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“The old man said, ‘I mean to hang on

Till her canvas busts or her sticks are gone’—

Which the blushing looney did, till at last

Overboard went her mizen mast.

Hear the yarn of a sailor,

An old yarn learned at sea.”

masefield, The Yarn of the Loch Achray

In the morning Captain John had everything ready for pushing off and hoisting sail. He was waiting only for his crew and his crew were busy tidying up the camp after breakfast, because the mate would never allow things to be left dirty between one meal and the next.

“She likes the camp to look as if no one had ever eaten even a biscuit in it,” said John to himself, rather grumpily, though he knew the mate was right. But he had a reason for being in a hurry.

Long ago the Amazon had been sighted, sailing fast down the lake, along the farther shore. The explorers on Wild Cat Island had slept so well that there was never any chance that they could beat Nancy and Peggy Blackett in getting first to Horseshoe Cove. Nancy had said Amazon would be there first, and she would be, first by any amount. But that was not all. Captain John had seen what a good wind she had out there. Through the telescope he had seen that there were pretty big waves on that side of the lake. From the rock above the harbour he had watched Amazon race past Cormorant Island and on and on until she reached the narrow entrance into Horseshoe Cove. Then, watching through the telescope, he had seen how Nancy and Peggy jibed her smartly, brought the sail over on the other side, and shot out of sight into the little bay. While he was watching, he was planning, of course, exactly what he would do in sailing Swallow across there. The wind was north-east, so that it was blowing directly from Wild Cat Island to Horseshoe Cove. Captain John made up his mind that he would run down wind to the cove with the sail out on the port side. By doing that, he thought, he would be able to turn into the cove without having to jibe in the rough water and harder wind that he could see that he would find there. He had this plan clear in his mind, and now he wanted to be sailing and getting across there before the wind changed or something happened to make the plan no good. It seemed to him that the wind was getting stronger and he did not want to have to reef when, as he had seen, the Amazon had carried full sail. He wanted to be off at once and to-day everybody else seemed to be busy about something that did not matter at all. It had begun at breakfast when Titty had started making a fuss about torches, as if anybody wanted torches on a summer day. He had been a donkey to give in to her and to let her have his torch to put in with the rest of the luggage.

At last he heard the others coming.

Roger came first with the kettle. Then came Titty with a basket of eggs and a frying-pan. Then mate Susan with two knapsacks, one full of towels and bathing things, and the other with rations for the expedition. “We shan’t want much,” she had said, “because the Amazons have got to get back to tea.” As she came, she was going over the things she had put in. “Biscuits, bread, seed-cake, spoons, knife, marmalade, butter . . .”

“You haven’t put in egg-cups,” said Roger, “because we don’t have any.”

“Botheration!” said the mate, dumping the knapsacks on the ground and turning to run back to the camp. “I’ve forgotten the salt.”

There was really nothing much in this to bother the captain, but it did bother him all the same. He was in a hurry to sail, and had been waiting a long time, and perhaps it was just that little bit of bad luck in the mate’s forgetting the salt and keeping back the ship for two minutes more that made the captain not quite so careful as usual.

At last everything was stowed, the crew aboard, and Swallow was pushed off, stern-first. And then it was discovered that in her haste the mate had forgotten to bring her torch.

“We shan’t want it anyway,” she said.

“No one’s going back for it now,” said John. “Do hold the tiller amidships while I paddle her out.”

“It’s all right,” said Titty, “we’ve got the other three.”

“There’s quite a lot of wind,” said the mate, when they were clear of the rocks outside.

“That’s why I was in a hurry,” said the captain. “Now then, see that the main-sheet is free, so that the boom can swing right out. I’m going to hoist the sail up now. Are you ready?”

“Aye, aye, sir,” said the mate.

John shipped his oars, hooked on the gaff, and swayed up the brown sail. The boom swung out free, so that the sail was no more than a big flag. John hurried aft to the tiller. He hauled in ever so little on the main-sheet, so that the sail held the wind and Swallow began to move. Then, putting the tiller up he let her bear away until she was heading straight for Horseshoe Cove. The little pennant flew out straight before her from the masthead. The water creamed out from under her forefoot as she gathered speed.

