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It must have been about eleven o’clock in the morning of that third day when all four of the ship’s company were at the look-out place at the northern end of the island. The mate was sewing a button on the boy’s shirt, and as the boy was inside it, she was finding it difficult. The captain was busy with some string, trying some of the knots in The Seaman’s Handybook. Able-seaman Titty was lying on her stomach in the heather, now and then looking through the telescope at the woody point that hid Houseboat Bay and the houseboat of the retired pirate.

“It’s still in there,” she said.

There was a loud bang and a puff of smoke showed above the woody point. Everybody jumped up.

“It must be fighting the pirate,” said Titty.

“I told you he had a cannon,” said Roger, squirming in the hands of the mate.

“Let’s go and help,” said Titty.

Just then a small sailing boat, with one sail, shot out from behind the point. She was about the same size as Swallow, only with a white sail instead of a tanned one. She was sailing close-hauled against a south-westerly wind.

The little boat sailed right across the lake on the port tack, and then came about and headed almost directly for the island.

“There are two boys in her,” said Titty.

“Girls,” said John, who had the telescope.

When the little boat was on the other side of the lake, the crew of the Swallow could be sure of nothing, but they watched her as closely as they could, and took turns with the telescope. She was a little varnished sailing dinghy with a centre-board. They could see the centre-board case in the middle of the boat.

“That’s why she sails closer to the wind than we do,” said John; “though Swallow sails very close,” he added, out of loyalty to his ship.

In the little boat were two girls, one steering, the other sitting on the middle thwart. The two were almost exactly alike. Both had red knitted caps, brown shirts, blue knickerbockers, and no stockings. They were steering straight for the island.

“Lie down everybody,” said Captain John. “We don’t know whether they are friends or enemies.”

Roger, the button now fixed to his shirt, dropped flat. So did Titty. So did Susan. Captain John rested the telescope on the edge of the rock so that he could see through it while his head was hidden by a clump of heather.

“I can read her name,” he said. “AM am, AZ az, O . . . N . . . Amazon.”

The others, hiding in the heather, looked out as much as they dared. The little boat came nearer and nearer. The girl who was steering (they could see now that she was the bigger of the two) pulled something from under the stern sheets. The other reached aft to take it, and then went forward, and was busy with something about the mast.

Suddenly the Amazon, now only twenty yards from the island, went about. They heard the girl who was steering say, “Ready about,” and saw the other duck to let the boom pass over, when she stood up again at once, holding some halyards in her hands. She began to haul downwards, hand over hand, and a little flagstaff with a flag on it went bobbing and jerking up to the masthead.

“They’re hoisting a flag,” said John.

The little staff straightened itself at the top of the mast, and the flag, a three-cornered one, blew out in the wind.

Titty drew a long breath that nearly choked her.

“It is . . .” she said.

The flag blowing out in the wind at the masthead of the little boat was black and on it in white were a skull and two crossed bones.

The four on the island stared at each other.

Captain John was the first to speak.

“Roger stops here,” he said. “The mate watches the landing-place. Titty watches the western shore. I watch the harbour. No one will show themselves. It’s quite likely they haven’t seen us. Wait till they’re well away on that tack and then we’ll get to our places. They could see us if we moved now.”

The Amazon, sailing fast on the port tack, was soon half across the lake.

“Now,” said John; and the three of them, leaving Roger, slipped down from the look-out place into the camp. Susan hid herself behind some bushes close to the landing-place. Titty crawled through the undergrowth till she could see out over the steep rock that ran along the western side of the island. John hurried through the trees until he came to the harbour. There he found a place from which he could look out without being seen. He unstepped the mast of the Swallow in case it could be seen over the rocks, and then hid himself and waited.

Titty saw more of what happened than any of the others, and she really saw very little. The Amazon went about once more, and sailed round the southern end of the island. Titty watched her until the trees at that end of the island hid her. John saw her only for a moment as she passed across the opening in the rocks outside the harbour. Then he could not see her any more. Then he heard voices not far away but dared not move for fear of showing himself. Presently he heard the voices further away, near the landing-place. He hurried back through the trees to help Susan. But Susan had seen them as they passed, for a moment only, through the trees. They had not stopped at all. Sailing fast, with the wind with them, they had run through between the island and the mainland, and were already north of the island, sailing straight on towards Houseboat Bay and Darien. Susan and John hurried together to the look-out point, where Roger, his legs kicking with excitement, was lying in the heather watching the Amazon growing smaller and smaller.

