Chapter XIII: The Stowaway

For a few moments, Peter Craddock could hardly believe his sense of hearing. Wilson and Symington were also too astonished for words. They could only abandon their efforts to teach the pup tricks and gaze blankly at Craddock’s face. The first conclusion they arrived at was that Peter was indulging in a little ventriloquism at their expense.

Craddock, too, tried to “fix” the owner of the voice. With the exception of Heavitree the others were on deck. Carline was for’ard, lying in luxurious ease and basking in the sunshine on the fore-deck. Brandon was still aloft; Talbot at the helm; Symington and Wilson in the cockpit.

“Kindly open the door!” exclaimed the voice again. This time there was a violent rapping on the panel of one of the side lockers in the cockpit.

The locker was a fairly spacious one, extending from the after bulkhead of the cabin on the starboard side to the bulkhead supporting the decked-in part of the stern. Usually it contained spare sails, canvas awnings, and warps not likely to be frequently required. It was secured by means of a detachable panel held in place by two projecting battens at one end and a stout wooden button at the other.

“Brandon!” sang out Peter.

“Coming,” replied the Patrol Leader. “What’s wrong?”

Swinging himself down by the throat halliards, Brandon gained the deck and came aft.

“Someone’s in there,” declared Craddock.

“Then hike him out,” rejoined Brandon in matter-of-fact tones. “This isn’t the First of April, me lad!”

“I quite agree,” boomed the voice from the locker.

Brandon gave a start, but quickly recovering himself, threw open the panel. Lying full length on the assortment of canvas gear and blinking in the strong sunlight was a boy of about twelve or fourteen.

“Come out!” ordered Brandon sternly.

“Precisely what I’ve been wanting to do for the last five minutes,” replied the youth, with astonishing coolness. “Just wait until I have collected my scanty belongings and your request will be complied with.”

“Well, I never——” ejaculated the Patrol Leader.

“Don’t distress yourself,” continued the boy. “Wait until I am in a position to offer an explanation. My limbs, I find, are somewhat cramped.”

With the utmost deliberation the stowaway emerged and stood upright in the cockpit with the Sea Scouts still too astonished to say much, hemming him in on three sides.

He was a pale-faced, sharp-featured lad of medium height and sparely built. The most noticeable feature about him was a high and prominent forehead. He was dressed in a tightly fitting suit of grey tweed and an Eton collar, his thin, bony wrists projecting quite three inches beyond his coat sleeves. Under one arm he held a schoolboy’s satchel, from which protruded a glass-stoppered bottle.

“You hid yourself on board?” began Brandon.

“Your surmise is a perfectly correct one,” agreed this remarkable youth, with a grave smile. “In the circumstances I had no option. Had I asked to be allowed to accompany you, my request would have been refused. As it is, I’m here.”

“A stowaway!” exclaimed the Patrol Leader. “You deserve a booting.”

The boy made a deprecatory movement with his hand.

“Believe me, it isn’t done,” he rejoined. “Personal violence to stowaways is, I take it, an obsolete practice that has shared the same fate as walking the plank and keel-hauling. At least, I hope I am not misinformed. . . . I say, what a jolly little pup!”

“Never mind the pup,” protested Brandon. “Tell me what you are doing on board.”

“Enjoying—or expecting to enjoy—a free journey to Chichester. The chances are I shall. You can’t very well go back to Dartmouth; you can’t put me overboard. So it seems as if I remain here a while, and I’ve brought my provisions!”

“I’ll see what Mr. Grant has to say,” decided Brandon, who had never before come in contact with such a self-possessed and precocious youngster.

“One minute,” interrupted Peter, drawing his chum aside. “Come for’ard.”

Craddock and Brandon made their way to the fore-deck, where Carline was slumbering in ignorance of what had occurred.

“Mr. Grant fainted just now,” reported Peter. “Heavitree’s with him. I fancy it’s his hand that made him go off. It’s a case of blood-poisoning, I’m afraid. I was boiling some water to make a poultice when this happened. I vote we say nothing to Mr. Grant until he’s had a good rest, but I leave it to you. You’re skipper.”

“Right-o!” agreed Brandon. “Where is he? In his cabin?”

“No, on one of the settees in the saloon.”

“Then carry on, old son. I’ll tell the others to keep clear a bit and not to disturb him. You can manage all right?”

Peter went below. He found that the Scoutmaster was nearly asleep and that the water was boiling. It seemed an unpleasant duty to have to rouse the patient, but it had to be done.

The poultice was made and applied. It was a very hot one, and Mr. Grant winced; but in a few minutes the warmth began to act soothingly upon the fiercely throbbing finger.

“That’s ever so much better, Peter,” remarked Mr. Grant gratefully.

