Chapter Twenty Three.
A Sea-Fog.
“Now,” said Bob to himself, when he got down to the beach after a sharp run across the common, “I must be as spry as possible with my swim, or else I shall be too late for the boat, as dad said I would be, for I really haven’t got much time to spare!”
Unfortunately, however, at the very outset, poor Bob met with obstacles that prevented this praiseworthy intention being effectively carried out. In the first place, Dick, with whom he had always bathed in company since their first involuntary dip together off the castle rampart on the first evening of their arrival at Southsea, was not at their usual trysting-place. Not only that, he was nowhere to be seen in the neighbourhood of the shore.
“I wonder where he can be?” said Bob, continuing his soliloquy in a very disjointed frame of mind, after looking in every direction fruitlessly, and calling out Dick’s name in vain. “I wonder where he can be? The Captain did not say he wasn’t to come with us this morning!”
At last, after wasting some precious minutes thus waiting, he began undressing very slowly, instead of in the usual brisk manner in which he was in the habit of peeling off his clothes, running a race with Dick to see who would get into the water first.
Then, at length, he plunged in to take his swim in a very half-hearted fashion, going in reluctantly and coming out in the same undecided way; while, to make matters worse and further protract his loitering, just as he was beginning to dress again, a nasty spiteful bloodhound, which was prowling by the shore, made a most unprovoked attack on Rover, necessitating his going to his rescue with a big stone—Master Bob hopping up to the scene of action “with one shoe off and one shoe on,” like the celebrated “John” the hero of the nursery rhyme!
Rover was not quite a match for the brute that assailed him; but with Bob’s help, not omitting the big stone, the two “routed the enemy with great slaughter,” the bloodhound fleeing away ignominiously with his tail between his legs, and Rover raising a paean of victory in the shape of a defiant bark as he retreated.
Still, the episode consumed a few more minutes of valuable time; so when Bob had hopped back again to where he had left his clothes to complete his toilet, and then raced down to the pier, it was not only past the hour fixed for the Southampton steamer to start, but she was already well on her way.
In fact, she was just then rounding Gillkicker Point, which juts out from Stokes Bay, bearing away on board her, his father and mother and Nell, besides the Captain and Mrs Gilmour; and not only that, leaving him behind!
Bob did not know how to contain himself.
He was too manly to cry; although he felt a big lump in his throat which made him take several short swallows without gulping anything down; while, strangely enough, something seemed to get in his eyes, for a moment preventing him from seeing anything seaward but assort of hazy mist as he stood listlessly by the head of the pier, trying vainly to discern the excursion-boat, now fast disappearing in the distance!
Presently, however, after remaining there awhile, staring at nothing, the Captain’s favourite maxim occurred to his mind— “What’s done can’t be helped”; and coming to the conclusion that there was no use in his stopping on the pier any longer, since the steamer had left, and there was no possibility of his being able to join the others, he determined to bend his steps in the direction of the coastguard-station, with the hope of finding Hellyer there to cheer his drooping spirits.
Bob’s fates, though, appeared singularly unpropitious for him this morning; for on his arriving anon at the little cabin beyond the castle, which was the Captain’s regular trysting-place, lo, and behold, a strange man was there, who told him that Hellyer was “off duty,” and it would not be his turn “on” again until late in the afternoon. Here was another misfortune!
But there was “balm in Gilead” in store for Bob; for, hardly had the long face that he pulled on learning the unwelcome news of Hellyer’s absence merged again into the ordinary round contour with which his friends were familiar, than, whom should he see coming along the beach, only a little way off, but—who should you think? Why, Dick!
Yes, he had been into Portsmouth, he explained, to take a letter to the Dockyard for the Captain; and now, also in pursuance of the old sailor’s orders, he was about going off to the cutter, which lay at her moorings abreast of the coastguard-station, and only about a cable’s length out, so as to be within easy reach, so that they could haul her up on the shingle in the event of any sudden shifting wind rendering her anchorage unsafe.
