Secret Water

by Arthur Ransome

  They turned another corner.

  “There’s the boat,” whispered Roger. “But there’s nobody in it.”

  John gave up sculling and poled the Wizard forward as well as he could, though the oar stuck in the mud when he pushed at it. The Wizard touched the mud, and stopped, only a few feet from a small brown rowing boat. Beyond the rowing boat was mud only. A rope ran from the boat to the side of the gully, and at the end of it they could see a small anchor, high on the bank. Whoever or whatever had been in that boat had made it fast before leaving it. But he or it had not landed, at least, not here. Again they saw those huge prints, a plain trail of them, two lines of enormous round hoofmarks leading from the water towards the anchor, and then away from the bank and on round another corner, along the muddy bottom of the gully.

  “We’d better get ashore,” said Roger.

  John prodded downwards with his oar, and brought it up black and dripping. “We can’t land here,” he said. “We’d only sink. We’ve got to get back. I saw a place where I think we could, just after we left our creek.”

  Titty with an oar at the bows, John with an oar at the stern, drove the Wizard back along the gully, till the water was wide enough to turn in. Near the mouth of the gully they came to the place John had seen, where some of the bank had fallen down. They prodded the fallen earth. It was a good deal harder than the mud. One by one they scrambled ashore. John took the anchor with him and planted it in the top of the bank. They found themselves on a dyke like the one that ran all round their own island.

  “She’ll be all right here,” said John looking down at the Wizard. “The tide’s coming in the whole time. It won’t be so hard getting back into her.”

  “We haven’t got any weapons,” said Titty.

  “Shan’t want any,” said John. “We’re not attacking. Only scouting. We’ve just got to find out.”

  From the top of the high bank he looked back across Goblin Creek to the island they had left. There were the tents and smoke from the fire. Everything looked peaceful. He could even see that Bridget was walking backwards, probably pulling something along the ground for Sinbad. War, even awkwardness with strangers, was the last thing he wanted. But that carved snake in the camp meant something. Strangers had been there. And there was that boat and those enormous hoofmarks. There was nothing for it but to go on.

  “It’ll get away if we’re not quick,” said Titty.

  “Come on,” said John, and they hurried along the top of the dyke looking down into the gully. They passed the anchored rowing boat, and hurried on, their eyes on the trail of huge hoofmarks, in the mud below them.

  “I say,” said Titty. “Look at that. It’s the wreck of a ship.”

  The gully was bending round, and ahead of them a lot of gaunt black timbers were sticking up above the mud.

  “An old barge,” said John.

  “She must have been here hundreds of years,” said Titty. “Just bones of her left.”

  Then, as they came nearer, they saw that though the stern part of the barge and the middle had all been broken or rotted away, the bows, close under the bank, still looked like the bows of a seagoing ship. The forepart was still decked. There was a rusty windlass, and a hatch, and the heavy tabernacle that once had held the mast. A rusty chain ran through a hawsehole in the bulwarks, over the dyke, to a rusty anchor bedded in the meadow. The sides of the old barge had fallen away aft, but forward they had been newly tarred. There was a small square window below the bulwarks. And someone had put new paint, blue, and yellow, on the scrollwork round the barge’s name, the bright red letters of which looked as if they were hardly dry.

  “Speedy,” said Roger. “She won’t go very fast now.”

  “Never again,” said Titty, thinking of water foaming under those old black bows now wedged into the mud.

  “They must have just shoved her out of the way here, and left her to rot,” said John.

  “But why have they bothered to put new paint on her name?”

  “Both sides,” said Titty, who had walked on till she could see the other side of the barge’s stem. “I say, John. There are no more hoofmarks on this side.” She lowered her voice. “Perhaps it’s lurking in the wreck.”

  “There’s a regular path on the marshes over there,” said John. “He’s probably got away … What’s that? Listen.”

  There was a noise of splitting wood.

  “It’s inside,” said Roger.

  “Keep quiet,” said John.

