Читать книгу Swallows & Amazons - Boxed Set - Arthur Ransome - Страница 36

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Titty had gone to sleep with one idea firm in her head, and she woke up next morning with it still there. She crawled out to see what sort of a day it was. It was a fine day without much wind, just what she wanted, for she knew that if there had been a strong wind she and Roger would not have been allowed to go off in Swallow by themselves, without the captain or the mate.

“Wake up, Roger,” she called.

“What’s the matter?” said Captain John.

“Somebody may get it first.”

“Get what?”

“The treasure on Cormorant Island. Roger and I are going to look for it.”

“But we’ve all looked once, and there’s nothing there.”

“It’s our last day,” said Titty obstinately, “and you and Susan said we might. And I’m sure it’s there.”

“But Captain Flint’s coming, and we’re all going fishing.”

“Roger and I are going treasure-hunting. We settled it last night. And there’s no wind.”

“You’ll be awfully disappointed, Titty,” said Susan sleepily.

“Not when I find it,” said Titty.

“Well, heave out, Roger,” said Captain John, “you can go across and get the milk, anyhow, as soon as you’ve bathed.”

“Double lot to-day because of the Amazons and Captain Flint,” called the mate. “We’ll have to take some with us when we go whaling.”

It was a quick bathe that morning for the boy and the able-seaman. The able-seaman did not bother about pearls, and she drove the boy out to dry as soon as he had shown that he could swim both ways, on his front and on his back. Then they hurried across for the milk. They came back to find everybody but the mate of the Swallow busy setting up fishing rods.

“You’re not really going off to Cormorant Island, Able-seaman?” said Peggy. “You know there’s nothing there. You’d much better come whaling with us.”

But Able-seaman Titty was not to be persuaded, and the Boy Roger, though he thought rather well of whaling, made up his mind to follow the able-seaman.

After breakfast, while the others were busy catching minnows to be ready for Captain Flint, Mate Susan made them each a large packet of sandwiches and bunloaf, and gave them a bottle of milk.

“Now remember, Roger, Titty’ll be in command, and you’ll do just what she tells you.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” said the boy.

“What shall we have for a pickaxe?” said the able-seaman.

“You don’t want a pickaxe,” said the mate.

“Of course we do,” said the able-seaman. “The treasure may be fathoms deep.”

“Take the hammer,” said John.

“We ought to have the compass too, and a chart with skeletons on it, and pictures of trees.”

“You can have the compass, if you take care of it.”

“Well, don’t be too long, anyhow,” said the mate. “You’ll see where we go with Captain Flint, and when you’re tired of the island, you can come. We’ll take your fishing rods.”

They walked down with their stores to the harbour. John took the mast and sail out of Swallow. Everybody wished them good luck, and the able-seaman and the boy set off, Titty poling the Swallow out of the harbour.

“Don’t stay there too long,” Mate Susan called after them.

“Far better come whaling,” called Captain Nancy.

There was too much in Titty’s head to let her think of an answer.

As soon as they were clear of the island, Able-seaman Titty gave one of the oars to Roger. They sat side by side on the middle thwart.

“You keep time with me, Boy,” said the able-seaman.

“All right.”

Titty lifted her oar from the water. Roger gave one pull.

“Boy,” said the able-seaman, “you mustn’t say ‘All right.’ ”

“Aye, aye, sir,” said the boy.

“We are going to land on a desert island, to look for pirate treasure—the treasure the pirates took from Captain Flint. There may be land crabs, or alligators, or enemies of all kinds. The treasure may be buried deep in dead men’s bones. We may be all our lives finding it. . . .”

“Susan said we weren’t to be long.”

“The mate meant, don’t waste time. We won’t waste time, but looking for treasure you never can tell to a year or two. We must face our dangers. We must keep together. And you must do what you are told.”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

“Now then, at the same time as me . . . dig in.”

They both dug in, and the Swallow, a heavy little ship to row, because of her shape and her ballast, moved on a zigzag course across the lake.

Able-seaman Titty knew that it was not the thing to keep looking over your shoulder, but she was not very sure of how to manage without. Half-way across, she took both oars, and made Roger sit in the stern and steer.

Cormorant Island was little more than a heap of rocks and stones, sticking up out of the water. There was some heather on it, a little grass, but very little, and two trees, both dead. One of the trees was lying on the rocks. It had been uprooted a long time ago, and the ground about it was nothing but great stones. The other tree, gaunt and bare, splashed with the white droppings of the birds, was the perching place of the cormorants.

“We’re quite near,” said Roger. “I can see the birds.”

Titty looked round. Two cormorants, black, long-necked, a patch of white at their beaks, flew away fast and low over the water. Two others waited on the topmost branch of the dead tree.

