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Nancy and John, pulling short, hard strokes, and lifting their oars well clear of the water between them, drove the Swallow shorewards. There was very much less swell than on that evening when he had sailed round here with Captain Flint, but there was still enough to break on the low reef outside Duckhaven. As they came nearer, John, when he glanced over his shoulder, could see the white splash of the spray over the rocks, and was glad to see it, because it gave him something to steer for. He was rowing with the bow oar and keeping time with Nancy. Now giving a harder pull or two, now easing a little, he was able to keep Swallow heading for the end of the reef. Nancy left the steering to John. She set herself only to pull as steady a stroke as she could, and did not allow herself even once to look over her shoulder.

“Is he there already?” she asked breathlessly, for they were putting all they could into their rowing.

“I can’t see anybody,” John panted back.

They plugged on. Even for Nancy’s lurid taste things had been happening too fast. Besides, it was all very well to be the Terror of the Seas, but real pirates, like Black Jake and his friends, were altogether different. Bullies. Cowards and bullies, five of them together going for an old man and a boy. Nancy clenched her teeth and dug in so hard with her oar that she all but made John get out of time with her. She did, indeed, feel his oar just touch her back.

“Sorry,” said John.

“My fault,” said Nancy.

They would have said just that if they had got out of time while rowing together on the lake at home. They said it now, though they were rowing in at dusk to an island of landslide and earthquake and half-mad pirates roaming about with stolen guns. Still, some things were the same as usual. Wherever you were you said “Sorry” if you bumped “stroke” in the back with the bow oar, and you said it was your fault if you had happened to change the time unexpectedly because you were thinking of something else.

They plugged on.

“Easy a bit,” said John. “We’re close to the reef now.”

Nancy resolutely looked straight before her at the Wild Cat anchored out there, dim in the twilight. She would not turn round. She rowed steadily though the noise of breaking waves was not more than a few yards away.

“We’re in,” said John.

A rock showed in the dusk on the starboard side of the boat. Nancy, steadily rowing, saw it on her left, with a white splash of spray flying up it. Another rock swam into view. Another, higher. Already they were rowing in water sheltered by the reef.

“Mr. Duck said ‘Don’t land!’ ”

“We won’t,” said Nancy. “We’ll keep her afloat in the harbour, ready to pull out the moment he comes. If only he hasn’t come already and found nobody here and turned back.”

“He can’t have done,” said John. “He’d have seen the Wild Cat if he’d come out on the beach. So he wouldn’t think of turning back.”

They brought Swallow carefully into the tiny harbour from which she had sailed so proudly only a few hours before, a Spanish galleon with treasure in her hold. Everything seemed just as they had left it and yet altogether different, because they could no longer think of the island in the same way. It was no longer their island and theirs alone. Earthquake and landslide had not been enough to make this kind of difference. It was the coming of the Viper that had changed the island for them. Somewhere in the dusk among those fallen trees and lifted roots there were the men who had come aboard the Wild Cat and left Peter Duck roped and helpless on the floor of the deckhouse after one of them had all but killed him with a blow. Somewhere on the island there was the man who had not been ashamed to knock Bill’s teeth out, and to leave him gagged and choking in the bottom of the monkey’s cage. Who could think of the island as the happy place it had been? Worst of all, Captain Flint was still there, thinking only of his crew, and knowing nothing of the danger at his heels.

It was still light enough at first to see their old camp. Little was left of it. The broken ridge-pole of the tent, a crushed store-tin, Susan’s old fireplace, their own footprints leading down to the water’s edge, and the marks of Swallow’s keel in the sand, showing how they had come down there and launched her to sail away, as they supposed, for ever. The crabs were coming back. They saw several of them, wandering uneasily about, lifting themselves from the ground, slowly waving their pincers from side to side, as if they were feeling their way in a fog.

“Hullo,” said John, “there’s one of Susan’s spoons. There’s no harm in hopping ashore for that.”

“No. We’d better get it.”

The spoon was sticking up out of the sand, its handle buried. John jumped ashore, ran to it, picked it up, looked this way and that along the beach and came down again to the boat.

