The Baby on the Shore

Cromwell Argus, Volume LXIII, Issue 3249, 6 February 1933, Page 7

The Baby on the Shore

Frustration of a Kidnapping Scheme.

The promenade at Saltby was black with perambulators as little Mr. and large Mrs. Miniver walked down it in the summer sunshine. There were large prams and small prams, high prams and low prams and shabby prams. Each contained one infant; many held two; a few accommodated as many as three. A rough computation would have led one to the conclusion that not only were the entire population, under the age of two, of the seaside resort gathered together in that one place, but that there had been an incursion of infants from the surrounding neghborhood. "Good gracious!” said Mrs. Miniver, with her usual dominant manner. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many babies together at one time, even at the clinic. What does it mean, Wilfred? Is it a baby show, or a competition of some kind; or are they doing It for the pictures?” Mr. Miniver said mildly that he didn’t know. Mrs. Miniver snorted, but for once she refrained from demanding the reason for his ignorance. A few yards farther on she became aware of a curious phenomenon. The largest, deepest, and smartest pram of all, shining with copal varnish and chromium beneath a fringed sun canopy of the latest design, moved along amid the throng upon its balloon tyres. The other prams gathered round It, jostling each other in the most unconsiderate manner, but all kept a respectful distance from the focus of their attention. The smartly uniformed highly superior nurse who propelled it moved along with her chin in the air,‘ as if disdainfully unaware of the interest her charge aroused; the six-months-old occupant of the pram was quite sincerely ignorant of the crowd; he was fast asleep. “Who is it, Wilfred?” Mrs. Miniver asked her husband in an awed whisper. “Is it Royalty?” Again Mr. Miniver admitted, not unreasonably, that he did not know. “Then find out,” his wife commanded sternly. “Ask somebody.” Mr„- Miniver hesitated. He was a shy little man, and reluctant to address strangers. Through his round spectacles he looked at his wife in wistful appeal, and met a glare that sent him almost scuttling to the nearest man—not even for Charlotte would he have spoken to one of the mothers or nurses. The nearest man was an official of the local corporation; whose duty it was to pick up the pieces of newspaper, orange peel, and unexpended portions of meals that the populace, in

spite of many and varied appeals, de- . dined to Intern in the receptacles lavishly provided for their disposal. He had an air of weary disillusion, as if he had missed his aim in life, as was probably the case. “Excuse, me,” said Mr. Miniver plucking at the functionary’s arm, “what’s all this about? Who’s that baby? Royalty?” The bureaucrat spat on the promenade. “Royalty?” he echoed scornfully. “Nab. It’s the Bloggs kid —grandson of Bloggs the millionaire brewer you've heard of Bloggs’ Brighter Beer, ain’t ye?” Mr. Miniver had indeed heard of the beverage, though he had never tasted it; Charlotte disapproved of all alcoholic liquors. “Richest kid in England,” said the scavenger. “And the apple of its ma’s eye.” “I expect so,’’ said Mr. Miniver. He stood up on the pediment of the promenade railing, and gazed over the sea of pram canopies at the wealthy infant. “Nice kid,” he remarked, a shade of sentiment in his tone.

“Nice?” The corporation official turned his head over the rail and expectorated derisively down on to the beach. “Ruddy little plutocrat. Daft, I call it. Being worth about a couple o’ million quid, at that age. Daft. And all these mugs, pushing their ruddy prams as near it as they can get, so’s they can tell their pals how near their kids have bln to young Bloggs, and hoping, when the photographers come along to take snaps for the picture papers, they’ll show up among the alsorans. Daft, I call it.” Mr. Miniver returned to Charlotte and reported the principal facts imparted to him, deleting the picturesque embellishments and didactic expressions of opinion. “Oh,” gasped Mrs. Miniver. “Two — million pounds,” she said in a hushed voice, as she looked in the direction of the baby (she could just see the nurse’s cap). Then her expression changed. In a tone of deep disgust she said “Beer!” and stalked on past the bandstand. Mr. Miniver trotted after her. ' With her dragoon-like stride, Mrs. Miniver made her way to the far end of the promenade, well away from the banana-and-flsh-and-chip-eaters, who congregated in masses at the point nearest the railway station. Arrived there, she appropriated the only vacant seat, took from her bag the jumper she was knitting for an inhabitant of a Wana-Waziri Zenana, and directed her husband to go and paddle. Mr. Miniver looked nervously at the peirprs on the promenade. *T don’t think I will this morning, my dear,” he said. “What?” said Mrs. Miniver, in a tone Uf mingled surprise and indignation. “Why ever not?" “I —I don't know, m’dear. I don’t think I will." “I do,” said Mrs. Miniver firmly. “You know how good the sea water is for your rheumatism. But don’t go too far in; you know it ruins your

