SPEED BOAT

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 188, 11 August 1933, Page 12

SPEED BOAT

CHAPTER VIII.

Anne's Brother. The dinghy waited by the "hard." There was a lad of about seventeen in the stern, a fresh-looking, intelligent youngster with rough curly hair and thick-rimmed spectacles. His manner was friendly as he made room for Tanner alongside him. He expressed the opinion that it would prove a bigger job than anyone reckoned, and admitted having already had a go at it himself, at which news Tanner did not attempt to conceal a grimace. It did not take long after reaching the Aline to confirm his opinion or the suspicion that a proportion of "the needed repairs might be attributed to his own inexpert manipulation. The main trouble, however, was with a bent propeller ehaft, and, on ascertaining this, Tanner sent a message ashore to the effect that there was no prospect of the job being completed before the morning. By the time, with the youngster's eager help, he had brought the damaged ehaft on deck, the dinghy was back with the report that Sir Gerald had resigned himself to make Burnham by road, and with his strict instructions that the yacht was to fetch him from there on the following afternoon. When they reached the "hard" with the length of shaft the youngster asked in a diffident manner that was rather charming, whether he might como to the shop and see the job done. "It seems to me you ought to have been apprenticed as a mechanic," remarked Tanner as he gave consent. "Wish I had," replied the boy longingly. "Engines and machinery are the only things I care about, but I suppose it's got to be Uncle Gerald's beastly

Officd" Bull Palmer was waiting for them or the bank. Evidently he had remained to talk to Sir Gerald, though what these two could have in common puzzled Tanner considerably. He ran them back to the ehop with the shaft at then feet, and the way in which the mechanic's youthful assistant accepted a lifl in that atrocious vehicle was a lessor in good manners. He never so mueli as allowed Tanner to catch his eye. In a very short'time too he proved to have an encourageable aptitude for mechanical work, and Tanner was soon congratulating himself on having picked uj a useful mate, who rendered him agree ably independent of his fellow workmen at times when two pairs of hands were needed. They rigged up a straightening device with an old fly-press, and having taken the bend out as far a« possible, Tanner set the job up in the lathe for test. It was while he was engaged thus that he heard his voluntary assistant say, "Hello, here's my sister!': She came down the shop, Miss Anne Wade, and for. one person her presence immediately irradiated it. "Hello Kerry," she said, "enjoying yourself? ,1 Then, as if she, had just recognised Tanner, which was an affectation, "Oh good afternoon, Mr. Tanner." He barely responded to her greeting but became very absorbed in his work In ordinary circumstaneee he might have stood back arid watched the shaft spin harmlessly, but at this moment it seemed incumbent on him to concentrate on each fractional- movement as if the point of his indicator were verging on an area of high explosive. "It looks very difficult," she remarked pensively. "I hope we spectators are not distracting you." At her half-mocking, half-serious tone, his pose revealed itself to him for the foolish thing it was, and he made a plunge to rescue himself from -,a sense of being ridiculous. "It's really perfectly simple," he confessed simply, "only I suppose I wanted very much to impress you." It was a long time before he learnt how that return to wholesome frankness restored him in the esteem of Miss Wade. She laughed a friendly laugh. They all three laughed. "You certainly succeeded!" she admitted gravely. "I thought I was witnessing something, appallingly skilful, like Kerry when he's sailing the dinghy and always just escaping disaster by superlative seamanship." Her brother protested good-lrumour-edly. "You do, you know you do, clenching your teeth and looking desperate, and making the muscles stand out on your arms." Tanner stopped the lathe and looked up at them. Their relationship would have been easy to guess, only she was of a shorter build:and altogether more solid and purposeful. Although Kerry was still a graceful boy, and she defi- ■ nitely more matured, • there was something subtly harmonious, cadenced, about them both that told of character, of training, and probably of inheritance. Kerry returned his glance with a halfbashful air of protest. Those nice eyes of hers smiled frankly. He knew that his awkwardness was forgiven, and he sensed still more than that —a comradeship, an admitted equality and friendship that was all the more grateful after the churlishness of recent encounters. They stayed until the shafting began its unadvextised deceleration and the gas engine wheezing out the end of the shift reminded Tanner that he had made no arrangement for working late. He made a quick apology and rushed off to the engine shed, where he was just in time to catch his employer. Palmer always stopped and started the engine himself, and as none of his men dare cease work until the engine did, he gained some minutes unpaid daily by delaying the leaving signal. He seemed pleased that Tanner should propose to work overtime. "That's all right," he said' benevolently, "make as much overtime as you can. Doubt you'll find the money useful. There'd be no harm in coming in for an hour before breakfast." It was only the realisation that he meant to charge overtime at half-a-crown an hour that prevented a suspicion of sarcasm. Bathing With Anne. John Tanner hurried over his tea and was half-way down Mr. Bull Palmer's binder path when the noise of a motor jycle announced the approach of his issistant. The heat hung about that jvening, and- beneath the wooden roof jf the shop all the ardour of mid-day seemed, to be imprisoned. They worked in. their shirts, and no moving breath )f air came across the still machines tor their refreshment. "Thank goodness the tide will be .ligli enough for a bathe before turning in," Kerry gasped as he heaved the shaft an: to a pair of test blocks they had rigged up. Tanner, found time to convey his en«j[ of the prospecty , ,',

By FAREMAN WELLS.

"Oh, Anne and I always bathe on h< nights when there's a tide that servei We're pretty keen swimmers. Why don't, you come too? I'll run you over and back on the pillion." On learning that there were plenty of spare bathing suits at his disposal Tanner readily assented. And so it came about that a few hours later he found himself hobbling along the pebbly hard to join two dim, white-limbed figures who waited for him at the edge of the tide. In a few yards they were in deep water, for there is an extraordinarily rapid rise in the channels of these creeks, and were plunging and swimming through the most beneficent coolness.

