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“Barbecued billygoats,” cried Captain Nancy, “but . . .”

Peter Duck interrupted.

“Sound carries in a fog, Cap’n Nancy,” he said, “and we’ve made enough noise already, what with shouting and getting him aboard. Cap’n John, I’m ashamed of you. What’s the look out doing, hanging round the poop? Mate Peggy, I thought you was amidships. Mate Susan, wasn’t you up on the foredeck with Cap’n John? Tidy mess it seems to me with the whole crew aft. Time enough we’ll have to settle with Bill when we’re farther out of this. Cap’n Flint, sir, would you mind now giving another three blasts on that bull-roarer? Just in case they’re listening for it in the Viper. I wouldn’t like to set them wondering too soon why they only heard it once. Three blasts, sir, as before.”

Captain Flint leaned forward again over the deckhouse roof and blew three more great blasts on the old horn.

“Oo,” said Bill. “Sounds better like this than it does when you hears it coming down on you out o’ the fog. I thought I was a goner just now.”

“Less lip,” said Peter Duck. “We ain’t begun to think of you yet. And why hain’t you coiled the mainsheet as you come aboard by? No. Begin at the right end, where it’s made fast. You ought to know as much as that.”

Everybody had hurried back, each to his post.

“And what now, Mr. Duck?” said Captain Flint.

“That’s for you to say, sir,” said Peter Duck. “Maybe we ought to pick up that little dinghy and go and look for Black Jake to give it him back and his cabin-boy as well. He’d be sorry to lose that little boat, and the foghorn too. . . .”

“I’ll see him fried first,” said Captain Flint, and there was a laugh, instantly choked, from Nancy, who was near enough to hear.

“I’d rather stay,” said Bill.

“You wasn’t asked,” said Peter Duck.

“I’m only sorry we didn’t sink the boat,” said Captain Flint. “He may find her again when the fog lifts.”

“Then we’d better be shifting,” said Peter Duck. “Fog may last an hour or two yet, or it may not. But the wind’s nor’-westerly, right enough, and that’s a grand wind for Spain. Sou’west by south and a half south’s the course, to put us outside Cape Villano coming from the Longships. And topsails would help her along.”

Just then the liner’s siren sounded, and Captain Flint reached for the bull-roarer.

“No,” said Peter Duck. “We’re a different vessel altogether. We’re not that one with a bull-roarer, no, nor yet the Wild Cat that had nothing but a dinner-bell to clatter on, the vessel Black Jake’s seeking away there between Land’s End and the Seven Stones. We’ll sound on the Board of Trade horn if we sound anything, but it don’t matter for a bit if we do keep quiet.”

“I’ll be getting those topsails up then,” said Captain Flint. “Give me a hand, Nancy.”

He brought up the topsails from the sail locker, gave Titty the bundle of the foretopsail to look after while Nancy and he hooked on the halyard sheet and downhaul, mousing the hooks with twine so they should not slip open. And then, just as the little jib-headed sail was up at the mast-head, the sheet jammed. Nancy tugged. Captain Flint tried it. No. The thing was stuck somewhere or other.

“Have it down again,” said Captain Flint.

It would not come.

There was a sudden patter of bare feet on the wet deck. A small figure ran forward. A mop of red hair, two red feet, a ragged coat, a pair of old blue trousers with a black patch across the seat of them, shot between Captain Flint and Nancy, and leapt at the mainsail’s wooden mast-hoops. The blue trousers and the black patch faded upwards into the fog.

“All clear, sir.” A hoarse whisper sounded above their heads. A small figure dropped hand over hand down the halyards to the deck, and as Nancy and Captain Flint hauled again on the topsail sheet, the clew of the sail moved out along the gaff and all was as it should be.

“That’s not a bad boy,” said Captain Flint, as Bill bolted back again to stand by in case he was wanted by Mr. Duck.

“He and Gibber are two for a pair,” said Nancy. “But what was he doing in that dinghy, all by himself with a foghorn?”

