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The feast came slowly to an end. Even Roger said that he thought he had had enough ice-cream. There had been plenty of everything for everybody. It had been a very happy feast. Almost, it might have been somebody’s birthday. It was the sort of feast that there is when everybody knows that the school term has come to an end and that holidays begin to-morrow. Of course, Swallow was afloat again, new rigged, new painted, and sailing just as well as ever. That would have been enough for the happiness of John, Susan, Titty, and Roger. They were shipwrecked mariners no longer, but able to sail once more. Bridget, the ship’s baby, with her mouth red with crushed raspberries, would have been happy anyhow just to be at a feast with the rest of the crew, as if she were old enough to go to sea like Roger himself. The Amazons were happy to be enjoying once more the freedom of ruthless and black-hearted pirates. But there was something in the happiness of this feast that was shared by Swallows and Amazons and their elders all alike. It was like the end of one of those heavy days full of thunder, when the clouds have cleared away and the air feels light and clean. It was as if shutters had been suddenly opened, letting the sunshine into a room that has been dark for a long time.

Yet there had been very little talk, really, about the going away of the great-aunt.

“Where did she sit?” Titty had asked Peggy privately.

“Just where Roger is sitting now.”

Titty had looked at Roger, but he was showing no signs of being a boy who was sitting in what had been the special chair of the great-aunt. Perhaps that was because he did not know. For a moment she had thought of getting him to move, but then she had decided that perhaps it was just as well not to tell him. The chair had been chosen for him because of its arms, on one of which he could lean his crutch, from which he refused to be parted.

Mrs. Blackett, chattering happily to Mrs. Walker (“Mother’s fairly letting herself go again,” said Nancy), did say something about the way in which children used to be brought up and how much better it was now that children could be the friends of their elders instead of their terrified subjects.

This was too much for Nancy. “What she really means,” she broke in, “is that it’s lucky that we are bringing ourselves up instead of being brought up by the G.A.”

“Nancy, Nancy,” said Mrs. Blackett, and then laughed at herself. “Well,” she said, “it is a relief to be able to call you Nancy now and again without being reminded that you were christened Ruth.”

“The trouble now would be if mother were to call me Ruth and I had to do something fierce to show that I was really Nancy.”

But little else was said about the great-aunt, though, when the feast was over and they were all in the garden, Roger, who liked Mrs. Blackett and remembered what he had heard about the great-aunt always pointing out the weeds, stumped up to her and said, “It’s a very nice lawn, and the daisies are nice too. A lawn without any daisies would be awfully dull.”

Mrs. Blackett stared at him for a moment, not in the least knowing what he meant, and then suddenly laughed.

“Well, it’s very kind of you to say so,” she said.

It was soon after that that Susan heard one of the mothers say, “It all depends what sort of children they are,” and the other reply, “It certainly works with yours.”

It was the mother of the Swallows who first spoke of going home.

“You’ll have a lot to do when you get back to camp,” she said, “and I want to beg a passage for myself and Bridget, as far as Holly Howe.”

“Come the whole way to Swallowdale,” said Titty.

“Do, please,” said Susan.

“Wait till you’re back on the island and Mrs. Blackett and I will come and spend a night with you, just to see how you manage.”

“And I’m coming,” said the ship’s baby.

“Of course.”

“Well done, mother,” said Nancy. “We’ll take care of you, and you shan’t get in a row from anybody.”

“Will Captain Flint come too?” asked Roger.

“I expect he will if he’s asked,” said Mrs. Blackett.

“He must be bursting to come,” said Nancy.

“Well,” said Peggy, “I do think he might have turned up for the feast.”

Mrs. Blackett and Mrs. Walker looked at each other.

“He’s in a hurry to get back aboard his houseboat, after having to be proper all this time,” said Nancy.

Again Mrs. Blackett looked at Mrs. Walker. “And I suppose all of you are in a hurry to get back to your island.”

