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The sleepers round the saloon table were roused by the noise of tinkering with the engine. It was broad daylight. They stretched stiff arms, yawned, and rubbed eyes that did not seem inclined to stay open. They got up and wandered aft, like sleepwalkers, to find Captain Flint crouched below the deckhouse in the hole that served as an engine-room, trying to free the choked engine from some of the oil that Gibber and Roger had lavished upon it. There were smudges of grease now, as well as the scratches on his face, and his torn shirt, as Peggy said afterwards, might just as well have been an overall, it was in such a state. He did say “Good morning” to them, but that was all, and he went on at once with what he was doing to the engine.

“He’s jolly bothered about something,” said Nancy, as they went sleepily up the companion steps. As soon as they came out on deck they knew why.

There had been hardly any wind during the night. Crab Island was still in sight on the horizon. But that was not all. Soon after dawn Captain Flint and Peter Duck had seen a tall black schooner creeping round the northern headland. There she was, with topsails set on both her masts. The Viper was after them again.

That, in itself, was enough to set Captain Flint tinkering at the engine. But it was not the thought of Black Jake alone that kept Peter Duck, who was at the wheel, looking uneasily about him. Anybody could see that there was still something altogether wrong about the weather. Where was the steady trade wind of the last few weeks? What did they mean, these little cat’s-paws that ran across the water, now from this side, now from that, under this heavy metallic sky, orange and purple in the east, black and thunderous in the west? There was something wrong with the sea, too. With the ordinary trade wind of these parts there should have been a steady swell rolling down from the north-east. There was nothing of the sort, but tossing, aimless waves.

But on that morning, not even the sight of the Viper, or the look of the weather, or the grim faces of Captain Flint and Peter Duck could cloud the happiness of the crew. There they were, all together again in the Wild Cat, homeward bound, with the treasure, whatever it was, safely aboard. Nothing else seemed to matter. They hurried below again to get into their bathing things for washing decks, as on the old, happy mornings of the outward voyage. Susan, Titty, and Roger were on deck and ready when the two captains, followed by Peggy and Bill, clambered up through the forehatch. They soused each other with bucketfuls of salt water, and took turns in driving the water along the deck with the long-handled mops. They crowded round to look at the purple spreading bruises on both sides of Bill’s right shoulder where Black Jake’s fingers had held him in that cruel grip. Tenderly they felt his swollen face. Bill wished the bruises would last for ever, like tattoo-marks, because John, and Roger, and Nancy seemed to admire them so much. But at least he would always have the teeth to show. They would last as long as he would. And then, while the others swabbed the water into the scuppers, Peggy and Susan hurried into the galley to make breakfast. It was a pity, said Peggy, that nobody had thought of bringing aboard a really large stock of bananas. They dressed while the kettle was coming on the boil. Titty brought the parrot up on deck. Roger let loose the monkey. Everybody, except Captain Flint and Peter Duck, was in the highest spirits.

“Come along here, one of you cap’ns, or you, Bill, when you’ve done washing down decks, and take the wheel,” Peter Duck called out at last. “Just you come here and do the best you can with her. I want to see what canvas we’ve got in the locker, and the skipper’s busy with the little donkey down below.”

But just at that moment Captain Flint came up the ladder into the deckhouse and put his head out of the door.

“It’s a donkey that won’t go, Mr. Duck. I’ll take the wheel for a bit, while you see what you can do in the way of more sail.”

“She’d carry all we could put on her,” said Mr. Duck, “but we’ve nothing to put. Now if only I’d the foresail mended, or a bit of topsail to set over her main . . .”

“Uncle Jim,” said Nancy. “You’d feel a lot better if you went and had a go with that bucket, and got some of the dirt off.”

Captain Flint looked round over his shoulder at the far-away schooner. Then he laughed, in spite of his worries. “You’ve been taking lessons from Susan, Nancy,” he said. “But I believe you’re right. You can take over, you three, just for a minute.” And he went forward up to the capstan, and pulled his ragged shirt off, and poured bucket after bucket over his head. He came aft again, looking cleaner and much more cheerful, just as Peggy began hammering at the breakfast bell.

