Читать книгу Swallows & Amazons - Boxed Set - Arthur Ransome - Страница 26

Table of Contents

She looked round the camp, and felt at once that there was something wrong. There were two tents, and a shipwrecked mariner on a desert island ought only to have one. For a moment she thought of taking down the captain’s tent, but then she remembered that for part of the time she would not be a shipwrecked mariner, but would be in charge of an explorers’ camp, while the main body had sailed away on a desperate expedition. During that part of the time the more tents there were the better. So she decided not to take down the captain’s tent. “It’s Man Friday’s tent,” she said to herself. “Of course I haven’t discovered him yet. But it’s ready for him when the time comes.”

Then she went into the tent that belonged to her and to the mate. It was still a very Susanish tent. Susan had taken her blankets, but she had left her haybag. It was quite clear that it was a tent belonging to two people and not a tent belonging to a lonely, shipwrecked sailor. So the able-seaman took Susan’s haybag, and put it on the top of her own, and spread her blankets over the two of them. At once the tent became hers and hers alone, and it would be easy enough to put the mate’s haybag back in its place when it was time to be on guard over a whole camp.

She lay down on the two haybags. The sun glowed through the white canvas of the tent, and through the doorway she could see smoke rising from the smouldering fire. She began to feel that she was really alone. Even the buzzing of the bees in the heather just behind the tent helped to make her feel that there was no one else on the island. She listened for other noises. Birds were not singing much, but a sandpiper was whistling somewhere near. There was the lapping of water against the western shore, and now and again the faint rustling of wind in the leaves. But there were no human noises at all. Nobody was clattering tins. Nobody was washing up plates. Roger was not there to be looked after. Susan was not there to be looking after both of them. John was not at the look-out place, or splicing ropes in Swallow at the other end of the island. Nothing was being done by anybody on the island. Nothing would be done if she did not do it herself. It was like being the only person in the world.

Suddenly she heard the chug, chug, chug of a steamer on its way down the lake. On ordinary days nobody bothered much about steamers except Roger, but to-day, on hearing it, Able-seaman Titty jumped up and ran out of the tent into the sunlight. Through the trees on the western shore she could see the steamer passing the island a long way off. She looked at it through the telescope. There were a lot of people on deck, and she could see one of the sailors at the wheel. Perhaps the people on the steamer were looking at the island. They did not know that there was nobody on the island except one able-seaman who had been wrecked there five-and-twenty years before. Of course, that was because she had not waved a flag to show that she was there, and waiting to be rescued. But who would wave a flag to be rescued if they had a desert island of their own? That was the thing that spoilt Robinson Crusoe. In the end he came home. There never ought to be an end.

The steamer hurried on down the lake, and Titty followed it through the trees on the high western shore of the island. The path to the harbour was turning into a regular beaten track. “It really looks as if I’d been here for years and years,” said Titty, “but it’s a pity I’ve got no goats. Goats would soon have nibbled off all these branches that hang across the path, and catch your hair if you try to run along it in a hurry.” She took out her knife and began pruning the branches to make the path better. Every branch that hung across the path and was low enough to be in the way she broke or cut off until by working hard she had cleared the track the whole way to the harbour. Then she ran along it both ways, to the camp and back to the harbour again. Now it really was a path. What a funny thing it was that no one had thought of clearing it sooner. Somehow there was always more time to do things when you were alone.

At the harbour she reached up to the nail on the forked tree to make sure that she would be able to hang the lantern on it. She could not quite reach it, but that would be all right because she would be holding the lantern by the bottom part of it, and the ring that had to be hooked on the nail was at the top. The nail on the stump with the white cross on it was quite low. There would be no sort of difficulty about that.

She began to think that it was going to be a very long time till dark would come, and still longer till the Swallow and her crew would come sailing back. But it would be worth it if only they brought the Amazon with them as a prize. That would show the pirates. And then to-morrow the Swallows would sail up to the Amazon River to tell the pirates that they had lost the war, and to bring Nancy and Peggy back to Wild Cat Island as humble and respectful prisoners. For a moment Titty wished that she was with the others in the Swallow. Now they must be searching the islands by Rio, keeping a good look-out, waiting for dusk before going on to the mouth of the river. She wondered what the river was like. All the same you cannot have everything, and if she had not chosen to stay at home, and light the lighthouse lantern and the leading lights, she would never have had a chance of having a whole island to herself.

She took her shoes off, and paddled across to the big rock on one side of the harbour. She climbed to the top of it, and lay there, looking down to the foot of the lake and watching the steamer swing in towards the distant pier. And just then she saw the dipper. A round, stumpy little bird, with a short tail like a wren’s, a brown back and a broad white waistcoat, was standing on a stone that showed above the water not a dozen feet away. It bobbed, as if it were making a bow, or a quick, careless kind of curtsey.