“We don’t want to waste a minute,” said Nancy.

“Swallowdale’s a fine camp,” said John, “but it’s not the same thing.”

“It isn’t an island,” said Titty.

“No harbour,” said Roger.

“It was quite all right while we hadn’t got Swallow,” said John.

“Come on,” said Nancy, “and we’ll begin getting things ready for portage. It’ll take us all day to-morrow if we don’t begin on it to-night.”

“Come on,” said Peggy. “Suppose someone else grabbed the island.”

“No one has,” said Titty. “I looked.”

“Anybody might,” said Nancy, “with none of us there to defend it. Look how you came last year and we had to have a war with you.”

“Come on,” said John. “We’ll be back there to-morrow and then we’ll have another.”

Some of the Swallow’s crew sailed in the Amazon for the passage to Holly Howe. This was to make more room for Mrs. Walker and the ship’s baby.

“We’ll lend you our A.B. and the ship’s boy,” said Captain John.

“Skip aboard,” said Captain Nancy.

“Aye, aye, sir,” sang out Roger and Titty together, and were presently stowing themselves one on each side of the centre-board case.

“Of course there’s really room in Swallow for all six of us,” said Captain John.

“No point in overcrowding,” called Nancy. “Besides, you and your mate sailed with us the other day and your fo’c’sle hands never have.”

“No fog to-day,” said Roger.

“Good thing, too,” said Nancy. “It’s horrid, groping about.”

“Good-bye, and thank you very much for the feast,” called the Swallows.

“Good-bye, mother,” called the Amazons. “You’re invited to a corroboree on Wild Cat Island any time you like.”

“Long pig and plenty of it,” called Peggy, as they drifted out towards the mouth of the river.

“We’ll pretend it’s great-aunt steak,” called Nancy, but Mrs. Blackett pretended not to hear.

“Was she really as bad as all that?” said Mrs. Walker quietly, as the Swallow slipped away.

“We never really saw her,” said John, “but she must have been.”

“She probably didn’t mean to be,” said Susan, “but she just was.”

“Well, I wonder,” said mother, “in thirty years’ time, when I come to stay with you. . . .”

“We’ll never let you go away,” said Susan.

“There won’t be any coming about it,” said John, “because there won’t be any going. You’re fixed.”

The wind was dropping as the afternoon turned into evening. It had freshened up after the race was over, but now there was only enough to keep the sheet stretched and the boom well out. There was not enough even for that when, half-way between the river and the Rio Islands they met a steamer, and the wash from it set both little ships rolling and tossing their booms about as if in an ocean swell.

In Swallow the ship’s baby was being allowed to help the mate to steer.

Amazon had passed Swallow outside the river, and, with the following wind, was adding foot after foot to her lead. She was being steered by Roger and Titty in turn. They were trying who could leave the straightest wake, now that the real captain and mate had changed places with their borrowed crew and were lying down on each side of the centre-board case, pretending that it was their watch below and that they were asleep in their cabins.

“Wake us up when we come to Rio Bay,” said Nancy.

“What for?” asked Roger.

“You should never say ‘What for?’ to the captain,” said Titty.

“All right. I mean, aye, aye, sir. But if you hadn’t gone and said that I wouldn’t have made that waggle in our wake.”

“Count it my waggle,” said Titty. “That’s two, with the one I made myself. And you’ve made three, two in your last turn and one in this.”

“No quarrelling on deck,” said Captain Nancy in a growling voice from down on the bottom-boards, “or there’ll be keel-hauling and hanging from the yardarm.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” said Titty.

“Why didn’t you say ‘No, no, sir’?” asked Roger. “You meant ‘No.’ ”

“You think of your steering,” said Titty, “or you’ll make another waggle. You have. That’s two waggles in this turn. Let me have a try for a bit.”

“All right,” said Roger, “and I’ll talk.”

