Читать книгу Swallowdale - Arthur Ransome - Страница 7

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“A handy ship, and a handy crew,

Handy, my boys, so handy:

A handy ship and a handy crew,

Handy, my boys, AWAY HO!”

Sea Chanty

“Wild Cat Island in sight!” cried Roger, the ship’s boy, who was keeping a look-out, wedged in before the mast, and finding that a year had made a lot of difference and that there was much less room for him in there with the anchor and ropes than there used to be the year before when he was only seven.

“You oughtn’t to say its name yet,” said Titty, the able-seaman, who was sitting on the baggage amidships, taking care of her parrot who, for the moment, was travelling in his cage. “You ought to say ‘Land, Land,’ and lick your parched lips, and then afterwards we’d find out what land it was when we got a bit nearer. We might have been sailing about looking for it for weeks.”

“But we know already,” said the look-out. “And anyway there’s land all round us. I’ll be able to see the houseboat in a minute. There it is, just where it used to be. But (his voice changed) Captain Flint’s forgotten to hoist a flag.”

The little brown-sailed Swallow with her crew of five, including the parrot, had left Holly Howe Bay, and was now beating across the open lake that stretched away to the south between wooded hills, with moorland showing above the trees and, in the distance, mountains showing above the moorland. A whole year had gone by. August had come again. The Walkers had come up from the south yesterday. John, Susan, Titty and Roger had been at the window with the parrot as the train came into the little station, thinking that their old allies, Nancy and Peggy Blackett, would be on the platform to meet them, perhaps with their mother, or with Captain Flint, that retired pirate, who lived in the houseboat in Houseboat Bay and was really Mr. Turner, Nancy’s and Peggy’s Uncle Jim. But no one had been there. All the morning, while mother, little Bridget and nurse had been unpacking boxes and settling into the old farmhouse at Holly Howe and they had been down at the boathouse loading Swallow for her voyage to Wild Cat Island, they had been sending scouts up to the high ground, to look up to the northern part of the lake to see if a little boat about the size of Swallow had come out of the Amazon River, where the Blacketts had a house, away up there towards the Arctic, under the great hills. Every other minute they had been looking for the little white sail of the Amazon at the mouth of the Holly Howe Bay, expecting to hear Captain Nancy’s jolly shout of “Swallows and Amazons for ever!” and to see Mate Peggy hoisting the Jolly Roger to the masthead. Then the Swallow and the Amazon would sail down to Wild Cat Island together, calling on their way on the houseboat to say, “How do you do” to Captain Flint. Everything would be just as it had been last year. But they had seen no sign at all of their allies and when afternoon came they could wait no longer. Mother and Bridget had gone off to the little town to buy stores for them and were going to bring the stores down to the island in the native rowing boat from Holly Howe. Whatever happened, they had to get the camp ready before mother arrived, so that she could see that all was well for the first night. It was no good waiting for those Amazons. Nancy and Peggy were probably in the houseboat with Captain Flint. Or, more likely still, they were already on Wild Cat Island, plotting either a welcome or an ambush. With Nancy you never really knew. So the four explorers had set sail. The thing they had been planning for a year was at last beginning. It had indeed begun, for once more they were afloat in Swallow, and sleeping at home in beds had already come to an end.

“I do think he ought to be flying his flag,” said Roger, the look-out.

“Perhaps he didn’t think we’d be sailing so soon,” said Titty, the able-seaman, who was resting a telescope on the cage of her parrot, and looking through it at the distant houseboat.

“He’ll hoist his flag all right when he sees us coming,” said Susan the mate.

John, the eldest of the four of them, said nothing. He was too busy with the sailing, now that Swallow had left the shelter of the bay and had begun to beat down the lake against the southerly wind. He was looking straight forward, feeling the wind on his cheek, enjoying the pull of sheet and tiller and the “lap, lap” of the water under Swallow’s forefoot. Sometimes he glanced up at the little pennant at the masthead, a blue swallow on a white ground (cut out and stitched by Able-seaman Titty), to be sure that he was making the most of the wind. It takes practice to know from the feel of the wind on your cheekbone exactly what your sail is doing, and this was the first sail of these holidays. Sometimes he glanced astern at the bubbling ribbon of Swallow’s wake. At the moment, it did not seem to matter whether Captain Flint was flying a flag from the masthead of his houseboat or not. To be on the lake again and sailing was enough for John.

