The Forest (41 page)

‘Off you go, then.’

So Willie ran back to Richard Albion who received the offer with almost as much surprise as the boy. Without hesitation, however, he came striding across to Seagull’s boat. ‘Do I hear you’ll really take a bet on this race?’ he enquired.

‘That’s right.’

‘Well.’ He smiled broadly. ‘I never thought I’d live to see the day that Alan Seagull took a bet. What’ll it be, then?’ His sparkling blue eyes gave just a hint of concern on the mariner’s behalf. ‘No one will take my five pounds, so name your figure and I’ll be honoured.’

‘Five pounds is all right with me.’

‘Are you sure?’ The rich gentlemen had no wish to ruin the mariner. ‘I’m getting a bit nervous about five pounds myself. Couldn’t we make it a mark? Two if you like.’

‘No. Five pounds you offered, five pounds I took.’

Albion hesitated only another second, then decided that to question the mariner any further would be to insult him. ‘Done, then,’ he cried and gave Alan his hand, before striding back to the watching crowd. ‘You’ll never guess,’ he announced to them, ‘what’s just happened.’

It only took a couple of minutes for the whole of Lymington to be buzzing with this unexpected news – and scarcely a couple more before there were theories about what it meant. Why was Seagull suddenly abandoning the habit of a lifetime? Had he lost his head? Had he got five pounds anyway, or had he found someone to stake him. One thing seemed clear: if he was betting, then he must know something they didn’t.

‘He knows we’re going to win,’ cried Burrard, cock-a-hoop.

Was it so? Those who had bet against the mariner began to look uncomfortable. Some of them, standing near Totton, turned to him nervously. What was going on, they demanded? ‘We were following you,’ they reminded him.

Henry Totton had already endured some chaff when it had been noticed that his son was in Seagull’s boat. ‘Your son’s sailing with the opposition?’ his friends had cried. He had treated the question with perfect equanimity. ‘He’s still friends with the little Seagull boy,’ he had replied calmly. ‘He wanted to go with him.’

‘I would have stopped him,’ one merchant remarked grumpily.

‘Why?’ Totton had given a quiet smile. ‘My son’s extra weight and will undoubtedly get in the way. I think he’ll cost Seagull a furlong at least.’ This shrewdness had drawn some appreciative laughs.

So now, as they looked at him accusingly, he only shrugged. ‘Seagull has made a bet, like the rest of us.’

‘Yes. But he never bets.’

‘And he is probably wise.’ He looked round their faces.
‘Has it not occurred to any of you that he may have made a mistake? He may lose.’ And faced with this further piece of common sense, there wasn’t much anyone could say. There was a feeling, all the same, that there was something fishy about the business.

Nor was this suspicion confined to the spectators. Down in the boat, Willie Seagull was looking at his father curiously, while the mariner, his leather hat squashed at a jaunty angle on his head, leaned very comfortably against a cask of wine. ‘What are you up to, Dad?’ he whispered.

But all Seagull did was murmur a short sea-shanty:

And that was all Willie could get out of him until the mayor’s voice cried: ‘Cast off.’

Jonathan Totton was happy. To be with his friend Willie, and the mariner on their boat – and for such an event – it did not seem to him that heaven itself could be much better.

It was a bracing scene. The little river between the high green slopes on its banks had a silvery tinge. The sky was grey but luminous, the ribs of the clouds spreading southwards. Pale seagulls wheeled round the masts and dipped over the reeds, the waterside echoing with their cries. The two boats were out in midstream now, the Southampton boat nearer the eastern bank. At the quay it had looked larger, but to Jonathan, now, down on the water, the hoy with its built-up platforms fore and aft seemed to tower over the fishing boat.

