Secret Water

by Arthur Ransome

  “I’ll begin practising at once,” said Roger.

  “You jolly well won’t,” said John. “One go a day’s enough for anybody.”

  “All right,” said Roger. “I won’t. But it’ll be John’s fault if I play false notes tonight.”

  “I say,” said John. “Do just look at the map. Is there a way through round the place where we were yesterday?”

  “I don’t know,” said the Mastodon. “There is a sort of gap, but it doesn’t look as if it went right through. Anyway there’s nothing but mud on the other side.”

  “It’s awfully important,” said John. “You see, if there’s a North West Passage then where we were yesterday’s an island. If there isn’t it’s only a promontory. You can’t tell from Daddy’s map. What about going to have a look?”

  “No good with a falling tide,” said the Mastodon. “It’s gone down a long way. Didn’t you say you wanted to try my splatchers? Now’s the time. No good starting for the Upper Waters till the tide turns again.”

  “Can I have a shot, too?” said Nancy.

  “And me?” said Roger. “Hullo! Here are the others.”

  “Karabadangbaraka!” Daisy and her brothers were rowing up Goblin Creek.

  “Akarabgnadabarak!” The Mastodon and the explorers went down to the landing place to meet them.

  “It’s all fixed,” cried Daisy as she splashed ashore. “Corroboree tomorrow night. And the missionaries are going to let us stay till after dark. And high water’s pretty late. Everything’s just right.”

  “But you’ll come to supper in Speedy tonight,” said the Mastodon. “I’ve got a feast all ready.”

  “That’s all right too,” said Daisy. “Only we’ll have to clear off pretty early. We’ll have to be up at dawn tomorrow.” She whispered in the Mastodon’s ear.

  “We’re just going splatchering,” said Roger.

  “Ever done it before?” asked Daisy.

  “No,” said Roger. “But we’ve seen him do it.”

  The two silent brothers, Dum and Dee, looked at each other.

  “We’ll watch,” said Daisy. “Who’s going first?”

  “I am,” said Nancy, and stood on the splatchers while the Mastodon fastened the straps over her insteps.

  Slowly, inch by inch, she moved the splatchers along the mud, grabbing at the gunwale of a boat to keep her balance.

  “That’s not the way,” said Roger. “You ought to swing them round and fairly gallop.”

  “Let him try,” laughed Daisy.

  Nancy looked oddly worried, let go of the boat and took a few steps. “Come on John. You have a go,” she said. She sat on the gunwale of the boat while the Mastodon freed her feet.

  John stood on the splatchers and made the straps fast. He moved slowly off. “It’s not as easy as it looks,” he said. One foot slid from under him on the sloping mud. He tried to balance on the other. That splatcher also began to move like a toboggan. The next moment John was sitting in the mud. He tried in vain to bring a splatcher under him. It was no good. He rolled over and struggled back to the hard on all fours.

  “That’s quite enough,” said Susan. “You’ll have to take everything off.”

  “He ought to have moved much faster,” said Roger. “And he ought to have leant forward.”

  “Let’s see you try it,” said John.

  “One all mud’s quite enough,” said Susan.

  “Oh let him try,” said Daisy.

  The Mastodon fastened the splatchers for Roger. “Now you watch,” said Roger. “You ought to lean forward and swing your legs … like this. …” He stood for a moment. A queer look of uncertainty came into his face. Then, remembering how he had seen the Mastodon go running along the bottom of his creek, he threw himself forward. The first step was all right. So was the second. At the third he caught one splatcher on the other and fell on his nose.

  Dum and Dee said not a word but looked at each other and rocked with silent laughter.

  “It takes practice to be a Mastodon,” said Daisy.