“They hauled down the flag almost as soon as they were clear of the island,” he said.

“Then they must have hoisted it only because they saw us,” said John.

Titty joined them.

“If they were pirates,” she said, “why did the pirate on the houseboat fire at them?”

“Perhaps he didn’t,” said Susan. “Watch if they run into Houseboat Bay again.”

“They haven’t got a cannon,” said Roger, “and he has, a beauty. I know it was the pirate on the houseboat who fired.”

The Amazon did not run into Houseboat Bay. The little boat, with her white sail well out, held on her course, leaving a long line of wake astern of her, as straight as if it had been laid off with a ruler.

“They know how to steer,” said Captain John. One of Swallow’s weak points was that she was inclined to yaw about with a following wind. It was none too easy to leave a wake like that. And, as John could not admit that there might be easier boats to steer than Swallow, he had to give all the credit for that straight line to the sailors of the Amazon.

They watched the little white sail grow smaller until at last it disappeared beyond the Peak of Darien.

“She must be going to Rio,” said Susan.

“We’d better follow and see where they come from,” said Captain John. “They can’t get back here without our seeing them. Now we can’t see them, and they can’t see us. So even if they do see us afterwards, they won’t know we have come from the island.”

“Unless they have seen us already,” said Susan.

“They didn’t see Swallow, anyhow,” said John. “I took her mast down. Let’s have a pemmican day. Then we needn’t wait to cook dinner. Don’t let’s waste a minute. A loaf of bread and a tin of pemmican and some apples, and we’ll get four bottles of ginger beer, grog, I mean, in Rio. Then we needn’t bother about anything but tea when we get back. Come on, Roger. We’ll bring Swallow round to the landing-place. Will you be ready with the stores, Mister Mate?”

“Aye, aye, sir,” said Mate Susan.

John and Roger ran to the harbour, cast off Swallow’s moorings, and scrambled in. John stepped the mast, paddled her out through the narrows, and then began rowing as soon as there was room to use the oars. You can’t do much sculling over the stern against a south-west wind. He rowed round to the landing-place. Susan and Titty were waiting there with a tin of pemmican, a tin-opener, a knife, a loaf of bread, a hunk of butter wrapped up in a bit of paper, and four large apples. A moment later the brown sail was hoisted and set, and Swallow, with her whole crew aboard, was slipping out from behind the island.

All four were in the stern of the boat to give her her best chance with a following wind. John steered, and the other three sat in the bottom of the boat. The little Swallow foamed through the water. John did his best to keep her nose steadily on the outermost point of Darien, but, glancing back, he knew that he was not steering so well as the girl at the tiller of the Amazon. Still, he did his best, and the noise of the water boiling under Swallow’s forefoot showed that Swallow was doing her best too. The tops of the trees on the shores of the lake seemed to race across the purple slopes of the hills.

Houseboat Bay opened up. There was the houseboat and on the foredeck of her stood the fat man.

“He’s very angry about something,” said Titty.

He seemed to be shaking his fist at them, but they could not be sure, and presently they had passed the further point and could not see him.

Darien grew clearer and larger every moment.

“They’ll have lost the wind the other side of Darien,” said John, “and they won’t get much until they get beyond the islands off Rio. They’ve a long start of us, but we may get a sight of them and see where they go.”

The Swallow rounded the point of Darien. All her crew looked towards Holly Howe. Outside the farm-house they could see two figures and a perambulator—mother, nurse, and Vicky. They seemed to belong to a different, distant life. There they were, placid in the sunshine. Vicky was probably asleep. And here, foaming through the water, ran the Swallow, carrying Vicky’s brothers and sisters who, not an hour before, not half an hour before, had seen with their own eyes the black flag with the skull and cross-bones upon it run to the masthead by a strange vessel which, so they thought, had actually been fired at by the retired pirate with the green parrot from the houseboat in Houseboat Bay.