“I’ve a pretty shrewd idea,” said Captain Flint. “But we’ll hear presently. There’s the foretopsail to set now. Thank you, Titty. Out of the way, you two. Peggy, what about scaring up a mug of hot cocoa for the passenger? But don’t rattle your pans in the galley.”

Peggy on tiptoe went off into the galley, closing the door carefully behind her. She knew, like Captain Flint, and all the others, that Peter Duck was right. There were more urgent things to think of than the red-haired boy. They were still in the fog. They had heard the Viper pass them, going north to look for them, but for all they knew she might have turned again and might be no more than a few yards away hidden in that loose choking blanket of fog that made it all but impossible to see from one end of the ship to the other. The wind was getting up, though as yet it blew the fog in thick curling wisps through the rigging and across the decks instead of lifting it up and driving it away. With topsails set, the Wild Cat was moving fairly fast through the water. All to the good, to get away from Black Jake, but, at the same time, with every minute they were coming nearer to the great thoroughfare of shipping. And, bad as it would be to be found by Black Jake and his men, it would be not much better to be run down by some big steamship hurrying on its way. They had heard the howl of the Wolf every half-minute, and knew that it was no longer south of them but north. They had passed it, and, steering south-south-west, were heading as it were into the middle of the road, with traffic that they could not see coming both ways at once. Peter Duck was right. This was no time to ask the red-haired boy questions. The only thing to do was to keep quiet, to keep a sharp look out, and to hope at the same time that the fog would last and they would be able to sail through it without being run down by someone else. How right Peter Duck was they were not very long in finding out.

Captain Flint and Nancy were looking up at the foretopsail, trying to see if it was setting properly, when a steam siren sounded somewhere away off the starboard bow. It was a shriller noise than the booming note of the big liner, which, as Peter Duck had said it would be, was already far away to the west. It sounded again, a long, shrill blast.

“Steamship,” said Captain Flint.

“That one seems a bit nearer,” said John quietly. “The big one’s much farther away.”

“Quite near enough,” said Captain Flint, and turned to go aft.

Just then a foghorn sounded from close by the deckhouse. Three clear hoots it gave, loud, but not so loud as the horrible noises made by the bull-roarer.

Captain Flint and Nancy hurried aft, in time to see the red-haired boy sounding the Board of Trade foghorn, that works like a pump. Roger was standing watching him open-mouthed and envious.

“Three times,” said Peter Duck. “Put some beef into it. We’re getting into the track of the Channel shipping.”

Again that shrill siren sounded, close on the starboard bow.

Everybody stared into the fog. A minute passed. Another.

“Let them have the horn again,” said Peter Duck. But the red-haired boy had only time to get a single blast out of it.

“Something right ahead,” shouted John at the very top of his voice as the steam siren sounded again, this time as if out of the sky immediately above him.

The white fog turned suddenly black before them. Peter Duck spun the wheel, putting the helm hard aport. The Wild Cat came sharply round into the wind, with her sails all shaking. Her bowsprit end just cleared the towering, rusty walls of an ocean tramp feeling her way in from the Atlantic. From high above the Wild Cat faces looked down out of the fog on the startled group at the stern of the little schooner.

“What are you playing at down there?” sounded an angry voice.

“Aye, it’s you to shout,” said Peter Duck, “when as near as nothing you sent us to the bottom.”

“I thought steamships had to keep out of the way of sailing vessels,” said Nancy.

“So they have, by law,” said Peter Duck, “and there’s a whole town full of good sailormen at the bottom of the sea for thinking the same. They have to keep out of our way, the clumsy, racketty, bangetty bundles of scrap-iron, but do they, I asks you? Do they ever? And least of all in fog.”

The big tramp steamer lurched on her way. Her propellers beat the water as the Atlantic swell lifted her stern. Her wash, cutting across the line of the swell, sent small, steep waves to run amuck, one of which, all unexpected, heaped itself up and slopped over the Wild Cat’s waist, sluicing aft past the galley door just as Peggy came out with a mug of cocoa.