Bob at once flew to him with open arms, so to speak; and so did Rover too, the sagacious animal always reflecting his young master’s moods, and having turned as woebegone as a naturally cheerful dog could be since he noticed Bob’s being mopey, he had now resumed his proper tone of bark and mien, wagging his tail at the sight of Dick and thus reciprocating Bob’s feelings.
“Hullo, Dick!” said the latter, when the young yachtsman had approached near enough for them to speak without getting to each other. “What are you going to do aboard?”
“To clean out the yacht ready for another trip, Master Bob. The Cap’en told me to get her done afore he come back.”
“That’s jolly!” exclaimed Bob, brightening up at the prospect of some sort or any sort of expedition in lieu of the one he had missed. “May I come with you?”
“Ees, sure-ly, Master Bob,” returned Dick. “But how comes it you bain’t a-gone wi’ the Cap’en and t’others?”
Bob did not like any allusion to this delicate subject.
“I was too late,” he said abruptly, changing the conversation at once. “How are you going off to the cutter, I see she has got the dinghy towing behind, eh?”
“P’r’aps I’m a-going to swim out to her,” replied Dick, with a grin. “What say you to that, Master Bob, hey?”
“If you do, I will too,” retorted Bob; “although I’ve had my dip already, and very lonesome it was. Why didn’t you come down this morning?”
“I sang out to you jist now, sir, as how I had to take a letter for the Cap’en, who told me as he didn’t think you’d have time to bathe afore starting for the steamer.”
“I thought I had—and missed it!” said Bob ruefully. “But you’re not going really to swim out to the cutter now, Dick, eh?”
“No, no, Master Bob,” cried Dick, his grin expanding into a laugh. “I were only a-joking. There’s a waterman just shoving down his wherry as will put us off to her. Hi, ahoy, there!”
“Hi, hullo!” also shouted out Bob; but the two only succeeded in ultimately attracting the attention of old Barney the boatman, who was rather deaf, and required a deal of hallooing before noticing any one, by setting on Rover with a “Hi, catch him, sir!”
This rather exasperated old Barney at first. However, after some violent explanations they were grudgingly given a passage out to the anchored yacht, Barney grumbling at doing it for nothing!
Rover was not included in the bargain; for, he disdained adventuring his valuable person in a small row-boat, no inducement being ever strong enough to persuade him so to do. He was quite satisfied to swim out after the boys had started off in the wherry, being lugged subsequently on board the cutter by his legs and tail as soon as they fetched alongside.
For some little time after Bob and Dick got on board, both were very busy, Bob dipping overboard a bucket that had a “becket” of rope for a handle, and a longer rope bent on to this with which he proceeded to haul the bucket up again, full of sea-water, wherewith he sluiced the decks fore and aft thoroughly; while Dick, on his part, scrubbed the planks with a piece of “holystone,” then adroitly drying them with a mop, which he could twirl now, after a little experience, with all the dexterity of an old salt!
When the little cutter was thus presently made “a-taunto” by their mutual exertions, they sat down to rest for awhile, Dick sharing his luncheon of bread-and-cheese with Bob, who, of course, had long since consumed the slices of bread-and-butter he had brought out with him for his breakfast.
By and by, on a gentle breeze springing up from the southward and westward, Master Bob, boylike, suggested their slipping the Zephyr’s moorings and going for a little sail out into the offing.
“We needn’t run very far,” he said. “Say, only to the fort there and back again, you know.”
But Dick would not hear of the proposal.
“No, Master Bob, not lest the Cap’en gived orders,” he remonstrated. “Why, he’d turn me off if I did it; and, he’s that kind to me as I wouldn’t like to vex him, no not for nothing!”
“He wouldn’t mind me though,” argued Bob. “Didn’t he say the other day—why, you heard him tell Hellyer yourself—that he’d back you and me to manage a boat against any two boys in Portsmouth, aye, or any port on the south coast?”
“Ees, I heerd him,” reluctantly assented the other; “but that didn’t mean fur us to go out in the boat alone.”
“Well, Dick, I didn’t think you were a coward!” said Bob with great contempt, angry at being thwarted. “I really didn’t.”
This cut the other to the heart.
