The Pirates in the Deep Green Sea (6 page)

Sam came quickly and said, ‘Yes, sir. What's gone wrong now? — Why, your writing-table's fallen over.'

‘Pick it up, Sam. Pick it up,' said the Captain, and Timothy and Hew looked at each other in astonishment. For now, when they could hear it clearly, they realised that their father's voice was more sad than angry, and that was a note they had never heard in it before. But they could only guess, or try to guess, what had made him sad, for he shut the door of his study — more quietly than
usual—and talked to Sam without shouting at all.

‘It must have been something in a letter that upset him,' whispered Timothy.

‘Did you see the letters before he took them in?' asked Hew.

‘No.'

‘There may have been one from South Africa.'

‘That's what I was thinking,' said Timothy.

They sat side by side on the top stair, silent and rather frightened, for both were wondering if their mother had written to say she was ill, or had been knocked down by a motor-car, or something like that. Or perhaps someone else had written. Perhaps she was seriously ill. They felt very unhappy.

After about ten minutes the study door opened, and Sam Sturgeon came out with a serious expression on his face. He went half-way down the passage that led to the kitchen and shouted: ‘Mrs. Matches! Captain's orders. You're wanted on the quarter-deck.'

Then he came upstairs and saw the boys. ‘You too,' he said. ‘The Captain wants to speak to you.'

They found their father sitting at his writing-table, looking stern and very solemn. He was reading a letter, perhaps for the fourth or fifth time, that was, they could see, in their mother's handwriting. Mrs. Matches, whose sleeves were rolled up and whose hair was coming down behind, said
she had dished the potatoes and they would be getting cold; but the Captain paid no attention to her.

‘They're mashed,' she said. ‘Just wait a minute and I'll run out and put them in the oven——'

‘Stay where you are,' said the Captain. ‘I have important and unhappy news for you. But tell me first if you could look after these boys, for two or three weeks perhaps, if I were to go to South Africa?'

‘A fine question!' exclaimed Mrs. Matches in a scornful voice. ‘If I can look after you and the boys as well, how should I not be able to look after them, if they were left to themselves, and we hadn't you about the house to hinder us all?'

‘I want no impertinence!' shouted the Captain.

‘It's not impertinence I'm giving you, it's the simple truth. But if I don't get leave to go to the kitchen it's cold potatoes you'll be getting, and you won't like that.'

‘Confound your potatoes!' roared the Captain.

‘And that won't improve them either,' said Mrs. Matches.

Captain Spens made a great effort to control himself, and in a quieter voice—though it was still angry—demanded: ‘Will you listen to me, woman? I tell you that I've important news for you. News of my wife. Terrible and horrible news! She says that she's made up her mind to live in South Africa. She isn't coming back to Popinsay, she says. She's going to settle down in
Cape Town. In Cape Town!'

‘And never come home again?' cried Hew.

‘Is she ill?' asked Timothy.

‘If you want my honest opinion,' said the Captain, ‘she's mad.'

‘Oh, no, sir, I wouldn't say that,' Sam Sturgeon interrupted. ‘That's going a bit far, sir. Headstrong—that's what she is. She always was a lady that liked to have her own way.'

The Captain turned in his chair and looked fiercely at Sam. ‘Do you remember,' he asked, ‘the sort of hat she was wearing when you first saw her?'

‘I shan't ever be able to forget it,' said Sam.

‘What was it like?'

‘It filled me with admiration, sir.'

‘What!' cried the Captain.

‘With admiration for you, sir,' Sam explained. ‘It took a brave man to go out walking beside a hat like that. Its colour would have made a delicate person sea-sick, and in shape it was like a Chinese gong with a hole through the middle and bits of mosquito-netting hanging down from the brim. To this day, sir, I can't think of that hat without a shudder.'

‘She made it herself,' said the Captain moodily, ‘and now she wants to start a shop in Cape Town. A hat-shop. A shop to sell the hats that she's going to make! Hats like the one that you remember, Sam, and worse, if possible. She's going into partnership with a woman called Blinkingroof, or
some such name, and Mrs. Blinkingroof's husband, who must be a nincompoop if ever there was one; and his name's Blinkingroof too, I suppose.—But I shan't allow it, Sam! It wouldn't be fair to South Africa! South Africa's a fine country, a loyal country, and the South Africans are splendid people. To let my wife make their hats, and fill them with confusion and despair, would be a crime, Mrs. Matches! A crime, I say!'