  After that, the Eels were taken up to the camp, to visit it this time as friends not enemies. John and Roger spread their clothes on bushes, decided that for the rest of the day they would wear bathing things, like the savages, and had a wallow in the pond to get rid of the mud that they had not taken off with their clothes. Susan and Peggy set to work to make packets of sandwiches for the expedition to the Upper Waters. John and Titty made copies of the blank map showing just the part west of Goblin Creek, so that there would be one for each of the six boats. The Mastodon, squatting beside them, was admiring the work that had been done, and pointing out one or two places where he thought the surveyors had gone a little wrong. A little way along the dyke shouts of laughter told where Nancy, Daisy and the Eel brothers were holding a private conference. Bridget, rather cross at having been shoo’d away by them, was playing with Sinbad. Roger, chivvied from the camp, was practising “The Keel Row” on his whistle down by the boats, and watching for the turning of the tide. Slowly the water went down, and at last began to creep up again over the mud.

  Roger came running with the news.

  “It’s started coming up,” he said.

  “Give it at least an hour,” said the Mastodon. “No good going before there’s water in the channels.”

  Final preparations were made. Bridget unwillingly agreed that Sinbad should stay in camp. “Hell be miserable in a little boat all day,” said Susan, and promised that he should come on the next expedition by land. The Mastodon pointed out that the bigger boats would have to keep to the main channels.

  “The little channels’ll be the hardest to map,” said John. “Look here. Titty and I’ll have to go in the Eels’ boats. They’re shallower than ours.”

  “I’m going with Daisy,” said Nancy.

  “In some places we may have to get out and push,” said the Mastodon cheerfully.

  “Do let’s start,” said Titty at last.

  “What about having dinner first?” said Susan.

  “Better eat under way,” said the Mastodon. “We might just as well be drifting up with the flood.”

  *

  Half an hour later the camp was deserted. Goblin Creek was deserted, too, but, if anybody had been looking from an aeroplane they would have seen something like a floating island moving slowly with the tide in the middle of the Secret Water. It was a smooth, oily calm, without a breath of wind. Wizard had tied alongside Firefly. Nancy and Daisy, John and Dee, Titty and Dum, each couple in one of the tiny dinghies of the Eels had thrown painters aboard one of the larger boats. The Mastodon with Roger had rowed round them all, and ended by coming up close under Wizard’s stern. All six boats were closed together. Food was being passed from boat to boat, and everybody was busy eating.

  Slowly the tide carried the floating island of boats up the middle of the wide channel. On either side there were low green shores, and wide stretches of shining mud. Ahead the glassy water lost itself in the distance. There, too, were green shores. The roof of a house showed far away and low green islands fringed with mud.

  “Oughtn’t we to be rowing?” said John at last.

  “No good hurrying till the tide’s a bit higher,” said the Mastodon.

  “I’ve started filling in my map,” said Roger.

  “But there’s nothing to put in yet,” said John.

  “We’ve put it in,” said Roger. “That’s just it. And jolly good, too. Specially the bananas.”

  “But what’s that got to do with the map?” said John.

  “It’s all right,” said Roger. “I’ve just put in ‘Here the fleet hogged’, and so we have.”

  A little patch of ripples showed on the glassy water, and then another.

  “Cat’s paws,” said Daisy.

  “Wind coming,” said John.

  “Cast off,” said the Mastodon. “Come on Roger. If they’re going to be able to sail, we’d better start rowing.”

  DRIFTING UP WITH THE TIDE

/>   In a moment the floating island began to break up into half a dozen little boats. Roger and the Mastodon shot out ahead. In all the other boats people were getting up sails.

  “Eels’ wind,” said Daisy, hauling her little sail up while Nancy, for once an idle passenger, sat on the bottom of the boat with a pencil and her copy of the map.

  “Why Eels’?” she asked.

  “It’s just the wind we want,” panted Daisy swinging on her halyard. “It’s just a perfect wind. We’ll be able to sail both ways without tacking.”

  Susan, in command of Wizard, had fixed her rudder, and put Bridget, for once promoted to able-seaman, at the tiller while she hoisted sail.

  Peggy, alone in Firefly, was having slight difficulties but when John offered to come and help she answered, as if she was Nancy, “Jibbooms and bobstays! Shiver my timbers! It’s only stuck. Barbecued billygoats! Up she goes.”

  Dum and Dee, anxious to show their passengers what savages could do, had their sails set and drawing almost before their passengers knew what was happening.