For a moment or two no one said anything.

Then Susan said: “It’s no use trying to tell mother about the pirates, not until it’s all over, anyhow. But we must put it in the log and tell her afterwards.”

“We’ll tell her when she isn’t a native any more,” said Titty. “It’s not the sort of thing you tell to natives.”

The Swallow ran on. There were now more houses on the eastern shore of the lake. The further they went, the more houses there were. There were islands. One big one had houses on it. A long sandy spit ran out with boathouses on its further side. The houses, no longer scattered among trees, clustered on the side of the hill above the little town of Rio, inhabited entirely by natives who had no idea that this was its name. The Swallow ran on in sheltered water beyond the outer islands and the spit of land. Now they could see Rio Bay and the steamer pier. They were slipping slowly through a fleet of yachts at their moorings. Motor boats were moving about with cargoes of visitors. Captain John sent the Boy Roger forward, to the boy’s delight, as a look-out man, and himself was kept very busy avoiding the rowing boats and canoes. Rio on this summer day was a busy place. A steamship hooted, left the pier, and steamed slowly out of the Bay. Not one of all the passengers who looked down from the deck on the little brown-sailed Swallow knew that the four in her were living on a desert island, and that they were interested, not in the big steamer, or the yachts, or the motor boats, but only in another little vessel as small as their own. For the crew of the Swallow there was no other vessel on the water, except, of course, this mass of clumsy native craft which really did not count. Their eyes were only for the pirate vessel they were pursuing.

She was not in Rio Bay. Four pairs of eyes searched every little jetty. She might have tied up and lowered her sail, in which case she would be hard to see. She might have slipped in behind the islands that made the Bay so good a sheltered anchorage for yachts and so suitable a playground for all these noisy natives with their rowing boats.

“We’ll sail right through the Bay,” said Captain John, “and out into the open water, so that we can see right up towards the Arctic. If we can’t see her then we’ll turn back and cruise among the islands.”

The Swallow slipped through the Bay, and almost as soon as she was clear of the long island that lies in front of the town, there was an eager shout from Roger, “Sail Ho!”

“It’s her,” shouted Susan.

From the northern entrance of the Bay, beyond the long island, it was possible to see far up the lake, a long blue sheet of water stretching away into bigger hills than those which rose from the wooded banks of the southern part.

Little over a mile away a small white sail was moving rapidly towards a promontory on the western shore. In a moment or two it disappeared.

“What shall we do now?” said Titty.

There was a short debate.

Roger was all for going on. John thought not.

“We know just where they are now,” he said. “They may be trying to draw us away from the island. If we sail down there, and they come out again, we might have to race them back to our own island. If we stay here we can be sure of getting back there before they do. I think we’d better stay here and eat our pemmican and see whether they come out or not.”

Susan said, “What about the grog?” And that made them all feel thirsty and hungry.

“But they might come out while we are buying grog in Rio,” said John. “They might slip through behind the islands, and then when we come back from Rio we might be waiting here while they are capturing our camp.”

Titty had an idea. There were plenty of small islets at this end of the big islands that sheltered Rio Bay. Why not put her ashore on one of them to watch while they sailed into Rio for the grog. Then at least they could be sure of knowing whether the pirates had come out again or not.

“Good for Titty,” said Captain John.

There was a small islet with nothing on it but rocks and heather only a hundred yards away. They sailed to leeward of it, and then John put Swallow’s head up into the wind.

“Keep a look-out for rocks under water, Roger,” said the mate.

Swallow slipped along with sail flapping, yard by yard nearer to the islet.

“Stand by to lower the sail, Mister Mate,” said John, and Susan made ready to lower away in a hurry. But there was no need. The islet rose out of water deep enough to let the Swallow lie afloat close alongside it. There was the gentlest little bump, and Titty was over the side and ashore.

“The telescope,” she said.

“Here it is,” said the mate.

“Push her off,” said John, putting the tiller hard aport.

Titty pushed. The Swallow moved backwards. Then her sail filled, she hesitated, heeled over a little, and began to move forward again. Titty waved her hand and climbed to the top of the islet, and sat there resting the telescope on her knees.