‘Then make her come home,' said Mrs. Matches. ‘Go out, and bring her back with you.'

‘That is exactly what I propose to do,' declared the Captain, ‘though Heaven knows I can't afford to. I must borrow money, I'll have to mortgage my pension—but to save South Africa I'm prepared to go to any expense! I mean to leave at once. I shall fly out, meet my wife, talk things over and try to make her see reason—and if she won't see reason I'll stuff her in a sack and bring her home as cargo!'

‘She wouldn't be very comfortable in a sack,' said Timothy.

‘Though I suppose you could put a bottle of lemonade and some sandwiches in with her,' said Hew.

‘Listen to me!' exclaimed the Captain. ‘You want your mother to come home, don't you?'

‘Yes, of course we do!' they answered, both together.

‘Then home she shall come! I'll rescue her from the scoundrels and nincompoops into whose
hands she has fallen—I'll save South Africa from the anarchy and misery your mother would create if she started selling hats there—and she'll come back to Popinsay either sitting decently beside me in the aeroplane, or in a sack among the luggage!—That's settled, that's all arranged. I've made up my mind, and there's nothing more to say. Is there, Sam?'

‘No, sir.'

‘Then we can have our lunch.—Come along, Mrs. Matches, don't you see what time it is? How much longer are you going to keep us waiting?'

Mrs. Matches, who was an active woman, had grown more and more impatient while the Captain was talking. She had passed the time by rolling down her sleeves, by tidying her back hair, by taking off her apron and tying it more neatly round her waist, and by pulling up her stockings, which were inclined to fall in wrinkles about her ankles; but she had never stopped worrying about the potatoes, which were getting cold, and a rhubarb pudding which had been too long in the pot. So now, when she heard herself accused of idling, she started as if she had been stung by a wasp.

‘Me
keep you waiting!' she exclaimed. ‘Me that's been itching to get away and see to the potatoes that'll be as cold as a stone, and the pudding that'll be as soft as a wet sponge, while you sat there blethering as though time would stand still to let you finish!
Me
keep you waiting! May
the Lord forgive you, man, but if the pudding's spoilt, I never will!'

Her thin face was red with anger, and as she flung open the study door, and marched indignantly away, her back hair fell down again and fluttered like a pennant in a breeze.

Sam followed her, and the Captain, frowning a little, said, ‘There goes a most unfortunate woman. A woman who can't control her temper! It's a bad fault, my boys, and I hope you'll avoid it. Try to keep your temper in all circumstances.'

Then he walked briskly into the dining-room, followed by Timothy and Hew, and began to carve what was left of a cold leg of mutton. He carved slowly, because his artificial hand was not much use to him, and he had cut only two slices when Mrs. Matches appeared again, carrying a large china dish on which lay a rhubarb pudding, steaming hotly, that looked as if it had fallen out of an upper window. And Mrs. Matches was very angry indeed.

‘There!' she said, holding the dish under the Captain's nose. ‘That's what you've done with your talking and chattering! That was as fine a pudding as ever went into the pot, and look at it now. Ruined, just ruined! And it was you that did it!'

Her voice was so angry, her expression so fierce, and she thrust the pudding so close to the Captain's nose that he grew somewhat alarmed. He thought she was going to throw it at him. So he retreated
a step or two, and picked up the leg of mutton. He held it as if it were a club, and shook it in Mrs. Matches' face.

‘Stand back,' he exclaimed. ‘Stand back, Mrs. Matches!'

And now it was Mrs. Matches' turn to be alarmed, for the Captain was waving the leg of mutton in a very threatening manner.

‘And you call yourself a gentleman!' she cried. ‘But what sort of a gentleman would hit his housekeeper with a leg of mutton, I'd like to know?'

‘And you call yourself a housekeeper,' shouted the Captain. ‘But what sort of a housekeeper would throw a rhubarb pudding at her employer?—Get back to your kitchen, Mrs. Matches. Back to your kitchen, and learn to keep your temper!'