  “I say,” said Titty. “That was jolly good.”

  “Dead heat,” said Dum. “Sometimes Dee’s quicker than me, and sometimes not.”

  “What do we do now, White Chief?” asked Dee, grabbing the tiller and stepping over John’s legs.

  “Let’s all go on together to where the channels divide,” said John, curling round in the bottom of the boat, so that he could keep his chart on the middle thwart. “But let’s keep near the northern shore. I haven’t been along this bit. You see when we were doing that part we thought you were enemies and we had to keep within sight of the camp.”

  Dee chuckled. “You didn’t keep quite near enough.”

  “You wouldn’t have done it if Titty hadn’t been so busy with the map,” said John. “Anyway, it’s a good thing you did. But it’s a pity that we haven’t properly done that northern shore. I say, is that an island ahead?”

  “One of them,” said the savage guide.

  “Look here,” exclaimed John a few minutes later. “What’s that gap? Is there a way through? If there is, all that part where we were exploring may be an island.”

  Dee looked where John was pointing. There was a break in the long line of the dyke to the north of them.

  “There may be,” he said.

  “Hi! Mastodon!” shouted John.

  The Mastodon stopped rowing, and looked back. In this light wind, he was ahead of the sailing boats. “What is it?” he shouted.

  John pointed. “Is that the gap you were talking about?”

  “Yes,” shouted the Mastodon.

  The tide was carrying them past.

  “I say, let’s try it,” said John.

  It was at that moment that Bridget saw the seal. Ahead of them where the Secret Water seemed to lose itself in low green shores, there was a spit of mud or sand and on it something had moved. “Look,” said Bridget. “Somebody bathing and wallowing. Just like Dum and Dee.”

  Everybody looked that way in a hurry, bristling at the thought of a stranger.

  “It’s a seal!” cried Titty, looking through the telescope.

  “It’s the seal,” said Daisy.

  “It’s George,” said the Mastodon, and swiftly and quietly rowed towards it.

  The seal, idly sunning itself after a bathe, might have been a sort of magnet. The whole fleet turned towards it. Even John for a moment or two had eyes for nothing else. After all, islands do not move and seals do. And anyhow, Dee had the tiller, not John, and Dee altered course with the rest.

  “First time we’ve seen it this year,” said Dee. “Don says it’s been here again and again. But we’ve always been somewhere else.”

  “Why does he call it George?” asked John, and the same question was being asked in every boat.

  “Why not?” said Dee, and his answer was as good as any.

  It might have been a regatta, with George, the seal, as the finishing mark. All six boats drew nearer and nearer to each other. Even the quietest talk could be heard from boat to boat. “Don’t splash so,” hissed Daisy at the Mastodon. “Don’t talk,” said the Mastodon to Roger. “What’ll we do when we catch him?” Bridget asked Susan. “Peggy, you’ve taken our wind,” said Titty. “Well, don’t come so near,” said Peggy. “He’s seen us,” whispered Dee.

  The seal, lying flat on the mud, suddenly lifted a round grey head. Slowly, with no sort of hurry, he raised himself on his flippers and waddled towards the water. In the water, he lay awash for a moment, and was gone.

  The fleet sailed on towards the place where he had been.

  “He’ll come up again,” said the Mastodon.

  “But where?” said Roger.

  “There he is,” said Daisy, and the whole fleet altered course together. George had come up a hundred yards away and more. His head and shoulders were above water. He was as interested in the fleet as the fleet was interested in him.

  “Do let’s get near enough to draw him,” said Titty. “We ought to put him in the map.”

  But George had had enough of them. He dived, and though they sailed over the place where he had been they did not see him again.

  John turned round to look for the gap once more. “I say, Mastodon, I ought to go and try that gap,” he called. “It may really be a North West Passage.”

  “Tomorrow,” called the Mastodon. “You couldn’t do it now, not if you’re coming along with the rest of us. Even if it does go through you’d have to wait for water. And if you went right round you’d be too late for all this.” He pointed at the low marshy islands ahead of them.

