Flotsam

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 89, 6 July 1927, Page 11

Flotsam

By

Coralie Stanton and Heath Has ken.

To have Flotsam, i.e., goods floating on the water; Jetsam, i.e., goods cast out of a ship during a storm, and Wilsam, i.e., goods driven ashore when ships are wrecked. These wrecks were called by the vulgar, Goods of God's mercy. (Ancient Charter of Dover.) CHAPTER I. ' Poor little chap’. What can I do with him?” John Bolton peeped through the fog into the blurred face of a grizzled sailor from whose guernsey and trousers water was running in little streams about his bare feet. Bolton was kneeling on the shingle and supporting in his arms the inanimate form of a boy whose white face was just a shadowy outline in the fog. He was half-drowned, and the sailor had just placed him in Bolton’s arms. The sailor scratched his head. “I’m sure I don’t rightly know what you can do, sir,” he said. ‘‘Seems queer there don’t happen to be a doctor among the passengers. The ship’s doctor hasn’t come ashore yet. There’s others needing a doctor over yonder—a lady fainted and another with her leg smashed in getting into the boat. It’s a bad business.” ‘‘A lucky business, I should say,” Bolton retorted. ‘‘The purser told me there’s no loss of life. A fine performance getting all the passengers off in this fog.” He looked toward the invisible sea into which the Green Star liner, ‘‘Queen of Peru,” on her first day out from port, bound for South America, had sunk in a collision with a Scandinavian ship. All around him was the steaming blanket of fog, dead white, all but impenetrable. The air vibrated hoarsely with the ceaseless voice of the giant fog-horn, warning other vessels not to share the liner’s fate, and distant sirens out of the fog. Dimly Bolton perceived ghostly groups of forlorn passengers, standing or sitting on duckboards placed on the shingle by the few inhabitants of that solitary spit of land. For miles there was nothing but shingle; one ploughed through it like the desert sand. Some of the passengers had been in the water some time. They shivered, despite the heat of the August day. Trains had been telephoned for from the little light railway station to the nearest main line. There was a dull murmur of voices, monotonous, subdued, broken every now and then by a querulous note of complaint or a moan from someone in pain. There had been no panic. The orderly rescues of those who had slipped into the sea when the liner heeled over had been a pattern of efficient seamanship and British self-control. Voices were heard shouting in the fog, as more boats were brought ashore, rasping on the shingle beach. Cheerful cries they were—the ship's officers calling out names, or friends greeting friends. Through it all the boy in Bolton’s arms >ay unconscious. He breathed and his heart was beating. He was a slim lad, perhaps twelve or thirteen years, pale as a ghost, with matted fair hair and obstinately closed eyes. The sailor had already made inquiries about him, but could not find his people. “Couldn’t make ’im out, sir,” the man told Bolton. “’E kicked up a terrible fuss-when I put 'im in the boat. ’E jumped into the water and ’ad to be fished out again. Acted like a young lunatic an’ ’ollered out: ‘I don’t want to be saved! Let me drown! Let me drown!’” “Panic,” said Bolton briefly. “I expect so, sir. Poor little feller; ’e do look bad.” The boy at that moment was struggling into semi-consciousness. He began to moan feebly. Bolton breathed a sigh of relief. He left the lad in the charge of the sailer, who handled him as tenderly as a woman, and went off, feeling his way through the fog, to make inquiries. He found several of the ship’s officers. They knew nothing about the Doy. Neither did any of the passengers. Of course, the liner had only been out a few hours: the passengers had not had time to sort themselves out and settle down. Possibly, someone suggested, the boy was travelling in charge of the captain. The captain had not come ashore yet. Bolton groped his w ay- back to where he had left the boy. The lad was whimpering and shivering with cola. His eyes -were still shut. Bolton took his own coat off and wrapped it round him. The lad’s grey clothes were thin; his Eton collar was.soaked and pulpy. Bolton spoke to him, but he would not answer, only crying feebly. Time passed. In the end. when the first train arrived, almost immediately followed by another, Bolton found himself left with the boy. Bolton had not been a passenger in the “‘Queen of Peru.” He lived in the neighbourhood: and, happening to be near the when the accident was first heard of, he hurried to place himself at the service of anyone who might need him. No passenger claimed the boy. Bolton finally sought out the captain. The lad was not fit to travel to London w 7 ith a crowd of strangers. There was evidently some mystery about him. The captain had no knowledge of him at all. Bolton gave the captain his card, and said he would take him home —only a few miles—and have him looked after until his people were found. The captain thanked him warmly, and went off, throwing cheery words here and there, his blue sailor’s eyes grim the while for the loss of his ship. Bolton found a coastguard and got him to help him carry the boy to the place where he had left his car. It was nearly a mile —the furthest point of the civilised road, where it joined the spit of land nosing out into the sea, called Shingleness. It was a weary progress. Slight though the boy was. they were both tired when they reached the motor-car. Quite suddenly the fog began to disperse. They no longer needed to grope their way, fixing their eyes on the old railway sleepers that formed the only track. They saw the patches of pale blue borage, and the drifts of sep. pinks, and the clumps of yellow sea poppies, tall rosy foxgloves that grew so miraculously out of the shingle, A breeze stung their faces. Great banks of white mist began to roll around them, shifting, now lifting, now dropping, but showing that the worst was over and promising a respite from their danger to the ships still out at sea. Bolton tipped the coastguard and laid the boy in the luxurious back seat of the car, covering him with rugs. With all possible speed he manoeuvred the car along the narrow, grass-grown track until he reached the main road and the small town of Dryll, boasting a famous explosive factory and a vast Early-English church, known as the Cathedral of the Marsh. There he pulled up and looked back. The boy was sitting up. Bolton saw his eyes open for the first time. They gave him a shock. They were yellow brown, like a topaz, very large and rimmed with black lashes. And they were full of fear. They looked like the eyes of a wild animal at bay. Bolton stopped the car and got out and went to him. The lad’s teeth were chattering. There was an inn nearby. Groups of people were standing about