Neither he nor Peter Duck would come down to the saloon for breakfast. They had theirs brought to them on deck by Titty and Bill. Captain Flint was steering, and Peter Duck was already desperately stitching at a sail. He did not believe in engines, anyway.

After breakfast it was clear to everybody that the Viper was gaining on them, very slowly, because of the fitfulness of the wind, but gaining all the time.

“Why not let me start the engine?” said Roger.

“Didn’t you hear me trying to start it?” said Captain Flint. “That wretched monkey of yours has fairly choked it with oil and grease. There’s nothing to be done with it until we take it to pieces and put it together again.”

“It’s not really Gibber’s fault,” said Roger. “He did his best, and he worked very hard.”

“Yes, I know that,” said Captain Flint, “but laziness, in monkeys, is a virtue.”

All the same, when John, Nancy, and Bill were all free to look after the steering, Captain Flint took Roger down with him under the deckhouse, and they spent the morning in taking the engine to pieces. Gibber would have liked to join them, but Roger had to agree that just now the monkey would be better in his cabin.

Once or twice during the morning Captain Flint came up to glance astern from the door of the deckhouse.

“The little donkey’ll not help us,” said Peter Duck.

“It’s something to do,” said Captain Flint. “I’m no good with a needle.”

When Nancy struck eight bells, one two, one two, one two, one two, on the ship’s bell at noon, Crab Island was just disappearing below the horizon.

“Good-bye,” cried Titty suddenly, and waved her hand.

“Who are you waving to?” asked Bill. “Black Jake? We’re not leaving him, seems to me.”

The island was disappearing, but the Wild Cat was not alone. There was the black schooner sailing after her, and it was easy to see that she was drawing nearer.

It was dreadfully hot. There was no sun. A black cloud spread from one side of the sky to the other.

“There’s trouble coming for both of us,” said Mr. Duck. “We’re not through with that storm yet. Now a capful of wind’d be welcome. She’s faster’n us, is the Viper, in light winds, but in a bit of a blow we’d be showing her our heels while they’d be dowsing her sails. But there’s something more’n a capful coming.”

Everybody had dinner on deck.

Nobody felt much like talking.

Roger did open his mouth to speak, but even he, when he saw Captain Flint’s face, knew without being told that this was not the time to remind him of the treasure box in the deckhouse.

All afternoon the Viper crept up. The little wind there was blew this way and that under the heavy sky, and sometimes died altogether and left both schooners idly drifting, rolling, rolling, and swinging their heavy gaffs and booms from side to side in the uneven sea.

“There’s not a chance of getting that engine going before dark,” said Captain Flint at last, coming up on deck.

“If it would only come on to blow now, so that the Viper couldn’t carry her topsails, we’d slip away from them yet,” said Peter Duck, stitching away as hard as he could, to get even one topsail ready to set on the Wild Cat. Both of her topsails had been torn to shreds in the squalls that had come after the earthquake, while Captain Flint was hurrying to get back to the island, not knowing what might have happened in Diggers’ Camp during that terrible night. “There’s something pretty bad coming,” said the old seaman, “but it’ll have to be bad indeed for us to mind it now.”

And still the wind freshened and died away, freshened and died away without ever blowing hard enough to worry Black Jake, who was crowding on every bit of canvas he had, and with every hour was making the distance less between the Viper and the Wild Cat. The little green-hulled schooner that had slipped out of his clutches once was not, if he could help it, going to escape him again.

Nearer the Viper came and nearer yet. The little company about the wheel of the Wild Cat could see, even without using the glasses, that there were men looking forward from the black schooner’s bows. One of her jibs had gone and had been replaced with a smaller one, but that hardly mattered with a slack wind that swung from south-west through west to north-west and back again. Her topsails alone, high aloft, were enough to give her the mastery over the Wild Cat, which, even with all sails set, had never been a match for her unless in half a gale.

At last Mr. Duck’s topsail was ready. “It’s a poor job,” he said, “but it’ll be better up there than a bare pole. Come on, Bill, and let’s have it up. And will you lend a hand, Cap’n Nancy? Cap’n John’ll look after the wheel.”