“Good business, sir,” rejoined the Sea Scout. “Now, try and go to sleep.”

“Not much doubt about that,” said the patient. “I’ll try a couple of hours’ sleep. Tell Brandon to inform me when Portland Bill is in sight. It ought to show up one point on our port bow.”

“Very good, sir.”

As he was leaving the cabin, Peter signed to Heavitree.

“I’ll send Wilson down to relieve you,” he said. “There’ll have to be someone in the saloon in case Mr. Grant wants anything. Give an eye to the kettle before you come on deck, and bring some grub with you. We’ll have dinner on deck, then we won’t disturb him.”

Peter found the stowaway still hemmed in by the justifiably inquisitive Sea Scouts. The boy had dropped much of his stiffness of manner and seemed more at ease, although he retained his quaint method of speech. Possibly he had been nervous and had concealed his anxiety under a mask of forced self-assurance. Now, finding that the youthful crew of the _Kestrel_ were not in any way antagonistic, he was becoming quite communicative.

His name, he told them, was Eric Little. He made the statement somewhat doubtfully, fearing, perhaps, that his audience would “pull his leg” over that once well-known book: “Eric, or Little by Little.” He had had quite enough of that already. Fortunately his fears in that respect were ill-founded, for the work in question had mercifully not been brought to the notice of the Aberstour Sea Scouts.

Eric’s parents were dead. He had been “brought up” by his grandparents who lived on the outskirts of Dartmouth. Apparently they had weird and misguided notions as to how their grandchild should be brought up. They had a strange antipathy to schoolmasters. They absolutely declined to let Eric go to school or to associate with other children. His education, if such it could be called, was imparted by a half-baked governess of uncertain age and of a frigid and ultra-prim manner. The natural result was that Eric, invariably in the company of grown-ups, had developed the pedantic manner of speech that had so greatly astonished Brandon and his companions. He was well versed in several serious subjects, but his knowledge of the ways of boys of his own age was lamentably weak. In spite of himself, he was fast developing into a little prig, and if compelled to run in the same rut he would be an object of derision and scorn when the time came for him to go out into the world.

Luckily for him, although he did not know it, his uninvited presence on board the _Kestrel_ was to be the making of him.

He had no idea of running away from his overkind and misguided grandparents. He merely wanted a change. Somewhere in the neighbourhood of Chichester he had an aunt and uncle. He had never seen them, and beyond receiving presents from them at Christmas and on his birthday he was hardly aware of their existence. Yet he felt a vague longing to visit them, and although he had hinted of his wish in that direction, his grandparents had for some unexplained reason declined to allow him to do so.

Eric had exercised considerable intelligence in making a bid for a free journey to Chichester. Quite by chance he had been standing under the Butterwalk when Craddock and Talbot were talking with some members of a Dartmouth troop of Scouts. He gathered that the two former were going to Chichester Harbour in a yacht for the Jamboree. What the word “Jamboree” meant he knew not. It sounded like something jolly. At any rate, opportunity was knocking at the door of his warped little mind, and there and then he made up his mind to stow himself away on board the _Kestrel_.

Acting upon his grandfather’s oft-repeated precept that “There is no time like the present,” Eric got busy. He had a few shillings with him. This he invested in a supply of food and a couple of bottles of ginger-beer. He knew that all the crew of the _Kestrel_ were ashore; Craddock had mentioned that there were eight including a Scoutmaster, and eight had certainly landed at the steps close to the boat pond. For the sum of one shilling a weedy youth minding a yacht’s dinghy agreed to row him off to the _Kestrel_, and there he hid himself in the locker, hoping that the yacht would put to sea that evening—which she did not.

“What did you do with yourself all night?” asked Brandon.

“Oh, when you were all asleep I emerged from my place of concealment for fresh air and in order to stretch my cramped limbs,” explained the stowaway. “Once that pup of yours growled, but I don’t think it was on my account. That was when a certain person swam off to the yacht from the large ship at anchor.”

“Someone swam off!” exclaimed Craddock. “What did he do? Why didn’t you raise the alarm?”

Eric turned reproachful eyes upon his questioner.

“My dear sir,” he replied. “It couldn’t be done! It couldn’t really. Consider my position. I really had no right to be on board. Neither, presumably, had the swimmer to climb up over the side. After all’s said and done, it wasn’t my affair, was it?”

“That was the chap who lashed the bucket to the rudder,” declared the Patrol Leader. “What sort of fellow was he?”

“I gathered that he did so from subsequent happenings,” rejoined Eric. “Regarding your question, I’m sorry to inform you that I had no opportunity of studying his features. Nocturnal conditions and a natural desire to efface myself combined to keep me in ignorance of the man’s appearance. But here I am,” he added briskly, “willing to acquire as much nautical knowledge as my mental appetite will digest. Which, by the by, is the main brace?”