“You’re both wrong, really,” said Mate Peggy, lying on her back and looking up at the sky from the bottom of the boat. “You ought never to talk to the man at the wheel, and you’ve both been doing it.”

“But there isn’t a wheel,” said Roger.

The two little ships took the Rio passage, and John pointed out to mother the island with the landing-stage, where they had tied up and slept after beating to and fro in the dark a year ago.

“The night you were very nearly duffers?”

“Yes,” said John.

Then they were slipping across Rio Bay, outside the yacht moorings and close by the reeds where the natives anchor and fish.

“That’s the yard where they mended Swallow,” said John, and called out to Nancy in the other boat. Nancy was sitting up now and being the pilot, taking Amazon through the bay. Titty was steering. Both ships turned across towards the boatyards and sailed along close to that shore with its wooden jetties, and slipways and sheds full of boats being built.

John sniffed the air.

“Yes, you can smell it. Tarred rope. Just sniff for a minute, mother.”

And mother sniffed and remembered that same smell drifting from the open doors of the little shops along the water front, and from the sailing ships in Australian harbours long ago.

A man who was looking at the new paintwork on a motor boat saw them passing, and called out to John, “Is she all right?”

“That’s the boatbuilder,” said John, and shouted back, “Better than ever. Thank you very much.”

“You made a good job of the mast between you,” the boat-builder shouted back. “I had a good look at it, when we brought her down yesterday.”

They sailed on round the promontory and into Holly Howe Bay. Both vessels tied up to the jetty for a minute or two while mother and Bridget went ashore to go home to the farm for the night, and the able-seaman and the boy left the Amazon and rejoined their own ship.

“Good-bye, mother. Good-bye, Mrs. Walker. Good-bye, Bridgie.”

Bridget, waving good-bye, nearly made a pier-head jump at the last moment without meaning it, if mother had not caught her in time.

“Come and see us on the island to-morrow night,” called Susan.

“Glook, glook,” said the best of all natives.

The little ships pushed off from the jetty and sailed out of the bay, close together, under the Peak of Darien.

Titty looked up at the Peak, remembering how last year they had watched the island day after day from the top of it, waiting for the telegram from daddy to say they might put to sea. She remembered how, day after day, they had watched the boats of natives fishing or rowing about, and how, when any boat went too near the island, they had been afraid that someone else was going to land there before they could. And then she remembered the finding of the fireplace when they landed there, and the coming of the Amazons who had made it. She remembered how first they had seen Peggy and Nancy, once their enemies and now their closest allies, and she looked happily across the water to the Amazon slipping quietly along beside the Swallow. And then, as they sailed on and left the Peak astern and could see into Houseboat Bay, she remembered their first sight of the retired pirate and the parrot.

“We’ll sail in to tell Uncle Jim how you won the race,” called Nancy, and the two ships changed course and headed directly for the houseboat.

“He isn’t there,” said Peggy a moment later. “There’s no flag up.”

“And there’s no rowing boat,” said Nancy.

The Swallow and the Amazon sailed close under the stern of the houseboat and Nancy and Peggy shouted “Houseboat ahoy!” but there was no answer.

“He had the launch with him this morning,” said John.

“Of course he had,” said Nancy. “That’s it. I was forgetting he’d have to go back to Beckfoot in her. He must have missed us going through the islands. Oh, well, never mind. We’ll tell him to-morrow.”

They sailed out of Houseboat Bay and now set a course a little west of south to take them straight to Horseshoe Cove.

“We don’t want to waste any time,” said Susan. “Let’s all get to bed early. It’ll take us all day to-morrow to get everything shifted across.”

They were well out in the middle of the lake, and more than half-way from Houseboat Bay to Cormorant Island, when Roger, who was being a look-out man, though, with his crutch, Mate Susan wouldn’t let him go before the mast, suddenly shouted, “Smoke, smoke! There’s smoke on Wild Cat Island.”

