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“He turns his head, but in his ear

The steady trade-winds run,

And in his eye the endless waves

Ride on into the sun.”

BINYON.

Peter Duck was sitting on a bollard on the north quay of Lowestoft Inner Harbour, smoking his pipe in the midday sunshine and looking down at a little, green, two-masted schooner that was tied up there while making ready for sea. He was an old sailor with a fringe of white beard round a face that was as brown and wrinkled as a walnut. He had sailed in the clipper ships racing home with tea from China. He had sailed in the wool ships from Australia. He had been round the Horn again and again and knew it, as he used to say, as well as he knew the crook of his own thumb. But for a long time now he had left the sea. He lived in an old wherry on the Norfolk rivers, sailing this way and that between Norwich and Lowestoft and Yarmouth and Beccles, sometimes with a cargo of potatoes, sometimes with a cargo of coals, and sometimes with the deck of his wherry piled so high with reeds for thatching that the sail would hardly clear them. But he had not very much to do and every now and then he used to leave his old wherry in Oulton Broad and slip down to Lowestoft to look at the boats and the fishermen and to smell the fresh wind blowing in from the sea. And for two or three days now he had been coming along to smoke his pipe on this particular bollard because he liked the looks of the little green schooner that was lying there moored to the quay.

There was a queer thing about this little schooner. There seemed to be only one man aboard her, a big fat man with a bald head. Peter Duck knew what his name was, for there were two girls helping him, and Peter Duck heard them calling him sometimes “Uncle Jim,” but more often “Captain Flint.” And he heard this Captain Flint calling the girls “Captain Nancy” and “Mate Peggy,” but that, he thought, was probably, his fun. The thing that puzzled Peter Duck most was that there didn’t seem to be a crew. Yet anybody could tell that the little schooner was getting ready for sea. Captain Flint and those two girls were for ever running to the ships’ chandler’s in the town and coming back with new canvas buckets, and tins of paint, and marline-spikes, and spare blocks, and what not. And as for the stores that had gone aboard her, Peter Duck had heard from a friend in the Custom-House at the end of the quay, you would have thought she was bound twice round the world and back again. And old Peter Duck looked down at her from the top of the quay and wished he was going too. “Going foreign, she is, to blue water,” he said to himself. And he thought of other little schooners he had known, on the Newfoundland Banks and in the South Seas. He thought of flying-fish and porpoises racing each other and turning over in the waves. He thought of the noise of the wind in the shrouds, and the glow of the lamp on a moving compass card, and tall masts swaying across the stars at night. And he wished he could go to sea once more and make another voyage before it was too late.

That morning Captain Flint and his two nieces had been even busier than usual, tidying up their ship, throwing chips and shavings over the side, swabbing down decks and paintwork and sweeping the dirty water out through the scuppers. And every now and then they kept looking up to the quay and along it towards the Custom-House and the harbourmaster’s office and the road from the railway station. Old Peter Duck, smoking his pipe on the quay, twisted himself round and scratched his head and wondered what they were looking for. And then a telegraph-boy had come along the quay on a red bicycle, and Captain Flint had run up the ladder to meet him, and torn open the orange envelope of a telegram, and given the boy a sixpence and said there was no answer. “Well, that’s done it,” he had said to those two girls. “He can’t come. He can’t come at all. And we can’t start without him. And it’s too late to send a wire to the Swallows. They’ll be here any time now.” All three of them aboard the schooner looked very glum after that. But it was clear that they were expecting someone else besides the telegraph-boy, for Captain Nancy and Mate Peggy still hung about on deck, and kept looking up every two minutes. Perhaps, thought Peter Duck, they were waiting for that crew of theirs. And suddenly, round the corner by the Custom-House, came two boys and two girls, helping a porter to push a handcart along and keeping the luggage on the handcart from tumbling off. On the top of the luggage was a green parrot in a cage. A monkey, on a lead, was hurrying along after the smaller of the two boys. Peter Duck had a look at them and thought they must have taken the wrong turning.

The four were all talking at once. Something had just happened to startle them.

“Did you see he had gold ear-rings?” asked Able-seaman Titty.

“Why did he look so angry?” asked Roger, the ship’s boy.

“Why shouldn’t old Polly say ‘Pieces of Eight!’ if he wants to?” said Captain John.

“Probably it was just a mistake,” said Mate Susan.

“Lucky for you it’s not his vessel you’re looking for,” said the porter.

“Why? Has he got a ship?”

