He looked round the rest. Some were big, some tubby, some the merest cockleshells. They all gleamed with splendid paint. Mitt thought he was weighing each one up as he looked at it, but in fact, all he was doing was comparing them with that blue beauty ten yards away and finding them trash in comparison. He did not have time to make himself decide reasonably. A soldier down in the marsh yelled. Mitt bolted on hands and knees like a monkey. He was rolling across the blue beauty’s cabin roof before he had time to think. She had a steering well—purest pleasure boat stuff, Mitt thought, dropping down into it. At least it hid him from the soldiers.
But not for long. Before Mitt had believed it possible, footsteps were pattering on the jetty outside. He tore open the double cabin doors and dived inside. If he had not been in such a hurry, he would have stopped then and stared. He never could have imagined a ship’s inside could be so beautiful—blue blankets and blue plush, a charcoal cooking stove, white paint and gold, and everything carved and ornamented and cleaned until it was more like a floating palace than a boat.
Ah, I always said the best wasn’t good enough for me! Mitt thought, tiptoeing in a trail of green slime to the far end of the cabin. The boat’s name was embroidered on all the blankets. Mitt could not resist pausing to spell out the name all this luxury went under. Wind’s Road, he read. Very suitable. Suits me fine.
The next second Wind’s Road dipped and swung under people’s feet. “Isn’t she beautiful!” Ynen said, dumping his sack on a locker. Mitt fumbled open a gilded cupboard, sweating with panic, and found himself confronting a bucket with a gilded seat. The bucket seemed to have roses painted all over it.
Flaming Ammet! thought Mitt. There really is nothing but the best on this ship! He shot the polished brass bolt to the cupboard with slimy, shaking fingers, and leaned against the gilded wall, listening to feet scampering and shrill, haughty voices calling overhead.
PART THREE
Wind’s Road
11
Help me get the mainsail up, and then stand by to untie her,” Ynen said. “Oh, look at this! She’s all over mud! I knew those blessed sailors used her for lobsters when my back was turned!”
“I’ll wash it down when we’re sailing,” Hildy said. “But do let’s get going before those soldiers come. Most of the mud’s only on the sail cover.” She jumped on the cabin roof and helped Ynen unlace the cover.
Ynen unlaced busily beside her. He was not often angry, but he was now. Someone had been on Wind’s Road, the apple of his eye, the one lovely thing that was truly his own, and made a mess of her in his absence. He could not forgive them. “Honestly!” he said. “Green, smelly mud! You trust people, and they go and take advantage of you.”
“Father said you can’t blame people for that,” said Hildy. “I’ll fold from my end, and be quick! He said the poor see the rich as their natural prey.”
“Just the kind of thing he would say!” Ynen said irritably. “Fold it, don’t just scrunch it! Mind you, he was probably right. I’ll ask for a guard in future.”
“Some soldiers have just come through the gates,” said Hildy, causing Mitt to stand stiffly in his cupboard with his hands clenched. He had no idea who these arrogant fugitives could be or why they were in such a hurry, but he knew they could not be in too much of a hurry for him.
“Cast off the moorings and push her off, then,” Ynen called, “while I get the sail up. Make sure you don’t push us out of the deep channel, though.”
Yes, and hurry up about it, for Old Ammet’s sake! Mitt thought.
In a flurry of thumping, Hildy untied the mooring ropes and threw them on the planking, ready to be coiled later. Then she heaved on the jetty with all her might. Mitt gathered from the shifting and dipping what was happening. He heard the rhythmic rattle, rattle as Ynen sent the mainsail up, hand over hand, and then a further pounding of feet combined with a stiff tilting, as Ynen bounded to the bows to get the foresails up, and Hildy plunged to the tiller and turned Wind’s Road to catch the wind. After that came a slow ripple, ripple. Wind’s Road got gently under way and slid along the channel toward the open sea.
They won’t find us so easy to stop now, Mitt thought. Whoever these rich youngsters were, they could handle a boat all right. He supposed it was lucky they could. But he was still scared stiff. He could not see them getting away with it.
Hildy and Ynen anxiously watched the harbor wall glide by and wished it would glide faster. Four or five soldiers were now running along the jetty behind, stumbling among ropes and shouting.
“What are they saying?” Ynen wondered.
Hildy gave a nervous giggle. “Stop, I think.”
“What am I supposed to do? Pull on the reins?” Ynen said, and laughed, too.
Soldiers appeared on the harbor wall, struggling up from the marsh behind, most of them muddy and all in a great hurry. No sooner did they see Wind’s Road sliding proudly past and beginning to lean a little in the sea wind than they became quite frantic. They shouted to one another and yelled at Hildy and Ynen to come back. One or two raised their guns.
“They’re awfully close,” Hildy said.
“I know, but I daren’t leave the channel,” said Ynen. The soldiers seemed so angry that he thought he had better pacify them. He jumped up onto the seat of the steering well, with his foot on the tiller, and waved. “It’s all right,” he shouted cheerfully. “We’re only going out for a sail.”
A soldier sighted along a gun at him. Ynen overbalanced out of sheer astonishment and pitched down into the well, kicking the tiller as he went. As Wind’s Road veered, the shot fizzed slantwise across where Ynen’s head had been, only just missing the lovely whiteness of her mainsail.
“Ye gods!” said Hildy, and plunged for the tiller.
Wind was hard in the sail, and she could feel the deep keel dragging in the mud of the Pool. Another shot zinged across behind Hildy’s head.
Ynen rolled over as if he had been stung and stared anxiously up at the sail. “Filthy swine! If he’s holed my canvas, I’ll have his guts for garters!”
Hildy dragged the tiller across. Wind’s Road, her sail now properly filled, gathered majestic speed and foamed past the end of the wall. If the soldiers fired any more shots, they were lost in the sudden buffet of waves and the singing of the fresh wind. “They can’t possibly stop us now,” said Hildy. “But, Ynen, they fired at us! What did they think they were doing?”
“They must all be filthy revolutionaries, ‘” Ynen said. He was still very shaken. “I’ll make sure they’re all hanged when we get back.”
“I think it must have been a mistake,” Hildy said, almost equally shaken.
Mistake all right, Mitt thought, shaking all over. They thought one of you was me. Now you had a taste of the way the rest of us feel. Don’t like it, do you? What did I have to go and choose this boat for? I can’t do a thing right today, can I? If only I’d got on any of the other ones, I could have sat tight and let the soldiers think these two was me.
“It must have been a mistake,” Ynen agreed, recovering. “I was just furious in case they’d spoiled the boat. We can sort it out when we get back.”