trousers. Ask somebody If the tide i* coming In or going- out.” Mr. Miniver sighed, but made no further protest. A mild, Inoffensive little figure in his black jacket, striped trousers and straw hat, he descended the stone steps to the firm, sandy beach for which Saltby is famous, sat down on an abandoned sand-castle, and took off his - boots and socks, rolled up his trousers and pants, and stuffing his socks into his boots and slinging the boots round his neck by their laces, walked down to the water, and waded ankle deep. At least, he was ankle deep for the first three steps, and then the water was over his knees, for a fairly heavy swell Was rolling in. “Oh, my,” said Mr. Miniver. “What will Charlotte say?”

He cast a guilty glance towards the promenade to see if his wife had witnessed the Incident, but her head was bent over her knitting. He observed that the Bloggs pram was at the top of the steps, and that a number of eager men were preparing to lift it down to the sand. Highly interested, Mr. Miniver stood with his back to the sea and watched the operation (disdainfully supervised by the nurse) until another breaker caught him astern, soaking the hinder portion of his trousers.

This diverted his attention, and when next he turned his gaze shoreward the nurse, having dismissed her helpers with lofty thanks, was pushing the pram across the hard sand towards a high ridge of rocks that ran out, almost cutting off a cliff-locked little cove from Saltby Bay. She went alone but for the baby; the sycophants followed no farther. A sound from seaward, a mixture of sharp explosions and splutterings, now attracted Mr. Miniver’s attention. A short distance off shore a large motorboat, with a single man aboard, was apparently trying to lay to, but finding it difficult in the swell.

Actuated principally by a desire to escape from Charlotte’s hawklike gaze, even at that range, until his neather garments had dried somewhat, Mr. Miniver paddled along towards the ridge of rocks, round the corner of which the nurse and pram were just disappearing. It also occurred to him, even then, that the tide was coming in fast, and that if the nurse stayed overlong in the cove her line of retreat would be cut off.

By the time he, in turn, rounded the corner, the nurse was half-way across the cove, and some way up the beach, in close conversation with a young man in a grey flannel suit. Judging from the closeness of their proximity, the highly superior nurse was, after all, humanly susceptible to the tender passion. Together they crossed the beach to another ridge of rock, parked the pram in a corner —presumably young Master Bloggs still slept—and retired to a more secluded cranny among the rocks. Mr. Miniver himself sat down, in the cool shadow of a big rock. He was very hot and a little tired. On his left, the motor-boat was coming in shore, rising and falling in the heavy swell. One moment she was riding high, about the height of Mr. Miniver’s head, it seemed, on a crest; the next she was all but invisible in a trough, behind a cloud of spray sparkling and shimmering in the summer sunshine.

A few minutes later the boat came plunging into the shallows, bumped on to the sand, and the man leaped ashore. Seizing the gunwale, he began to haul the vessel higher up on the beach, assisted at intervals by a breaker. At last he seemed satisfied, and, leaving the boat, he ran briskly up the beach to the perambulator, gently lifted out the sleeping baby, and, carrying it rather awkwardly, ran down the beach again toward the launch. As he went, he uttered a shrill whistle.

Mr. Miniver sat up and watched, his mouth and eyes round with surprise. He remembered all he had read of similar incidents occurring in the Land of the Free; he recollected scenes he had witnessed on the silver screen when Charlotte had allowed him to take her to the pictures. He had no doubt whatever as to what was going on; the heir to the Bloggs millions was being kidnapped.

Mr. Miniver wondered what on earth he could do. Active intervention was useless; both the motor-boat man and the nurse’s admirer were large and young. They would throw little Mr, Miniver aside contemptuously, rendering him incapable of taking any further part in the business. To rouse an alarm was impossible; there was nobody within earshot; the general point were all in the big bay, on the other side of the ridge of rocks. By the time he rounded the corner and attracted somebody’s attention the motor-boat, with its precious freight, would be well out to sea. He glanced wildly round him, but there was no sign of help. But the kidnapping was not proceeding precisely according to plan. The tide was making fast, and as it rose the breakers seemed to grow larger and more violent. As the kidnapper ran down the beach a big roller picked up the launch, lifted it high off the beach and began to carry it seaward. The kidnapper yelled “Bill!” hoarsely, put the baby down on the sand at the water’s edge, and raced into the shallows. Up to his thighs in water, he grabbed the boat’s gunwale and tried to haul her back. But she was a heavy craft, and the pull of the receding wave was strong. It took him all his might to hold her till she grounded as the water shallowed. He could not move her till the next wave came in, and, when it did, it picked up the boat and hit him with her, knocking him under water. He rose again, soaked, and once more laid hands on the gunwale and proceeded to wrestle with the now thoroughly refractory boat. (He was not a very skilful motor-boat-