“You doesn’t mean that, Master Bob,” he exclaimed reproachfully, hesitating to utter his scathing reply. “Ah, you didn’t say as I wer’ a coward that time as I jumped into the water arter you behind the castle.”
“Forgive me, Dick,” cried Bob impulsively, “I was a beast to say such a thing! Of course, I know you are not a coward; but, really, I’m sure the Captain would not mind a bit our going for a sail—especially if he knew, and he does know, about my being left behind all alone while they all have gone off to Southampton in the steamer enjoying themselves!”
This last appeal made Dick hesitate; and, in hesitating thus, he lost his firmness of resolution.
“Well, Master Bob, if we only goes a little ways and you promises fur to come back afore the tide turns, I don’t mind unmooring for a bit; though, mind, Master Bob, you’ll bear all the blame if the Cap’en says anythink about it!”
“Of course I will, Dick, if he does; but I know he won’t say anything. You may make your mind easy on that score!” With these words, Bob sprang forward on the fo’c’s’le and began loosening the jib from its fastenings; while Dick, now that his scruples were overcome, set to work casting off the gaskets of the mainsail, the two boys then manning the halliards with a will, and hoisting the throat of the sail well up.
The jib was then set, its sheet being slackened until Dick slipped the buoy marking the yacht’s moorings overboard; when, the tack being hauled aft, and the mainsail peaked, the bows of the cutter paid off and she walked away close-hauled, standing out towards “No Man’s Fort,” on the starboard tack.
It was now past midday and the tide was making into the harbour; so that, as the wind from the south-west had got rather slight, veering round to the southwards, the cutter did not gain much of an offing, losing in leeway nearly all she got in beating out to windward.
“I vote we let her run off a little towards the Nab,” said Bob, seeing what little progress they made towards the fort; and he, being the steersman, put the helm up, easing off at the same time the sheet of the mainsail; Dick, who was in the bows, attending to the jib. “It’s awful poor fun drifting like this!”
“Mind you turns back agen when the tide begins to run out!” premised Dick. “You promised as we wasn’t to go fur!”
“All right,” replied Bob, “I won’t forget.”
But, now, a strange thing happened.
No sooner had the cutter’s bows been turned to the eastwards, than Rover, who had previously been looking very uneasy, standing up with his hind legs on one of the thwarts and his fore-paws on the taffrail astern, gazing anxiously behind at the land they were leaving, all at once gave vent to a loud unearthly howl and sprang overboard.
“Hi, Rover, come back, sir!” yelled out Bob, at the pitch of his voice—“Rover, come back!”
But, the dog, although hitherto always obedient to his young master’s call, paid no attention to it now, turning a deaf ear to all his whistles and shouts and swimming steadily towards the shore.
“Poor Rover, he’ll be drownded, sure-ly!” said Dick. “Don’t ’ee think we’d better go arter he, poor chap?”
“Not a bit of it!” replied Bob, angry at the dog’s desertion, as he thought it, putting down Rover’s behaviour to some strange dislike on his part to being in the yacht, at all events when she was moving briskly through the water. “He has swum twice as far in the river in London, and I won’t go after him!”
Bob, however, brought the little yacht up to the wind again, watching until Rover was seen to emerge from the sea and crawl up on the beach again; when the cutter’s head was allowed to pay off again, and within a couple of hours or so, although neither of the boys took any note of how the time was going, they had not only passed the Nab but were now nearing the Ower’s light-ship.
Not till then did Dick become aware how far they had reached out, Portsmouth having long since disappeared and even the forts beginning to show hazy to windward; while Selsea Bill loomed up on their port hand.
“Master Bob, Master Bob!” he cried in consternation, never having been so far out before, even with the Captain. “Do ’ee know where we be now?”
“Why, out at sea, to be sure!” said Bob, his face all aglow with delight at gliding thus like Byron’s corsair— “O’er the glad waters of the deep blue sea.”
For his soul certainly was, for the moment, quite as “boundless” and his “thoughts as free,” from all consideration, save of the present—“Isn’t it jolly?”
“Well, I doesn’t know about that,” replied Dick, looking very glum. “I’m a-thinking of the gitting back; which, wi’ the tide a-setting out from the harbour, won’t be so easy, I knows!”