“Black Jake’s not the sort of chap it’s safe to quarrel with,” said the porter. “ ‘Pieces of Eight!’ your bird said. Well, there’s many a boy in this town got a sore head for shouting that after Black Jake. You mustn’t speak of treasure to Black Jake. No. Nor yet of crabs. Look, that’s his ship. That black schooner over there on the other side. This’ll be yours. What did you say her name was?”

“Wild Cat,” said Titty.

“She’s called after our island,” said Roger.

“There’s no name on her that I can see,” said the porter. “They’ve been new painting of her.”

But at that moment Nancy and Peggy looked up and saw them coming along the quay.

“Here they are,” Peggy bent and shouted through the skylight to Captain Flint, who was busy down below.

Peter Duck had another look at the Swallows. So they were for the little schooner, were they? They hadn’t taken a wrong turning after all.

Nancy and Peggy ran to the ladder and climbed up to the quay from the deck of the schooner.

“Here you are at last,” shouted Nancy. “Swallows and Amazons for ever! Come on. She’s a beauty, the Wild Cat. Real bunks in the cabins, one above another. The ones with longest legs have the top bunks. And Captain Flint’s been building a cage for Gibber. It’s the best cabin any monkey ever had.”

THE SWALLOWS JOIN THE SHIP

“We’ve got a gorgeous galley to do the cooking in,” Mate Peggy called to Mate Susan. “On deck, too, so there won’t be any smells down below.”

“Swallows and Amazons for ever!” John, Susan, Titty, and Roger shouted back, remembering how they had shouted that over the water to each other as their little boats, the Swallow and the Amazon, were sailing home on the last day of those holidays on the lake in the north. There was great shaking of hands. Nancy and Peggy shook hands even with Gibber, and had their fingers nipped a little by the parrot, for old sake’s sake. The parrot had been in high spirits ever since the railway journey had come to an end. “Pieces of eight!” he screamed, “Pieces of eight!” just as Nancy had taught him ever so long ago.

“He hasn’t forgotten,” said Nancy.

The four Swallows were waving their hands to Captain Flint, who had just come on deck. But at this Titty turned round.

“Of course he hasn’t,” she said. “He’s got a splendid memory. He was shouting it like anything just now, when we were coming out of the station, and there was a man with gold ear-rings . . .”

“ ‘What’s that? What’s that?’ the man said.” Roger interrupted. “The man went on saying ‘What’s that? Whose is that bird?’ and he pushed his horrid face at us, and tried to take hold of the cage. Titty wouldn’t let him, but he came with us all the way until the man by the bridge stopped him and told him to leave us alone. . . .”

“How do, Mr. Duck?” said the porter, as the old sailor nodded towards the opposite quay where a handsome black schooner was lying. “Aye, it was him. Getting worse then he used to be is Black Jake. We’ll be well rid of him when he gets away. They say he’s off to have another look at them crabs of yours. He’s got the scum of the place with him in that hooker of his.”

Captain Flint came climbing up the ladder to the quay.

“Hullo, Captain John,” he said. “Hullo, Mister Mate. Glad to see you, Able-seaman. Hullo, Roger, not yet tired of being a ship’s boy? Hullo, Polly. And how’s Gibber?”

“We were most awfully afraid we were going to be late,” said John. “The train got held up by something or other. Have you been waiting for us? When are we going to start?”

Peter Duck saw Captain Flint and his two nieces look suddenly grave.

“That’s the whole trouble,” said Nancy.

“We can’t start,” said Peggy.

“We’ve just had the telegram,” said Captain Flint. “The man who was coming with us can’t get away. We’ve got to begin looking round for someone else.”

“We may be days and days,” said Peggy.

“We just can’t help it,” said Captain Flint. “Anything breakable in these bags?”

“No,” said Susan. And Captain Flint and the porter carried four long canvas kitbags to the side of the quay and dumped them over so that they fell on the deck of the schooner.

“Anyway, it’s very jolly just being here,” said John.

“Did Swallow get hurt on the journey?” asked Titty.

“Not she,” said Captain Flint. “Go along and see if you can find a scratch on her. There she is in the davits.1 A fine ship’s boat she will make. And we’ve a good dinghy as well.”

“Good old Swallow,” said Titty, looking down at the little sailing boat that Captain Flint had brought in a crate all the way to Lowestoft from that far-away lake in the north. There she was, hanging from the davits on the starboard side of the schooner, with her oars and her mast and her old brown sail neatly stowed away in her, all ready to be lowered into the harbour. “Good old Swallow.”

