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The message about food was given and at once forgotten. What with Bill and the decision just taken, not even Roger at that moment could think about such things as dinner.

“Well,” said Nancy cheerfully, as they crowded into the saloon and Bill looked round in surprise to see no officers about. “We’re in for it now. I knew he’d never be content just hanging about near home. Three cheers for Christopher Columbus.”

“It’s a good thing we’ve been careful with the water from the very beginning,” said Susan.

“This is going to be a real voyage,” said Titty.

“What do you mean?” said Bill.

“Mr. Duck’s island,” said John.

“Those crabs,” said Roger.

“I’m jolly glad we ran you down,” said John. “You know, it was just that that settled it, our going, I mean.”

Bill stared.

“Why,” he said, “we knew in Lowestoft you was going there. We was sailing the night you first come aboard, only Black Jake see Mr. Duck a-talking to your skipper. And then next day when he see Mr. Duck bringing his dunnage aboard, why then he knowed. And then when he pushed me overboard and I telled him what your skipper said about all them cap’ns and mates . . .” Bill lowered his voice, and looked round at the cabins.

“He did push you overboard that day?” said Titty. “I was sure he did.”

“Course he did,” said Bill. “I ain’t no natural diver. When I come back and tell him what your skipper said, Black Jake he telled the others and I got more’n half a rope’s-ending next morning when he come on deck and find you’d cleared out of harbour and given us the slip. And then when you come in again as we was going out to look for you I got it worse from the others. We knowed you was going well enough. And Black Jake telled Mogandy and Boon and the rest they’d nothing to do but to get a hold of Mr. Duck and they’d be rich men for life. They reckoned to do it, too, this morning.”

The Swallows and Amazons looked at each other. With Bill so sure that from the beginning they had been bound for Crab Island, it began to seem odd, even to Susan, that they had really set sail from Lowestoft without meaning to go treasure-hunting at all. When Captain Flint left the wheel to Mr. Duck and came hurrying down after them into the saloon, just for a moment, to spread the big chart of the Atlantic on the saloon table and to show them where they were going (he, too, had already forgotten about the food) they could see that Bill simply did not believe that they were looking at it now for the first time. It may seem a queer thing, but perhaps it was just because Bill took it for granted that they had set out on that tremendous voyage that the others so quickly grew used to the idea of it.

Indeed, they almost forgot to think about the voyage in the interest of fitting Bill out as a member of the crew. Nancy had a white canvas hat for him. John offered him a pair of shorts, but Bill preferred his long trousers, patch and all. His feet turned out to be about the same size as Peggy’s, and luckily she had a pair of sandshoes to spare as well as an old pair of sea-boots. As for oilskins, there were a lot of spare ones. “And, anyway,” said John, “we’re never all wearing oilskins at once.” Susan and Peggy cleared a lot of tins out of the lower bunk in the hospital cabin for him, and Titty pinned up a picture postcard of Lowestoft harbour on the wall, to make him feel at home. They decided where he was to sit at the saloon table, and remembered, with horror, that Captain Flint had asked for food. Susan and Peggy left the others and bolted up the companion, to get to work in the galley. Roger showed Bill where the engine was stowed. John and Nancy took him into the fo’c’sle. Roger introduced him to Gibber, who let Bill tickle him behind the ear. Titty introduced him to the parrot, who gave him a terrible nip in the finger.

“But where are all them cap’ns and mates?” asked Bill at last, lowering his voice. “Sleeping, are they?”

“There just aren’t any,” said Titty.

“We’re them,” said Nancy.

And they tried to explain to Bill about the adventures they had had in the Swallow and the Amazon, but somehow it didn’t seem much good. Bill just roared with laughter. “And me creeping on my toes,” he said, “for fear of ’em.” Suddenly his face grew solemn. “Lucky for you your skipper telled me what he did. Why, if Black Jake had knowed. . . . If he’d knowed that, why he’d have had Mr. Duck out of here before you was half-way down Channel. He wouldn’t have waited for no fog. . . .”

Just then Captain Flint, with a new confident ring in his voice called down through the skylight.

“Come up and have a look round, you people. Fog’s gone. We’ve done it!”

They crowded up on deck. The lurching of the vessel had already told them that there had been a complete change in the weather, just as Peter Duck had guessed there would be. They found the wind blowing hard from the north-west and strengthening every minute. Besides the ocean swell there were waves now, hurrying so fast that their tops tumbled head over heels in a smother of white spray. The wind thrummed in the rigging, and the Wild Cat left a long troubled wake streaming away astern of her. There was no fog. There was no land in sight. And there was no sign of the black schooner.

“We’ve done it all right,” said Captain Flint. “That’s one, two, three steamers, two cargo boats, and a tanker . . . more of them hull down . . . there’s another of those French fishermen. . . . Not a sign of the Viper. No. We’ve done it.”

“Hope he’ll like Dublin,” said Nancy.

“Or the North Pole,” said John. “The farther he goes the better.”