  John marked the gap with a big question mark. If that was a way through to the Northern Sea, it was certainly worth an expedition for itself alone. The opening looked as if it ran in a long way. North West Passage. And there might be a North East as well. He would do one and Nancy would do the other. But now, with the tide sweeping them on, they must follow the savage guides.

  “Who’d better go which way?” shouted Daisy.

  “Two main channels,” shouted the Mastodon. “And there’s a creek to the south, and channels through the saltings in the middle. I’ll go up the creek with Roger, because my boat draws less than any, and I’ll be able to get to the top and back before there’s water for any of the others. Then we’ll work through the saltings and join you.”

  “Right,” called Daisy. “There you are, White Chief. You take that one.” She pointed to the opening of a channel. “Take him through there, Dee. Wait for us at the other side, if you get through first.”

  “Better get the sail down,” said Dee. “There won’t be room for sailing.”

  John lowered the little sail, watching the five other boats moving in a bunch along the edge of the marshes.

  “Better let me row,” said Dee. “You’ll be busy with the map.”

  “Good,” said John. “Hullo. Somebody else lowering sail.”

  “That’s my brother,” said Dee. “He’ll have a time of it, getting through there. It’s only about four feet wide.”

  “Down go two more.”

  In another moment all the other boats were hidden by land, and John, watching his compass, had no time to look at them even if he could have seen them. This mapping on the move was no sort of joke, and he wondered what some of the others were making of it. Due east to that point on Mastodon Island. He jammed that down, and then every few minutes had to put down a new compass course, as Dee, rowing now in water, now with his oars scraping the mud, worked his way between the banks.

  “It’s a much better channel than some of them,” said Dee, watching John feverishly at work.

  “Good thing we’re going through with the tide rising,” said John, “and before the mud’s all covered.”

  “There’s one of them,” said Dee when, at last, they sighted clear water ahead, and, almost at the same moment, saw the mast of a small boat apparently moving on dry land to the south of them.

  “There’s another,” said John
.

  “And another. That’s the lot. No. There’s one missing. Who is it?”

  Five small boats met where the channels between the islands joined. Wizard, Firefly, the Mastodon’s rowing boat, and two of the savage sailing dinghies. One, with Nancy and Daisy aboard, had not arrived.

  “They’ve got stuck,” said the Mastodon, standing in his boat and looking back.

  “We got stuck three times ourselves,” said Roger. “And once the Mastodon had to put on his splatchers and get out and push.”

  “We got stuck at least twice,” said Titty.

  “We got stuck a hundred times,” said Bridget. “Didn’t we Susan?”

  “Daisy ought to have got through all right,” said the Mastodon.

  Dee and Don both turned their boats round to go back to the rescue. But there was no need. The top of a mast showed, moving through the marshes, and a few minutes later they saw the boat itself, being poled along by the savage Daisy on one side and an explorer with a red cap on the other.

  “Hullo! What happened?”

  “Stuck really hard,” said Daisy. “We just had to wait for the tide. It didn’t matter. There was a lot to talk about.”

  Both of them were smiling. It seemed to John almost as if they had been glad of the delay.

  “What now?” said Roger.

  “Better swop channels and go through again,” said John.

  Back they went, each boat taking a different channel from the one through which it had come. Already the water was higher, and this time nobody got stuck for more than a minute or two. Then back again, explorers in each boat plotting their tracks as best they could.

  “Mango Islands,” said Titty. “All swamp. Nowhere to land.”

  “There were two good landings up the creek,” said Roger.

  “We could land over there,” said Bridget.

  “Let’s,” said Titty. “It’s a settlement. People in native costumes.”

  They rowed on through a bit of open water, with patches of mud still showing here and there. On one side of it was an old quay, with some native boats pulled up beside it. Behind the quay were cottages, and a field in which horses were grazing, flicking at flies with their tails. Under the quay, some men in shirt sleeves and trousers (native costume) were painting a boat. The explorers landed on a bit of gravel beside the quay, and climbed up it to have a look round from above over the Mango Islands and the channels through which they had come.