Читать книгу Swallowdale - Arthur Ransome - Страница 13

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“Gae fetch a web o’ the silken claith,

Anither o’ the twine,

And wap them into our ship’s side,

And let nae the sea come in.”

The Ballad of Sir Patrick Spens

“Hullo,” said Captain Flint. “What’s happened? Lost a mast?”

He had just seen the sail spread on the rocks at the point, and the broken mast beside it.

“Much worse than that,” said Roger cheerfully. “We had to swim ashore.”

This was not at all the way in which the Swallows had hoped to meet Captain Flint. They had not seen him since the Christmas holidays and the making up of the story in the cabin of the wherry. They had hoped to find him aboard his houseboat, flying the elephant flag at the masthead, ready once more to fire his cannon, fight for his life and walk the plank into a sea crowded with the largest kinds of sharks. He had not been there to welcome them with a salvo as they sailed by on their way to Wild Cat Island, though Roger had discussed the question beforehand with Titty and decided that if he did it would not be waste of gunpowder. He was not living in his houseboat at all, but, for the time, had sunk into a mere landsman. There was this queer native trouble about a kind of aunt. He had not even been with Nancy and Peggy yesterday and now, at last, here he was, only to find them with their ship wrecked and the future black as ink, except perhaps for Roger, who took things as they came and was content so long as things kept on coming.

Captain Flint did not bother about asking them all how they were. As soon as he saw that something serious had happened, he rowed in to the shore, stepped out, pulled his rowing boat a little way up out of the water and joined the others by the wounded ship.

“Lost a mast? Holed her too? Well, these things will happen.”

As Nancy Blackett always said, one of the best things about her Uncle Jim was that he never asked you why you tumbled down.

He looked carefully at the hole in Swallow’s planking, but asked no questions except about the parrot.

“He’s quite all right,” said Titty. “He’s looking after the island. He doesn’t know yet about Swallow.”

“And you’ve left old Peter Duck behind?”

Titty looked at him and for a moment was not very pleased. But, after all, everybody there knew all about Peter Duck.

“You know he’s only for a story,” she said.

“I know,” said Captain Flint, bending down and working his hand through the hole to feel if the ribs had been damaged. “I know. But has he been up to much since he steered us home from the Caribbees when the waterspout came just in time and licked up the pirate ship?”

“No,” said Titty. “Just staying at home in his boat and doing a little fishing.”

Captain Flint stood up again.

“It’s a boat-builder’s job,” he said. “I’ll row along there and tell them to send out a salvage party.”

“Couldn’t we patch her up?” said John. “I wanted to take her to Rio to find out how much the mending would cost before going to tell mother about it. That’s why we got her up.”

“Got her up?” said Captain Flint. “Where was she?”

“I ran her on the Pike Rock and she sank right away.”

“We all had to swim,” said Roger.

“You got her up from out there?”

“Yes.”

“By yourselves? Well done. How did you manage about the ballast and the anchor?”

“I had time to throw the anchor out before she sank. That helped when we were ready to pull her up.”

“And the ballast?”

“He dived again and again and we pulled it up one pig at a time,” said Nancy.

“Good work,” said Captain Flint. “And don’t you worry about the boat-builders. It won’t cost much anyway, and I’ve just got another dollop of pocket-money from my publishers, and you know my book1 would never have been published at all if you people hadn’t saved it for me, so that you’ve got at least as much right as I have to the money it makes. You needn’t bother your mother about that.”

Susan and John looked at each other. Roger was hardly listening. He was looking at a promising-looking box in Captain Flint’s rowing boat. Titty said, “Not really?”

“Of course,” said Captain Flint, “you went treasure-hunting and found my book. My book goes on turning into publisher’s cheques. They’re the next best thing to Spanish gold. It’s as if you’d found a barrel or two of doubloons on Cormorant Island. So don’t you worry about the money.”

“I’ve got to go and tell mother anyway,” said John, “to find out what we can do next. We’ll probably have to go back to Holly Howe.”

“No more sailing,” said Titty.

“But we’ve only just begun,” said Roger, hearing something in Titty’s voice that told him things were serious.

“Something’s got to be done,” said Nancy desperately. “Of course we could lend them Amazon.”

“No, no, no.” Neither John, Susan nor Titty would hear of that. Roger would not have minded, though he did not think much of the look-out’s place in Amazon. There was not enough room before the mast.