man, and if you’ve ever had a singlehanded tussle with a heavy boat on a beach in a rough surf you will know all about his troubles.) At this moment the nurse-girl and the other young man appeared, a little tardily, from among the rocks. The man saw his accomplice struggling with the motor-boat, and ran toward him; the nurse saw the baby lying on the beach, uttered a piercing yelp, and ran toward that. The young man turned his head, shouted at her, and lifted his fist threateningly. Startled and astounded, she stopped; he ran on. Then she came on again, so he stopped, turned, and hit her savagely on the head. She fell on the sand and lay there, and the man ran on, splashed into the water, and began to assist his comrade with the boat.

Mr. Miniver was still sitting unobserved in the shadow of the rock, desperately eager to do something in the matter, but helplessly wondering what he could effectively do. The sight of the girl being brutally struck down made his mild blood boil, but the thing that stirred him to impulsive, unreasoning action was the baby lying on the shore. Fathers have more maternal instinct that mothers realise. The instant conscious thought in his mind was “It’ll be drowned”; his subconscious emotional reaction was a reflex from the early days of his married life, when his daughters (now all married) had been infants; It framed itself in his mind as “If the baby gets wet, Charlotte will be wild with me.” He jumped from his retreat and ran, as fast as his little legs would carry him, across the sand. By this time the baby was awake and yelling lustily. Mr. Miniver picked it up in his arms —arms that had not held a baby for many, many years—and made hoarse, crooning noises. A shout from the water brought him back to the realities of the situation. The young men had hauled the boat further up the beach, and now left her and began to splash through the water toward him, uttering shouts of anger and making threatening gestures of horrid import. Mr. Miniver threw an anxious glance at the eastward ridge of rocks between him and civilisation. The kidnappers already cut him off from there. He looked to the westward ridge; the breakers were already thundering round it. He whisked round like a rabbit and, the baby in his arms, scuttled up the beach, with the men in what the novelists call hot pursuit. The distance was no more than a sprint, otherwise Mr. Miniver would quickly have been run down; his littie legs were no match for his pursuers’ long limbs, and he was hampered by a twelve-pound baby. But he ran as he had never run in his life, reached the tumbled rocks at the foot of the sheer cliff, and commenced to scale them.

' You may guess that Mr. Miniver was no mountaineer, but luckily the ascent from rock to ledge and ledge to rock was not really difficult. By the time his pursuers reached the foot, he was poised at the top of the heap of rocks. Using the most shocking language, they began to climb towards him.

If Mr. Miniver’s pocket-book had been in peril, he would probably have surrendered tamely; if Charlotte had been attacked —but Charlotte was capable of defending herself better than he could do the job for her. But the infant in his arms aroused all his protective instinct; the assault on the girl, and the pursuit of himself, had brought to the surface, so to speak, such little fighting blood as lay in his veins. Mr. Miniver defied them, and prepared for battle. Around the ledge on which he was ensconced lay a scatter of big stones and small rocks. Mr. Miniver picked up one that was not too heavy for him, and boiled it downward at his adversaries. It missed them, so he heaved a second. By a sheer fluke, his aim was true. Kidnapper No. 1 only saved his skull by ducking, and the rock struck his shoulder, and knocked him off his balance. As he fell, he cannoned into Kidnapper No. 2, and the two rolled to the bottom together. When they picked themselves up, they saw that their boat was afloat again, and hurried off to drag her higher up the beach. While they were doing this, the nurse came to,- sat up, remembered what had* happened to her, and, yelping hysterically, climbed upon the ridge of rocks near her. Mr. Miniver sat still, there being nothing else to do, and endeavored to soothe the fretful infant’s protesting cries. He had quietened it considerably, by the expedient of holding his watch to its ear, by the time the kidnappers returned for a second assault. Although he scarcely realised it, not being a student of tactics, Mr. Miniver had taken up a very strong defensive position; the kind of position in which a handful of men can hold an army at bay, as the Swiss did the Austrians among their mountains, and the Greeks did at Thermopylae. Every time Mr. Miniver, holding baby in one arm, hurled rocks at them with the other hand. More than once one or other of them very nearly reached him, but each time a lucky shot with a heavy chunk of conglomerate sent him to the bottom. Then they found that the tide had surged right in, that the beach w'as alternately six inches and two feet deep in water, and that their boat was afloat again and in imminent danger of being dashed against the rocks. They clambered aboard her, then, brought her under the foot of the cliff, and, holding her in, attempted to parley. Alternately they offered Mr. Mini ver a considerable sum of money if he would hand the baby down to them, and uttered the most grisly threats of what they would do to him when they caught him. All Mr. Miniver answered was;

