Chapter XX: A Narrow Squeak

Once aboard the smack, Jim was shoved into a small black dog-hole of a cabin forward and the door slid to and bolted. And there, all alone in the dark, he presently passed a very evil time.

In due course he heard the rest of the crew come aboard. Then the anchor was pulled up, and then his head began to swim in sympathy with the heaving boat.

Like most boys he had at times had visions of a seafaring life, swinging impartially between that and a military as the only two lives worth living. But the night he spent on that smack cured him for ever of the sea.

It was a black night, with a stiff west wind working round into a south-west gale. They had hoped to get under the lee of the Island before the full of it caught them, but it meant strenuous beating close-hauled, and progress was slow. Before they were half-way across, about midnight, the gale was on them, and they turned tail and ran for their lives, with the great seas roaring past them and like to come in over the stern every moment.

Jim knew nothing of it all. He was sick to death, and bruised almost to a jelly with bumping to and fro in that dirty black hole. While they beat up against the wind, the crashing of the seas against the bows, with less than an inch of wood between him and them, deafened and terrified him. It seemed impossible that any mere timber could long withstand so terrific a pounding. Each moment he feared to see the strakes rive open and let the ocean in.

But very soon he was past caring what happened. He had never been so utterly miserable in all his life.

When they turned and ran, the crash of the waves against the outside of his dog-hole lessened somewhat, but the up-and-down motion increased so that the roof and the floor alternately seemed bent on banging him to pieces. And at times they plunged down, down, down, with the water bubbling and hissing all about them till he believed they were going down for good, and felt no regret about it.

How long he spent in that awful hole he did not know. Ages of uttermost misery it seemed to him. But, of a sudden, there came an end.

The boat, racing over the great rollers with a scrap of foresail to give her steerage way, brought up abruptly on a bank. The mast snapped like a carrot, the roaring white waves leaped over her, dragged her back, flung her up again, worried her as vicious dogs a wounded rat.

The men in her clung for their lives against the thrashing of the mighty waves, and then, not knowing at all where the storm had carried them, but sure of land of some kind from the bumping of the boat, they scrambled one by one over the bows and fought their way through the tear of the surf to the shore.

All but one. He hung tight to the stump of the mast till the others had gone, each for himself and intent only on saving each his own life.

Then the last man, swinging by one arm from the stump of the mast, caught at the bolt of the dog-hole and worked it back, and reached in a groping arm and dragged out Jim, limp and senseless from his final bruising when the boat struck.

"My sakes! Be yo' dead, Mester Jim?" he asked hoarsely, holding the lad firmly with one arm and the mast with the other.

But the sharp flavour of the gale acted like a tonic. The limp body stretched and wriggled and gripped the arm that held it.

"Aw reet?" shouted the hoarse voice in his ear, and when Jim tried to reply the gale drove the words back into his throat.

The boat was still tumbling heavily in the surf. All about them was howling darkness, faintly lightened by the rushing sheets of foam. Jim felt himself dragged to the side, and then they were wrestling, waist deep, with the terrible backward rush of the surf. His feet were swept from under him, but an iron hand gripped his arm and anchored him till he felt the sand again. Then a thundering wave swirled them on, and they were able to crawl up a steep, hard bank of sand on their hands and knees.

They lay there panting, while the gale howled and the white waves gnashed at them like wild beasts ravening for their prey. And Jim felt cleaner and better than he had done since he boarded the smack.

He turned to his rescuer and laid hold of his arm.

"Who is it?" he shouted.

"Me--Seth," came the hoarse reply into his ear, and he had never in his life felt so glad of a friendly voice, though he would not have known it was young Seth's voice if he had not said so.

For their position was terrifying enough. It was still too dark to see where they were, except that they were on a bank, with the roar and shriek of the gale all about them.

Young Seth stood up to see, if he could, what had become of the others. But he was down flat again in a moment.

"I connot see nowt," he shouted.

"Are we safe here, Seth?"--as a vicious white arm came reaching up the slope at them.