The crew were all ready. There were four men on the oars, but only to keep the boat steady in the stream. The rest were in position to raise the sail. Seagull was on the tiller, the two boys, for the time being, crouched down in front of him. As Jonathan looked up at the mariner’s face, with its
dark wisps of beard against the gleaming grey sky, it looked, for a moment, strangely sinister. But he put that thought from him as being foolish. And just then, on the shore, the mayor must have waved his flag, for Seagull nodded and said: ‘Now.’ The boys looked forward as the square sail went up with a flap and the four men on the oars gave a few good pulls, and in a few moments they were moving down the stream with the north wind pressing behind them.

Looking across to the quay, Jonathan could see his father’s face watching them. He wanted to get up and wave to him, but he did not because he was not sure his father would like it. Soon the borough on its sloping crest was falling behind. A shaft of light through a break in the cloud lit up the town’s roofs for a few brief, rather eerie moments; then the clouds closed and greyness descended. They were slipping downstream fast. The trees on the river bank intervened and the borough was lost to sight.

The smaller craft was able to pick up speed more quickly so that they had moved just ahead of the Southampton boat for the moment. They were in a long reach, now. To the right lay the open wastes of Pennington Marshes; to the left a strip of muddy marsh; and ahead, past a broad tract of mud banks that the high tide had submerged, the choppy waters of the Solent.

For sailors, the Solent harbours had some remarkable benefits. At first sight, the entrance to the Lymington river might have seemed unpromising. Across the river-mouth, stretching from below Beaulieu in the east to beyond Pennington Marshes in the west – some seven miles in all and over a mile wide in places – lay vast mud-flats, through which various streams cut narrow channels. Rich in nutrients, growing eelgrass and algae, this large feeding area produced molluscs, snails and worms in their billions, which in turn supported a huge population, some year round, some migrant, of waders, ducks, geese, cormorants, herons, terns and gulls. A paradise for birds but not, one
might suppose, for mariners. Its virtue for shipping, however, lay in two features. One was the obvious fact that the whole twenty-mile stretch of water was sheltered by the comfortable mass of the Isle of Wight, at whose eastern and western ends one entered the sea. But the real key was not the shelter. It was the tides.

The tidal system of the English Channel operates rather like a see-saw, oscillating about a fulcrum, or node line. At each end of England’s south coast, the waters rise and fall considerably. At the central node, although much water washes back and forth, the water level remains relatively constant. Because the Solent lies quite near the node its tidal rise and fall is modest. But the barrier of the Isle of Wight adds another factor. For as the tide in the English Channel rises, it fills the Solent from both ends, thereby setting up a complex set of internal tides. In the western Solent, where Lymington lies, the tide usually rises with a gentle current for seven hours. There is then a long stand – sometimes, in fact, there are two high waters a couple of hours apart. Then there is a short, fast ebb tide, which scours out a deep channel in the narrows by the western end of the Isle of Wight. All this is perfect for the shipping using the big port of Southampton.

And even modest Lymington was amply favoured. By high water, the huge mudflats were all submerged. The little river channel was easy to see and deep enough for the draught of any of the merchant vessels then in use.

As they entered the Solent now, the boat began to pitch against the dark and choppy waves that the wind had raised; but it was quite a light motion and Jonathan enjoyed it. Ahead lay the broad slopes of the Isle of Wight, only four miles away. Their destination, the small harbour of Yarmouth, was almost directly opposite. Looking east, he could see the great funnel of the Solent, rolling away for fifteen miles, a huge grey corridor of sky and water. On the west side, past the marshes and Keyhaven, a long sand and
gravel spit with a hooked end came out for a mile from the coast towards the chalk cliffs of the island and, through the narrow channel between, Jonathan could see the open sea. The salt spray stung his face. He felt exhilarated.

With the wind directly behind them, there was nothing to do except run before it. Coming back, however, would be more difficult. Although the boat had a large, centred rudder, the primitive square sail was not well adapted for tacking. They might need to use their oars then. Perhaps, he supposed, this might turn out to the smaller vessel’s advantage. It would need to be so, for already he could see that the Southampton boat was closer. Before they were halfway across, he suspected, the heavier ship would overtake them.