The younger two were good swimmers, but Tanner was secretly no little pleased to find himself tlieir superior in this matter. He hugged his knowledge to himself, keeping abreast of them as they steadily threshed their way through the cool smooth Waters, their arms flashing glimmeringly in the dusk. Presently a gleam on the surface ahead betrayed the Aline. They made a last spurt, and were soon resting, clinging to the gunwale of the dinghy astern. There was a brief little whispered colloquy between the brother and sister. To Tanner it seemed that Anne was insisting, Kerry protesting, but presently the iboy worked his way round to whisper: "Go easy on the return, old man. You've set the pace a bit hotter than we're used to, and she'll never admit she isn't equal to it." He agreed to keep an eye on her going back, and some obscure instinct of good sense caused him to make a joke of purloining the dinghy's rudder as a trophy to propel before them on the return. lib might come in handy in the event of her failing to stay the course. Acting on Kerry's warning he was swimming slightly behind Anne thrusting at his booty with every stroke, and alert for signs of distress, when suddenly he saw her turn towards her brother. . "Stop it, Kerry," she commanded. "Float a. bit, and I'll tow you. You must!"

Obviously they were in trouble, and it was not Anne. Tanner brought the rudder across to them. "Get this under his chest," he instructed. Kerry gasped out a protest that wae unconvincing. ■ "Hang on to it, man. I'll see her ashore and come back for you if you are sure you can last out." It was not until sister Anne began to declare that she would not leave him that Tanner found himself wondering which of them might by a voice test have been judged in the worst plight. "His heart's always been funny," she explained, in a shrill little wail of concern that afflicted still another heart with moot poignant concern. It was clearly time for firmness, and Tanner began robustly to insist that it was no good being awkward in twenty feet of water and goodness knew how far from land, but .nothing he could say would separate them. They were humorous about it, each stayed'by a hand on the half-submerged rudder, but their joking had a defiant quality tiiat did nothing to disguise the fact that thoy were both in a bad way. To make matters worse, he himself had an insistent reminder from cramped palme that he had over-rated his own powers, and might easily prove unequal to whatever might now be required of him. It was a nasty situation, nasty with its absence of anything recognisably antagonistic. The water was too calm, too caressingly warm, to seem dangerous. Light shone from the deckhouse acrose its almost unruffled surface and by contrast the twilight seemed darker about them. The sense of being isolated, of being at the mercy of something very suave but entirely remorseless, was present to each. The strange thing was that, although the idea of hailing the yacht occurred to them all, no one

deigned to suggest advertising their plight, precipitating all the fuss and publicity of a rescue. In the end Tanner persuaded Anne to paddle easily shoreward with the flat rudder under her chest while, with his hands under the boy'e chin in correct life-saving style, he put out all his reserves of strength to reach shallow water. The method saved him from the agonising ache of his unaccustomed palms, and he found the boy at this stage admirably docile, but it would be hard to say which of the three was in the worst case when from a few yards ahead Anne's voice delightedly announced that she could stand. Their feet went down to bottom on rich ooze, and slowly the three of them, instinctively linked into a sesquipedalian unity, waded into safety.

When they were clear of the water they simultaneously slumped down on a slimy patch that was still comfortingly warm from the day's sun, and for a long time were silent. Their arme were no longer about one another, but as they sat it came into the minds of two at least of them that their earlier tolerant acquaintanceship had verged on something more serious and lasting. It was Kerry who interrupted their strength-restoring reverie. " That was jolly decent of you both," he said gravely. " I feel I've been an awful ass."

" Don't be eilly. You were braver than me if it conies to that, but bravery isn't much use. It was Mr. Tanner who displayed the only evidence of a brain among the three of us, making up that perfectly preposterous joke about pinching the rudder." *

Tanner modestly blamed himself for taking the swim so far, but was cried down. "You've neither of you anything to be ashamed of," declared poor Kerry enviously, and evoked a more passionate protest this time from his sister. It might have gone on inconclusively for much longer had it not fallen to Tanner's lot to say what they both a good while afterwards assured him was the most perfect thing hie wits had ever achieved. " Well, whatever there was we've shared it," he said, meaning the folly and the terror, as well as the more creditable aspects of the adventure, and not having taken thought, but speaking his predominant idea at that moment.

They sat and thought it over" for a full minute.

" Please don't let's spoil that," was sister Anne's ultimate comment. She rose and moved thoughtfully away through the warm dusk. " They'll be sending back to look for us if we don't show, up soon," ehe called back to them. " I'm off to wash the mud off."

He did not see Anne Wade again that night. She was gone from the " hard " when he and Kerry re-immersed to clean themselves. It was obviously too much to expect the. boy to convey him backito Fringsby Bowl, and he was quite prepared to walk, feeling that a go; 1

saunter along the warmth-breathing lanes would accord with his mood. However, Kerry insisted th.it at least he should accept the loan of the motor cycle. He switched off as he- neared the Garland's, and ran the machine silently into a convenient shed. Then he let himself in to find a candle and some bread and cheese on the kitchen table. But the most gratitude-inspiring evidence of consideration awaited him when at length he had crept up the creaking stairs to his. little room. A groat drapery of j

nightgown, obviously sewn for Lie landlord, had been thoughtfully provided for him. It occurred to him that a certain good woman must have been highly perplexed by his lack of a wardrobe. It was a wonderful experience to eleep in a bed again, though his weariness did not give him more than a few minutes to appreciate the luxury before ho was very soundly asleep. And, indeed, it seemed scarcely an hour later when he was awakened in the thin light of an early morning to receive a cup of tea and the news that it was already five o'clock. (To be contimied daily.)