“There are lots of crabs round the wreck,” he said. “Hullo, why are you turning her round?”

“Jump in,” said Nancy, who had taken both oars and turned Swallow’s stern towards the beach. “Better this way. We can pull out at a moment’s notice.”

John scrambled in and sat down in the stern, while Nancy pulled offshore again and kept the boat in the middle of the little harbour.

“It’s a horrible place to be alone in,” said John. “I don’t wonder Mr. Duck didn’t like it when he was small. Listen!”

They listened. To-night there was no noise of wind in trees, for there was hardly any wind, and on this side of the island hardly a tree was standing. Far away they heard the cries of startled birds. There was no other noise except the water breaking on the rocks and the sand, and that was quieter than usual, for the regular swell sweeping in from the east had somehow been flattened out by the storm, and instead there was an undecided sea, sulky and petulant. It was very hot, but though the dusk turned quickly to such darkness that they could only just see the shape of the land against the sky, there were no cheerful fireflies where the ruined forest met the beach.

John, in the sternsheets, was busy with the hurricane lantern. He lit it, and the moment it was lit neither he nor Nancy could see anything at all outside the boat, unless it was so near that the lantern showed it to them. It showed them, when they drifted that way, the side of the rock that sheltered Duckhaven. It lit up the yellow oar with which Nancy gently fended off. It lit up their faces, oddly white, as they looked at each other across it, and then, as John turned towards the shore and held the lantern at arm’s length, it seemed to Nancy to turn him into a monstrous flickering shadow between her and the light.

“He ought to see that all right,” said John.

“They’ll see it, too,” said Nancy.

John peered into the darkness, but there seemed to be splashes of light everywhere, from the dazzle in his eyes.

“Well, it’s no good our seeing, anyhow,” he said. “We don’t need to.”

“I can’t even see the Wild Cat now. No. There she is. There’s the light in the deckhouse door. She’s an awful long way out.”

Away out to sea in the pitch darkness of a clouded night the schooner was invisible, but now and then a light in the galley or the deckhouse glimmered and died and then shone out again as the Wild Cat swung to her anchor.

“I’m going to turn her round again,” said Nancy. “It’ll be just as easy to work out stern first, and easier if the Wild Cat’s showing a light. You’d better come back to the bows, so there’ll be less shifting about when he comes.”

“All right,” said John, and clambered forward with the lantern.

They were speaking in whispers now, though they did not know why. Sometimes Nancy spoke out loud, on purpose, but she did not keep it up. Whispering seemed easier.

“I wish he’d hurry up,” said Nancy, after a long wait in silence.

“I say,” said John, “you don’t think they’ve got him?”

“Of course they haven’t,” said Nancy. “There’d have been a fight. They’ve got guns. We couldn’t have helped hearing if one of them had gone off.”

“He’s been an awful long time,” said John.

“Well,” said Nancy, “just think what it was like just going into the forest a few yards to look for my spring.”

“It would have been quicker to come round by the shore.”

Nancy caught her breath.

“Uncle Jim started straight across. Bill saw him start, and he wouldn’t turn back whatever it was like. Not once he’d started. But if the others came round by the shore . . . they might easily get here first.”

IN DUCKHAVEN AT NIGHT

They stared at each other in the bright glare of the lantern, and looked out of the light into the thick darkness that shut them in.

“If they’d been coming by the shore they’d have seen the Wild Cat and rushed back to look after their beastly Viper.”

“Or hurried on,” said Nancy. “Bill heard them say they’d seen the smoke of our camp.”

“Are you awfully thirsty?” asked John, after a long time.

“Yes,” said Nancy. “Empty, too. Don’t let’s talk about it.”

Empty, thirsty, more tired than they knew after the wild night of storm and earthquake, the excitement of finding the treasure, the shock of what they had found on getting back to the schooner, and the horror of knowing that Captain Flint might be at the mercy of the pirates, they almost drowsed with open, smarting eyes.

Suddenly John started up.

“It’s him,” cried Nancy.

Both of them had heard at last the sound for which they had been waiting, the cracking of branches, the brushing of leaves, the uneven sudden noises of someone struggling over rough ground in the dark.