They had cleared the handcart by now. Susan had taken her tin box, black, with a red cross on it, full of iodine and things for colds and stomach-aches and sticking-plaster to put on people’s knees. This had been the best of Susan’s Christmas presents and ever since Christmas she had been almost pleased when anybody fell down (it was usually Roger), sorry for him, of course, but pleased to have the chance of patching him up again. John had a small tin box with a compass in it, and a barometer, and a few other things best not stuffed into a kitbag. Roger’s things had all gone into his kitbag, but Gibber had a box of his own, with his blanket in it and a tin mug he particularly liked. Nancy had taken charge of it and was laughing at seeing the monkey’s name in capital letters on the outside of his trunk. Titty had a box full of things for writing and drawing. She also had charge of the little telescope that really belonged to John.

One by one they went down the ladder and aboard the Wild Cat.

“Look out for Polly below there,” called Captain Flint, and Titty was just in time to take the big parrot-cage as it came swinging down on the end of a rope Captain Flint had borrowed from the porter. Roger and the monkey were down already. Roger had started first, pulling Gibber after him, but Gibber was quicker on a ladder than his master, and was pulling at him from below long before Roger reached the deck. John was waiting on the quay to settle with the porter for bringing the things from the station.

“That’s all right,” said Captain Flint. “It’s the ship’s affair, bringing the crew aboard.”

“Dinner’s all ready in the saloon,” said Peggy, as John and Captain Flint joined the others on the schooner’s deck. “I didn’t cook it,” she added hurriedly. “It came from the inn. But we’ll cook the next one ourselves.”

“Come on,” said Captain Flint. “This way. Leave the kitbags on deck for now. Let’s get at dinner and talk things over. Look out. Mind your heads. Oh, I was forgetting that there’ll be plenty of room for most of you. I get a fresh bump or two every time I go below.”

They crowded down the companion-way and a moment later, but for the laughter that kept coming up through the open skylights, anybody might have thought the schooner was deserted. The Swallows, the Amazons and Captain Flint were all below deck. Gibber the monkey had gone below with them. Only the parrot, in his cage, had been left on the roof of the deckhouse to enjoy the sunshine. He was preening his feathers after the journey, and talking to himself, saying sometimes, “Pretty Polly” and sometimes, “Pieces of eight.”

Up there, on the top of the quay, Peter Duck sat on his bollard alone. The porter had trundled his handcart back to the station, but Peter Duck was still sitting on his bollard, smoking his pipe, and thinking. After all, he was thinking, why not? He laughed to himself. He could just hear what his daughters would say to their old father. His mind was almost made up. And he began looking carefully at the masts of the schooner. There were one or two things up there that could do with some little attention.

Hungry as they were, for the first few minutes, they could not settle down at the saloon table. There was so much to admire below decks. Nobody had really thought that Captain Flint would keep that promise about taking them to sea in a real ship. And yet here they were, all together once more, and actually afloat, aboard a little schooner. She had been a Baltic trading schooner with a deckhouse with a couple of bunks in it, and a fo’c’sle with a couple more. But Captain Flint had decked over the hold and given it a long skylight. Where, once upon a time, had been cargoes of firewood and potatoes, he had made a saloon, with four cabins opening into it. There was a cabin for John and Roger, one for Susan and Titty, and one for Nancy and Peggy. The fourth cabin was to be a hospital, if necessary. “But, of course,” said Captain Flint, “if anybody is really ill, ill enough to be a nuisance, we’ll put him overboard.” Captain Flint himself was sleeping in the deckhouse, to be within easy reach of the wheel, and the charts. The fo’c’sle had been changed too. He had turned part of it into a big cage for Gibber, so that the monkey had his own bunk, like everybody else, but had it behind bars, so that he could be locked in there if he was getting too much in the way. On either side of the saloon, and in the fo’c’sle, and everywhere else where there was room for them, there were lockers and store cupboards crammed with every kind of tinned food.

Susan stared with surprise when Captain Flint and Peggy proudly flung open one cupboard after another.

“Pemmican,” said Peggy. “We’ve pemmican for a year at least and jam enough for ten.”

“But isn’t it rather waste?” said Susan.

“It’ll keep,” said Captain Flint. “And what do you think we’ve got under the floor?” he asked.

“Ballast,” said John.

“Water tanks,” said Captain Flint. “You can’t have better ballast than that, and you never know when you won’t be glad to be able to drink it.”

“It isn’t that he means to go very far,” said Nancy, “but he just likes to feel he could.”

“And now, thanks to Sam Bideford not coming we can’t start at all,” said Captain Flint. “But there’s nothing against having dinner. I don’t know about you people, but I’m ready for it.”

Every now and then shouts of laughter floated up through the skylights, but as time went on there were not so many, and when dinner was over and the whole ship’s company came crowding out on deck again, they were talking seriously enough.

