At six, a cock crew, it seemed under my elbow, and I heard beyond my door and the cockpit the saloon door slide open as both Johnson and Rupert emerged to pad about on the deek. A smell of coffee seeped through, indistinctly, from the galley. From the fo’c’sle, there was no sound. Michael, I took it, was sulking. Who cared? By six thirty we were in the sea lock with Binkie, and Rupert was rolling about on deck roaring with laughter to such an extent that I dressed and emerged. I wore ski trousers, a man’s printed lawn shirt and suede boots. Everyone else wore large dirty woollens with yellow oilskins. Bob and Nancy Buchanan wore their small woollen caps and sat on Binkie’s coachroof, subsiding with Dolly in unison as the lock water ebbed, and relating, it seemed, the stop-press or aftermath of the Club’s night out at Crinan. There was no sign of life on Cara Mia, but the basin was full of exhaust fumes, as the competitors moved about, ready to emerge. The puffer Willia Mavis had gone out long ago, on the same course as our own, bound for the south end of Mull, but not before losing a coil of old rope and a loo lid to Ogden.
What do You think about Dolly And The Singing Bird?