“It may not be,” said John.

Nancy’s eyes widened. “What do you mean?” she said. “One of them?”

“Listen,” said John.

There were no wild beasts on the island to make a noise like that. Only a man would push at boughs until they creaked or broke or swung back, one against another. And then, those sudden crashes. That could be only a man forcing his way through the tangle of the fallen forest and falling every now and then into the holes left by the uplifted roots of the trees.

“Pull in, Nancy, pull in!”

“What are we to do if it isn’t him?” said Nancy.

There was a noise of stumbling and of stones striking against each other somewhere up the beach.

“He’s tumbled into the place where we found the box. . . . He’s coming straight down the beach. We’ll see him in a minute. Have the oars all ready to back her out. . . .”

John stood up, holding the lantern before him as high as he could.

Steps, stumbling, uneven, hurrying, were coming nearer in the dark.

“Who goes there?” Nancy suddenly called out in a high voice, unlike her own, stirred by a memory of some old tale of sentinels and war.

“Friend.” A voice came back out of the darkness, and a moment later Captain Flint limped into the glow from the hurricane lantern. His face was scratched, his shirt hanging in ribbons, one of his knees, red with blood, showed through a great cut in his flannel trousers. He was helping himself along with a big rough stick from which twigs and green leaves were still sprouting, and anybody could see that he could hardly bear to put his right foot to the ground.

“What have you done with the camp? Is anybody hurt? Where are the others?”

“Hurry up,” said Nancy. “Everybody’s all right. They’re waiting for you in the schooner.”

“The schooner?”

“She’s anchored out here. Everybody’s in her and quite all right.”

“What about the camp?”

“Packed. Oh, do get in. The others may be here any minute and they’ve got all our guns.”

“Who? What?”

“Don’t stop to talk, Uncle Jim. Get in!”

“I’d have been across ages ago if only I hadn’t sprained my ankle between a couple of rocks. But what a bit of luck P. D. thought of bringing the schooner round. . . .”

“Do get in.”

Captain Flint climbed painfully in over the bows of the Swallow. John splashed overboard into the shallow water to get out of the way.

“What was that you were saying about guns?” Captain Flint asked, as, leaning heavily on Nancy’s shoulder, he stepped over the main thwart and sat down in the stern.

“Black Jake,” said Nancy. “He’s here. The Viper’s here. They’re all on the island. They may be anywhere by now. Go on, John. Push her off. . . .”

“What? What? But . . .”

“They captured the Wild Cat. . . . All right. We’ve got her again. They landed on the island and went after you. Won’t she go, John? Too much weight aft?”

Nancy stood up and pushed at the bottom with an oar. John put the lantern down on the forward thwart. He wanted to use both hands and all his strength. Swallow slid off. John got a knee on the gunwale and gave a last kick at the shore. They were afloat. And at that moment there was the sharp crack of a rifle away to the south, a crash and tinkle of broken glass, and the lantern toppled down from the thwart and went out.

“Now do you understand?” said Nancy.

Captain Flint understood well enough.

“Lie down, both of you,” he said.

“Rot,” said Nancy. “They can’t see us now the light’s gone. They’ve got nothing to shoot at. Keep still while I paddle her out. Don’t let’s bump those rocks. Reach out over the stern to fend her off.”

“Oh, what a mess I’ve gone and got you all into,” said Captain Flint. “I ought never to have brought you here. The whole island’s turned upside down. Anything might have happened to you last night. And now these scoundrels. . . . We’re sailing at once, if we get out of this. Hang the treasure! Let them have the stuff if they can find it! I’m through. I ought to have known better than to start. I’ll never forgive myself if anything goes wrong now. . . .”

“But we’ve got the treasure,” said John quietly. “That must be the end of the reef,” he added. “Turn her round and let me have that bow oar.”

“You’ve got it?” said Captain Flint. “Got it? But where is it? Not on shore?”

They could not see him in the dark, but they could feel the boat give a bit of a lurch as if he had suddenly half stood up.

“In your bunk in the deckhouse,” said John.

“Gosh!” said Captain Flint.