Trustee From the Toolroom by Nevil Shute Read Free Book Online

They ripped the companion hatch back and struggled into the cockpit, and as they did so she went over again in a breaking sea.
    She came up again more slowly, sluggishly, and they were both still there in the cockpit. The companion hatch had been half open, and she had taken much water in through it; she now lay heavily and sluggishly at least a foot deeper in the water, in the trough of the waves. But Dermott had the helm now and was steering her round downwind, and Jo had slammed the hatch shut and bolted it. When the next wave came they took it stern-on and she rose to it with far less than her normal buoyancy, but rise she did; the top of the crest swept green across them but they did not broach again. There was now a little faint light on the scene, probably due to the moon above the clouds.
    John said quietly, 'Start pumping, Jo. We'll take it in turns.'
    She bent to the pump and began the endless, back-breaking motion on the handle. Presently he gave her the helm and took the pump himself; so they continued alternately pumping and steering for the rest of the night, while the wind screamed around them and the surf beat on them. From time to time the suction blocked with debris in the bilge; then John had to wait his chance to open the companion hatch for a moment to get down into the flooded cabin, shut the hatch above him, and, working with his hands and arms deep in the water in pitch darkness, clear the pump. The night passed like this, but when the grey cold light began to make things visible the ship was buoyant again, almost clear of water. .
    In the cockpit as they rested, Jo asked, ' Did you think we'd had it that time, John ?'
    'I don't know that I had time to think of anything, except getting her straight and running,' he replied. 'When we got her running I knew that we were going to make it all right.'
    She said, 'I've been thinking so much about Janice.'
    'Don't,' he said gently. 'We'll have her with us in a month or two.'
    ' If we get out of this.'
    'We'll get out of it, all right,' he said. 'But if anything should happen, if we buy it, she couldn't be with anybody better than Katie and Keith.'
    'They'll look after her,' she said. 'But she's only ten. And, John, they haven't any money.'
    'She'll have money,' he replied.-'It's all left in trust to Keith for her, until she's twenty-five. She'll get as good an education as anyone can get, and after that she'll have a good lump sum. Don't you remember how we made our wills?'
    'But, John, she won't have anything! We've got it all here!'
    He stared at her in the half light. 'I never thought of that.' This was another disaster that had come upon him, and one that hit him far harder than any that had come so far. The approach of the storm, the parting of the jib, the chafing of the sea anchor warp, the broaching to, the nearness of the Tuamotus - these were challenges to his seamanship. When you went to sea and crossed the world in a small yacht you wagered your courage and your skill against the elements with your life as the stake, and if you were good you usually won. It was what you went to sea for in this game; if you didn't like the game you needn't play it. He had wanted to play it because the sea was his whole life, and Jo had wanted to play it with him because she loved him. Now, suddenly and without warning, his small child's future had been added to the stake.
    Inevitably, perhaps, he held strongly right-wing views; he was a conservative in politics. He held that if a man worked hard and well and saved money he had a right to pass some of it on to his children, especially if they were girlsi, who usually got a raw deal anyway. He. approved of moderate death duties because he did not hold that grandchildren should live in idleness because grandfather had worked; all people ought to work, as he had worked for the Navy himself. He held, however, that it was the duty and the right of every decent man to give his children as good a start in life as he had had