  “If it’s natives,” said Titty, “we could just ask if they’ve seen it.”

  “Seen what?”

  “A mastodon,” said Titty, “Or whatever it is that makes those hoofmarks.”

  “Hullo,” said Roger. “Somebody must be living here. Look at that.”

  A thick cloud of yellow smoke had poured suddenly out from the top of a rusty iron pipe that stuck up through the deck close by the ancient windlass. Knee deep in the rank grass of the dyke, they stood and stared and sniffed the pungent smell. There could be no doubt about it. One end of the wreck was derelict, but the other was still in use. That new tar on the bows, the new paint on the name, and now this smoke from the chimney, showed that, even if the Speedy would never sail again, even if it was only a matter of time before most of her would fall apart and disappear in the mud, someone still had a use for part of her. One end of her was wholly dead, but the other was very much alive. It was as if they had come across a skeleton and on looking at the skull had been greeted with a wink.

  They stood there, looking up and down the narrow winding gully, across it to the marshes of the mainland, to distant fields, trees, and farms, back towards the Secret Water, and Goblin Creek, and their own camp on the other side of it. They could see flashes of white, the tops of their tents along the dyke. But near by everything was wild and desolate, marshes, the creek that was more like a ditch than a creek, mud, and the derelict old barge. And here, with not a human being in sight except themselves, there was smoke pouring from that rusty chimney, and the noise of splitting wood had changed to the crackle of a new lit fire.

  SPEEDY

  “Someone’s looking at us,” whispered Roger. “I saw a face … it’s gone now … someone was looking at us through that window.”

  “We’d better clear out,” said John. “It isn’t our island.”

  “Couldn’t we just ask?” said Roger.

  But John had turned and was walking back along the top of the dyke. “It’d be all right if we were afloat,” he said to Titty. “We could row up here at high water, and try to get out the other side, to see if it’s really an island. Whoever it is may be on deck then, swabbing down or something. …”

  “I say!”

  A boy had come through the Speedy’s fore (and only) hatch. Bigger than Roger though not as tall as John, he was dressed in a rather ragged grey jersey and his muddy grey trousers were tucked into socks. He had a mop of stiff sandy hair. His eyes shone bright blue in a face burnt brick red by the sun.

  “Where are his boots?” said Roger. “Has he got stuck too?”

  “Hullo,” said John.

  “I say,” said the boy. “Is that your camp over there? Sorry I barged in. I thought you were somebody else. As soon as I saw you coming I tried to clear out. I thought you hadn’t seen me.”

  “We didn’t,” said Roger. “But we saw your boat.”

  “We wanted to know what made those hoofmarks on the mud,” said Titty. “Do you keep it in the barge?”

  The boy laughed and then was serious again.

  “I left something behind in your camp,” he said.

  “I know,” said John.

  “I meant to come and take it away again after dark.”

  “Oh! He mustn’t do that,” exclaimed Titty. “He’d only frighten Bridget.”

  “We’ll give it back,” said John.

  “We wondered what it was,” said Titty.

  The boy opened his mouth to speak and shut it again. “Just a game,” h
e said after a pause.

  For some moments nobody said anything. Then the boy spoke again.

  “Look here,” he said. “Do you know the Lapwings?”

  “I saw lots this morning,” said Roger, “when we were walking round the island.”

  “Not those,” said the boy. “Lapwing’s a yacht. Look here. How did you get here? I never saw you come. I wasn’t here yesterday.”

  “We came in a boat,” said John.

  “You didn’t know about the Lapwings?”

  “No. We’ve never been here before.”

  “I thought it was rum,” said the boy. “Because they said they were going to camp on Flint Island as usual. But when I saw your camp I was sure they’d changed their minds. I didn’t think anybody else knew about this place.”

  “We didn’t,” said Titty. “We’re exploring. We aren’t exactly shipwrecked. But we can’t get away till our ship comes back. We’re marooned.”

  “Marooned,” said the boy, considering. “Do they know at the farm?” He looked far away across Goblin Creek, to the island beyond it.

