Signals of Distress Read Free Page B

bows of the rescue boat and try to find his footing in the
shallows. He sank into the water. Its iciness shocked him. The salt was painful on the wounds, but cleansing, too, and healing. He was the last to make his way to shore. They found a bed for him,
in seaweed on the half-loaded horse-drawn cart. They gathered round to point and shake their heads and giggle nervously. Miggy was the first to stretch her arm and touch him on the toe, where dry,
dark blood had been made pasty by his short walk in the sea. Then everybody touched the toe, in turn. They ran their fingers across the nail and felt the skin, the pink below the toe, the brown
above, the blood, and cold.
    The beach was never busier, except at pilchard time. The sailors and the locals hugged and shook hands. Three dogs ran wild, experimenting with the sea and crowds. The cattle moved inland. Miggy
looked for Palmer Dolly. Perhaps he’d shake her hand. Or they might hug. But he’d gone off in his father’s boat. Instead she made do with the attentions of the younger Americans,
who now could see, despite her breeches, that she was a girl, a pretty one. She wore their ensign round her throat.
    ‘This miss is calling out for help,’ they joked. ‘All hands stand by.’
    The sailor, Ralph Parkiss – blond, teasing and boyish – attempted first to take away her ensign scarf. And then, playing the innocent, touched her at her waist. The whole of Miggy
flushed. She’d gladly press her lips on any young man there. A fire was lit – in her, and on the beach. They warmed and dried themselves as timbers from the Belle smoked grey.
The three seine boats pulled beyond the bar and soon were out at sea. The Belle of Wilmington settled into the wet sand of the bar. It would not break up; the seas were sheltered there, and
shallow. On Monday there would be a rising tide of sufficient depth, with luck and wind, to float it free again. Captain Comstock turned his back on his command. He’d have to wait and see
what happened to the Belle , and he would rather wait and see in some dry place, on solid land. He was not the hero of the day.
    The Americans, with Otto sleeping in the cart, and Whip in tow, embarked upon the six-mile walk to Wherrytown, where there was food and lodging and where, by now, Aymer Smith, that other
dreaming voyager by sea, had found the inn. Walter Howells rode ahead on his laming horse to spread the news. The air – scrubbed and quietened by the storm – was now so still that Miggy
and her mother could take a lighted piece of wood and carry it the half-mile to Dry Manston to start a celebration fire in their own home. And what was there to celebrate, besides the passage of a
storm? Much. Much. Much.

2. The Journey West
    A YMER S MITH was taken to the inn in Wherrytown by George, the parlourman-cum-porter, whose job it was to bully custom from any
ship that docked. George didn’t take to the Tar ’s single passenger, the unpromising and unattractive Mr Smith. The man’s breath was foul. And his bookish jollity, his
height, his thinness, his insistence that they shake hands like old acquaintances and then take turns to ‘bear the burden’ of his carriage bag on the short walk between the quay and the
inn, were misplaced, misjudged, unbecoming. If they had to share the burden, would they also share the tip?
    The night gale, which had lifted tiles and flung back doors in Wherrytown, had left the quayside scrubbed and clean. Aymer Smith remarked it was ‘a fresh and handsome town’, but,
steady though he was in conversation, he had climbed awkwardly from the cabin to the deck. His shoulder was bruised, or worse, from the tumble from his bunk. His throat was sore and hot. His legs
were still at sea. He was shivering, from cold and apprehension and timidity. George could only guess what business such a man could have in Wherrytown at that time of year, but what he knew was
this, that Aymer Smith would not be an inspiring presence