“Shall I go forward now to be look-out?” asked Roger.

“No,” said John, who was beginning to feel how strong the wind was. “We want all the weight aft. Both you and Titty come as far aft as you can.”

The wind was dead aft and stronger with every yard that they moved out of the shelter of the island and the hills on the eastern shore of the lake. With Susan beside him in the stern-sheets, and the boy and the able-seaman crowded aft on the bottom boards at their feet, it was all that John could do to keep the Swallow steady on her course. The wind pressing on her sail seemed to be trying to lift her rudder out of the water and that did not help to make steering easy.

“She’s going faster than a motor boat,” said Roger.

“Oughtn’t we to have reefed?” said the mate.

“The Amazons hadn’t,” said the captain, with his teeth tight clenched, hanging on to the main-sheet with one hand and holding the tiller as hard as he could with the other, doing his utmost to keep Swallow from yawing about.

“What’s that you’re saying, Titty?” asked the mate.

“I was telling Roger the bit about the old man who meant to hang on,” said Titty; “the bit daddy read to us at Falmouth.”

“Well, her canvas won’t bust,” said John, “and she’s got a jolly strong mast.”

But he spoke too soon.

If the wind had been steady, it would not have been so bad, but it was never the same strength for long together. Every now and then came a harder puff, so sudden and so strong that it forced the nose of the boat round before John could meet her with the tiller and put her back on her course again. Every time that this happened it began to look less and less likely that John would be able to carry out his plan of sailing into the cove without having to jibe twice over, once to bring the sail across to the starboard side, and then again to bring it back to the port side for running into the cove. Each of these gusts that was a little too hard or too sudden for John left the Swallow further to the north of her proper course, and this meant that the wind was no longer directly from aft but was blowing over the quarter from the same side as that on which was the sail. The little pennant was no longer blowing directly forward over the stern, nor was it blowing out with the sail, when it would have shown that all was safe. There was the sail out to port, and there at the masthead was the little pennant fluttering to starboard, showing that there was a danger that the wind might catch the leach of the sail and swing it right over. A jibe of that kind, not done on purpose, was what John was trying to avoid. He had made up his mind that he could get across without having to jibe at all.

“We ought to be able to do it,” he said aloud, and really because he began to be not quite sure.

“Remember the rock we saw yesterday,” said Susan.

“The Pike Rock,” said Titty.

“We’re much more likely to hit the rocks on this side if we get a gust like that one just as we are going in,” said John. “We ought to have reefed, really. It’s blowing much harder than it was a few minutes ago. But it’d be an awful job to bring her head to wind and reef here. Besides we’re very nearly there. I’m sure she’ll do it. . . .”

“There are the Amazons,” called Roger.

With his eye all the time on that warning pennant at the masthead and watching for a tremble in the leach of the sail, John saw Nancy and Peggy waving on the rocks at the entrance to the cove. That settled it. He could not give up his plan now. In another minute they would have done it and be safe between the headlands. Another twenty yards. The leach of the sail was ashake. Another ten. Could he do it, or could he not? He could. Surely he could.

“Look at the waves breaking on the Pike Rock,” said Roger.

And at that very moment, off the mouth of the cove, only a few yards from safety, the wind, leaping at them in a last furious gust, caught the wrong side of the sail and whirled it across.

“Keep your heads down,” shouted John, but for that there was no need. Titty and Roger were crouched in the bottom of the boat and the mate had ducked in time. So had John himself. The boom crashed over, but broke no heads. But John had been pulling hard on the tiller to keep the Swallow on her course. She was moving very fast. The moment the sail lifted there was nothing to balance the rudder. A moment later and the full force of the wind caught the sail on the other side, not working against the rudder but working with it. The Swallow spun round, out of all control, and ran with a loud crash on the Pike Rock. The rock stopped her dead. The mast broke off short above the thwart and fell forward over her bows, taking the sail with it.

There was a shriek, but it was from Peggy Blackett on the rocks at the entrance to the cove. There were no shrieks in Swallow.

It had all happened too quickly. Everybody had been jerked forward as the boat struck the rock. Everybody was holding fast to whatever had happened to come nearest, thwart, gunwale or tiller. Roger spoke first, as the Swallow slipped back off the rock.