“Aye,” said Peter Duck, after a slow careful look all round the horizon. “Seems we’re quit of him, right enough.”

“Thanks to you, Mr. Duck. We’ve got clear from him, and we’ve got one of his crew instead of him having one of ours,” said Captain Flint gleefully. “Well, Bill, I wonder if Black Jake’s missing you much?”

“There’s nobody aboard the Viper what anybody can lay into now.”

“So you think they’re cruising round the Wolf Rock looking for you with a rope’s end?”

“Well, I ain’t there, anyhow,” said Bill.

Dinner that day was hours late, a joyful but a most unsteady meal. The sea was getting rapidly worse and worse. They had had a taste of wind that last night coming down Channel, but then the wind had been off the land. Now, running south for Spain, they were exposed to the full drift of the Atlantic. Old Peter Duck was enjoying it. “I knows this bit of water,” he told the mates, while they were giving him his dinner. “By Ushant right down across the Bay I knows it. I were in them Frenchy boats fishing round here when they give me to the skipper of the Louisiana Belle for a bag of tobacco. But I telled you that yarn before. First an easterly, then a fog, and then a blow from the nor’-west. We’ll be hove to before night, but we’ll be getting better weather in the morning.” He had his dinner, lit his pipe, and went up again to take the wheel while Captain Flint came down.

Captain Flint had been the first to ask for food, but Susan said it was waste of time cooking for him if he would talk instead of eating. He came down with two volumes of Hakluyt’s Voyages from the shelf in the deckhouse, and he had brought the big chart down again, and nothing would stop him from using plates to keep the chart spread out over the fiddles while he was looking first in one of the books and then in the other. But in the end he remembered that Mr. Duck had been up most of the night, and he sent John and Bill up to take the wheel, and gulped down his food and hurried after them.

He found them together at the wheel when he came on deck, but Peter Duck had not yet gone to his bunk. He was standing in the deckhouse, leaning out of the doorway, watching the two boys at the wheel and looking at the weather.

“Blowing up quick, it is,” he said when he saw Captain Flint. “Wind after fog. Always the way. It’s a right wind for us, if it don’t blow up a bit too hard.”

“There’s no shelter to look for out here,” said Captain Flint.

“We don’t want none,” said Peter Duck. “With every mile we make to the southward we gets deeper water. We don’t want no better. Get her into deep water and she’ll ride out anything. It’s shoal water makes the trouble and drowns poor sailormen. We’ll best be putting a reef or two in her sails, and then if it don’t get no better, we can heave her to for the night, and she’ll lie as snug as a gull.”

Reefing was no easy job but it was done, at last, and then, with Captain Flint on deck, the old sailor went to his bunk and lay down for a minute or two, but he could not stay there. He came out again and stood there, watching the way the little schooner ran.

“Aren’t you going to get a bit of sleep, Mr. Duck?” said Captain Flint.

“Time enough for sleep later on,” said Mr. Duck.

Hour after hour she ran on, easier now under her shortened sails. But the sea was growing steadily worse, and the wind blew harder and harder. The mates tried washing up on deck after dinner, but so much water was coming aboard that it felt rather as if they were being washed up themselves. Roger brought Gibber up to have a look at things, and sat with him on the top step inside the companion-way. But a bucketful of spray flew in there and soaked him as well as the monkey, and they had to close that door to keep the saloon dry. They had already closed the skylight. It was oilskins that afternoon for everybody who came on deck. Those who were not at the wheel found shelter for themselves under the lee of the deckhouse and tried to keep the water that blew across the roof from pouring down their necks. There were always two at the wheel, and all the time the spray came blowing over, slap, slap, against their oilskin backs. The motion grew worse again, and Susan and Peggy, taking turns with it, had a hard job to keep the kettle in its place when they wanted a drop of hot water. At last, just as it was falling dark John heard Peter Duck, who was at the wheel with him, shout to Captain Flint who was standing close by: “She’s done very well, she has. How’d it be if we was to heave to now, for a quiet night, before anything carries away?”

“What if that fellow races us across?” said Captain Flint, who, now that he was bound for Crab Island, hated the idea of stopping even for a moment.

“He’ll have to come down this way,” said Peter Duck, “unless he wants contrary winds the whole way across. There’s no good way but the old sailing ship track by Spain and Portugal to the North-east Trades away down by Madeira and the Canaries. If the weather’s bad for us, it’s worse for him. If the Viper’s not hove to at this minute, somewheres north of the Land’s End, Black Jake’s wishing she was. She’s a flyer, the Viper, but she won’t carry sail in bad weather.”

“Shall we ever have it worse than this?” Nancy asked, snuggling down into her oilskins.

“We’ll be having good weather when we get by Finisterre,” said Peter Duck, “but it won’t last as bad as this beyond the morning.”

“So long as it doesn’t get any worse, it’s all right,” said Nancy, who was very pleased indeed to find that she was not feeling sick.