Captain Flint looked from face to face. Then he had another look at Swallow’s broken planking.

“There’s only one sensible thing to do,” he said at last. “You are shipwrecked. Why not be shipwrecked? Stay where you are and make the best of it until your ship’s been mended and is ready to put to sea.”

“Mother’ll never let us. It’s the wrong side of the lake for her,” said Susan.

“Why not?” said Peggy. “It’s the right side for us.”

“It’s not really much farther than the island,” said Captain Flint. “Look here. You’ve got to sleep somewhere. Pitch a camp here. Make it a good one. Nancy and Peggy’ll help to bring your things across. The skipper and I will see what can be done with Swallow, and when we go to Rio we’ll bring Mrs. Walker back with us and I bet she’ll let you stop if you’ve made a really good show of it. Settled. Get a move on, you pirates. Now then, Skipper, what are we going to stop this hole with? We don’t want her sinking in deep water on the way to Rio.”

“In ‘Sir Patrick Spens,’ ” said Titty, “they wapped it with silk and cloth. But the sea came in all the same.”

“We must do better than that,” said Captain Flint. “A bit of tarpaulin’s what we want.”

“We could take a bit of one of the old ground-sheets,” said John. “There’s a spare one in the stores tent.”

“Polly’s looking after it.”

“Hi, Titty, are you coming across?” shouted Captain Nancy, who was already getting Amazon ready for launching.

“We’re coming too,” said Captain Flint. “We’ll give you a passage, Able-seaman.”

A minute or two later Captain Flint in his rowing boat, with John and Titty, was pulling hard after the Amazon, sailed by Nancy, with Susan and Roger. Peggy alone stayed in Horseshoe Cove to keep the fire going and to turn the clothes on the stones when they had toasted enough on one side. Susan had to leave the fire to Peggy, because she knew where everything was, and so had to look after the striking of the island camp.

Striking camp on Wild Cat Island would have been a more melancholy business than it was, if everybody had not been in such a hurry. Captain Flint and John would hardly wait for a few more small bits of cargo as soon as they had taken the spare ground-sheet, and the tin box that had fishing tackle and tools in it with the hammer and the box of mixed nails which was what they really wanted. Captain Nancy kept the others at it like slaves. “Quick, quick,” she was saying. “Jump to it. Save all you can before the ship goes to pieces.”

“But it isn’t a ship,” said Roger, “it’s an island.”

“Lucky for you it’s so stoutly built,” said Nancy. “It might have broken up long ago.”

“Besides, the tide may be coming in with a rush to sweep everything away,” said Titty, hurriedly rolling up her sleeping-bag.

“That’s enough for one load,” said Nancy, who was seeing to the stowing of the cargo. “We don’t want to be swamped. Look out, Able-seaman; the boom won’t clear the parrot’s cage. He’ll get swept overboard. Burrow his cage down between the tents and the sleeping-bags. Hi, Roger! Come along. We’ll make another voyage yet. Shove her head round. Don’t wet the tents more than you can help. Scramble in.”

But long before the Amazon, with a full cargo, returned from her first trip to the island, Captain Flint and Captain John had landed from the rowing boat and were hard at work. A big patch of waterproof canvas had been cut out of the ground-sheet. (“In time of shipwreck,” said Captain Flint, “you don’t think twice about a scrap of tarpaulin.”) It had been fitted and tacked roughly in place, and Captain Flint was now hard at it with the hammer. “Just listen to the ship’s carpenter,” said Titty, as the Amazon sailed into the cove.

Captain Flint was putting in a neat row of small flat-headed nails round the edge of the patch and beating the canvas close down on the planking as he did so, to make as tight a fit as he could. John was picking out the smallest flat-headed nails from the mixed lot in an old tobacco tin that had been given to him by the farmer at Holly Howe, and Captain Flint was holding two or three in his lips all ready, so that there was no waiting between banging in one nail and beginning to bang in the next. “The last time I had this job to do,” he was saying, mumbling a bit because of the nails he was holding in his lips, “it was when I’d come a nasty bump in a ship’s gig against the coast of Java. Better patch than this, though (bang). We melted some rubber to bed it in properly (bang). Didn’t leak a drop (bang). Didn’t have to (bang). Shouldn’t be here if it had (bang). Ready for some more nails, Skipper. That’s my last.”