Mate Susan, too, did not mind that there was no flag on the old houseboat. She had had a tiring time the day before, looking after her mother and Bridget and nurse and the others and all the small luggage during the long railway journey from the south. She always took charge on railway journeys and was always very tired next day. But nothing had been forgotten, and the number of things that would have been forgotten if Susan had not remembered them was very great. And then, this morning, there had been lists of stores to make out and check, besides the stowage of cargo in Swallow. So Susan was resting and happy, glad that for the moment everything was done that she could do, glad no longer to hear the din of railway stations, and glad, too, not to have to listen to strange voices in that din to make sure that they ought not to be changing trains.

Even Able-seaman Titty was less disturbed than Roger at seeing no flag on the houseboat’s stumpy little mast. She had so much else to think about. At one moment she felt that this was still last year and that they had never left the lake and gone away. All that long time of lessons and towns was as if it had never been. And then, the next moment, it was just that time that seemed real, and she could not believe that it was the same Titty who had had such awful troubles with her French verbs who was now once more the able-seaman, sitting in Swallow with the parrot cage and the knapsacks and the stores, looking back at the Peak of Darien from which she had first seen Wild Cat Island, and looking down the lake at the island itself, sketches of which with its tall lighthouse tree had filled, almost without her knowing how they came there, the two blank pages at the end of her French Grammar. This feeling of being two people at once in a jumble of two different times made her a little breathless.

But Roger, wedged in his old place in the bows, had been sure that their old friend, Captain Flint, would have had his flag at the masthead, even if he had not dressed ship to welcome them back, and he had been looking forward to seeing the houseboat’s great flag dip and Swallow’s little pennant dip in answer. After that, of course, there would be a puff of smoke and a saluting bang from the little yacht cannon on the houseboat’s foredeck. And now, there was the houseboat without any flag at all.

“He may be asleep,” said Titty.

“He can’t be asleep if Nancy and Peggy are with him,” said Susan.

“They’ve probably gone on to the island. We’ll know in a minute or two,” said John. “This next tack’ll take us into Houseboat Bay. Ready about.”

The little Swallow came up into the wind, Titty and the mate ducked as the boom swung over, the brown sail filled again, and the Swallow, now on the starboard tack, headed across the lake towards Houseboat Bay.

“Steamer on the starboard bow,” called the look-out. “Miles away though.”

“There’s one much nearer coming up astern,” said Captain John, “out of Rio.”

Looking back they could see the wooded islands off the busy little port they called Rio, and through the islands glimpses of the broad waters of the northern part of the lake. The steamer was coming out of the Rio channel between Long Island and the mainland.

“Fisherman broad on the beam,” said the look-out, as they passed a rowing boat with two natives in it, one at the oars and the other holding a fishing-rod.

“Towing a spinner for pike,” said the captain.

“Shark,” corrected the look-out.

The Swallow crossed the bows of the steamer that was going south from Rio. She crossed them with plenty of room to spare. The steamer swept past, the captain upon the bridge of the steamer waved a cheerful hand, and the crew of the Swallow waved back. They got a tossing in the steamer’s wash that made them feel they really were at sea.

They were now nearing the sheltered bay where the old blue houseboat was lying to a mooring buoy.

“There’s nobody on deck,” said the look-out.

Last year, when they had seen the houseboat for the first time and Titty had guessed that Captain Flint was a retired pirate, they had seen him sitting, writing on the after deck with his green parrot perched on the rail beside him. This year there was no pirate to be seen. As for the parrot, he could not be on the houseboat for he had joined another ship. Titty was talking to him.