“What’s happening?” asked Peggy, seeing the startled faces, the sails slack and flapping, hearing the noise of the tramp’s engines, and the splash, splash of her propeller, going off into the fog.

“Narrow shave of being run down,” said Nancy.

“And there wasn’t nobody handy with ropes to haul us aboard like you hauled me,” said Bill, who had been so much afraid of being run down when he was floating alone in a dinghy that he was almost cheered at the thought of being run down with so many others to keep him company. “Thank you kindly, miss.”

“Look out. It’s pretty hot,” said Peggy.

“You may well be thankful for that,” said Peter Duck. “There’s plenty as would have drowned you, fooling about in a boat trying to make us think you was the Viper.”

“But I didn’t, Mr. Duck,” began Bill. “I really didn’t.”

“Sound that foghorn,” said Mr. Duck. “We’ll have the truth out of you when we’re ready for it.”

He swung the Wild Cat back on her course again. The sails filled and everything settled down; settled down that is, as far as anything can be said to have settled down when a little ship is sailing in a dense fog across the mouth of the Channel. The big tramp steamer had scared them, towering above them suddenly, out of the fog, and though everybody was bursting to find out what the red-haired boy had been doing alone in a boat, everybody knew now that the most important thing of all was to listen and to keep sailing. The whole crew were on deck, excepting the parrot and the monkey. Peter Duck never left the wheel, and every two minutes, at a word from him, the red-haired boy was sending out three blasts on the foghorn, while Captain Flint kept walking quietly fore and aft, listening for noises, and now and then slipping into the deckhouse to have yet another look at the chart that by now he almost knew by heart.

The Wild Cat was steadily moving faster and faster through the water, and she had left the Wolf Rock far astern, and long out of hearing when, at last, Titty, who had been with Roger in the stern looking at Bill, wondering what he was really like, and watching him pump at the foghorn when Mr. Duck nodded to him, saw that the jib no longer seemed to be made of fog, and that John and Susan up in the bows could no longer be mistaken for ghosts.

“Fog’s lifting,” said Peter Duck suddenly. “We could do with it a bit longer, barring them screw steamers.”

“We can’t have it both ways,” said Captain Flint. “I’d like to let Black Jake go cruising up to Ireland looking for the Wild Cat, and that’s likely enough if the fog holds. But I wouldn’t mind it if we met no more of these blundering tramp steamers, not as near as that one, anyway.”

“Was Black Jake going up to Ireland?” said Bill. “What about me? He’d have had to pick me up first.”

“Likely he would,” said Peter Duck. “Valuable you are. He might have come back for his boat or his foghorn, but I reckon he’d made up his mind to be losing the both of them, and you think he’d be coming back for you. Not likely.”

“Lucky I caught your rope,” said Bill.

“Lucky for you,” said Peter Duck. “What about us?”

“With all them cap’ns aboard,” said Bill, “one of em’s bound and sure to want another boy.”

The fog did indeed begin to lift. It was soon possible to see a hundred yards or so from the deck of the schooner. It was as if she were sailing in the exact middle of a round pond, shut in by a high wall of fog. Only, though the pond was so small, a swell was rolling across it of that tremendous kind that does so often come sweeping out of the Atlantic down into the Bay of Biscay. Beyond that wall they could hear faint, distant sirens. Within it they were alone.

“What do you think about it, Mr. Duck?” said Captain Flint at last. “Nobody’s going to run us down now. Titty, run along forward and tell John and Susan they can come aft. And Nancy’s there with them. I want one of them to take the wheel from Mr. Duck, while we’re hearing what the passenger has to say for himself. . . .”

Bill looked suddenly grave.

Titty hurried away forward. She hurried because she did not wish to miss a word of what was coming? How had it happened that the red-haired boy had been drifting alone in the fog? Was he on Black Jake’s side or theirs? Had they rescued him or made him prisoner? What had been going on last night when the Viper had nearly crashed into them in the dark? What had been happening in the fog, while Peter Duck had been pretending the Wild Cat was heading north for Ireland when really she was heading south for Spain?