The Amazon unloaded her cargo on the beach and sailed back for more. Susan stayed in the cove this time, and Peggy rejoined her ship and sailed over with the others to the island. Peggy had been a little inclined to forget the fire while watching the patching of Swallow. Besides that, what with all the swimming and diving that had been done that day, Mate Susan was thinking that it would be a good thing if the captain and the rest of the crew had something solid to eat. She opened a pemmican tin, and made pemmican sandwiches, good thick ones, with one of the loaves she had brought across from the island. It was no good thinking of making any use of the loaf that had gone down to the bottom with Swallow, though Roger and Peggy still thought they would be able to do something with the seed-cake.

By the time Amazon returned with her second cargo, and Captain Nancy reported the island all clear, Mate Susan was ready with her sandwiches. Captain Flint had finished putting the patch on, too, and was calling for all hands to help turn Swallow over again. She was turned over, her bottom boards were put in place and then she was run down into the water. The water came in pretty fast from under the patch, but Captain Flint shouted for ballast to put in her stern. John, Peggy, Nancy and Susan ran out along the rocky headland to the place where the pigs of lead had been piled together by Nancy after she had hauled them up from the lake. One at a time they brought them and waded out and put them in Swallow’s stern. Each pig of lead in her stern lifted her nose a little higher out of the water until the whole patch showed above water, and the leak almost stopped. Then Roger was lifted into her to bale her out as well as he could. Then she was anchored by the stern, and after that Captain Flint said they had better knock off and have some grub and see how much she had leaked by the time they had done.

“I haven’t made any tea,” said Susan.

“Tea?” said Captain Flint. “Who wants tea? I was forgetting. That box (he pointed to the box that had seemed promising to Roger when first he saw it in the rowing boat) is full of bottles of ginger beer. I brought them along, thinking they might come in handy. Cook told me she’d had to let the pirates go off without their grog.”

Anybody would have known there had been a shipwreck now if they had seen the beach in Horseshoe Cove with all the stuff from the island camp piled on it in heaps, tin boxes of stores, tents loosely rolled up, rugs, parrot-cage, sleeping-bags, fishing-rods, Susan’s great fire, and the clothes of the shipwrecked hanging to dry and spread about the rocks. The Amazons’ clothes were the only really dry ones, and theirs were in a heap on the beach where they had thrown them out of their ship when she had been pressed into use as a salvage vessel. But no one would have known who had been shipwrecked and who had not. All the Swallows and Amazons had rushed down into the water and out again for a last dip before eating. Captain Flint, sitting among them in his flannel trousers and white shirt, with his shirt sleeves rolled to the elbow, drinking ginger-beer out of the bottle and taking big bites out of enormous sandwiches, looked like the solitary shipwrecked sailor in the middle of a lot of piebald, pigmy savages.

Bit by bit, listening to the talk round the fire, asking a question now and then, but not very often, Captain Flint came to hear the whole story. He heard how Roger had been hauled ashore through the raging surf. He heard how Nancy and Peggy had watched Swallow come racing down wind from the island. He heard of the rescue of oars and other flotsam. He heard how Titty had made sure of the telescope, and how John had been seen to throw the anchor shorewards at the last moment and had then got clear as the ship sank beneath him. He heard of diving operations, of the salving of kettle and frying-pan and pigs of ballast. He heard how, in the end, they had brought Swallow round into the cove and careened her where she now was. The bits of the story were all in the wrong order, but Captain Flint fitted them together in his own mind and in the end knew pretty well what had happened.

“There’s one thing,” he said at last. “You’ve got the most sensible mate that ever I saw in a ship. There are plenty of mates to go howling round banging poor young chaps on the head with belaying-pins, but there’s not one mate in a thousand who’d have the sense to start a fire and stretch a warp for a clothes-line and set about getting a dry rig-out for the whole crew. How are the skipper’s clothes now, Mister Mate?”

“They’re nothing like as wet as they were,” said Susan. “But they still steam a bit if you hold them to the fire.”

“Well, short of burning them, hurry them up. He and I’ll be off in a few minutes now, and he’ll want a shore-going kit. Now then, Skipper, let’s see how much water there is in the hold.”

John waded out and found there was a good deal, even though the patch had been lifted out of water.