Peggy, in the Amazon, had seen it at the same moment, a thin cloud of blue smoke, drifting away from the trees. They would have seen it before if it had not been that the wind was northerly and was blowing the smoke away from them to the south of the island.

“Too late, too late!” wailed Titty. “Someone’s got it after all.”

“We ought to have taken it to-day instead of racing,” said John.

“We couldn’t,” said Susan. “We’d promised to go to Beckfoot.”

“There’s very little smoke,” said John. “Someone may just have boiled a kettle there and left his fire smouldering. Natives often do.”

Nancy Blackett took command.

“Don’t alter course more than a little at a time,” she said quietly across the water. “Don’t let them think we’ve seen it. We’ll sail on just as we are, working over a bit that way when we can. Keep a sharp look-out, everybody. There may be nobody there. We’ll make sure. It’s no good taking risks. There may be a whole crowd of them.”

“We can’t let them have it,” said Titty.

“We won’t,” said Nancy. “We’ll keep together, working over that way, as if we were sailing for pleasure. Don’t let them see that we’re taking any notice.”

“How would it be for one of us to go across towards Shark Bay and down the inner channel? You can see right into the camp from there.”

“It would give us away at once,” said Nancy. “They’d see that we’d come to look at them. No. We’ll keep together and work over that way, pretending we aren’t really altering course. Look here. There’s a steamer coming. We’ll change course the moment the steamer’s between us and the island.”

So it was done. The long passenger steamer churned up the lake, and while it was passing completely hid the Swallow and the Amazon from anyone who might be watching on the island. They changed course and headed east of south, and when the steamer had passed, there they were, sailing together as before. No one who had not been looking at them very carefully could have been sure that they had not been heading in that direction before the steamer had shut them out of sight.

“Shan’t we be able to go back to Wild Cat Island at all?” said Roger.

“Of course not, if there are a lot of strange natives on it,” said Titty. “There’s only room for one camp anyhow, and they’ll be using our fireplace.”

“It may be just a fire someone’s left,” said Susan. “If it’s a fire that’s being used it’s funny there’s not more smoke.”

“Hullo,” said John, “Nancy’s putting her centre-board down. She must be meaning to reach across below the island.”

A hoarse whisper came over the water.

“It’s so as to keep station and not run away from you. Any donkey’d know I was waiting for you if I go on monkeying about with my sail.”

Now that the centre-board was down, Amazon no longer moved faster than Swallow, in spite of the following wind. It was much easier now for the two ships to keep together.

“Can you see anyone there?” asked John.

“No. But there’s no doubt about the smoke.”

“Watch for a branch to move low down. Someone’s bound to stir the leaves if they’re looking out. Watch the clumps of heather along the edge of the rock.”

“There is someone there. There is someone there,” cried Titty, pushing the telescope into Susan’s hands. “There’s a lantern on our lighthouse tree.”

There it was, to be seen even without the telescope, hanging below the lofty branch at the top of the long straight stem of the tall pine at the north end of the island. Whoever was on the island meant to stay, or they would never have taken the trouble to climb those thirty feet of smooth trunk to hang a rope over the bough for hoisting the lantern to its place.

“That settles it,” said Captain Nancy. “They weren’t there this morning, or we’d have seen something. We mustn’t let them settle down. We must drive them out to-night. We must give them no sleep. We must scuttle their ships. We must drive them into the sea.”

“But how?” said John.

“I don’t believe they’re any good at being explorers or pirates or they’d be keeping a look-out. And I don’t think they are. Then, what galoots to leave the lantern up there not lit, instead of hoisting it up when they want it. They’re no good at camping, or they’d have a better fire. They probably haven’t discovered the harbour at all. They’re probably the sort of pigs who just eat sandwiches and leave paper about. They little know what’s coming to them.”

“I wish we had a cannon,” said Roger.

“Too much noise,” said Nancy. “We’ll creep on them like snakes and it’ll all be over before they’ve had time to open their mouths. Then we’ll spare their lives and let them get into their boats and row away. They’ll row away as fast as ever they can and never bother us again.”