“Well,” said Captain Flint, “you know the Bay better than I do. And there’s one thing about it. We could all do with a bit of sleep after last night.”

Bill earned good marks from everybody in the half-hour of tremendous business that followed. He never quite managed to be in two places at once, but worked so hard and made himself so useful that it almost seemed as if he had. When they had done, and rested, panting for breath, they had the heavy booms lashed down in their places, stowed all the ordinary sails, and left the Wild Cat under a tiny storm-jib and a trysail, balancing each other, so that she lay quiet, meeting the waves as they came but no longer driving on her way.

“Beautiful she lays,” said Peter Duck, when all was done. Nobody on land would have thought so, but aboard the Wild Cat it felt like a peaceful holiday after the last strenuous hours of the evening. No more water was coming aboard. The lurching of the vessel was less violent. But the mates did not try to cook anything for supper. Everybody cheered them when they came staggering below with a huge jug of boiling cocoa.

Just before Titty and Roger went to their bunks for the night, they were allowed on deck for a last look round. It was a wild sight. Now and then when the schooner lifted on the top of a great sea, they caught a glimpse of a steamer’s lights far away. There was nothing else to be seen but flying clouds overhead and the white rolling tops of the waves. Yet the Wild Cat was comfortable enough. Hove to, under her two small sails, the little schooner seemed to be at home in the midst of the tumult. She seemed to be picking her way almost in her sleep in and out among the mountain ranges of the sea. Alone in the dark, her lights burning confidently and brightly, the Wild Cat lay resting, as Peter Duck had said she would, easy as a sleeping gull upon the heaving waters.

Bill, too, to his surprise, had been sent off to his bunk soon after supper.

“Everybody’d better take their chance of a good night’s sleep,” said Captain Flint. “Wheel’s lashed. Mr. Duck and I’ll keep a look out. Off you go, Bill. No point in sitting up with your eyes closing. You did good work with those reef points, my lad. Off you go now. You can get up as early as you like in the morning.”

In the saloon, after the others had gone, John, Susan, Nancy, and Peggy, sat at the table under the swinging lamp. For a little they talked of the voyage ahead of them and of Mr. Duck’s island, but the talk soon turned to Bill, who, after all, was not so far away.

“He’s awfully good at going up the mast,” said Nancy.

“Anybody can tell he’s been to sea before . . . really to sea,” said John.

“It must be awful in trawlers,” said Susan.

“I don’t suppose he thinks anything of this,” said Peggy.

“Of what?”

“Being hove to in a storm,” said Peggy, grabbing the table as the Wild Cat seemed to pitch and skid sideways both at once.

“Well, it isn’t half bad,” said Nancy.

“He’s going to be useful in all sorts of ways,” said John.

“What would have happened to him if we hadn’t picked him up?” said Peggy.

“Drowned, probably,” said Nancy. “Black Jake hadn’t even left him an oar.”

“Sh,” said Susan. “He may not be asleep.”

Holding firmly to the table, the bulkhead and anything that came handy, the four of them crept towards the cabin that had once been labelled hospital, but now bore a new label, “Bill. A.B.” on its half-opened door. John looked in. The others listened.

“He’s gone to sleep in his clothes,” said John.

“Oh, I never thought of it,” said Susan. “That’s my fault. He’ll have to have somebody’s spare pyjamas.”

“I’ll get him mine,” said Peggy.

“It’s no good waking him now,” said Susan. “He’s probably horribly tired.”

Upstairs in the deckhouse, Peter Duck lay in his bunk, darning socks. Susan had offered to darn them for him, but he had said that darning socks was the sort of work he liked to do at sea. Captain Flint sat at the chart table, playing patience, swaying in his chair to meet the motions of the ship. Miss Milligan was the patience he was playing and he had brought it out twice running. After each game he had gone out into the wind and made the round of the deck to see that everything was all right.

“If I bring it out three times running, Mr. Duck,” he said, “if I bring it out three times running it’ll show Fate’s taking a hand in the game and we’re going to lift that treasure of yours, eh, Mr. Duck, Black Jake or no Black Jake?”

Mr. Duck’s darning-needle was working more and more slowly.

“Grand sailing in the Nor’-east Trades,” he said.

A few minutes later, Captain Flint swung round in triumph.

“Three times running, Mr. Duck,” he cried. “You couldn’t have a clearer sign.”

But Mr. Duck’s sock had dropped on the floor, with the darning-needle fastened to it at the end of a long painter of grey wool. Mr. Duck had slipped down in his bunk. His mouth had fallen open a little. His breathing had become more regular and was beginning to sound its usual musical note. Mr. Duck was asleep.

Captain Flint picked up the sock, spiked it with the darning-needle, and dropped it into the bag-of-all-sorts that was hanging from the end of Mr. Duck’s bunk. Then he got up and went out once more into the night.

“Three times running,” he said. “Three times running. Why, it’s as sure as if we had the stuff already stowed aboard.”