Mrs. Matches' spirit failed her. The Captain's voice was used to command a thousand men, and Mrs. Matches was overawed. Step by step she retreated before him, and was driven from the dining-room. The Captain, breathing deeply but otherwise calm, replaced the leg of mutton on the sideboard, and having wiped his hands on a napkin, again set to work on it.

He said to the boys: ‘You have just seen a good example of the power of the human eye. A man who is sure of himself can dominate a wild animal merely by looking at it in a resolute and determined fashion. That is how I looked at Mrs. Matches when she threatened to become violent and throw a rhubarb pudding at me. I fixed her with my
eye, and dominated her completely.'

‘It didn't look like that,' said Hew.

‘It looked as though you fixed her with a leg of mutton,' said Timothy.

The Captain was about to explain that the leg of mutton was of no consequence at all, when Sam Sturgeon brought in a dish of cold potatoes; so instead of arguing, the boys and their father sat down to lunch.

In the afternoon it began to rain, and a gale sprang up. The wind rattled the windows, and the rain came through the leaky parts of the roof, and Mrs. Matches brought all her buckets and basins up to the drawing-room and the bedrooms, and set them down where they would catch the drops. Then she had to go and iron some shirts for the Captain, who was busy packing, and kept everyone else busy too.

Sam Sturgeon had carried eighteen or twenty suitcases, valises, gladstone bags, hold-alls, and portmanteaus down from the attics before the Captain could find exactly what he wanted, and every now and then Mrs. Matches had to come and look for socks or handkerchiefs or collars or pyjamas. Captain Spens did not want to stay more than a few days in South Africa, because the longer he stayed the more money he would have to spend, and the trip was going to cost him far more than he could afford in any case. So to begin with he decided to carry very little luggage. Enough, perhaps, for three days in Cape Town. But then he thought it might take longer than that to make his wife see reason, so he packed a larger suitcase with enough clothes to last him a week. And a little
while later he grew more doubtful still, and made Mrs. Matches look for more socks and more collars, and told Sam to fetch the gladstone bag that, an hour before, he had thought he would not need. ‘For if she's in a difficult mood,' he said, ‘I may have to stay as long as a fortnight.'

Timothy, who was helping his father, looked very thoughtful and said, ‘Why can't you fix her with your eye, and make her come at once?'

‘Well,' said the Captain, ‘that might be a little difficult. — Go and get my white buckskin shoes, Sam. I'll probably need them too.'

He waited until Sam had gone, and then admitted, ‘The fact is that your mother's got an eye of her own, and once or twice in her life she has fixed me!'

‘You'd better take a sack with you,' said Hew. ‘You may need it.'

‘That's very sound advice,' said the Captain, and when Sam brought in his white shoes, he told him to go and look for the biggest sack he could find.

At night the wind blew harder, and howled in the chimneys, and thundered on the window-panes. Doors rattled, floors creaked, and in all the upper rooms the rain fell
drip-drop, plish-plash,
into the buckets and basins that stood under the leaky parts of the roof.

Timothy and Hew lay in bed, unable to sleep because they were excited by the thought of their father flying to South Africa to bring their mother home.

‘But she won't enjoy living here in weather like this,' said Timothy.

‘Not unless the roof's mended,' said Hew.

‘And there's something wrong with the windows too.'

‘And with the doors.'

‘It would cost hundreds of pounds to repair everything that needs to be repaired.'

‘But if we can find the wreck,' said Hew.

‘And if there's treasure in it———'

‘Then we can afford it, and mother won't have anything to complain about.'

Presently they fell asleep, and in the morning rose early to go with their father to Fishing Hope, where he went aboard the little steamer that crossed every day to the mainland.

‘Be good boys,' he said, ‘and take care of yourselves. — And don't do anything rash while I'm away, Sam. If you like to use
Endeavour
to go out and do some general exploration, well and good. But keep an eye on the weather and take no risks.'

‘Oh, no, sir,' said Sam. ‘Of course not.'

‘And when I come back,' said the Captain, looking very grim indeed, ‘I'll have Mrs. Spens with me — and the Government of South Africa ought to pay me handsomely for bringing her home!'