  “In the Native Kraal?” said Titty. “They know. One of them brought us some milk this morning, but that was just to see what we were like. We’ve got our own milk, in tins.”

  “Kraal’s a good word,” said the boy. “My father’s got a Kraal, too. Over there.” He pointed south over the marshes. “You can’t see it. Hidden by the trees. So it’s just as good as if it wasn’t there. There’s nobody here except just them …” Again he looked away towards the distant farm, a bit of tiled roof showing above the little trees. “Only the Lapwings and me … until you came.”

  John said, “Look here, I’ll go and bring that thing if you put it up in our camp by mistake.”

  “Never mind,” said the boy. “I’ll come across and fetch it.”

  “Do you live here?” asked Roger.

  The boy considered.

  “Like to come and see?” he said at last.

  “Very much,” said John.

  “It’s too far to jump,” said Roger.

  But the boy stooped and from below the bulwarks lifted a broad plank and stood it on end, and then let it fall forward so that it made a bridge between the wreck and the dyke.

  “Make sure that end’s firm,” he said.

  Roger was first on the plank. Titty had taken a step or two after him when he stopped dead.

  “Look out, Titty,” he said. “If two of us are on it, it’ll jump and Susan’ll be in an awful stew if I go in the mud again.”

  “It’d be a job to get you out,” said the boy.

  One by one they crossed the plank and stepped down on the wreck. It was like standing on the deck on a ship of which nothing was left but the bows. Looking aft, there were gaunt ribs sticking up out of the mud, and the remains of the stern. But where they were standing, everything was solid. The deck was scrubbed and clean and there was new paint on the bulwarks that ended in mid air.

  “I began looking after her just in time,” said the boy. “Look here. I’d better go first, just to clear things out of the way down below.”

  He slid out of sight, backwards, down the steep ladder in the hatchway. The others followed him, one by one, and, for a moment stood blinking at the foot of the ladder. A lot of light came down through the hatch, and a little from each of the two small square windows that had been cut high up in the sides. But all the woodwork was black with age, and it was a minute or two before they could see what sort of living place this was that the boy had made for himself in the bows of the old wreck. There was a rusty little stove, into which the boy was pushing some scraps of wood. There was a sort of bunk, built into the side with rugs in it. There was a table made of thick black wood, roughly nailed together. “Made that out of some of the old planking,” said the boy proudly, and John thought, though he did not say, that it might very well have been rather better made. There was a good solid seat that had clearly once been the thwart of a boat. There were shelves, very rough, along the walls. An old hurricane lantern, not lit, hung from a beam. There were nails driven into the beams, and into the walls, and from these nails hung all kinds of things, fishing lines on wooden winders, a net of some kind, begun but not finished, with a big wooden needle, half full of string, stuck in among the meshes. In one corner were some fishing rods, and beside them, leaning against the wall of the cabin, were three more carved sticks, like the one they had found stuck in the ground by Susan’s fireplace. Roger saw them first.

  “More snakes?” he said.

  “Eels really,” said the boy. “Snakes don’t have a fin down their backs.”

  “I thought there was something funny about it for a snake,” said Titty.

  “What are they for?” asked John.

  “They’re …” and then the boy pulled himself up. He had just been going to say something, but changed his mind.

  “Don’t tell us if it’s a secret,” said Titty. “Is the thing that makes those hoofmarks secret too?”

  The boy threw back his head and laughed. “Don’t you know splatchers?” he said.

  “Splatchers?” said Roger.

  “Splatchers,” said the boy. “For walking on the mud.”

  “Gosh!” said Roger. “Like snowshoes?”

  “I’ll show you,” said the boy. “I always leave them outside so as not to get mud all over old Speedy. It’s only at high tide the water comes up here, and I couldn’t get home without them, or get to my boat, or anything.”

  “They make marks just like a mastodon,” said Titty.”

  “I’ve never seen one,” said the boy.

  “Neither have I,” said Titty. “But like an elephant anyway.”