"Don’t make such a noise; I’ll never get him to sleep.” They started on another direct assault; one with some trouble held the boat’s nose in to the rock, while the other stepped on to a ledge and began to climb. At this evidence of determination Mr. Miniver began to be scared; until now he had been so busy and so concerned about the baby that he had had no time to feel frightened. He attempted bluster —an art almost unknown to him.

“If you try to come up here again,” he quavered, "I’ll tip this big rock into your boat and sink it.” For a moment the attacker paused, far more alarmed at this threat than at any risk of personal injury. Then he called to his companion; ’’Push her out. Bill; I’ll settle the little perisher.” And savagely he began to climb, neatly dodging the rocks Mr. Miniver threw at him —with rather uncertain aim, for he was becoming very tired. The fellow was almost within grasp, when a yell of alarm sounded from Bill in the boat. He stood up, pointing, and both Mr. Miniver and his opponent looked in the direction of his gesture. Two motor launches were rounding the eastward point, advancing rapidly. “Let’s beat it, Mike,” Bill called urgently, “or we’re cooked.” Mike stood not upon the order of his going. Without even a parting word to Mr. Miniver or a kiss for the baby, he slid down the rocks, to the detriment of his grey flannels, missed the boat and soused into the water, then clambered aboard and seized the tiller. Bill started the engine, and the boat swung round and began to kick her way against the combers towards the open sea. But one of the fast launches headed her off, and it was plain that by nothing but a direct and undeserved intervention of providence could the kidnappers make their getaway. The other boat, its occupants observing that Mr. Miniver was holding the baby, headed for him, ignoring the frenzied yelps of the nursemaid on the other rocks. With some trepidation, Mr. Miniver perceived that in the stern of the craft sat Charlotte. Her complexion was greenish, for she was an extremely bad sailor, but the set of her lips and the glint in her eyes were indomitable. With her were a helmeted policeman, a stout young man in white flannels, and a radiant pull-over, and a distracted-looking young woman in a smart tennis frock. The boat reached the foot of Mr. Miniver’s eyrie, and most of the people in it stood up and began to talk loudly all at once. Mr, Miniver eyed them reproachfully; the infant was snuggled quietly and comfortably in the crook of his left arm, one of its tiny hands clutched the third finger of his right hand, and its eyes were closed. "Wilfred!” Mrs. Miniver challenged sternly, “what are you doing with that baby?” Her husband shook his head reprovingly at her—for the first time in years. "Ssh!” he answered. “It’s just gone off to sleep.” “And look at you,” said Mrs. Miniver reprovingly, as, landed at Saltby, they slunk through the back streets toward their diggings. “Look at your trousers —all wet and torn. You’re not fit to be trusted out of my sight. Whatever possessed you to go round that cove? I made sure you were drowned, so when I heard that Mr. and Mrs. Bloggs were anxious about their baby, which they heard the nursemaid had taken round the point, and were going to find it with boats, I insisted on being taken, too.” “’lt’s a good thing somebody came,” said Mr. Miniver. “I couldn’t have held out much longer. I was getting tired.” “You’d no right to mix yourself up in such an affair,” his wife retorted. “It was no business of yours.” “I couldn’t stand by and see those blackguards run off with a baby,” Mr. Miniver said, indignantly. “I know how its mother would feel. And, anyway, Mr. Bloggs is most grateful to me; he’s promised to do absolutely anything for me —anything.” “Humph!” snorted Mrs, Miniver, the unconvincable, sceptically. “Well, I hope what he does will buy you a new pair of trousers.” “Yes,” said Mrs. Miniver, giving the landlady an account of the affair while Mr. Miniver changed his trousers, “he went for those two great hulking ruffians single-handed, and took the baby away from them. When we arrived he was nursing the baby with one hand and throwing huge rocks at the kidnappers with the other; if we hadn’t turned up soon I think he’d have killed the pair of them. You’d never think it to look at him, but when he’s roused by cruelty or injustice, he’s a regular lion, my Wilfred.” “By gum! Tha’ must be proud of him,” said the awed landlady. “I am,” said Mrs. Miniver.