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Updated: June 9, 2025
"They're down here," cried the voice of Miss Pilbeam, and the skipper, hardly able to believe in his good fortune, heard the sergeant go downstairs again. At the expiration of another week by his own reckoning he heard the light, hurried footsteps of Miss Pilbeam come up the stairs and pause at the door. "H'st!" he said, recklessly. "I'm coming," said the girl. "Don't be impatient."
"Tell your skipper that if so be as he wants to apologize for stealing my coal I shall be at home at tea at five o'clock." He jerked his thumb in the direction of Miss Pilbeam and winked with slow deliberation. "She'll be there, too," he added. "Savvy?" Mr. Dowson sat by the kitchen fire smoking and turning a docile and well- trained ear to the heated words which fell from his wife's lips.
By his side stood Miss Pilbeam, and both, with a far-away look in their eyes, were smiling vaguely but contentedly at the horizon. The sergeant appeared to be the first to see the skipper. "Ahoy, Darkie!" he cried. Captain Bligh, who was creeping slowly aft, halted, and, clenching his fists, regarded him ferociously.
Miss Pilbeam sat in deep thought. "It's the getting aboard that's the trouble," she said, slowly. "You'd have to disguise yourself. It would have to be a good disguise, too, to pass my father, I can tell you." Captain Bligh gave a gloomy assent. "The only thing for you to do, so far as I can see," said the girl, slowly, "is to make yourself up like a coalie.
"It's no good blaming him," said Miss Pilbeam, thinking deeply, with her chin on her finger. "The thing is, what is to be done? Once father gets his hand on you " She shuddered; so did the skipper. "I might get off with a fine; I didn't hurt him," he remarked. Miss Pilbeam shook her head. "They're very strict in Woodhatch," she said. "I was a fool to touch him at all," said the repentant skipper.
The skipper stepped into the cupboard without further parley, and the girl, turning the key, slipped it into her pocket and sped downstairs. Sergeant Pilbeam was in the easy-chair, with his belt unfastened, when she entered the parlor, and, with a hungry reference to supper, sat watching her as she lit the lamp and drew down the blind.
Miss Pilbeam rose. "No, don't go," she said, hastily. "Do be quiet. I want to think." Captain Bligh waited in respectful silence, heedless of the fateful seconds ticking from the mantelpiece. At the sound of a slow, measured footfall on the cobblestone path outside Miss Pilbeam caught his arm and drew him towards the door. "Go!" she breathed. "No, stop!"
A horrified groan from the cupboard fell like music on her ears. Then the smile forsook her lips, and she stood quivering with indignation as the groan gave way to suppressed but unmistakable laughter. "H'sh!" she said sharply, and with head erect sailed out of the room and went downstairs to give Mr. Pilbeam his breakfast.
"I'd sooner be upset a hundred times than spend a night in that cupboard. However, all's well that ends well." "Ah!" said Miss Pilbeam, dolefully, "but is it the end?" Captain Bligh put down his knife and fork and eyed her uneasily. "What do you mean?" he said. "Never mind; don't spoil your breakfast," said the girl. "I'll tell you afterwards.
He drew his chair to the table and helped himself, and, filling his mouth with cold meat and pickles, enlarged on his plans for the capture of his assailant; plans to which the undecided Miss Pilbeam turned a somewhat abstracted ear. By the time her father had finished his supper she was trying, but in vain, to devise means for the prisoner's escape.
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