“Come on, Susan,” she said, almost as if Black Jake were listening out on the bowsprit end. “Come on, John. Come on, Nancy. Captain Flint thinks it’s all right now; the fog’s not so bad. He wants somebody to take the wheel. They’re just going to decide about the red-haired boy. . . .”

They all hurried aft together, in time to hear Captain Flint say: “We’ll do better for him than that, if we think he’s worth keeping at all.”

“But you can’t throw him back,” said Titty.

“Why not?” said Captain Flint.

“I’ve got a spare toothbrush he could have,” said Susan. “I brought two for each of us.”

The red-haired boy looked doubtfully, first at Peter Duck then at Captain Flint, then at the children of whom this schooner seemed so full.

“Sou’west by south and a half south,” said Peter Duck, giving up the wheel.

“Sou’west by south and a half south it is,” said John, taking it over.

Peter Duck turned sharply on the red-haired boy.

“And now, young Bill,” he said, “let’s hear what you was doing in a dinghy letting on with a foghorn as you was a sailing vessel on the starboard tack. What have you got to say about that? Don’t let’s hear nothing but the truth.”

“It wasn’t my fault I shipped along of he,” said Bill.

“Never mind that,” said Captain Flint. “Let’s hear what you were doing with that foghorn.”

“Black Jake he send me down into the dinghy with the horn, and then he tell me to sound it, once at a time, every so often, so he’d know where I was and pick me up when he come back.”

“Back?” said Captain Flint. “Where from?”

“He was going to lay aboard you in the fog and get a hold of Mr. Duck.”

“H’m. Was he? And how many did he think would be enough for that?”

“Five of ’em there was. There was Black Jake. Then there was Simeon Boon, that’s just come out after two years’ hard. Then there was Mogandy, the nigger, blacker’n Black Jake. Then there was a brother of Black Jake that was hiding in the fo’c’sle till we’d sailed. Police wanted him for something. Then there was the man that was chucker-out at the ‘Ketch as Ketch Can’ . . .”

“That’s a fishermen’s tavern in Lowestoft, sir,” said Peter Duck. “It’s got another name. You’d not know it.”

“And then there was me.”

Captain Flint threw back his head and laughed.

“There was six of us altogether,” said Bill.

“All right,” said Captain Flint. “So the five who stayed in the Viper were going to board us, were they?”

“Black Jake tell ’em it’d be easy. There’d be no more’n two of you on deck, and if one of ’em was Mr. Duck, why that was all he wanted. If Mr. Duck wasn’t on deck, Black Jake he reckoned to hold down the hatches and offer to blow you up with dropping something down if you didn’t send Mr. Duck up quick.”

“Pleasant,” said Captain Flint. “But if that was what he was thinking, why didn’t he try that game last night, when he ran up alongside us with all lights out in the dark?”

“Half of ’em was drunk last night,” said the red-haired boy, “and some of ’em was frighted. And Black Jake was letting fly at ’em all night for the chance they’d missed, and then, when the fog come on this morning, he fair drove ’em to it. ‘Cap’ns and mates and all,’ he says, ‘I’ve that here as’ll send ’em squealing. Give up Peter Duck,’ he says, ‘they’ll throw him overboard to us and be thankful.’ ”

“And so you were to sound the foghorn while they were to creep up to us in the fog?” said Captain Flint.

“I didn’t have nothing to say neither way,” said Bill. “They’d all had a go at me about one thing and another ever since we was clear of Lowestoft pier heads. I’m all one bruise, I am. What could I do when Black Jake drop me over into the dinghy. ‘Pass up them oars,’ he says. ‘You won’t want ’em. And now,’ he says, ‘if you don’t sound that horn regular you’ll be run down and sunk.’ ‘And what if he is?’ says Mogandy. ‘There’s no name on the boat,’ says Black Jake. And he throw down the painter into the boat and let her drop astern, and the next I knowed they was gone into the fog, and what could I do without oars? Swim ashore? What could I do but sound that horn?”

