s most important to have our public-houses decent, respectable, civilised places. I often drop in to make sure all is well.”
“I am afraid it would be impossible for me, as an abstainer, to do that,” he cried, dissimulating his horror with difficulty.
“Of course. I should not advise you to try. But if I were to become an abstainer, not only should I dislike it very much myself, but nobody would behave any the better for my sacrifice. As it is, some of them do behave better for knowing that I may come in to their public-house for a chat and a glass of beer with them.”
I saw that Snape was not only puzzled but pained by the unfamiliarity of my views, so I hastened to change the subject.
“I think a country parson can really do a littlegood for his flock by just living among them and not putting on side,” I said. “One can help in various ways, material and other. I have been able, for instance, by a little timely financing to help a young couple to get married, and so have prevented an otherwise inevitable scandal.”
“But that sort of thing would be utterly impossible in a large industrial parish!”
“Of course it would. But this is a small country parish. It would have been impossible for me to do what I have said if I had not had some private means; though of course the young people paid me back by degrees. But isn’t it possible that the methods which seem best in the populous parish may not be equally suitable in a little community like this?”
Without really meaning to, I had got the better of him in mere logic. I saw that he was distressed by feeling that my logic, though unanswerable, was wrong. It is a feeling I know well myself and hate.
“I daresay I am only defending my own laziness and incapacity, to myself as well as to you,” I continued. “The fact is I don’t understand how to run these things. If you like, I shall be delighted if you inaugurate all the organisations you think necessary while I am away. Then perhaps you can teach me to keep them going when I return, if they seem to work well.”
“I’m afraid the time is too short,” he said regretfully.
“Well then, stop on as long as necessary—on the same terms, of course.”
His look of gratitude was very affecting. Yet I regretted my hospitality; for though he commanded my respect, he bored me terribly. I was not uneasy about his organisation, beingconfident that not even Paul and Apollos could stimulate my Sussex parishioners to a “combined effort.”
“I must ask the bishop about it,” Snape said.
“Do,” I said, cravenly sure that Parminter would rescue me from the full consequences of my impulse.
This was our only long conversation during the impatient days while I waited for Edmund’s post-card.
A note came at last to say they were starting. I was to begin looking out for them on the afternoon following the day I received it. The time of their arrival of course depended on wind and tide. I had somehow forgotten to allow for this uncertainty in my anticipation, and now it added to my impatience.
Bates packed up my things wistfully. He had pleaded hard to be taken, and I should have been glad to have him in many ways. But it appeared there was no possible accommodation for him on theAstarte. Besides, I had no one else to leave in charge of the pigeons and Snape.
Bates had the imagination and sympathy which make the best kind of servant, and he conceived of me as something utterly helpless in his absence.
I shook off Snape as soon as I could after lunch, and went up on the Downs where I could get a wide view of the Channel.
There was a fresh topsail breeze from the east, a fair wind for theAstarte. I knew it had held steady for forty-eight hours. It was not unreasonable to expect that she would come up to time or ahead of it.
I had an unreasoning desire to see her for which I could not account. But I had a feeling thatsomething was going to intervene to prevent my sailing. When the idea had first been broached, it had been but a matter of a trip to me. Now it had somehow assumed an unwarranted importance. My desire for the start filled me with senseless apprehensiveness. I was like a schoolboy dreading rain on his holiday.
I could not account for this mood in myself; it made me uneasy, and intensely intolerant of any society—especially Snape’s.
There was a warm April sun glowing on the Downs, and glistening on the loose flints that everywhere pushed their way up through the chalk, and lay about among the short grass of the sheep-pastures. The Channel was a crisp blue under a shining sky, and the air was full of the infinitely soothing sound of the distant calling of sheep.
Peace came over me as I lay watching for the expected sail, wondering what exotic form it would take, trying to picture the long bowsprit and the head-sails “like a skein of geese” that I had been told of.
But the afternoon wore on and no sail came in sight, none at least that could be theAstarte.
The wind grew cold as the sun dipped to its setting, and I rose with a little shiver to go home, calm but disillusioned.
“No sign of Mr. Edmund?” I asked deceitfully of Bates.
“No, sir.”
I felt that the moment had passed, that he would not now come at all, and that I should not set sail in theAstarte.
But I did not want Bates to know I had been watching for her all afternoon.
The sky had clouded over, and it was dark in my study when I heard Edmund’s voice outside.
I went out and met him coming from the passage that led to the kitchen and cellars. He must have come up the tunnel.
“Hullo,” he said. “Sorry I’m late. We were delayed starting and miscalculated the tide a bit. We expected to get the ebb sooner, however it will be making nicely now. How are you? How do you do, Mr. Snape?”
“Is theAstartehere?” I asked.
“Of course she is. We’re not mooring her, just keeping her lying-to till we get the stuff—the stock I mean—ashore and take you off. Are you quite ready?”
“Can’t you stop and dine?”
“Oh, just some soup and a snack, but we mustn’t be long. Just while the other boat comes ashore and we off-load her. Let’s get in to your fire. It’s cold on the water.”
We went into the study and I switched on the lights. The rosy comfort of my room struck me with a kind of pang as I thought of leaving.
“Thank you, Bates, just what I wanted,” said Edmund as Bates brought in a tray with decanter and syphon.
He drank with a little shudder as though of cold, though he did not look cold, but ill at ease.
Snape shuddered too as he watched him.
I knew that seeing a man drink a whisky-and-soda, unsanctified even by the presence of a meal, gave him a feeling of being in some unhallowed presence, and filled him with a desire to protest that was choked down only by his shyness.
“Get some dinner in at once, Bates,” I said, “anything that’s ready.”
“Got all your traps ready?”