Three or four short tacks brought the Swallow to the nearest of the landing stages for rowing boats that run out from the shore in Rio Bay. Roger climbed on to the landing stage, took two turns round a bollard with the painter, and then sat himself on the top of it. To be on the safe side they lowered the sail. Then John and Susan hurried up the landing stage to the little store where you could buy anything from mouse-traps to peppermints.

“Four bottles of grog, please,” said John without thinking.

“Ginger beer,” said Susan gravely.

John was looking at a coil of rope in a corner of the shop.

“And twenty yards of this rope,” he said.

The shopman measured off twenty yards and made a neat coil of them. He put four bottles of ginger beer on the counter. John put down his five shillings. He took the coil of rope and two of the bottles. Susan took the other two.

“It’s a grand day,” said the shopman as he handed out the change.

“Yes, isn’t it?” said John.

This was the whole of their conversation with the natives of Rio.

When they came back to the landing stage, Roger said, “One of the natives came and said, ‘That’s a fine little ship you have there.’ ”

ROGER ON GUARD

“What did you say to him?” asked Susan sternly.

“I said ‘Yes,’ ” said Roger. He, too, had been giving nothing away.

They sailed back to the islet for Titty. She waved to them when she saw them coming, and was at the water’s edge ready to climb in when John brought Swallow alongside.

“It’s all right,” she said. “They haven’t come out. They must be still in there behind that promontory.”

“Well, I’m glad we know, anyway,” said John.

“May I land on Titty’s island?” said Roger.

“Why not all land and have dinner on it?” said Susan.

So they lowered the sail and landed, taking the anchor with them and letting Swallow lie in the lee of the island at the end of the anchor rope. A rock on the top of the islet made a table. John opened the pemmican tin, and jerked it till the pemmican came out all in one lump. Susan cut up the loaf and spread the butter, so that no one slice should be thicker spread than another. On the hunks of bread and butter they put hunks of pemmican, and washed them down with deep draughts of Rio grog out of the stone bottles. Then they ate the apples. All the time they kept a close watch on the promontory where the little white sail of the pirate ship had disappeared.

“They may never have seen us at all,” said Susan.

“I’m sure they did or they would never have hoisted that flag,” said John.

“Perhaps,” said Titty, “there were more of them. Perhaps these ones showed their flag so as to draw us away from the island while some of their allies landed there and took our camp.”

“I never thought of that,” said John. “There may have been a whole fleet of them waiting for us to go.”

“They may be on our island now,” said Titty.

“Anyway, let’s sail,” said Roger, who was never happy unless he could hear the water under Swallow’s forefoot.

It was lively work sailing home, tacking through the native shipping in Rio Bay, and then beating against the south-west wind which met them squarely once they had left the shelter of the islands. They thought of taking in a reef, but did not want to if they could help it. There were hardish squalls now and again, and Mate Susan stood by ready to slip the halyard and bring the sail down if it was necessary. Roger got so wet with the spray splashing in over the bows that Susan made him come aft and sit in the bottom of the boat. There was no time to think of anything but the sailing until they came in under the lee of their own island. In Houseboat Bay the man on the houseboat got up from his chair on the after-deck and looked at them through binoculars. But they hardly noticed him.

“Wind’ll drop at sunset,” said John. “We’ll land at the old landing-place. Swallow will be in good shelter there, and I’ll take her round to the harbour later on when it isn’t blowing so hard.”

So they landed at the old place. As soon as they landed they ran in a bunch up to their camp and looked into the tents. Then they went all over the island. Everything was just as they had left it. Nobody had been there. The pirates in the Amazon had had no allies.

They made a fire in the fireplace, and by the time they were sitting round it drinking their tea they had begun to think that they had been altogether wrong in thinking that the pirate flag had been hoisted on the Amazon for them to see. They began even not to be sure that they had heard the gun in Houseboat Bay.

“Why did the man on the houseboat shake his fist at us?” said Titty. “Something must have happened to make him.”

“Perhaps he didn’t really,” said John.

“I don’t suppose we shall ever see the pirates again,” said Titty sadly.

“If they were pirates,” said Susan.