It sounded very good, but there were misgivings in both ships. Supposing it wasn’t all over when the rightful discoverers of Wild Cat Island leapt out upon their enemies, what then? Still, there was nothing for it but to try, and no doubts were spoken aloud.

The two boats sailed on side by side, all the time edging over towards the eastern side of the lake. Cormorant Island was already astern. They were nearing the southern end of Wild Cat Island and still had seen no sign of anyone moving on it. But they had seen that lantern hanging from the tall pine, and wisps of smoke still kept blowing away out of the trees.

“Perhaps they’ve left a guard and sailed away, meaning to come back at night,” said Peggy.

“That would explain the lantern,” said John.

“It’ll be all the easier for us if they have,” said Nancy. She laughed. The others looked at her. They did not feel like laughing. Nancy explained. “I was remembering last year, and thinking we mustn’t make the mistake we made when we let your able-seaman capture our ship.”

They passed the southern end of the island.

“Haul your wind, Captain John,” said Nancy. “We’ll stand across till we can see into the harbour.”

Both steersmen put their helms down and hauled in on their main-sheets, and the Swallow and the Amazon, changing course once more, stood in as if for the harbour.

“Keep a look-out for anyone hiding among the rocks.”

Everybody was watching. Not a wagtail could have moved among those rocks without being seen. But nothing stirred.

“The harbour’s empty,” said Nancy, the moment she could see in. “They haven’t found it. Their boats must be at the old landing-place.”

She brought Amazon suddenly up into the wind.

“Not a yard farther,” she said, “or they might see us from the landing-place. I don’t believe they’ve spotted us at all. We’ll go into the harbour. Lower away, Peggy. Up with the centre-board. Out oars. Quietly now. Quietly! . . .”

John was doing exactly what he saw Nancy do, and now Titty and Susan were stowing the sail. Then, very quietly, John lifted the rudder inboard, put out an oar, and sculling over the stern brought Swallow through the channel between the rocks while Susan, watching the marks, warned him when they were out of line. Amazon had hardly touched before Swallow was slipping into the harbour beside her.

“Quietly,” said John. “Don’t let her bump.”

“Roger,” said Susan, “that’s a clean handkerchief. Don’t wipe the dirt off your crutch with it.”

“I’m not. I’m muffling the foot of my crutch, so it won’t make a noise on the stones. It’s ready now.”

He fended off with his crutch that now had a stout pad of handkerchief over its foot. He then hopped ashore, and stood there, propped on the crutch, holding Swallow from slipping back or grinding on the beach.

Nancy and Peggy were looking quickly here and there among the rocks round the harbour to make sure that no able-seaman of the enemy was lurking there to seize the ships. Titty, Susan, and John, one by one, joined Roger on the beach, when they lifted Swallow’s nose and hauled her up as silently as if they were pulling her out over cotton-wool instead of over hard stones.

“Let’s cut them off from the landing-place,” said John.

“No, no,” said Nancy. “We want them to take to their boats and go away. We’ll creep through the undergrowth above the western shore until we’re close to the camp. Have you got a whistle?”

“The mate has.”

“So has Peggy. Whistle when you hear her whistle, and then dash out for all you’re worth.”

“I can smell their fire,” said Titty.

“Listen.”

There was no noise at all.

“They may be asleep.”

“Or hogging. Come on, anyway.”

The Swallows and Amazons left the harbour and slipped into the undergrowth. Even the path was not the path it had been last year when Titty had trimmed it. Once more the honeysuckles and brambles had made it into a jungle track rather than a path. “It’s no wonder they didn’t find the harbour,” said Susan. “Lucky we hadn’t cleared the path before we were shipwrecked,” said John.

There was a whisper from close ahead. “Sh, sh!” and Nancy turned and waited. “Tents!” she said below her breath.