“What manners,” said Titty to herself. She lay perfectly still, while the little brown and white bird bobbed on its stone.

Suddenly the dipper jumped feet first into the water. It did not dive like a cormorant, but dropped in, like someone who does not know how to dive jumping in at the deep end of a swimming-bath. A few moments later it flew up again out of the water, and perched on its stone, and bobbed again as if it were saying thank you for applause.

Again it flung itself from the stone, and dropped into the water. This time it dropped into quite smooth water sheltered by the big rock on which Titty was lying. Looking down she could see it under water, flying with its wings, as if it were in the air, fast along the bottom of the lake close under the rock. When it came up, it did not come up like a duck after a dive to rest on the surface, but simply went on flying with no difference at all when it left the water and came into the air, except that in the air its wings moved faster.

“Well, I’ve never seen a bird do that before,” said Titty as the dipper perched on its stone and made two or three bobs. “It’s the cleverest bird I’ve ever seen, as well as the most polite. I wish it would do it again.” She lifted herself on her elbow to bow to the dipper when the dipper bowed to her. It’s very hard not to bob to a dipper when a dipper bobs to you. But the dipper did not seem to like it, and flew away out of sight behind the other rocks, fast and low over the water.

For a long time Titty waited for it to come back. But it did not come. Perhaps it had gone back to the beck where it lived. Suddenly Titty remembered that she was guarding the island against all attack. She ought to be at the look-out place with the telescope, not here. So she climbed down the rock, paddled ashore, and put on her shoes. Instead of going back by the path she had cleared, she thought she would go by the other path, that was hardly a path at all, the track they had sometimes used between the harbour and the landing-place. Here the undergrowth was thick, and the bushes were tangled with honeysuckle. It was like forcing your way through a jungle. Titty once more became Robinson Crusoe on his desert island.

She came out close by the landing-place, and stopped short. Something had happened while she was looking at the steamer and the polite dipper. She was no longer alone on the island. There was a rowing boat with its nose pulled up on the beach. A moment later she knew what boat it was. It was the rowing boat from Holly Howe. She ran up to the camp, and there was mother looking at the empty tents.

“Hullo, Man Friday,” said Titty joyfully.

“Hullo, Robinson Crusoe,” said mother. That was the best of mother. She was different from other natives. You could always count on her to know things like that.

Robinson Crusoe and Man Friday then kissed each other as if they were pretending to be Titty and mother.

“You didn’t expect to see me so soon after yesterday,” said mother, “but I came to say something to John. I suppose he’s with the rest of the crew in that secret harbour of yours that poor natives are not allowed to see.”

“No. He isn’t on the island just at present,” said Titty. “No one is except me . . . and now you too.”

“So you really are Robinson Crusoe,” said mother, “and I am Man Friday in earnest. If I’d known that I’d have made a good big footprint on the beach. But where are the others?”

“They’re all right,” said Titty. “They’re coming back again. They’ve gone in Swallow on a cutting-out expedition.” More than that she could not well say, because, after all, Man Friday might be mother, but she was also a native, even if she was the best native in the world.

“I expect they’ve gone to meet the Blackett children,” said mother.

“Man Friday ought not to know anything about them,” said Titty.

“Very well, I won’t,” said mother. “But what are you doing all by yourself?”

“Properly I’m in charge of the camp,” said Titty. “But while they’re not here it doesn’t make any difference if I’m Robinson Crusoe instead.”

“I am sure it doesn’t,” said mother. “Have they left you anything to eat?”

“I’ve got my rations in the tent,” said Titty.

“Well, it’s high time you ate them,” said mother. “Will you let Man Friday put some more wood on the fire, and make some tea? I can’t stay very long, but perhaps they’ll be back before I go.”

“I don’t think they will,” said Titty. “They’ve sailed across the Pacific Ocean. Timbuctoo is nothing to where they’ve gone.”

“Well, I’ll make some tea, anyhow,” said mother. “Let’s see what they’ve left you in the way of rations.”

Titty brought out her rations, a good big hunk of pemmican, some brown bread, some biscuits, and a large fat slice of cake. Man Friday did not think much of them. “Still,” she said, “I think we shall be able to make a meal. What about butter? And potatoes? What if we were to make pemmican cakes?”

Man Friday rummaged in the store box, and found some butter which was rather soft. She sniffed at it, and said it ought to be eaten, anyhow, and more would have to be got from Mrs. Dixon’s to-morrow. She found some potatoes and also the salt. Robinson Crusoe had the tea among her rations, rolled up in a screw of paper. She also had a tobacco box full of sugar.

