I lifted my face to where once God’s sky had been, and besought The Trues I might not die inarticulate, amid these half-worked miracles, but live at least till my fellow-mortals could be made one-millionth as happy as I was happy. I prayed and I waited, and we went slow—slow as the processes of evolution—till the boat-hook rasped again.
“He’s not what you might call a scientific navigator,” said Pyecroft, still in the dinghy, but rising like a fairy from a pantomime trap. “The lead’s what ’e goes by mostly; rum is what he’s come for; an’ Brixham is ’is ’ome. Lay on, Mucduff!”
A white whiskered man in a frock-coat—as I live by bread, a frock-coat!—sea-boots, and a comforter crawled over the torpedo-tube into Moorshed’s grip and vanished forward.
“’E’ll probably ’old three gallon (look sharp with that dinghy!); but ’is nephew, left in charge of the Agatha, wants two bottles command-allowance. You’re a tax-payer, Sir. Do you think that excessive?”
“Lead there! Lead!” rang out from forward.
“Didn’t I say ’e wouldn’t understand compass deviations? Watch him close. It’ll be worth it!”
As I neared the bridge I heard the stranger say: “Let me zmell un!” and to his nose was the lead presented by a trained man of the King’s Navy.
“I’ll tell ’ee where to goo, if yeou’ll tell your donkey-man what to du. I’m no hand wi’ steam.” On these lines we proceeded miraculously, and, under Moorshed’s orders—I was the fisherman’s Ganymede, even as “M. de C.” had served the captain—I found both rum and curaçoa in a locker, and mixed them equal bulk in an enamelled iron cup.
“Now we’m just abeam o’ where we should be,” he said at last, “an’ here we’ll lay till she lifts. I’d take ’e in for another bottle—and wan for my nevvy; but I reckon yeou’m shart-allowanced for rum. That’s nivver no Navy rum yeou’m give me. Knowed ’ee by the smack tu un. Anchor now!”
I was between Pyecroft and Moorshed on the bridge, and heard them spring to vibrating attention at my side. A man with a lead a few feet to port caught the panic through my body, and checked like a wild boar at gaze, for not far away an unmistakable ship’s bell was ringing. It ceased, and another began.