The others crept up to her. Through the trees and between the tops of the bushes they could see the pale flash of tents, more than one of them.

“They’ve put up their tents in our very camp,” said Titty bitterly.

“There’s nothing else for it,” hissed Nancy. “We’ve got to drive them out. If we don’t it’ll never be our island any more. Are you ready? Swallows and Amazons for ever! Mates, blow your whistles and come on!”

Two whistles sounded shrilly, and the whole party burst out through the bushes and charged with a yell into their ancient camping-ground. Five tents had been set up there, four small ones, where the Swallows’ tents had been before the shipwreck, and one large one, where the Amazons’ tent had been the year before. A sixth tent was behind the others, among the trees.

“They’ve got tents just like ours,” said Roger, as he swung desperately from foot to crutch and from crutch to foot, determined not to be last.

Nancy and Peggy charged at the big tent. The others rushed past the fireplace, across the open ground.

“But they are ours,” said Susan.

“Pretty Polly!” said a harsh voice.

The camp had no defenders. The fire in Susan’s old fireplace had burned very low, and at the farther side of the camp with his back propped against a tree, was Captain Flint, just opening his eyes, while the ship’s parrot, perched beside him on one of the roots of the tree, was trying to pull his pipe to pieces.

“Hullo,” said Captain Flint, “what time is it? I sat down for a minute to play with old Polly. Hot work, you know, shifting all these things down to the launch, and that tree takes some climbing, too. Why, what on earth’s the matter with you all?”

The Swallows and Amazons looked at each other.

“Oh, nothing,” said Captain Nancy. “We mistook you for somebody else.”

Captain Flint stretched himself, and felt for his pipe.

THE CHARGE

“Back at your old tricks again, eh, Polly? I must have been asleep.”

“Fast asleep,” said Roger.

“And did you bring the whole caboodle across by yourself?” asked Nancy.

“Mary Swainson helped, and a young man, a friend of hers who seemed to have a day off.”

“I expect Peter Duck lent a hand,” said Titty, “with the things in his cave.”

“He must have done,” said Captain Flint, “but I may have put the wrong bags in the wrong tents or something like that at this end. Mary Swainson’s going to have another look round up there, and if anything’s left she’ll bring it down to the farm.”

“Let’s go across to-morrow and make her come to tea,” said Titty.

“There’s another hole coming in my knickerbockers,” said Roger.

“But whatever made you think of doing it?” asked Nancy.

“Well,” said Captain Flint, “it was just as well to make sure of your island, and besides that there’ll be grouse-shooting all over those moors to-morrow, and both your mothers seemed to think you’d be best out of the way.”

“So that was why they hadn’t put a place for you at the feast,” said Nancy. “But you haven’t asked who won the race. We lost, if you want to know.”

“I thought Swallow had a good chance when I saw you go into Rio Bay while John went up the other side of the islands.”

“But you don’t know what John did with her at the end.”

There was the whole story of the race to tell him, and after that they changed their minds and told him how they had seen the lantern and the smoke on the island and had thought the island had been taken by enemies.

“And now we’ve got it for ever and ever,” said Roger.

“Until you have to go away,” said Captain Flint. “And if I don’t go away at once I shall be getting into trouble.”

“But she’s gone,” said Titty.

Captain Flint laughed.

“Cook’s nearly as bad,” he said.

A few minutes later he was aboard the launch, chug, chugging away past Look Out Point, while everybody shouted their thanks after him and asked him to come again to-morrow.

“You can give me supper,” he shouted back. “I’ll be sleeping in the houseboat to-morrow night. Oh, yes, and I was to tell you that Mrs. Dixon will have milk for you in the morning.”

The Swallows and Amazons went down again into their camp.

“Well,” said Nancy, “the holidays have really begun now.”

“We’ve got a good lot to put on our map already,” said Titty.

“Pouf!” said Susan, raking the sticks together in the fireplace. “Isn’t it a blessing to get home?”