“Couldn’t we manage by ourselves?” Nancy was saying.

“You could show us what to do,” said John.

“Look here,” said Captain Flint, “it’s no good talking about it. You and John are a couple of very good sailors, and no one could ask for better cooks than the two mates, and I’ve nothing whatever against the able-seaman and the boy, but the Wild Cat is a very different ship from the Swallow or the Amazon, and if we’re to do anything with her worth doing I must have another man aboard who can take watch and watch about with me. . . .”

And at that moment Peter Duck tapped his pipe out on his bollard, got up, walked to the edge of the quay and said, “Cap’n!”

Captain Flint looked up at the wrinkled, brown old sailor.

“Cap’n,” said Peter Duck, “can I have a word with you?”

“Why, yes,” said Captain Flint. “There’s the ladder.”

Peter Duck climbed quickly down to the deck of the Wild Cat. The others stood there watching him, and wondering what it was he was going to say.

“It’s like this, Cap’n,” said the old sailor. “These last few days I’ve been thinking a deal of your little schooner, and the more I looks at her the more I likes her. Now I’d like well to be seeing blue water once again, and I’ve been turning it over, as you might say, and I’d like to ask you plain out if it’s in your mind to be shipping a crew?”

John and Nancy looked at each other with a flash of hope. But it seemed too good to be true. What would Captain Flint say?

“A crew?” said Captain Flint. “Why, we’ve got three captains counting myself, and two mates and an able-seaman and a ship’s boy and a ship’s parrot and a monkey.”

“I seen them,” said the old sailor. “Now me, I’d be glad to sign on as an A.B. It wouldn’t be a bad thing to have an able-seaman to each mate.”

Captain Flint laughed. “As a matter of fact,” he said, “we are one man short. But are you an able-seaman? I know nothing about you, you know. You haven’t yet told me your name.”

“Duck’s my name,” said the old man. “Peter Duck, and Duck’s my nature, and I’ve been afloat as you might say, ever since I were a duckling. I’ve been on inland waters these last years, but I’m a deep sea man properly. Sailed in the Thermopylae. . . .”

“Sailed in the what?” Captain Flint eagerly caught him up.

“The old Thermopylae,” said Peter Duck. “There’s few A.B.’s with as much experience as what I have. Sixty years of it, and maybe then a bit more.”

“A fine ship,” said Captain Flint.

“If you be thinking it over, Cap’n,” said the old sailor, “and if it’s all the same to you, I seen a block up there that’s like to come adrift, and, sign on or not sign on, I might as well be putting a whipping on it.” His hands were already on the halyards and before they guessed what he was thinking of doing he had begun climbing up the mainmast. A minute later he had hitched a leg over the cross-trees. Then he pulled a knife and some twine out of his pocket and they could see him busy up there far above their heads.

“Well?” said Nancy. “How about that?”

Captain Flint said nothing. He was shading his eyes against the sunshine, looking up at the mast-head to watch what Peter Duck was doing.

Just then Roger, who had been exploring under the deckhouse, trying to get a look at the little engine that was tucked away down there, came rushing up for fear he was missing anything on deck.

Like all the others he looked up at the mast-head. “Hullo,” he said, “what’s he doing?” but did not wait to be answered. His eyes were all over the place. There was such a lot to see in this harbour. He looked at the swing bridge, closed now, with carts and motor cars and people going across it. He looked along the quay to the Custom-House with the big crest over the doorway, and beyond it the tall masts of the fishing vessels. He looked up the inner harbour towards the dry dock, where a steam trawler was being repaired and there was a great noise of men chipping rust and riveting. And then his eyes rested on that other schooner on the opposite side of the harbour, the black schooner that was tied up against the south quay. There were men taking stores aboard her, or cargo, Roger thought, and suddenly he caught sight of a man he knew on the black schooner’s deck.

“Hullo,” he said. “There’s the man who tried to be beastly about Titty’s parrot. The man with the ear-rings.”

“Where?” said Titty.

“Over there. On that ship. He’s seen us. He’s looking at us with a telescope.”

“He’s wondering what’s being done to our mast,” said John.

But Peter Duck was coming down now, hand over hand, faster than he went up, with his legs about the mast to steady himself.

“Good enough,” said Captain Flint. “In the Thermopylae, I think you said? There’ve been few ships to touch her. I think we might fix something up together. But you’d better meet the rest of us. This is Captain John. This is Captain Nancy. Both have commanded their own vessels. This is Able-seaman Titty. This is Roger, the ship’s boy. Where are the mates? Great hands at cooking are our mates. Ah, here they are. Mate Susan of the Swallow and Mate Peggy of the Amazon. This is Mr. Duck, who’s thinking of coming down Channel with us. . . .”