“They’re guarding the treasure,” said Titty.

“One of them’s swallowing a fish,” said Roger. “Now they’ve both gone.”

The two last cormorants rose from the tree and flew after the others, swinging at first low, then high, over the lake, wheeling far away by Darien, and coming down to the water where neither Roger nor Titty could see them.

“There’s Captain Flint,” said Roger. They could see his big rowing boat between Houseboat Bay and Wild Cat Island. He was on his way to join in the whaling expedition.

They waved, but he was rowing with his back to them, and at the other side of the lake.

“This is the place where I was anchored in Amazon,” said the able-seaman, “and I heard the pirates row past me, and then they crashed into the rocks.”

“Real pirates?” said the boy.

“I couldn’t see them,” said Titty, “but I heard the oars of their ship’s gig, and I heard them talk. They swore like real ones. And then I heard them hit the rocks.”

“It’s all rocks on this side,” said the boy.

Titty rowed slowly round the island. There was no good place for beaching Swallow.

“There’s the place where we landed with Captain Flint,” said Roger.

“His boat has narrow bows,” said Titty. “We couldn’t get Swallow’s nose in there.”

She rowed nearer to the north end of the island.

“It looks as if we could come alongside that rock,” she said, “but we won’t try to beach her. Captain John said we were to be careful about landing. So look out.”

There was just a little bump as the Swallow touched the rock, but it was not a bad one. The able-seaman scrambled out with the painter, and held the gunwale, while the boy followed.

“Shall I bring the compass?” he said.

“No,” said the able-seaman, “we’ll leave it in the ship until we need it. But bring the pickaxe and pass out the stores. Better leave the bottle.”

The boy gave the packets of sandwiches to the able-seaman. Then he gave her the hammer and scrambled out.

“Now we’ll fasten the painter round that rock, just the end of it. What wind there is is from the south, and she’ll float off without touching anything. We’ll leave the stores on the rock.”

It was done, and for some minutes the able-seaman stood watching her ship, which rode quietly at the end of the long painter, clear of all danger.

“She’s all right like that,” she said at last. “Now for the treasure.”

It was very hard going on those rocks, as everybody had found, even Captain Flint, when they had all come here to look for the stolen trunk, the day before the battle in Houseboat Bay. For the boy and the able-seaman it was very hard indeed. The rocks stuck up at all angles. There were deep clefts between them, big enough to take a foot and small enough to make it difficult to get the foot out again. Then there were lots of loose stones which slipped all ways when you trod on them. It took the treasure-hunters a long time even to get from one end of the island to the other.

“I’m glad we live on Wild Cat Island and not here,” said Roger.

“This is a real desert island,” said Titty. “Keep a look-out for a skeleton.”

“Here are lots of bones,” said Roger a minute or two later.

“Real bones?” called Titty.

“Little ones,” said Roger.

Titty climbed round a rock to where Roger was standing looking down at a little heap of white fishbones. She looked up at once and, sure enough, there was a small hole in the rocks above them, a hole big enough for a tennis ball to go into. The hole was splashed with greenish white, and so was the rock below it. Titty reached up towards it, but just at that moment something flew out with fast-moving down-turned wings, flashing brilliant blue in the sunlight.

“It’s the kingfisher’s nest,” she said. “Those are the bones of the minnows he’s eaten. Not pirate bones at all.”

They went on with the search. There were many more bones on Cormorant Island, but they were all fishbones. When the boy and able-seaman scrambled along to the tree where the cormorants always perched, they found plenty of them, lying under it. But the rocks there were so dirty, and the smell there was so bad, that they were glad to get away. And they found no sign of anything that might be treasure.

Roger began to lose heart, and also to feel hungry. They sat down on the flat rock at the north end of the island where they had left their provisions. They got the bottle of milk out of Swallow, ate their sandwiches and took turns in bubbling the milk out of the bottle into their mouths.

“There’s Captain Flint and the others,” said Titty. “They’re all in his boat. Over there. Not in Shark Bay. In the little bay we passed when we went to see the savages with the snake.”

“I wonder how many whales they’ve caught,” said Roger. “Sharks too, perhaps. Anyhow, lots of perch.”

“It’s much better to find treasure than just to sit catching fish,” said Titty.

“But we haven’t found any,” said Roger.

“We haven’t nearly looked everywhere yet. It must be here,” said Titty. “Come on. You hunt one side, and I’ll hunt the other. Shout if you find it.”

Presently Roger shouted, but it was not because he had found the treasure. He had slipped on the stones and scraped his knee.

“Which knee is it?” called Titty.

“The one that wasn’t scraped before,” said Roger. “At least not the one that got scraped last, but the other one.”