Authors of “ The Real Mrs. Dare." The Man She Never Married." " Sword and Plough." &c , jjrc. the street, discussing the wreck. Bolton went into the inn and asked for milk and brandy, which he made the boy drink, much against his will. "I don't want it —I don’t want it,” he said, trying to push the glass away. His voice was hoarse. His face was most unprepossessing, with the hostile eyes and frowning, jet-black brows that were in such amazing contrast to his fair hair. “Let me go!” he said. “Let me go!” “Tell me who you are,” Bolton said. He spoke sternly. “I am taking you home. You were shipwrecked on Shingleness Point with all the other passengers of the ‘Queen of Peru.’ What is your name? Where were you going to? Who v#ere you with?" “It’s no business of yours.” said the hoarse voice. “I’m afraid it is. Your people couldn’t be found. You were very ill. I have the captain’s permission to look after you. You must tell me who you are. What is your name?” “Jack King,” was the sudden answer. “And who were you with?” “My father.” “Where were you bound for?” “South America.” “Where is your father?” “I don’t know. Let me go! 1 don t want to be here. I want to go to my father.” “But you don’t know where he is.” “I will find him. I want to go.’* “You can’t go—you —you —foolish boy!” Bolton’s voice was half angry. At that moment the lad’s head rolled sideways helplessly. His white face grew whiter. Bolton caught hold of him and held the glass of milk and brandy to his lips, forcing some of it down his throat. It was a momentary collapse. The boy was moaning again. “I feel so ill. I feel so sick." “For God’s sake,” said Bolton sternly, “lie still and let me drive you home.” “I don’t want to go,” said the monotonous, hoarse voice. “I don’t want to go.” Bolton looked hard and masterfully into the glaring yellow eyes. ‘'You’ve got to go, my son. So no more of this nonsense. Be quiet 1 I’ll find your father for you. Only be quiet.” There was no more nonsense. The speed of the car settled that. They sailed up a long, winding hill and entered the beautiful country that had once been the crest of England’s sea coast, the marshlands, reclaimed from the sea since Roman times, lying far below them, still veiled in shimmering drifts of mist. the remnants of the fog. Close to the crest of the hill was John Bolton’s home —an ancient castle that he had acquired as a ruin and carefully and lovingly restored. Bolton was a favourite of fortune. At thirty-eight he was able to enjoy everything worth having in the world. He had good looks, looks that were attractive to both women and men; he had perfect health, he knew the world inside out, he had a fortune just large enough not to be a burden and to enable him to fulfil every desire oi mortal man. His father had left him well off. and, as quite a young man, he had become interested in oil, then a comparatively unknown quantity. Now his investments were piling up money for him while he waked and while he slept, without his lifting his little finger. He also knew how to spend money, had excellent taste, and a temperament that did not know what it was to be bored. He had seen life. Some said he had seen too much of it. There were stories about him, of course. lie did not pose as a saint. A rich man, unmarried at thirty-eight, must have “stories” in his life. But nobody had a word to sav against him. If he had a salient fault, it was that he was masterful. He had always had his own way. He did not like opposition. That was why he thought somewhat unsvmpathetically of the boy behind him*, as he drove through the fine old Italian wrought-iron gates of his estate, and over the gravelled drive between grass banks blazing with summer flowers. Trees did not thrive on the chalk hills. Only the aged hawthorns and the shabby-looking alders. But he had some yew hedges and arbours that had been there for five hundred years. Bolton resented the boy’s attitude, although he made allowances. The lad was a cheeky, insolent little wretch. Badly brought up—shockingly badly brought up. An ungrateful little beggar. Needed a good spanking. Interesting little beggar, though. What queer eyes! Well, Mrs. Manton would take him in hand, put him to bed. and nurse and doctor him. And if be tried to be funny with her, she’d soon settle his hash. The grey old Castle crouched like some prehistoric, long-bodied denison of the sea. It was squat, low built, with a massive square tower for a head, a many-windowed banqueting hall for a body, and the domestic buildings for a tail. It had withstood wind and weather for well nigh a thousand years, and looked it. In its immediate vicinity were only the yew hedges and the ancient turf. The more modern amenities, the cottages. the electric plant, the garage and stables — all were built so as to be out of sight of the venerable pile. And the croquet lawns and the ugly en-tout-cas tennis courts were even further and lower down, on terraces cut out of the hill-