“She’s going better already,” cried Titty, as the topsail spread and stiffened between the mast and the gaff of the mainsail. “Oh, if only we had another for the foremast!”

It was just then that Peter Duck first saw the waterspout. He was walking aft, looking astern to the Viper. Crab Island was already out of sight.

“Where are them glasses?” he said.

Titty handed them over.

“I was thinking there was some dirty weather still to come,” he said. “Look away there now. Call up the skipper.”

Far astern, right away on the horizon, where the sea met the sky, a narrow band of light showed under the black cloud that stretched above it, hard-edged as a bar of iron. And across that narrow band of light a thin black thread seemed to join the cloud to the sea.

Captain Flint came up in a hurry when Nancy shouted down to him.

“Do you know what that is, sir?” asked Peter Duck.

“Look’s like a waterspout,” said Captain Flint. “I’ve seen them in the Indian Ocean. Let’s get the telescope on it. Yes. It’s a waterspout, all right. That may mean a bit of wind. By Jove, it’s moving pretty fast.”

“Coming up this way,” said Peter Duck.

Roger was busy with the little telescope, so busy that he had not seen what the others were looking at. He was trying to get the little telescope properly focused on the Viper.

“What are they doing on the foredeck?” he said.

“Look at the waterspout, Rogie, and then let me have a look.” Titty had parted with the glasses to Peter Duck.

“They’re awfully near,” said Roger, “and they’re doing something on her foredeck.”

“I say, Uncle Jim,” said Peggy, “if the Viper does catch us up, what can they really do?”

“They can’t do anything,” said Captain Flint. “Not anything that matters.”

Bill opened his mouth and shut it again. Peter Duck looked oddly at Captain Flint, and then glanced round the horizon ahead of them.

“We’re not anywhere near the regular shipping routes,” he was saying to himself, but Titty heard him.

“Why should we be?” she said.

Peter Duck looked at her without smiling.

“Company,” he said.

Captain Flint looked astern at the Viper.

“Yes. I wouldn’t mind falling in with another vessel just now.”

But there was not a ship in sight, besides the Wild Cat and the Viper, and the distance between them was steadily growing less.

“The waterspout’s going to pass quite close to us,” said Nancy. “It’s coming along at a tremendous lick.”

That thread of dark colour between cloud and sea was thicker now. The cloud itself seemed now to roof the sky. The waterspout was changing its shape with every moment. It was like a tremendous indiarubber tube joining sky and sea. It widened at the top where it met the cloud, and the bottom of it spread out like a base of a candlestick.

“It’s twirling like a corkscrew,” said Titty.

“They do that,” said Peter Duck. There was something in his voice that startled Captain Flint.

The thing was now near enough to hear. A wild, shrill, rustling noise swept over the sea. The grey waves were white with foam under this twirling, swaying, monstrous pillar that was coming nearer and nearer, dancing as it seemed across the troubled water.

“That’ll give them something to think of,” said Captain Flint. “That thing’s got wind with it, and the Viper won’t stand topsails in a wind, you said, didn’t you, Mr. Duck?”

“Aye, sir,” said Peter Duck, and still his eyes were on the waterspout.

They saw the white spray leap from under the bows of the Viper as a gust of wind stronger than any they had had that day suddenly lifted her on her way. A moment later they felt the wind themselves, and Captain Flint glanced up at the newly mended topsail.

“It looks to me as if we’ll be glad to have our own topsail down again in a few minutes,” he said. “There’s a real wind coming.”

But Peter Duck said nothing. He was watching the advancing waterspout, twirling towards them across white, wind-whipped water.

“It’s coming right at us,” said Peggy, and her voice rose with the words until it startled her and she wondered if the others had heard the fear in it.

“Close all hatches!” Captain Flint suddenly saw how very near the waterspout was going to pass them. “Close the forehatch, will you, Bill? Shut down the skylights.”

“If that thing hits us it isn’t hatches’ll save us,” said Peter Duck quietly. “Smashed to match-boarding we’ll be, with that weight of water on top of us.”

But Bill had already darted forward.

A moment later something happened which, for a moment, startled them so much that even the waterspout was forgotten.

