The Cruise of The Breadwinner Read Online Free

better have a cuppa tea,” Gregson said. “Never mind about Jerry. If he’s in the sea we’ll find him plenty soon enough. He’ll wash up.”
    â€œI’d like to see what he’s like,” the boy said. “God, he was brave.”
    â€œYou think you hit him?” Gregson said.
    â€œI know I hit him.”
    â€œThen that’s bleedin’ good enough, ain’t it?” Gregson looked round, heaving his belly, with an air of heavy finality. “Snowy, git us all another cuppa tea!”
    The boy turned and went instantly down the hatchway, sliding the last four steps on the smooth heels of his sea-boots. The largeness of the world of men on deck seemed now to narrow down and diminish the already awkward spaces of the tiny cabin below. It oppressed him terribly. He lumbered about it as if he were as large as Gregson, partly stupefied with excitement, partly trying to listen through the cabin-roof to whatever might be going on above. He found an extra cup in the cupboard under the bunks and put it on the table with the two others. He saw it was slightly dirty, and wiped it with his sweater. Then he filled the cups with tea that was in colour something like dark beer. The teapot held about three pints of it, and hefilled it up from the big tin kettle before putting it back on the stove. Then he spooned quantities of soft sugar into the cups and stirred each of them madly before taking it upstairs. The whole business took him about three minutes, and he did not think that in this time anything of great importance could have happened on deck.
    He was astonished, coming up into the sunlight with the three cups of tea skilfully hooked by their handles into the crook of his first fingers, that even in those few moments a change had taken place. He came up in time to hear Jimmy saying:
    â€œI never knowed it was part of the game to go cruisin’ round picking Jerries up.”
    â€œI don’t know that he’s there to pick up,” the pilot said. “The bastard is probably dead. All I’m saying is he was a brave bastard.”
    â€œThat suits me,” Gregson said. “If he’s dead he’s dead. If he ain’t he ain’t. Have it which way you like, it’s all I care.”
    The boy came with the tea and stood silent, fascinated, while each of the three men took their cups from him. He watched the young pilot, holding his tea in both hands, the fur collar of his flying jacket turned up so that the scarlet muffler on his neck was concealed, look away southward over the sea. It was very like a picture of a pilot he had once cut out of a Sunday paper. To see it in reality at last held him motionlessly bound in a new dream.
    â€œHow far do you cruise out?” the young man said.
    Gregson had a superstitious horror of cruising down Channel to the west. Fifty years of consistent routine had taken him eastward, fishing in unadventurous waters somewhere between South Foreland and Ostend. He did not like the west for any reason he could say; he did not, for that matter, like the south either. There lurked within himsomewhere the cumbrous superstition born of habit, never defined enough to be given a name.
    â€œWell, we’re out now about as far as we reckon to go. Don’t you wanna git back?”
    The pilot, not answering, seemed to measure the caution of Gregson as he gazed across the water. And it occurred suddenly to the boy, watching his face, that he knew perfectly that there were no limits to which Gregson, in human need, would not go. But eastward or westward it was the same as far as enemy pilots were concerned.
    And then suddenly the boy remembered something. He spoke to the pilot for the first time.
    â€œHow far out did you fire?” he said.
    â€œSmack over a Martello tower,” the pilot said, “on the shore.”
    â€œThen it wasn’t you firing,” the boy said. “What we heard was right out to