  The boy busied himself with his fire, took a saucepan from its hook on the wall, and opened a parcel with bacon in it. They watched him. “Susan’s cooking our dinner,” Roger said absently.

  Titty looked at John.

  “I say,” said John. “Why not come back with us now to get your eel and have dinner. Unless you want to cook. We’ve got an enormous lot of grub.”

  “I don’t mind,” said the boy. “And if you want to see those splatchers. …”

  They climbed on deck once more. The boy went to the edge of the deck furthest from the bank. A rope ladder hung there, and beside it, on hooks, were the splatchers, two large oval boards, with rope grips in the middle of them for heel and toe, and stout leather straps for fasteners. The boy unhooked them and dropped them neatly so that they fell flat on the mud with their fastenings uppermost. He hauled on a pair of seaboots and went down the rope ladder.

  “Mud’s very soft here,” he said. “If I didn’t drop them first I wouldn’t be able to stand to get them on.”

  With his weight on one of the splatchers, he put his foot in the right place on the other and made it fast. Then with his weight on that splatcher he strapped the other on the other foot.

  “Now,” he said, and was off, swinging each leg in a wide circle so as not to trip himself with the big oval boards on his feet. Off he went, with a loud sucking noise, as he lifted the splatchers from the mud, one two, one two, one two, one two, leaving behind him the mastodon track of enormous hoofmarks. Off he went, swinging his legs, running easily along the muddy bottom of the creek where they knew the mud was so soft that in ordinary seaboots he could not have taken a step without being bogged.

  He turned and came running back, left his splatchers on the mud, climbed up his rope ladder and, a little out of breath was once more beside them on the deck of the old barge.

  “Gosh!” said Roger. “Can anybody do it?”

  “It needs a bit of practice,” said the boy. “I’ll get the plank in, if you’ll go ashore. I never leave it up when I’m not here.”

  “Are there other savages?” said Titty.

  “I say. Did he tell you?”

  “Who?”

  “The man from the farm … the Kraal.”

  “He said there was one of them about,” said Titty. “Is it
you?”

  “Oh well,” said the boy. “If you know that. … He oughtn’t to have told you really.”

  SPLATCHERS

  “Sorry,” said Titty. “We didn’t know the savages were a secret. We’ll pretend we don’t know. We’ll just call you the Mastodon.”

  “My name’s Don,” said the boy.

  “Short for Mastodon,” said Titty.

  The boy laughed. “It doesn’t matter your knowing about savages,” he said. “At least I don’t think so. If you’ve been marooned, it’s really right for you to know.”

  A shrill whistle sounded in the distance.

  “Grub,” said Roger, hurrying across the plank. “That’s the mate’s whistle.”

  “I’ll catch you up,” said the boy. “Where’s your boat?”

  “Close to yours.”

  Titty and John followed Roger ashore and along the high bank above the gully. The boy pulled in the plank, slipped down the other side of the wreck, and, hardly a moment later, they saw him running below them on the mud with that queer swinging run, leaving behind him a beautiful trail of mastodon hoofmarks. By the time they reached their boat, he was already in his, and they pulled out into Goblin Creek close together.

  Roger was first ashore on the other side, and ran up to the camp.

  “Extra plate, Susan,” he shouted. “Extra plate. The Mastodon’s coming to dinner.”

  CHAPTER IX

  MAKING A FRIEND OF A SAVAGE

  “OH BOTHER!” SAID Susan, but not very loud.

  “What’s it like?” said Bridget.

  But Susan had darted to the stores tent and was digging out another soup plate. The trouble was that she had already poured out the soup into five plates and there was none left in the saucepan. Roger had said enough to let her know that whatever the Mastodon might be, it ate like ordinary people, and she had to spoon a little soup from each of the five full plates into the sixth before the guest arrived. To see this being done would make any guest wish he had not come.

  She was just in time. Six plates, each practically full of soup, lay in a row by the fire when John, Titty and the Mastodon followed Roger across the saltings and came to the dyke and the camp.