“Down Channel, sir?” said Peter Duck. “But I made sure you was going foreign.”

“No reason why we shouldn’t,” said Captain Flint, “if we all get on together. We’ve got no plans as yet.”

“It was blue water as I was thinking of,” said Peter Duck.

“You think we’re fit for it?”

“She’s a tough little packet is yours,” said Peter Duck, “and two men and a boy could take her anywheres.”

“What about girls?” said Nancy rather fiercely.

“I don’t count captains girls,” said Peter Duck, “nor mates neither, nor yet able-seamen. And I’ve three girls myself, all proper sailormen, though they’re settled down now and got families.”

Nancy laughed. “That’s all right,” she said. “Some people don’t understand.”

“How soon could you join?” asked Captain Flint.

Everybody listened. Peter Duck thought for a moment before answering.

“It’s like this,” he said. “I’ve a vessel of my own to lay up before I can sail with you. Lying at Oulton she is, my old wherry, and I must sail her up to Beccles and leave all snug with one of my daughters for to keep an eye on her while I’m away. All that takes time. And then there’s my things to put together. It’s a good while now since I last went to sea.”

Faces fell once more. Perhaps after all it would be days and days before they could be starting.

Peter Duck went on. He looked up and sniffed the air and glanced at the vane over the Custom-House. “But there’s a right wind for Beccles now, and she’s a flyer is my old wherry. Arrow of Norwich, they call her. Everybody knows of her. I don’t say but what I might be back here with my dunnage to-morrow morning, and you’ll hardly be sailing before then. There’s best part of a day’s work to do on the rigging, seems to me.”

Captain Flint laughed. “I thought you were going to say the week after next. That’s all right. You’re the man for us, if you think you won’t mind cramming into the deckhouse with me. You and I ought to be handy for the wheel. . . .”

A few minutes later Captain Flint and Peter Duck were walking off together along the quay to the harbourmaster’s office.

“Well, that’s just saved us,” said Nancy.

“And isn’t Peter Duck a lovely name?” said Titty.

“That man’s still got his telescope,” said Roger. “But he isn’t pointing it at us now. He’s watching Captain Flint walking along the quay.”

They looked across the water to the black schooner. The man who had been angry with the parrot was standing on the deck with a telescope to his eye, watching Captain Flint and Peter Duck, who were just turning into the harbourmaster’s office.

Captain Flint came back alone. He was in the highest spirits.

“We simply couldn’t have done better,” he was saying. “The harbourmaster tells me that that old man’s the best seaman that’s ever shipped out of Lowestoft. The Thermopylae! We shall know something about sailing when that old fellow has finished with us. And now we can start the moment we’re ready. Trial trip to-morrow. Well, anyway, the day after. I was thoroughly bothered when I heard Sam Bideford couldn’t come. What a bit of luck. An old sailor from the Thermopylae! Good enough for anybody.”

“What is the Thermopylae?” asked Roger.

“A fine clipper ship,” said Captain Flint. “She was named after a battle, a land battle, though, not like Salamis. Oh yes, Roger, we heard all about your picture of that, of Salamis, I mean, and how you put funnels on all the triremes. You’ll be an engineer before ever you’ll be a sailor. You’ve been at the engine already in this ship. . . .”

Roger grinned a little shyly. “How do you know?” he asked.

“One large smudge of grease on your left cheek,” said Captain Flint. “There’s nowhere else you could have got it. Simple, eh? Well, come along now and have another look at it. And get your things stowed in your cabins, you others. We’ve a lot to do before Mr. Duck comes aboard in the morning.”

The rest of the day was busy for everybody. The old sailor, Peter Duck, was sailing the Arrow of Norwich up to Beccles, and wondering what his daughter there would say when she heard that her old father was going to sea once more. Aboard the green schooner Roger had been appointed engineer. He was oiling the engine, and Gibber the monkey was following him round with an oil-can, copying him in everything, and dripping oil on likely places. A board had been slung over the stern, and John was sitting on it with a tin of white paint and a brush, painting in the name “wild cat: lowestoft” in good big letters. Peggy and Susan were going through the stores and getting things into working order in the little galley at the forward end of the deckhouse, where they were to cook. Nancy and Titty were polishing up the brasswork and talking of old times. Captain Flint was lending a hand here, there, and everywhere. The parrot was practising his words. And away there on the black schooner at the other side of the harbour, Black Jake, that dark, scowling man with the black ringlets and the gold ear-rings, was watching all that was going on through his long telescope.