“The water’s coming in,” he said.

It was not so much an exclamation as a plain statement of fact. Swallow was badly holed below the waterline in the bows. The water was spouting in and she was filling fast. Already the water was nearly up to the thwarts. Hundreds of times they had had imaginary shipwrecks. This was a real one.

“Over you go, Roger, and swim ashore,” said Captain John. “Go on. Don’t get caught in the halyards. Go over this side. Hop out.”

Roger looked at the mate and then at John to see if he meant it. Then he looked at the shore. It was only a few yards away. Peggy was standing on the headland down at the water’s edge. Nancy had disappeared.

“Go on,” said John. “Don’t wait. She’ll be gone in a minute.”

Roger rolled himself over the side. For one second he hung on to the gunwale. “Isn’t it a good thing I went on with the swimming lessons in the winter?” he said, and then splashed off on his way to land and safety.

“Now then, Titty. You, too, Susan. Be quick.”

Susan and Titty went overboard one after the other. Titty swam ashore as fast as she could, holding something above the water as she swam. Susan trod water for a moment, waiting for John.

“Come on, John,” she said.

But John was fumbling under water in the bows of the boat.

“Look out,” he shouted. “Be quick, out of the way.”

He stood up with Swallow’s little anchor and threw it as hard as he could throw towards the headland. The effort of throwing it overbalanced him, and he slipped. At that moment the boat lurched sideways as the water came over the gunwale. John tumbled out, and kicked himself off with a foot against the sinking Swallow. He was not a second too soon.

SHIPWRECK

Nancy, as soon as she had seen what had happened, had rushed round to the Amazon, which lay, beached, in the cove, had grabbed a coil of rope that she used as a stern warp when mooring in the harbour on the island, and had come racing back to the southern of the two headlands, opposite the rock on which the Swallow had run. She had hoped to throw the rope as far as Swallow, so that John could catch it and between them they could pull Swallow ashore before she sank. But the wind was against her, and the rope did not reach the Swallow. However, it fell close to Roger, who caught hold of it and was rescued in the most proper way, Nancy and Peggy together hauling him in hand over hand. Susan and Titty splashed their way ashore close behind him. After them came Captain John.

There was nothing of the Swallow to be seen, except a couple of floating oars and one of the knapsacks, drifting in between the Pike Rock and the headland.

“She’s gone, she’s gone!” said Titty, standing dripping on the rocks and looking at the place where Swallow had been.

“We had to swim for our lives,” said Roger.

“It was horrible,” said Peggy.

Captain Nancy looked at Captain John. For once she had nothing to say.

“I’ve got the telescope,” said Titty at last.

“Good old Titty,” said Captain John.

Captain John knew all the bitterness of a captain who has lost his ship. Now that it was too late he was telling himself that he ought to have guessed that the wind would be so much stronger. Yes, it was clear that he ought to have reefed. If he had reefed, the jibe would not have mattered so much. Besides, it was not as if they had been racing. He could quite well have sailed some distance down the lake with the sail out to starboard and then jibed carefully or even come up to the wind and gone about so as to reach the entrance to Horseshoe Cove with the sail out to port just as he wanted it for running in. It was all his fault. And now Swallow was gone and it was only the third day of the holiday. What was it his father had said about duffers? Better drowned. John thought so too. And then a new flock of black, wretched thoughts came crowding in like cormorants coming to roost. Swallow belonged to the Jacksons at Holly Howe. What would they say? It was all very well for Peggy and Roger to chatter about shipwrecks. He knew what Titty was thinking as she stood there dripping, looking at the waves breaking on that hateful rock. For Titty and himself, Swallow was something alive. And now, with Swallow gone, how could they live on Wild Cat Island? How could anything lovely ever happen any more? What would mother say? After all, they might easily have been drowned. Mother was very good at understanding things, but wouldn’t even she put an end to exploring for this summer at least? Things looked worse and worse whichever way he looked. It was as if the summer itself had been the cargo of the little ship and had gone with her to the bottom of the lake.

“Hullo, what’s become of Susan?” said Peggy suddenly, looking round for the other mate.

And just then they heard her whistle, shrill, but not quite as clear as usual, from inside the cove.