side. It had taken great engineering skill, as well as much money, to keep the old castle secure and untouched in its hoary perfection. Bolton sounded his horn, as he drew up at the main entrance, a piece of elaborate early Norman work. The great oak, iron-studded doors were open. The butler came down the three shallow steps on to the terraces that overlooked the grandoise prospect of marshland and sea. “Call Airs. Manton. please, Parker,” Bolton said, springing out of the car and going to the back. “I’ve got a sick boy here, saved from a ship wrecked in the fog. I’ll bring him in.” Th. butler wei._ back into the house. By the time Bolton had lifted the boy out of the car and up the steps on to the terrace and into the housekeeper was waiting to'receive the unexpected guest. And there ensued a shocking scene. Mrs. Manton, dark-haired, brightbrown eyed, very modern and efficient Bolton liked everything modern and efficient —came forward, smiling. Bolton put the boy down, rugs and all. He looked a quaint bundle, his face white as paper, his eyes closed. Airs. Alanton put out her hands to unwrap the rugs. “Poor little chap!” she said. “We've heard about the wreck, sir. My word, but he looks ill. I'll have him in bed with hot bottles in a jiffy.” The boy opened his yellow eyes, and his white face was convulsed with fury. “I won’t go to bed!” he said hoarsely. “I won’t stay here! I won’t! I won’t!” The housekeeper looked at her employer.

(To bo eon tinned.)