“Bound to be a little,” said Captain Flint, “but there’d be much more than that if she was badly strained. If you want to take her to Rio under her own sail, I don’t see why you shouldn’t. You’ll have the wind with you, now it’s gone round to the south. Bring her nose ashore, and we’ll see what we can do in the way of a jury rig for her.”

John brought Swallow’s nose well up on the beach while Nancy and Peggy hurried off to the point to fetch the mast and the sail, which was still pretty wet, though not quite so soggy as it had been. Captain Flint cut away the worst splinters and stepped the broken mast in its place. John reefed the sail and carried it down to the ship. As soon as they tried to hoist it, they found it was still too big. The broken mast was now so short that even when the gaff was hoisted as far as it would go, the boom still rested on the gunwale.

“We’ll cure that,” said Captain Flint.

The boom had jaws that fitted round the mast. Captain Flint pulled them clear so that he could turn the boom round and round. He turned it again and again, rolling up the sail round it as he turned. As the sail was narrower at the top than at the bottom this meant that there was a long bit of boom with sail rolled round it, sticking out beyond the sail that they were going to use. By the time the boom had been twisted and twisted until so much of the sail had been rolled up that the boom was nearly touching the lower end of the gaff, the little three-cornered sail that was left was a very small sail indeed.

“It’ll take you to Rio,” said Captain Flint. “We’ll take a few turns of rope just here at the foot of the leach, and a few turns at the foot of the luff. The jaws round the mast’ll stop it from untwisting anyhow. It won’t unroll, and you’ve got a sail snug enough for a hurricane.”

They hoisted the sail, and this time the boom cleared the gunwale with a foot to spare.

“What about getting some clothes on?”

Mate Susan had been fairly toasting the skipper’s clothes. He quickly got out of his bathing things and into his shirt and shorts. He took his sand-shoes, but put them on the middle thwart of the Swallow, to go on drying in the sun.

“What about the flag?” said Titty, who had rescued it the moment the broken mast and sail had been brought ashore.

“We’ll jolly well hoist it,” said Captain John.

The sail was lowered once more, for the flag halyard to be reeved through the little ring at the mast-head. As soon as the mast was stepped again, Titty herself hauled up the swallow flag and made it fast. The sail was hoisted, and all was ready for the start.

“Hop in, Skipper,” said Captain Flint. “Now the mast’s in her, it’ll take your weight in the stern beside the ballast to keep her bows well up. No, no. Keep the anchor in the stern, too. You want all the weight there you can get.” He ran Swallow down into the water. “Hi! Nancy. You’re still a South Sea Islander. . . . Take her out to the headland to give her a chance.” He turned to his own boat.

Nancy waded along the shore, towing Swallow by hand until she reached the headland, when the little dark brown scrap of sail on the stump of a mast was no longer sheltered from the wind.

“All right,” said John. “She’s trying to sail. Let her go.”

He put his helm up, let the boom out square, and the Swallow, sitting on her tail, her nose high up out of the water, her scrap of sail bagging in the wind, slipped away from Horseshoe Cove. The only thing about her that was as it should be was Titty’s swallow flag, which fluttered proudly from the top of the jury mast, as if it had never known the bottom of the lake.

“So long, Nancy, give them a hand with the camp,” called Captain Flint as his rowing boat shot out from between the headlands.

“We’re coming too,” called Nancy, and she hurried back into the cove. The others were already launching Amazon. Titty, Susan and Roger were aboard. Peggy was pushing her off. Her captain scrambled into her at the last moment. There was wild work with the oars till she was at the mouth of the cove, when Nancy ran the sail up, and Amazon gathered speed as she hurried up the lake to overhaul the convoy. She was soon alongside the others, for Swallow, cocked up on end under her jury rig, sailed more like a buoy than a boat.

“This is all very well,” said Captain Flint at last. “We’re delighted to have you with us, but that camp ought to be in apple-pie order before we bring Mrs. Walker back to see it.”

“There’s no milk for tea either,” said Susan. “And we don’t know the way to the farm.”

For just a little longer the Amazon circled round the rowing boat and the gallant, wounded Swallow, and then with shouts of “Good luck!” from all who were aboard her, she turned up into the wind to beat down the lake again to Horseshoe Cove, while Captain John steered a straight course for Rio, and Captain Flint just taking a stroke or two now and then to keep his rowing boat within comfortable talking distance, followed Captain John.