Jonathan might be contented enough, but as he looked across at Willie he noticed that his friend was not. The two boys had shifted forward a little to a position just below the small deck on which Seagull was standing at the tiller. While Jonathan had been gazing eagerly out at the seascape, the other boy, sitting a few feet away, had been frowning and shaking his head to himself.

Jonathan slid over to him. ‘What’s the matter?’ he enquired.

At first Willie did not reply, then, lowering his head he muttered: ‘I can’t understand it.’

‘What?’

‘Why my dad hasn’t raised the big sail.’

‘What big sail?’

‘In there.’ Willie nodded towards the space under the aft deck. ‘He’s got a big sail. Hidden. He can outrun almost anyone.’ He jerked his thumb back towards the Southampton boat, which was now visibly gaining on them. ‘With a following wind like this they’d never catch us.’

‘Perhaps he will raise it.’

Willie shook his head. ‘Not now. And he’s bet on the race. Five pounds. I don’t know what he’s doing.’

Jonathan stared at his friend’s small, chinless face, so perfect a replica of his father’s, saw his worried frown and suddenly realized that the funny little boy who ran through the woods and played in the streams with him was also a miniature adult, in a way that he was not. The children of farmers and fishermen went to work alongside their parents, while the child of a well-to-do merchant did not. The poorer children had responsibilities and, to an extent, their parents treated them as equals. ‘He must know what he’s doing,’ he suggested.

‘Then why hasn’t he told me?’

‘My father never tells me anything,’ said Jonathan, then suddenly realized that this was not true. The merchant was always trying to tell him things, but he never wanted to listen.

‘He doesn’t trust me,’ Willie said sadly. ‘He knows I told you about his secret.’ He glanced at Jonathan. ‘You never told anyone, did you?’

‘No,’ said Jonathan. It was nearly true.

For a little while, however, Seagull’s boat managed to keep just ahead of the other as the coast of the island drew closer.

They were halfway across when the Southampton boat passed in front. Jonathan heard a cheer from her men but Seagull and his crew ignored it. Nor did the bigger boat, as they drew nearer to Yarmouth, establish more than a half-mile lead.

The port of Yarmouth was smaller than Lymington and protected from the Solent waters by a sand bar that acted as a harbour wall. They were still about a mile out from the harbour entrance when Jonathan noticed something strange: the sail was flapping.

He heard Seagull call out an order and two of the men leaped to loosen one of the sheets while two more tightened the other, altering the angle of the sail. Seagull leaned on the tiller.

‘Wind’s changing,’ cried Willie. ‘Nor’-east.’

‘That’ll make it a bit easier to get back,’ ventured Jonathan.

‘Maybe.’

The Southampton boat was having to employ the same tactic, but was already nearer the harbour entrance, so had the advantage. Before long they saw it turn and make for the narrow channel by the sand bar, dropping its sail as it passed into the protection of the harbour; but it was some time before they could do the same. Just before they made their run in he saw Alan Seagull gazing up at the sky, watching the clouds. The half-smile that was usually on his face had gone and it seemed to Jonathan that he looked worried.

As they came in, the Southampton boat was already tied up and its crew busy unloading.

The town of Yarmouth had also been founded by Lymington’s feudal lord. In this case he had laid out his borough as a little grid of lanes on the eastern side of the harbour water. Though small, it was a busy place, for the greater part of the Isle of Wight’s trade flowed through it. During the last hundred years, the quay had been built and lifting equipment set up, so that ships could unload directly on to the dock instead of into lighters.

The boat had no sooner tied up than the crew sprang into action. While gangplanks were pushed out from the quay and a beam moved out, the mariners raced to raise a block and tackle from the masthead by which the heaviest items, like the casks, could be swung outboard from the yardarm. Everybody was busy. Even the two boys rushed up and down the gangplanks with bales of silk, boxes of spices and any other cargo they could carry. Jonathan had hardly a moment to look, but he knew that, with their smaller cargo, this was where they should be able to make up some time against the Southampton boat. He was so busy that he scarcely noticed that over the harbour the sky was getting darker.