“Yes. All strapped and waiting. I had almost given you up.”
After a hasty meal we walked down by the road to the beach. Snape came with us, smiling vacuously as though he thought we were doing something comic, but couldn’t see the joke.
“The niggers can bring your kit down when they have stowed away the goods,” Edmund said.
It would be long before the moon, nearing its last quarter, rose. The only light was from a pale border of sky in the west under the straight edge of the great cloud mass that had overspread the firmament.
It had rained a little, and the roofs of cottages and loose stones on the beach gleamed feebly in the dark.
The sea broke dully on the shore, each wave drawing away from the shingle with a regretful sound. A dark blotch on the edge with two motionless figures beside it was the dinghy.
As my eyes grew accustomed to the faint light I could make out a dim nucleus of blackness against the dull pewter of the sea. This was all we could see of theAstarte. She looked a long way off in the gloom.
Presently Edmund said, “There comes the boat.”
I could see nothing, but very soon I heard the double-knock of oars in rowlocks. Then a moving blackness became visible with pale flashes from the blades of the oars.
The boat was much nearer than I had judged, for a few strokes brought her to the shore.
Immediately a harsh guttural gabbling broke out among the crew, which was at once checkedby a gruff order from someone in the stern-sheets.
Edmund hurried down to the boat, as her crew hauled the bow a few yards up on the beach.
Snape and I followed him more slowly. We seemed to be forgotten in the silent bustle that was taking place.
I could just make out the lines of an able, roomy ship’s boat, and I was a good deal surprised at the amount of cargo she had brought ashore. Case after case was being handed out and stacked on the beach. They looked like good-sized packing-cases, and the men handled them as though they were fairly heavy.
However, the crew of six had them out in about a minute, and then each man shouldered a case with surprising dexterity and they started in a group stumbling up the beach under their loads.
In the darkness I could just make out that some of the men had loose Turkish trousers and some wore the long robe or galabieh of the Arab. Their faces were invisible in the dusk, except for glints of white from eyes and teeth, and most of them seemed to have a white handkerchief or turban bound round their heads.
Edmund and the man who had been in the stern-sheets were talking aside in low tones, and now they guided the laden men to the rough path in the cliff leading to the tunnel.
Snape and I followed, fascinated by this strange, impossible invasion of our quiet Sussex cove.
“It is quite like the old days of the smugglers!” giggled Snape.
It irritated me to feel that he had no sense of the real eerie strangeness and mystery of the scene, and I wished I were alone.
I heard Edmund’s voice, almost unrecognisablein the harsh gutturals of Arabic, giving directions, as I guessed, about getting up the path. Then someone slipped and I heard the quick swish of a whip, the thud of its lash on flesh, and a growl like that of a wounded beast.
I drew in my breath with a little gasp and a throb of the heart, wondering if Edmund had struck the blow.
It seemed a horrible and hideous thing to me then.
The two men who had been with the dinghy now passed us also bearing loads, and three of the first party came back for others. Edmund and the rest had evidently gone on up the tunnel to my cellar.
It was strange to me to think of these wild-looking creatures even in the cellar of my peaceful home, and I wondered what Bates would think of them. I sincerely hoped that Mrs. Rattray would keep out of their way.
I knew how utterly she would disapprove of them, and feared I should sink in her estimation by such an association.
And Mrs. Rattray’s good opinion was very precious to me.
In an incredibly short time all the cases had disappeared and the men were back with my luggage.
Bates came to see me off, bringing some things he had thought of at the last moment as likely to add to my comfort.
“Is everything all right, Bates?”
“Yes, sir. Everything stowed away quite right.”
“What do you think of the crew?”
“Well, sir, I didn’t see much of them. But I hope you’ll keep your things locked up.”
“You think they’re thieves?”
“Well, I believe those sort of low-class foreigners mostly are, sir.”
As we were getting into the boat Snape asked which I thought would be the best evening for the G.F.S.?
“I don’t know,” I said firmly, “ask Miss Gregson at the post-office.”
I don’t know what put Miss Gregson into my head, but as the Arabs rowed us through the night with a strange grunt at each stroke, I felt the Girls’ Friendly Society was very remote.
Edmund remained silent, and it seemed to me there had been an air of silence and speed about the whole proceeding that was puzzling. I regretted it because it took away from my feeling of holiday exhilaration.
“You had quite a big cargo,” I said.
“Must keep up the stock, you know.”
“Of course. I didn’t know you had so much in reserve. How quickly these fellows handled it. They’re very smart.”
“They’ve got to be smart when Jakoub is around,” said Edmund grimly.
I guessed that the silent native who sat with us in the stern was Jakoub, and remembered Edmund’s description of him.
I hoped it had been he who had used the whip.
“Here we are,” said Edmund, as theAstartesuddenly became distinct and closer to us.
Someone fixed the port light in its bracket. There was no other light on deck, but a glow came through the sky-lights covering the saloon, and shone upwards along the tall pointed mainsail.
The boat was brought alongside, a short ladder slung from the side and, as I put my foot on it, ahand grasped mine and Captain Welfare said, “Welcome to theAstarte, sir.”
I thanked him and came aboard, followed by Edmund and the crew. At the same time the dinghy came alongside and was made fast.
There was a gruff order “Esta’ad,” followed by other words in Arabic which had the curious effect of fierceness to which the language lends itself. There was a rattle as sheets were hauled down and belayed and, with the two boats still in tow, theAstartewas on the wind and gathering way.
My heart leaped to the glorious sensation.
“We’re off!” I exclaimed in surprise.
“Yes. We don’t want to miss any of this tide,” said Captain Welfare. “But it’s no good standing here in the cold and dark. Come down to the saloon and have a look at your cabin. Get those boats aboard, Jakoub.”