He cocked his eye aloft at the expanse of tautened canvas, and then looked at Brandon enquiringly.

“No use, my lad,” replied the Patrol Leader. “You won’t find a brace aboard this craft. Sea Scouts favour belts, you know. Now, lads! Dinner! We’re behind time.”

The meal was duly relished and dispatched, the stowaway receiving a share as a matter of course. “Washing-up,” a distasteful yet necessary operation, was completed, the plates and other utensils being temporarily stowed in one of the cockpit lockers in order that Mr. Grant would not be disturbed had the gear been returned to its usual place.

By this time the wind had fallen light and was almost dead aft. Land was still visible; only an expanse of smooth sea rippled by erratic catspaws greeted the sight of the crew.

“Can’t we hoist the topsail?” asked Heavitree.

“No,” replied Brandon decidedly, “we can’t. Scoutmaster’s orders are that the topsail is not to be set without his permission. But we can hoist the spinnaker,” he added. “That’ll help us along.”

The spinnaker, a large triangular sail of light canvas, was spread by being hoisted by a halliard to the mainmast head, the tack being secured to the mast below the gooseneck, while the third corner of the sail was hauled out to the extremity of a horizontal spar known as the spinnaker boom. The latter was held by means of a sheet, but in order to prevent any tendency on the part of the boom to swing back, it was secured on the free side of the sail by means of a rope called a “guy.” The duty of “manning the guy” was deputed to Fred Heavitree.

“All ready, there?” sung out Brandon.

“Ay, ay, sir!” replied Craddock.

“Up with her, then! Out out-haul! Check your sheet!” ordered the Patrol Leader.

Craddock and Talbot at the halliard whipped the head of the canvas aloft. Simultaneously, Wilson tailed on to the out-haul. The spinnaker, distended by the light breeze, strained at the sheet; then, without warning, dropped from aloft in shivering folds. Unaccountably the halliard had parted, letting the spinnaker down with a run.

There was a heavy splash. Heavitree, enveloped by the canvas, had been jerked into the sea.

“Man overboard!” shouted Craddock. “Down helm, Carline!”

The helmsman put the tiller hard over. Peter, snatching up a life-buoy, prepared to throw it within easy reach of the Sea Scout in the ditch. The others, abandoning the spinnaker, rushed aft to bring the dinghy alongside to pick up their chum.

Alertly, Craddock watched the curving line of ripples astern as the _Kestrel_ came up into the line. There was no sign of Heavitree. The lad was an excellent swimmer, but there was the likelihood that he had hit the rail as he fell and had been rendered insensible.

Full thirty long-drawn-out seconds passed, but still no sign of Heavitree. Peter looked at Brandon. The Patrol Leader shook his head.

He was outwardly cool and collected; yet the disappearance of Heavitree without a trace filled him with apprehension. Even a stunned man under water would be expelling air from his lungs and the bubbles would show on the surface. The difficulty was that already the yacht had covered fifty or more yards since the time the accident had occurred, and in consequence it was futile to attempt to dive after the lad. And yet it was agonising having to stand and watch and yet do nothing.

The _Kestrel_ was now hove-to on to the port tack, her head-sheets, which had not been eased, being taut to wind’ard. The folds of the spinnaker hung idly over the starboard side between the shrouds and the forestay.

With one exception everyone was looking astern. The exception was Eric Little. Unnoticed by the others he crept cautiously for’ard and began to gather in the trailing canvas. Hanging on to the rail was the missing Heavitree, breathless but otherwise none the worse for his immersion. He had managed to grasp the coaming as he fell, although he was immersed up to his waist. The spinnaker, completely enveloping him, had effectually hidden him from view.

Willing hands assisted Heavitree on deck. The Sea Scouts relieved their pent-up feelings with a rousing cheer, the noise of which brought Mr. Grant hurriedly on deck.

“What’s the matter, lads?” he demanded anxiously, as he blinked in the strong sunlight. Coming straight from the darkened saloon he could see little or nothing. “Why are we hove-to?”

“I fell into the ditch, sir,” replied Heavitree. “Or, nearly. How’s your hand, sir? Mind you don’t hit it against anything.”

“Better go below, sir,” suggested Brandon. “We haven’t sighted Portland Bill yet. I’ll report to you when we do.”

There was a decided streak of obstinacy in Mr. Grant’s nature and occasionally it asserted itself. It did now.

He sat down, still blinking. By this time his eyes were becoming more accustomed to the sunlight. He noticed the untidily stowed spinnaker, then he spotted Eric Little.

“Who’s that, Brandon?” he asked. “What is that lad doing here? How did he come aboard?”

“Our prize stowaway,” replied the Patrol Leader.