“We must have that topsail down again, Mr. Duck,” Captain Flint was saying. “There’s more than a summer squall coming with this thing. . . .”

Crack!

What was that puff of pale smoke by the stem of the black schooner that was driving after them with the white foam flying from her bows?

A shrill whine passed close between Titty and Mr. Duck. There was a sharp thud and the noise of splintering wood somewhere right forward.

John and Nancy looked at each other. Again! They remembered last night. The Swallow was not the only vessel to get a bullet in her.

“They’re shooting at us,” said Roger. “I wondered what it was they were getting ready to do.”

Captain Flint took the wheel from John.

“Go below, the lot of you,” he said. “The drunken scoundrels! And us with children aboard!”

“It was no drunken man fired that, I’m thinking,” said Peter Duck, and still his eyes were on the waterspout, not on the schooner.

Crack!

A bullet whined close over their heads. There was a rending noise aloft. The newly mended topsail burst at the leech. The gaff came down with a run, and swung against the mast. The boom dropped, and would have crashed down on the rail if its fall had not been broken by the topping lifts.

“Think of that fellow,” said Captain Flint, “having the luck to cut the peak halyard with a bullet.”

No one had stirred of the little group about the wheel. All, except Roger, who still had the telescope focused on the Viper, were looking up at the wreckage that a single shot, cutting a single rope, had made of the Wild Cat’s mainsail.

“Done our reefing for us,” said Peter Duck grimly. “And there’s a day’s work in that topsail. Well, it’s no great odds. Look at that!”

The crippled Wild Cat was losing her way, while a tremendous wind was hurling the Viper along in a smother of white foam, her topmasts bending like reeds. But it was not at the Viper that Peter Duck was looking.

There were new deafening noises in the air, the sound of great waterfalls, the sound of a hurricane over the sea. The waterspout, now a whirling column of dark water, thicker than a house, and many hundred feet high, was rushing upon them. The sea about its base was churned white, and out of the white the dark pillar twisted up and up until it spread again into the roofing cloud.

“It’s coming right over us,” said Peggy.

And then, suddenly, they saw that it was not.

“Look! look!” shrilled Roger.

Both masts of the Viper broke off short, one after the other. Almost in the same moment the waterspout was upon her, seeming at once to suck her up into itself and to tear her to pieces. Of them all, Roger was the only one who was quite sure what he had seen. The others had seen a waterspout and, close beside it, a schooner suddenly overwhelmed and dismasted by a mighty wind. Then they had seen a waterspout and no schooner. Then, before their eyes, the whirling column of water began to narrow in the middle. It grew narrower, still narrower, until it seemed to twist itself in two, and the upper part, still whirling, was drawn up into the cloud, while the lower fell thunderously back into the sea. They saw a mass of water leap up again into the air, and drop, and then there was a gigantic whirling hollow in the sea, as if the water was being run off after a giant’s bath. The hollow filled up, and there was nothing left to show where the waterspout had been. There was no waterspout, and there was no longer any Viper. The Wild Cat was alone, tearing along under nothing but trysail and headsails.

Everything had happened so fast, from the firing of that shot that had brought the mainsail down, to the overwhelming of the Viper by that colossal mass of whirling water, that no one had had time to stir. The children, who had been told to go below when the first bullet whistled past them, were still on deck, staring at each other as if to make sure that all of them had seen this monstrous thing. For a few seconds Captain Flint and Peter Duck were as silent as their crew. Then, as the Wild Cat was caught in the outer edges of the whirlwind that had made and carried the waterspout, Peter Duck rushed round the deckhouse, to the mainmast, lowered away the throat, and, as the heavy gaff swung outwards, brought the whole tangle down on deck.

“Haul in on the trysail sheet,” yelled Captain Flint, “and get the staysail off her.”

“What are you going to do?” asked Nancy.

“Go back to pick them up,” said Captain Flint.