“Look, Polly,” she was saying, “that’s your old ship. That’s where you used to live before you came to live with us.”

“Two, Two, Twice, Twice, Two, Two, Two,” said the green parrot.

“Pieces of eight,” said Titty, “Say ‘pieces of eight.’ Don’t bother about ‘Twice Two.’ It isn’t term time any more.”

“Let’s have the telescope, Titty,” said the mate.

“I can’t see his rowing boat,” said John. “It isn’t there unless he’s got it hauled up along the port side.”

“The houseboat’s shut up altogether,” said Mate Susan, looking through the telescope. “The curtains are drawn in all the windows.”

Captain John and Mate Susan looked at each other. Even if they had not, like Roger, been dreaming of dipping flags and salutes of guns, they had been as sure that Captain Flint would be in his houseboat as that the big hills would be in their places round the head of the lake.

The Swallow sailed right into the bay, under the houseboat’s stern and then, coming about, easily cleared the mooring buoy on her way out again into the open lake. Everybody had a good look at the houseboat, but they could see no sign of life aboard.

“He’s covered up the cannon,” cried the ship’s boy with indignation. Indeed the whole of the foredeck of the houseboat was protected from the weather with black tarpaulin sheets.

“It does look rather as if he wasn’t there at all,” said Captain John, as the Swallow slipped out of the smooth water of Houseboat Bay to buffet once more with the little waves of the lake.

“I know what he’s done,” said Titty. “He’s shut up the houseboat and he’s on the island with the others.”

The others were really more important than Captain Flint, and, after all, it was just like Captain Nancy Blackett to plan that they should meet once more not in any mere railway station, or even in her uncle’s houseboat, but on the desert island where they had met last year.

“Wild Cat Island abeam,” shouted the look-out as Swallow left Houseboat Bay. . . . “Cormorant Island right ahead. . . .”

On this tack Swallow headed across to the western shore of the lake towards a low island of loose stones and rocks, with two dead trees on it, one a roosting place for cormorants, and the other long ago fallen down, its naked roots waving in the air, over the place where, once upon a time, Titty and Roger had found Captain Flint’s treasure.

“There go the birds,” shouted the look-out when, as Swallow slipped across the lake towards them, four big black, long-necked birds got up off the dead tree and flew away over the water.

The able-seaman was looking not so much at Cormorant Island itself as at the water not far from it. Was it possible that she had ever been anchored out there, in someone else’s boat, alone, in the middle of a pitch-dark night?

Mate Susan hardly looked at Cormorant Island. The voyage would soon be over and there would be tents to pitch and cooking to think about. She was looking through the telescope at the larger wooded island on the other side of the lake.

“It’s a very funny thing there’s no smoke,” she said.

“They must be there,” said Titty. “May I have the telescope now?”

Captain John glanced over his shoulder.

“Ready about,” he called. Round swung the little Swallow, and this time headed for Wild Cat Island, of which the whole ship’s company had been dreaming ever since they sailed away from it last year. It certainly was a funny thing that if Nancy and Peggy Blackett were waiting there to meet them, no smoke should be blowing from the trees. Nancy Blackett was always one for making most tremendous fires.

“Nancy would have hoisted a flag, anyway,” said Captain John.

“Perhaps she couldn’t get up Lighthouse Tree,” said Titty.

“Nancy’d get up anything,” said Captain John.

“Hullo,” shouted Roger, looking above the island at an old white farm-house high on the farther shore of the lake. “There’s Dixon’s farm. There’s Mrs. Dixon. Feeding geese. Look at those white spots.”

“They may be hens,” said Susan.

“Her hens are all brown,” said Roger. “Of course they might be only ducks.”

“Where are you going to land?” Susan asked the captain.

“I can make either end of the island on this tack.”

“The old landing-place is nearer the camp.”

“Oh, let’s look into the harbour first,” said Titty.

