The Cruise of The Breadwinner Read Online Free Page B

“What’s up, Jimmy? What’s up now?”
    â€œSomebody in the sea!” Jimmy said.
    The boy went up the hatchway with a half-peeled potato still in his hands. The engine died behind him as he went, and Jimmy followed him a moment later.
    On deck Gregson and the pilot were up in the bows. Gregson was lumbering about in a state of heavy excitement. The pilot seemed, to the boy coming up into the sharp winter sunlight out of the gloom of the cabin, about seven feet tall and crowned by a crumpled hat of coffee-brown fur. He was at that moment about to pull his flyingjacket over his head. The sharp released pressure of it shocked the wide moustache into a dishevelment that was for some reason more serious than even its bushy correctitude had been. The pilot took off his white under-sweater, and then began to take off his boots. He seemed to hesitate about his thick grey under-socks and then decided to take them off too. “Is he still coming in?” he said to Gregson; and Gregson, leaning heavily over the side bawled, “He’s floatin’ on his back. He’s a Jerry all right too.”
    â€œYes, he’s a Jerry all right,” the pilot said, and stood ready, side by side with Gregson and the boy, watching about sixty feet away the floating and feebly propelling body of a man awkwardly moving across the face of the sea like a puffing yellow crab.
    â€œWant a line?” Gregson said.
    â€œWant a line?” the young man said. “I could swim to France.”
    He went over the side a moment later in a smooth and careless dive that took him under and brought him up, fifteen or twenty feet away, with the shaking howl of a dog having fun. He began to strike out with strokes of deep power, turning backward with each of them a moustache that looked suddenly as if it had been pasted on to the strong wet face. All the fancy oddities of the man became in those few moments washed away. He seemed to be feeling forward to grasp the solid fabric of the sea so that he could tear it with his hands. He reached the other man, now moving with spidery feebleness parallel to the boat, in about twenty seconds, and rolled over beside him, coming up a moment later underneath and slightly to one side. The blue sleeve of his arm came up across the yellow inflated German life jacket, and then sleeve and jacket and theyellowish heads of both men began to move towards the boat together.
    The boy stood fascinated. Every now and then Gregson, huge and majestic, pushed his body a foot or two along the boatside, moving in time with the swimming pilot and at the same time pushing the boy along with him too. The boy was sometimes half-obliterated by the bulk of Gregson, and Gregson in turn was impeded by the boy. Neither of them seemed to notice it.
    The curiosity of the boy was so intense that it almost blinded him. The blob of yellow and blue coming in towards the boat sometimes receded and was lost for a second or two like an illusion. When it reappeared it seemed gigantic. The boy could then see clearly the water-flattened moustache of the pilot every time the head was thrown back, and he could see the upper half of the body of the rescued man. It seemed quite lifeless. But suddenly as it came nearer the boy could see lying across the chest of it a leather strap. It was attached to a leather case that appeared every second or so from below the sea and then was lost again. The boy in a moment of painful and speechless joy knew what it was.
    At that same moment Gregson, excited too, flattened him against the boatside so that he could not move. And since he could not move Gregson could not move either, and Gregson in that moment became aware of him again.
    â€œWhat the pipe, Snowy! Git out on it!” Gregson bawled. “Git down and git some tea! They’ll want it. Go on. Git crackin’! Git that tea.”
    With a curve of his hand Gregson hooked the boy from the boatside. It was a sort of friendly