Able-seaman Titty, as surgeon to the expedition, washed the knee, and tied it up with Roger’s handkerchief. Roger tried to blow his nose in the corner of it that was left after the tying up.

“You can have my handkerchief,” said Titty. “It’s my pink one.”

Roger blew his nose loudly in the pink handkerchief, and cheered up again.

Time went on. The morning was gone, and the afternoon was going, and still there was no sign of anything that might mean treasure. Titty had worked at least twice right round the island. Roger stopped looking, and went and sat on the rock to which Swallow’s painter was tied. He pulled on the painter, and Swallow came obediently to his feet. He met her with a bare foot on her stern, and she slid back again.

“Let’s row again,” he said. “We could see just as well from Swallow as on these rocks. Then if we saw nothing we could go whaling.”

There was no answer. He looked for Titty. She was crawling along the rocks at the very edge of the island, not far away. Suddenly he saw her jump up with something in her hand.

“Hi! Roger!” she called.

Roger stood up, and climbed along the rocks towards her.

“I’ve found a pipe,” she shouted. “It must have belonged to one of the pirates. This must be the place where they landed.”

It was an ordinary wooden pipe. She had found it between two stones close to the edge of the water. The finding of it made a great difference to the island. Even Titty had begun to think that perhaps she must have dreamed of the pirates landing here that night in the dark, but now she had in her hand a solid proof that someone had been there besides the cormorants and the kingfisher.

“If they landed here,” said Titty, “the treasure must be close by. They didn’t go far away, because I heard them banging about all the time.”

They looked carefully about them. They were close to the place where the old tree had stood, the tree that was now lying on its side with its rotted dried roots straggling in the air. The ground was covered with big loose stones. Titty went carefully over them, and round the tree. She found nothing. She went round the tree again in a widening circle. Still nothing. She went back to her task of working right round the edge of the island.

Roger stayed where he was, and presently began to amuse himself by gathering small driftwood and dead reeds that were stuck among the rocks, and had been drying there since the last time the lake was high after the rains.

At last Titty began to lose hope again. She came back to the fallen tree and Roger with his growing pile of fuel.

“Do light it, Titty,” said Roger.

The able-seaman looked at it.

“That’s not the way,” she said. “We’ll make a fireplace like the one Susan made on the shore that day we saw the savages and the snake. Then we’ll light a fire in it, and Captain Flint and the others will see the smoke of our fire on the desert island far away. Then they’ll come, and there’ll be a rescue.”

She began building with small stones.

“We need a good big stone to go at the back,” she said.

She pulled at a biggish flat stone close by the roots of the old tree. It moved easily, and as it moved all thought of making fireplaces flew out of Titty’s mind.

“Help, Roger,” she shouted. “Where’s the pickaxe?”

She had put the hammer down when she began to build the fireplace. Roger picked it up and gave it to her. Titty tapped with it at a black corner of iron that showed under the stone she had moved. It rang of metal and wood. She pulled the stone further, and it was clear that she had uncovered the iron-bound corner of a box.

“We’ve found it, we’ve found it, we’ve found it,” shouted Titty. She pulled the stone right away to one side, and there was a torn label on the corner of the box, a label with a picture of a camel and a pyramid, and the word Cairo, plain in big letters.

“WE’VE FOUND IT!”

“Help, Roger,” said the able-seaman, “get the stones off one by one.”

They pulled off stone after stone, and with each stone that was removed the marvels of the box grew greater. It was entirely covered with labels. There were labels showing “P. and O. First Cabin.” There were labels of the Bibby Line, of the Dollar Line, of the Nippon Yusen Kaisha. There was a label with palm trees and camels and a river from some hotel in Upper Egypt. There were labels showing the blue bays and white houses of Mediterranean seaports. There was a label saying, “Wanted on the Voyage.” There were labels with queer writing on them, and no English writing at all except the word Peking. There was a label of the Chinese Eastern Railway. There were labels of hotels in San Francisco, Buenos Ayres, London, Rangoon, Colombo, Melbourne, Hong-Kong, New York, Moscow and Khartoum. Some of them were pasted over others. Some were scratched and torn. But each one delighted the able-seaman and the boy. In the middle of the lid were two letters, “J.T.” Stone after stone was pulled away. The box had been put under the tree, in the hollow where the roots had been, and then covered with big loose stones, of which there were plenty on all sides. Some of the stones were so big that Titty and Roger both pulling together could hardly move them. As for shifting the box, it was like trying to move a house. They could not stir it a quarter of an inch.

“Let’s get it open,” said Roger.

It was heavily bound with big black angle irons. The able-seaman banged at them with the hammer. There were strange double clasps that met each other, and locked, and were as strong as the iron bindings. Titty and Roger banged away at them, but they might as well have been two flies trying to break into a steel safe.