Man Friday opened up the fire, and put sticks on it, and soon had it blazing up round the big kettle. She peeled some potatoes, and set them to boil in a saucepan at the edge of the fire. She chopped up the pemmican into very little bits like mince. Then, when the potatoes were soft, she took them out of the water, and broke them up, and mixed them with the chopped meat and made half a dozen round flat cakes of pemmican and potato. Then she put some butter in the frying-pan and melted it, and then she fried the pemmican cakes till they sizzled and bubbled all over them. Robinson Crusoe made the tea.

When they had eaten their meal, which was a very good one, Robinson Crusoe said, “Now, Man Friday, would you mind telling me some of your life before you came to this island?”

Man Friday began at once by telling how she had nearly been eaten by savages, and had only escaped by jumping out of the stew-pot at the last minute.

“Weren’t you scalded?” said Robinson Crusoe.

“Badly,” said Man Friday, “but I buttered the places that hurt most.”

And then Man Friday forgot about being Man Friday, and became mother again, and told about her own childhood on a sheep station in Australia, and about emus that laid eggs as big as a baby’s head, and opossums that ran about with their young ones in a pocket in their fronts, and about kangaroos that could kill a man with a kick, and about snakes that hid in the dust. Here Robinson Crusoe, who had forgotten that she was Robinson Crusoe, and had turned into Titty again, talked about the snake that she had seen herself in the cigar-box that was kept in the charcoal-burners’ wigwam. Then she told mother about the dipper, and how it had bobbed at her, and flown under water. Then mother talked about the great drought on the sheep stations, when there was no rain and no water in the wells, and the flocks had to be driven miles and miles to get a drink, and thousands and thousands of them died. Then she talked of the pony she had had when she was a little girl, and then of the little brown bears that her father caught in the bush, and that used to lick her fingers for her when she dipped them in honey.

Time went on very fast, much faster than when Robinson Crusoe had been alone. But suddenly Man Friday jumped up and said that she must go home.

“I can’t wait any longer,” she said. “I must go back to Vicky. But I’m sorry I haven’t seen John. I saw he was worried yesterday about what this Mr. Turner had said to him, and I wanted to ask if he would like me to write to Mrs. Blackett to ask her to let her brother know that John had never touched his boat.”

Titty was not sure. There were the Amazon pirates to think about. It would never do to get the natives mixed up in things. So she said she would tell John what mother had said as soon as he came back.

“I wonder why they are so long,” said mother. “Are you sure you are all right here by yourself? Wouldn’t you like to come home with me to Holly Howe? You could watch and shout to them when they come past, or you could come on a visit to me, and spend the night, and run along the road to Mrs. Dixon’s in the morning to join the others when they come for the milk. We could leave a note here for John to say where you have gone.”

For a moment Titty thought she would like to go. Somehow, with mother going, the island seemed to be much lonelier than before she came. Then she remembered the leading lights and the lighthouse, and that she was in charge of the camp.

“No thank you,” she said. “I’d rather stay here.”

Mother took the frying-pan and saucepan and mugs and plates down to the landing-place, and washed them while Titty dried them. Then she brought them back to the camp, and put them neatly away. She filled the kettle and put it on one of the stones of the fireplace, half on and half off the fire. “It’ll get hot there,” she said, “and then it’ll boil up quickly when they come back thirsty for their tea.”

“I don’t think they’ll be back so soon,” said Titty.

Mother looked at her.

“You’d better come along with me,” she said. “The camp will look after itself all right.”

“No thank you,” said Titty firmly.

“Oh well,” said mother, “if you are quite sure you will be all right. But don’t wait tea for them too long. The Blacketts might ask them to stay and have tea with them.”

Titty said nothing.

Mother got into the boat, and pushed off with an oar.

“Good-bye, Robinson Crusoe,” she said.

“Good-bye, Man Friday,” said Titty. “It was very jolly having you here. I hope you liked my island.”

“Very much indeed,” said mother.

She rowed slowly away. Titty ran up to the look-out point to wave. Mother rowed past below it. The island was suddenly very lonely indeed. Titty changed her mind.

“Mother,” she called.

Mother stopped rowing.

“Want to come?” she called.

But in that moment Titty remembered again that she was not merely Robinson Crusoe, who had a right to be rescued by a passing ship, but was also Able-seaman Titty, who had to hoist the lantern on the big tree behind her, so that the others could find the island in the dark, and then to light the leading lights so that they could bring their prize into the harbour.

“No,” she called. “Only good-bye.”

“Good-bye,” called mother.

“Good-bye,” called Titty. She lay down on the look-out point, and watched mother through the telescope. Suddenly she found that she could not see her. She blinked, pulled out her handkerchief, and wiped first the telescope glass and then her eye.

“Duffer,” she said. “That’s with looking too hard. Try the other eye.”