“Nonsense, Dick!” said Bob in his usual off-hand way, though bringing the cutter up to the wind, so as to go about on the other tack. “You’re frightening yourself really, my boy, about nothing! The wind has got round more to the south; so we’ll be able to run back to Portsmouth in no time. The cutter is a very good boat, so the Captain says, on a wind!”
However, “Man proposes and God disposes.”
The wind suddenly dropped, just as the tide turned, the ebb setting out from Spithead towards the east, dead against them; when, instead of running in homewards “in no time,” the cutter, after a time, became becalmed first, and then gradually began to drift out into the open Channel again.
Dick was the first to notice this.
“Look, Master Bob!” he cried. “We aren’t making no headway at all! I don’t see we’re getting any the nearer to the Nab!”
“We will, soon,” replied Bob, all hopeful. “It’s only because the breeze has dropped a bit. Before long, we’ll pick it up again! I think, Dick, we’d better slacken off the sheets and let her bear away more!”
This was done; but, still the Zephyr would not move.
She had net way enough, indeed, to answer her helm; for, her bows pointed west, and south, and east, alternately, as the tidal eddies swayed her in this direction and that.
“I knewed we was doin’ wrong,” remarked Dick presently, after a long silence in which neither of the boys spoke a word. “It’s a judgment on us!”
“A fiddlestick!” retorted Bob. “We’ll only drift about like this for a short time; and, when the tide turns again, it will sweep us back to Spithead like one o’clock!”
“I doesn’t believe that, Master Bob,” said Dick disconsolately, sitting down on a thwart, and looking longingly at a faint speck in the distance which he thought was Southsea; although they were almost out of sight of land now, the swift current carrying the boat along nearly four knots an hour. “We should ha’ tuk warnin’, Master Bob, by Rover. He knowed what wer’ a-coming and so he swum ashore in time, he did!”
“Rover is a faithless creature!” cried Bob hotly. “I’ll give him a good licking when we reach the land again, you see!”
“When’ll that be, Master Bob?”
“Oh, some time or other before night,” replied he defiantly, but Dick could easily tell from his tone of voice that he did not speak quite so buoyantly as before; and his already long face grew longer as the day wore on without the breeze springing up again or any change of circumstances.
They did not pass a single ship near, notwithstanding that they saw several with all their sails set, their loftier canvas catching a few lingering puffs of air that did not descend low enough to affect the cutter. The sight of these vessels moving, however, raised their drooping spirits, Bob and Dick thinking that the wind by and by would affect them, too.
But no breeze came; and all the while they were being carried further and further out to sea.
“Hallo, there’s a steamer!” sang out Bob after another protracted silence between the pair. “I see her smoke easily. She’s steering right for us!”
“Where?” asked Dick. “I doesn’t see no steamer, Master Bob.”
“There!” said the other, pointing to a long white line on the horizon. “There she is, blowing off her steam, or her funnel smoking, quite plain!”
“Lor’, Master Bob!” ejaculated the other, after peering fixedly for a moment where his companion directed him to look. “That arn’t no steam or smoke as ever I seed. It be a cloud, or fog, I knows; or summut o’ that sort, sure-ly, Master Bob!”
Bob, however, would not be persuaded of this, persisting that he was right and Dick wrong.
“I don’t know where your eyes can be!” he said scornfully. “I’ll bet anything it’s a steamer; or, I never saw one!”
But ere another hour had passed over their heads, Dick was proved to be the true prophet; he, the false!
The low-lying bank of vapour, which originally resembled the trail of smoke from some passing steam-vessel on her way down Channel, gradually spread itself out along the horizon.
It then rose up, like a curtain, from the sea; and, stretching up its clammy heads towards the zenith, widened over the heavens until it shut out the western sun from their gaze, making the still early afternoon seem as night.
Creeping over the surface of the sullen water with ghostly footsteps, the mist soon shrouded the boat in its pall-like folds; impregnating the surrounding atmosphere with moisture and making the boys believe it was raining, though never a drop fell.
It was only a sea-fog, that was all.
But it was accompanied by a dampness that seemed like the hand of Death!