The harbour was at the southern end of the island. It was sheltered by high rocks, and there were marks on shore to show the way in through the dangerous shoals outside. The landing-place was on the eastern side of the island, the side nearest to the mainland. It was a little bay with a shingle beach, close to the place that they had used for a camp. It was always best to bring boats to the landing-place instead of to the harbour when there was much cargo to be put ashore.

John steered for the southern end of the island, and, keeping well clear of the outer rocks, passed outside the entrance to the harbour.

“Amazon’s not in the harbour,” said the look-out.

Secretly everybody had thought she would be. There might be no smoke and no flag, but that would be natural if Captain Nancy, making sure that they would come straight to the landing-place, had hidden Amazon in the harbour and was waiting in ambush somewhere on the island. It was just the sort of thing she might do.

“There’s the stump with the white cross on it,” said Titty. “There’s the high mark, the forked tree. There’s the rock where I saw my dipper. Oh, isn’t it jolly to be back!”

“They’ve painted the cross again on the low mark,” said John. “It jolly well needed it, too.”

“They must be here,” said Titty. “No one else would have bothered to do it. No one else knows about it.”

The moment they had sailed past the entrance there was nothing to be seen but grey rocks. No one who did not know would have guessed that a snug harbour was hidden among them. For its size the harbour on Wild Cat Island was certainly one of the finest harbours in the world.

John put up the helm, hauled in his mainmast, jibed the boom carefully over, met his vessel with the helm again, and let the mainsheet out steadily and not all in a rush. Swallow, with a following wind, was running up the channel between the island and the mainland.

“There’s the landing-place,” shouted Roger, as soon as he could see it. “But Amazon isn’t there either.”

John sailed on and then hauled in the sheet for a moment while he headed Swallow for the little strip of smooth beach.

“She’ll do it now,” he said to himself, and let the sheet out again until the sail flapped idly in the wind while the Swallow slid more and more slowly into smoother and smoother water. She was moving at last so slowly that the crew hardly felt her as she stopped with her nose on the beach. The ship’s boy, painter in hand, jumped ashore.

“Lower away now, Mister Mate,” said the captain.

Susan had already scrambled forward over the cargo. She loosed the halyard and paid it out hand over hand. Down came the gaff and was unhooked by the able-seaman, while the captain gathered boom and sail into the boat.

The parrot was the next man ashore, handed out in his cage to the ship’s boy. The able-seaman followed the parrot. Then came the mate and the captain. They waited just long enough to pull Swallow well up before hurrying to the old camping-place in the open ground among the trees. Roger, Titty and the parrot got there first.

There was no one waiting for them. But, not far from the fireplace, left from last year, there was a large stack of driftwood all ready for burning, and on the top of it was a big white envelope, pegged in its place by an arrow with a green feather.

“The Amazons,” shouted Roger. “It’s one of their arrows.”

“One of your old feathers, Polly,” said Titty, putting down the cage, and the parrot, seeing his green feather in the arrow twanged his beak on the bars and let out a long angry scream.

Susan pulled out the arrow.

On the envelope was written in blue pencil: “TO THE SWALLOWS.”

“Open it,” said Captain John.

Inside it was a sheet of paper on which was written in red pencil:

“TO THE SWALLOWS FROM THE AMAZON PIRATES. WELCOME TO WILD CAT ISLAND, WE’LL COME AS SOON AS EVER WE CAN. NATIVE TROUBLE. CAPTAIN FLINT IS STUCK TOO. HAS TITTY REMEMBERED THE GREEN FEATHERS? THESE ARE OUR LAST. SWALLOWS AND AMAZONS FOR EVER!

NANCY BLACKETT, THE TERROR OF THE SEAS,

CAPTAIN OF THE AMAZON.

PEGGY BLACKETT, MATE.

P.S.—WE’LL BE WATCHING FOR YOUR SMOKE.”

Opposite the two signatures, a skull and cross-bones had been drawn in pencil and then blacked in heavily with ink.

“Have you got the feathers for them, Titty?” said John.

“Of course I have,” said the able-seaman. “They’re in an envelope rolled up in my sleeping-bag. I haven’t lost a single one.”