“I saw one quite close to, just before Libby Beer told me to pump,” Ynen said. “Didn’t they go fast!”
“Hey, look,” said Mitt. “We haven’t all run mad, have we?”
“Of course not,” said Ynen. “Libby Beer was sitting behind you, helping you sail her, and Old Ammet was standing in the bows stopping her sinking and keeping the horses off. I saw both of them.”
Hildy looked anxiously at the big purple bruise on the side of Ynen’s face and then at the tiny, salt-coated figure of Libby Beer on the stern. “I didn’t get a chance to turn round, but isn’t she rather small?”
“Old Ammet got carried away in that first big wave, for sure,” Mitt said, and hoisted himself weakly on the cabin roof to see.
He could see a bundle of whitish straw, gently rising and falling in the bows. He crawled forward, hardly able to believe it. Old Ammet was still there, contrary to all reason, every plaited wheat stalk of him, miraculously in one piece. There were strips of seaweed wrapped about him and tangled in his wheaten hair, as if he had got his lost ribbons back, changed by the sea to green and brown. But round his neck, broken and sodden, was draped a garland made of wheat, burst grapes, and drooping flowers.
“Come and look at this!” Mitt yelled.
They left Wind’s Road to sail herself and stood in a row with their clothes steaming, looking down at Old Ammet and his garland from the Festival. “I think we ought to thank him, and Libby Beer,” said Hildy.
Mitt was very self-conscious at the idea, but he made himself growl, “Thank you, sir,” with Hildy and Ynen, and then turn round and say, “Thank you, lady,” to Libby Beer. After all, he had seen Old Ammet with his own eyes.
Then Hildy started to shiver violently. Mitt knew what was needed. He waded through the soaked blankets on the cabin floor and fetched the bottle of arris. He made Hildy and Ynen have a good swig and then took one himself. They stood about in the well going “Umpwaugh!” and making awful faces.
“Shocking taste, isn’t it?” said Mitt. “Wait a moment, though. There comes a sort of boing inside, and then it warms the insides of your ears.”
The boing came. It made them feel so much better that they got out the pies and fell on them ravenously. Their hands shook as they ate, and their fingers were white, wrinkly, and blistered, even Mitt’s, which had got a little soft-skinned in Hobin’s workshop.
“I can’t
sail all through the night,” Hildy said wearily.
“We’ve got a sea anchor,” said Ynen, and looked at Mitt to see what he thought.
Mitt was dog-tired, too. But he knew autumn storms could come one on top of the other. He did not know what to do.
“I know,” said Hildy, and she crawled forward to the mast. Mitt, with Ynen nodding and yawning beside him, stared at the soles of her feet and heard her say, “Please, Old Ammet, can you look after the boat tonight? But if there’s another storm, could you wake Mitt up and tell him, please?”
“That’s right! Pick on me!” Mitt called. “Tireless Mitt they call me. Think I don’t wear out or something?” He turned to the figure of Libby Beer. “Excuse me, lady. She wants you to wake me if there’s trouble. She thinks I’m made of the same stuff as what you are. So, if I’m needed, and you have to give me a nudge, do you mind waking her up, too? She can sit and feed me nips of arris.”
The cabin was crowded and close that night. Nobody needed blankets, so they hung them in the well to dry. They all slept like logs, even Hildy, who had the small forward bunk which had been designed for her when she was nine. If Old Ammet or Libby Beer had tried to call Mitt in the night, he did not hear them. But all seemed well in the morning. The sea was flat, and the sun made a liquid yellow path to the gently drifting Wind’s Road.
“I think I hate pies,” said Hildy.
“You want to try mixing about a bit,” Mitt told her. “You know—cherry flan and steak. Makes a change.”
“You’re cheating,” said Ynen. “Those were squashed together, anyway. Try oyster and apple, Hildy. It’s—well, it’s different.”
After this decidedly strange breakfast, they cleaned up Wind’s Road and got very hot doing it. The heat told them all that they could not yet be very far North. None of them had the slightest idea where they were. As there was no land in sight, no chart Ynen could produce was any use to them. The only thing they were sure of was that they had been blown out into deep ocean, probably more west than north.
“I’ll steer north and east,” Ynen said. “When we sight land, I’ll keep it just on the horizon, until we see somewhere we can recognize. Tulfa Island should be easy to find. And we know that belongs to the North. Let’s get the sails up.”
Shortly, with sails set again, in a light wind, Wind’s Road was sailing on. Mitt sat lazily just above Old Ammet, listening to the water running past her sides and admiring the way her bows cut the sea sweetly asunder. In fair conditions Wind’s Road was a beauty, he thought. He could hardly believe she had been doing her damnedest to drown them all yesterday.
“There’s something to port over there,” Ynen called. “Can you see what it is?”
Mitt looked too far, then too near, and finally saw a small dark thing lolloping on the swell, about a quarter of a mile away. “Could be a boat,” he called.
“That’s what I thought,” Ynen called back, and pushed the tiller over, with a fine ruckle-ruckle of water from Wind’s Road’s elegant bows.
“Hey! What are you doing?” Mitt called, jumping up.
“Going to look. If it’s a boat, it will have been in the storm,” Ynen said and, for the first time for over a day, he gave Mitt a frankly unfriendly look. Hildy, beside him, gave Mitt the same look.