"Tide's goin' down."

So they lay and waited, and it was good for Jim that night that his life on the flats had hardened him somewhat to the weather.

He was soaked to the bones, and the spindrift stung like a whip. But he was so utterly spent with his previous sickness that his heavy eyes closed, and he dozed into horrible nightmares and woke each time with a start and a sob.

And then he found himself warmer, and thought the gale had slackened; but it was young Seth's burly body lying between him and the wind, and he was drawn up close into young Seth's arms, and there he went fast asleep.

He woke at last into a sober gray light and a great stillness. The wind had dropped and the sea had fallen back behind its distant barriers. When he stretched and sat up he could see nothing but sand--endless stretches of brown sea-sand, with the dull gleam of water here and there.

He got on to his feet and felt his bones creak as if they wanted oiling, and young Seth stood up too and kicked his legs and arms about to take the kinks out.

"Where are we, Seth?" asked Jim, with a gasp.

"I dunnot know. We ran like the divvle last neet. Mebbe when th' sun comes out we'll see."

"Land's over yonder, anyway," he said presently. "But it's a divvle of a way and mos'ly stick-sands, I reck'n."

The clouded eastern sky thinned and lightened somewhat, the sands began to glimmer, and the streaks of water gleamed like bands of steel.

"We mun go," said Seth. "Sun's sick yet wi' last neet's storm. Yo' keep close to me." And they set off on the perilous journey.

For a moment, as they crossed the ridge of their own sand-bank, which stood higher than its neighbours, they caught distant glimpse of yellow sand-hills very far away. Then they were threading cautiously across a wide lower level, seamed with pools and runlets, and could see nothing but the brown sea-sand. And Seth's eyes were everywhere on the look-out for "stick-sands," of which he went in mortal terror.

Where the banks humped up with long rounded limbs as though giants were buried below, he would run at speed; but in the hollows between their progress was slow, because "You nivver knows," said Seth, and tried each foot before he trusted it.

In one wide hollow they came on a mast sticking straight up out of the sand--like a gravestone, Jim thought--and gave it wide berth. And twice they came on swiftly flowing channels which rose to Jim's waist, and it was in the neighbourhood of these that Seth exercised the greatest caution.

"They works under t' sand, here and there, you nivver knows where, an' it's that makes the stick-sands," he said, and breathed freely only when they got on to solid brown ridges again.

So, step by step, they drew nearer to the yellow sand-hills, which looked so like those he was accustomed to that Jim's spirits rose.

"Is that home, Seth?" he asked.

"Ech, lad, no. We're many a mile from home, but we'll git there sometime."

It was when that toilsome journey was over, and the sun had come out, and they were lying spent in a hollow of the yellow sand-hills, that Seth turned to Jim and said weightily:

"Yo' mun promise me, Mester Jim, to forget aw that happened last neet. I dun my best for yo'; an' yo' mun promise that."

"I'm afraid I can't ever forget it, Seth," said Jim solemnly, "and some of it I don't ever want to forget. But I'll promise you I'll never tell about the little barrels and things, or about you, never, as long as I live."

"Well," said Seth, after ruminating on this. "That'll do if yo'll stick to it."

"I'll bite my tongue out before I'll say a word."

"Aw reet. Yo' see, I wur on the boat when they brought yo' aboard, but I couldn' ha' done owt with aw that lot about. 'Twere foolish to fall into their honds."

About midday they came on a fisherman's hut, back among the sand-hills, and got some bread and fish, freely given when Seth explained matters--so far as he deemed necessary; and they lay on a pile of strong-smelling nets and slept longer than Seth had intended. Then, with vague directions towards a distant high-road, they set out again.

"'Twere Morecambe Bay we ran aground in," said Seth, "an' they wouldn' hardly believe as we'd come across th' flats. Reg'lar suckers, they say, an' swallowed a moight o' men in their time."

"And when shall we get home, Seth?"

"It's a long road, but we'll git there's soon as we can," said Seth, with the weight of the journey upon him.