“Well, there’s something in that,” said Captain Flint.

“And then you come right down on top of me and throw me a rope and I come aboard. I’ll work my passage, sir,” he added eagerly, “if you’ll let me stay with you back to Lowestoft.”

“What if we aren’t going there?” said Captain Flint.

John and Nancy looked anxiously at Susan.

“What if we aren’t going there?” said Captain Flint again. “What do you think about it now, Mr. Duck? Eavesdropping wasn’t enough for him. Kidnapping he was up to. Piracy. The fellow’d stick at nothing. Why not spike his guns for good by lifting that treasure of yours, Mr. Duck, and bringing it home? Once he knows it’s gone, you’ll have a quiet life.”

“I’ve never said yet there was a treasure in that place,” said Mr. Duck, “and I’ve always said I’d never go there. But after what’s happened since yesterday I’m with you, sir. I’ll show you the place as near as I can. If it’s anything you fancy, well and good. Even if them crabs have scoffed the bag and all that’s in it, it’ll be a grand bit of sailing down the Nor’-east Trades.”

But it was Susan who, in the end, gave the deciding vote.

“Whatever it is,” she said, “Black Jake ought not to have it. And Peggy and I were counting things all yesterday, because of what you said at Cowes. We’ve got enough for a very long time.”

“Six months’ stores,” said Captain Flint. “And if there’s anything short we could fill up in Madeira.”

“I think we ought to go,” said Susan. “Black Jake’s almost a murderer. He oughtn’t to be allowed to get it after this.”

“Susan,” said Captain Flint, “shake hands. You’re fifteen kinds of trump.”

“Well done, Susan,” said Nancy. “I thought you’d agree in the end.”

“What about you, John?” said Captain Flint.

“Susan’s quite right. We ought to go,” said John.

“Swallows and Amazons for ever!” cried Nancy.

“Don’t shout, Nancy,” said John, and Peter Duck looked northwards over his shoulder.

“What’s going to happen?” said Roger. “What’s it all about? What? What?”

“We’re going to Crab Island to get that treasure,” said Titty, who had been listening open-mouthed.

“Then we’ll really see those crabs,” said Roger.

Bill stared first at one and then at another.

Captain Flint walked hurriedly forward, right up to the bows and back again. He came aft chuckling in his excitement. “We’ll bring it off,” he was saying. “Nothing’s going to stop us. Black Jake did a bad day’s work for himself when he set his ship’s boy afloat in a dinghy. As for you, you young pirate,” he added, turning to Bill, “where did you sleep aboard the Viper?”

“Sail locker,” said Bill.

“We’ll do a bit better for you than that, if you’re to sign articles with us.”

“I’ll do whatever Mr. Duck says,” said Bill.

“We’ll fix you up a bunk in the hospital cabin,” said Captain Flint. “There’s nothing in there but tinned food. Take him below, you others, and introduce him to Gibber and the parrot. Matter of fact,” he added, turning to Peter Duck, “I’ve been feeling a bit uneasy about that boy, ever since we sent him back to the Viper, that day when John and Nancy fished him out of the harbour.”

Bill, hearing this, bobbed up again into the highest spirits.

“Come on, Bill,” said Nancy.

“Come along,” said Roger, “Gibber’ll be pleased to meet you.”

“Where’s all them cap’ns and mates of yours?” said Bill.

There was a general laugh.

Bill looked from face to face with surprise.

“Come on,” said Roger again, and Bill, nerving himself to meet a whole saloon full of officers, followed him down the companion.

“You’d better go down with the others to fix him up,” said Captain Flint to John. “I’ll take the wheel. Ask Susan and Peggy if they can’t give us something to eat.”

“Sou’west by south and a half south,” said John.

“Sou’west by south and a half south.”

“Blue water sailing after all,” said Peter Duck, looking round at the thinning fog.

And Captain Flint watched the compass card, smiling happily, as he kept the Wild Cat on her course for Finisterre, and thought of Madeira and the distant Caribbees.