We Didn't Mean to Go to Sea by Ransome Arthur

Author:Ransome, Arthur [Ransome, Arthur]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781446483756
Publisher: Random House UK
Published: 2011-06-30T04:00:00+00:00

*

It was a long August night, but it came to an end at last, and though the wind was still whistling in the chimney and rattling the rose against the window, the sun kept breaking through the clouds, shining on the damp roofs of the boatsheds and the crowds of little yachts at anchor at the end of the hard.

“Ready for your breakfast?” said Mother, as they came downstairs, “or how would you like to come along the hard and back to make sure of an appetite?”

Bridget wondered a moment, because one of the rules of ordinary days was, “Breakfast before everything.” If people once got loose out of doors, Mother used to say, you never knew how much time you would have to waste before you could catch them again. Today, Mother herself was suggesting going out. Porridge was steaming on the round table in the little sitting-room. Mother glanced at it, and looked away.

“Good morning, Miss Powell. Good morning … Do you think we’ve time to run out and look at the hard before the kettle boils?”

“That’s on the edge of boiling now,” said Miss Powell. “But it’ll do the tea no harm to stew a minute or two. So run along together. The wind blew the fog away last night and it’s nice to see the sun again. Well, child, and did you sleep through it all?”

“Part of it,” said Bridget.

“Most of it,” said Mother.

“Mother kept awake,” said Bridget.

“A lot you know about it,” said Mother with a laugh, and went out of doors, taking Bridget with her, while Miss Powell came to the doorway and stood looking after them, with a slice of bread in one hand and the toasting-fork waiting for it in the other.

“Worrying about those children,” she said to herself. “I must tell the men not to …”

But it was already too late.

“Good morning, ma’am,” said one of the young carpenters from the boatsheds, as Mrs Walker and Bridget came down the steps from Alma Cottage. “That was a wild night and no mistake.”

“You think it was really bad,” said Mother anxiously.

“Cruel bad,” said the man. “Why, more’n once I thought we’d be having the chimney pots about our heads and the roof lifted off us. When that blow like that blow last night, dry land and a snug house is the best place for anybody …” He looked at the crowded anchorage. “Funny to think some people go to sea for pleasure.” And then, perhaps because he saw Miss Powell signalling to him from the door of the cottage, or perhaps because he saw something in Mrs Walker’s face, and remembered that last night four of her family had been neither on dry land nor in a snug house, he broke off suddenly … “Not but what they’ll have been all right with Mr Brading to look after them. Having the time of their lives, I reckon. Coming back today, I hear Mr Brading tell Frank.”

“Hurry up, Bridget,” said Mrs Walker. “Let’s run along and see if they’re in sight.

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