But the best sailor in the world is hampered when his mainboom is lying over the side, and his mainsail is useless, his peak halyard gone, and he tries to come to the wind in a hurry with a small trysail on the foremast and two big headsails. The man who had fired that second shot from the Viper had made the Wild Cat all but unmanageable. And yet perhaps the Wild Cat had reason to be grateful to him. Perhaps that sudden loss of topsail and mainsail had saved her from losing a mast as the Viper had lost both of hers. In that first fury of the wind that had come with the waterspout the Wild Cat had run on safely under her shortened canvas. But now that Captain Flint wanted to bring her about and go back to pick up the Viper’s crew, time was lost because he could do nothing at all until Peter Duck had brought the swinging gaff of the mainsail safely down on deck. As soon as that was done Captain Flint tried to haul his wind and come about to cruise over the place where only a few minutes before there had been a black schooner and men with no other thought in their minds but murder and revenge.

Peter Duck hauled in on the trysail sheet, and shouted for help.

“Bill,” he shouted, “lower away the staysail! Bill, lower away there! Stir yourself!”

But poor Bill was sitting by the forehatch, leaning against the capstan and holding his left arm in his right hand. As the vessel came round to the wind and heeled over, his head slipped sideways, and, full-length now, he slid across the deck in a faint.

Nancy and Susan at the same moment had seen that something was wrong, and were running forward. John was hurrying after them.

“Lower away that staysail!” shouted Captain Flint, wondering what was happening there to prevent the staysail coming down, as the Wild Cat slammed suddenly into a wave and a great cloud of spray lifted over her bows and soused Bill and those who had come to help him.

“Lower away now!” said Peter Duck, shoving the staysail halyard into John’s hand. “Ship comes first. Lower away, now, and I’ll smother the sail.” The wild thrashing of loose canvas added itself to the noises of the wind and of the Wild Cat thumping into short, steep seas.

The spray brought Bill to himself. Now he opened his eyes to see Susan and Nancy bending over him.

“What’s happened?” asked Susan.

“They’ve shot him,” cried Nancy.

“What’s ado?” said Peter Duck.

Bill smiled happily through his pain.

“Less lip,” he murmured, and then, trying to move, turned very white.

“It was the forehatch,” he said. “That first shot. Broke my arm. . . . All right. . . . I saw the waterspout. I saw ’em go.” And he fainted again.

“His arm’s broke all right,” said Peter Duck, tenderly turning back the sleeve when he saw how the arm was hanging. “Broke, but there’s no bullet here.”

“Look at the hatch,” said John. A piece of wood had been knocked clean off it. Bill had been closing the hatch in fear of the waterspout, and his arm had been snapped, either by the blow of the bullet on the hatch or by the knocked-off bit of wood. No one would ever know for certain how it had happened, for Bill himself had known nothing but a sudden, violent blow on the forearm.

Peter Duck said no more, but picked Bill up in his arms, and carried him aft to the deckhouse. Susan hurried below for her First Aid box.

“What’s happened to him?” asked Captain Flint.

“That first bullet broke his arm,” said John.

“He’s wounded,” said Nancy.

“Oh, Bill!” said Titty.

“It might have been a lot worse,” said Peter Duck, coming out again, after laying Bill in his own bunk. “But those fellows that did that don’t deserve no picking up.”

“It doesn’t look to me as if they’re going to get any,” said Captain Flint grimly. “No human being could live in the sea there was here when that spout broke. We must be pretty near the spot. There’s a bit of wreckage, but no sign of those scoundrels. Not now. If they’d left our mainsail alone and not done that bit of fancy shooting we might have been a bit quicker.”

“It’s my belief,” said Peter Duck, “that if they’d not done that shooting the waterspout would have missed them, same as it did us. Those fellows in that ship, they was fairly asking the Devil to take his own, and he’s done it, and I think the better of him. Shooting like that at a ship full of children!”

To and fro Captain Flint sailed the Wild Cat, under trysail and jib, to and fro over that wind-tossed water where the Viper had last been seen. They saw fragments of deck-planking, a painted lifebuoy, a broken mast in a tangle of rigging, and other flotsam. But though they cruised there until dusk, and though all hands, except poor Bill, and Peter Duck, who was very busy, were carefully searching the water, they saw no sign of any living thing, no sign even that there had ever been a living thing on the schooner that had come to so sudden and so terrible an end.