Just after eleven o'clock the Maud ran under foresail only into the entrance channel of Whitstable harbour. Steep, lumpy seas followed her down the approach, until she turned to starboard into the square, sheltered basin. She glided across the smooth water, her sail now hanging limp, and there, standing on the quay wall at her usual berth was the small familiar figure of Bert Anderson. He soon hailed them, caught the heaving-line, and helped to make her fast, but all the time he was talking gloomily to a little knot of railwaymen and barge-hands who had gathered round him: "Look at that! All the risk and trouble, and hard work, and what did we get? A few blinking ploughs!" He spat despondently. 'Same as I say, this salvaging lark's finished. No money in it these days."
Chapter XIII
The hot August sun swung lazily across the sky, and the little harbour sweltered in the heat. The tide was out, and the evil-smelling black mud on which all the craft lay grounded popped and bubbled. The pitch, too, bubbled out of the seams of the decks; all around, the shimmering heat danced up from cobbles, railway-tracks, iron roofs and shingle. Wagons loaded with sacks of the first barley from the Downs beyond Canterbury stood in the siding, and the little tank engine that had brought them hissed gently and steadily behind them. It was the dinner-hour, and the loaders and crews were murmuring in small groups in patches of shade.
The smack Maud was not in her usual berth, which had been taken by a smart grey Norwegian barquentine. Instead, she lay outside Trilby, one of Abraham's fleet of magnificent sailing-barges, which were the arteries of this little port. The Maud was lifeless, except for the hunched shape of a young man, sitting with his back to the mast, engrossed in a book. It was Jim Robbins, though his lawyer uncle would have had the greatest difficulty in recognizing him. His face was stubbly, and darkened by a deep tan — and also by a fair amount of dirt; the tar and grease of his trade had worked into his nails and every pore of his hands. Those hands and fingers were now thick and ugly, too. In spite of the heat, he still wore, from sheer habit, the fisherman's rig of blue jersey, blue serge trousers, and sea-boots. The smoke curled up from black shag in the bowl of his short clay pipe.
In many ways, the eight months he had been a smacksman had been a surprise to Jim. There had been the cooking, for a start: he had not realized that nearly half of his time would be spent cooking and cleaning up for this strange family of four. Now he could roast a bit of beef, boil bacon and fry rashers, bake bread and produce a plum duff which even the formidable Dukey would describe (with a sigh of contentment) as "a good old gutful o' grub".
For another thing, these eight months had been the idlest he had ever known. During the stormy months of January, February, and March the call of the wrecks had been too strong for Dukey and Bert to ignore, in spite of their new wealth. Salvaging was in their blood - a kind of craving which kept them beating about inside the banks for weeks of bitter weather, on the off-chance of another glittering prize like the Sardis. Of course nothing else of the kind had turned up, but there had been all sorts of small pickings — tows given to disabled barges, pilotage for those who had lost their way, help in refloating craft which had grounded, help in unloading the cargoes of those which would not refloat until they were lightened, and the recovery of the anchors and cables of those who had been forced to slip them. The best prize since the Sardis, without doubt, had been the smart little yacht which they had found, unharmed but abandoned by her timid amateur crew, drifting seawards in a westerly blow near the Tongue lightship. Bert and Shiner had sailed her to Ramsgate, and there had been a handsome salvage payment. Dukey had no objection to taking even honest money, if it was offered.
During the winter months, then, their fortunes had made little difference to their lives, except that their little wooden cottages now gleamed with paint, and the after-cabin of the Maud reeked of brandy, whisky and cigars. But when the spring gales had come and gone, and the shipping of the Estuary went safely about in the fine soft weather, they had felt no desire to continue working. Normally, they spent the summer fishing for sprats themselves, and acting as carriers for the fleets of smaller craft. Maud was far larger and faster than most of the Whitstable spratting fleet, and it paid the skippers of the smaller boats to transfer their catches to the Maud and let her take them to the markets. Dukey and Bert, in their new splendour, found nothing attractive in this dull and respectable trade, and preferred to spend most of their days and nights in The Steam Packet, the pub at the harbour gates.
They put Shiner and Jim to work refitting the Maud after the salvage season. The two senior officers would merely supervise, swaying unsteadily, a glass in one hand, a cigar in the other, peering blearily at the two younger men, and bursting at various times into choking laughter, crude sea-songs and, occasionally, sentimental tears. They were the joke of the town.
During the summer they made a few short carrying runs, partly to keep up appearances, partly to keep promises which they had made when drunk the night before. But always they treated these trips as yachting cruises, lolling down below with their bottles and cigars, while Shiner took the helm. Shiner and Jim sailed the smack all round the Kent coast, taking their tons of silver sprats to Faversham and Sittingbourne to the west, and round the coast to the holiday resorts as far as Dover. Often Shiner would become weary of the hours at the tiller, and would say to Jim: " 'Ere, you take 'er for a bit." Whenever he did so, the old dread and misery would return to Jim. He would remember the damaged log, the faces of White and Brodie, the clutch of the sand, and the thin shriek of the lost souls in the rigging. He knew himself able to sail and pilot the Maud better than Shiner, for he had learnt quickly, but always that dead cold lump of fear inside him made him refuse, muttering some excuse. He could no longer face being responsible for anything.
Even during the long idle spells in harbour, the hideous memories of those three January days were never far away. Jim's life was not unpleasant, and he lived in close company with the rough, bustling, cheerful men of the harbour — the shunters, dockers, bargemen (or sailor-men, as they were called) and fishermen; yet he was moody, silent and aloof, and had not formed one real friendship.
Still, he had luckily found pleasures which had saved him from total misery — and perhaps mental breakdown. During the long sunny summer months in that dry corner of England he had had many whole days of idleness, in which he had been able to explore the little town of Whitstable and the surrounding district. He was not, of course, short of money, for he had hardly touched the share of the sovereigns that had been forced upon him. One fortunate day he boarded the train at the station across the road from the harbour and rode in it, ratthng through the woods and roHing fields, to Canterbury. This was the first of many days that he was to spend there, sauntering through the civilized bustle of its streets, gazing upwards at the leaping, arching pillars in the cathedral nave, sitting for hours in the cool cloisters, while the slow strokes of a great deep bell sank soothingly into his mind. He could not say why, but it was only while he was in and around the cathedral that he could forget the death of the Sardis.