Secret Water

by Arthur Ransome

“THE WATER’S A long way above my knees,” said Bridget.

  Titty judged the distance to that far away boat. The water would be a good deal higher before it could reach them, and already felt swirly and strong.

  “Come on, Bridgie,” she said. “We’ll perch you on that other post.”

  “Shall I let go of this one?”

  “Hang on to me.”

  She waded across the road, stumbling at one place where she suddenly found deeper water in a rut. The water certainly was coming in very fast. But nothing mattered now. The boat was coming. Only now she let herself know how she had feared the moment when, if there had been no boat, she and Roger would have had to get somehow across that wide water, with Bridget, who did not know how to swim, and Sinbad who would for the second time in his short life have been in danger of drowning.

  “Up you go.”

  She hoisted Bridget up to the top of the post, left her there, perched like Roger, and herself stood, waiting at the foot of it.

  “What about you?” said Bridget.

  “I’m all right,” said Titty. “We all are.”

  “It was my shirt that did it,” said Roger. “Hullo, it’s not John. It’s the Mastodon.”

  The water rose higher and higher, but Titty cared no longer. The boat, with the Mastodon rowing as if in a race, was coming fast towards them. Wet? They were all wet. Roger had sprawled in mud and water. Titty had fallen down. Bridget had fallen with her. But wet clothes were nothing. Much worse things had seemed like happening. The Red Sea had closed over the road but, after all, they had not had to swim for it.

  Bridget, perched on the top of her post, watched the boat and the quick flash of the Mastodon’s oars. Titty too had no eyes for anything else. But Roger, now that his efforts as a flagstaff had been successful, was thoroughly enjoying himself, and was looking round to see if anyone else had noticed his signals and seen the Egyptians out in the middle of the Red Sea.

  “Hullo,” he shouted. “Titty! More boats!”

  Three small boats were in sight coming from the other entrance to the Red Sea, from the channel between Cape Horn and the mainland. They had no sails or masts. The people in them were rowing, and rowing fast. Someone waved.

  “Karabadangbaraka!” A breathless shout came from the Mastodon’s boat, now quite near.

  “Akarabgnadabarak!” Titty, Roger and Bridget turned round and shouted together.

  In another minute the Mastodon, resting on his oars, floated up to them. He could hardly speak, he had been rowing so hard, and he looked much more worried than any of the Swallows.

  “You’re pretty lucky,” he panted. “The tide comes in jolly fast. In another half hour you’d be swimming. What are you doing here? You might have drowned yourselves.”

  “Did you see the signal of distress?” said Roger.

  “Lucky I did,” said the Mastodon almost crossly. “I say, you know there’s deep water over here at high tide.”

  “We didn’t mean to be Egyptians,” said Roger.

  “All jolly well,” said the Mastodon. “John and Susan must be mad to let you.”

  “They didn’t know,” said Titty. “It was my fault … though I did put a patteran to show them.” She took Sinbad’s basket, and put it in the boat. “Come on, Bridget. Let yourself slip. I’ll catch you.” Standing nearly up to her waist in water, she helped Bridget down from the post and aboard.

  “You get in now,” said the Mastodon. “And then I’ll go alongside Roger.”

  “Won’t we be too many?” said Roger. “I’m all right. I can wait for one of the other boats. Hullo. What’s happened to them?”

  The people who had been doing the rowing in those far away boats had disappeared. Not a head, not a hand showed above the gunwales. The boats were drifting like derelicts with the tide.

  The Mastodon had been rowing with his back to them, and, when he came to the posts, had had eyes only for the explorers he was rescuing. He now saw the other boats for the first time.

  “Gone adrift,” he said.

  “There were people in them rowing a minute ago,” said Titty.

  “There aren’t now,” said the Mastodon.

  And then the outline of one of the boats changed. A lump, a head, showed above the gunwale. Someone was looking out.

  The Mastodon laughed.

  “It’s all right,” he said. “Come on down, Roger. Lots of room if we keep her steady.”

  “There’s the knapsack on that other post,” said Titty.

  “We’ll get it.”

  Heads and no more showed above the gunwales of the three drifting boats in the distance. The rescue of the Egyptians was being watched from afar, and the Mastodon had a broad grin on his face, as he pulled his laden boat across to the place where the road to the farm came up out of the water.

  “What is it?” asked Roger.

  “Are you laughing because we’re so wet?” said Bridget.

  “You might have been wetter,” said the Mastodon, serious for a moment, and then, looking over his shoulder at those drifting boats he laughed again. Suddenly he stopped rowing, leant forward, gently prodded Bridget, and smacked his lips.

  “Much plumper than Daisy,” he said.

  “We’ve been stuffing her with cream buns,” said Roger.

  “Good,” said the Mastodon, and rowed on till the keel of the boat scrunched on hard gravel where the road came up again out of the water.

  The rescued Egyptians stepped out.

  “Thanks most awfully,” said Titty.

  “That’s all right,” said the Mastodon. “Better bolt to the camp as quick as you can. Your chiefs have been back ages.”

  “Aren’t you coming?” said Roger.

  “Not just yet,” said the Mastodon, and rowed away towards the drifting boats.

  *

  “Come on,” said Titty. “As fast as we can go. We’ll have to change everything, and put our clothes to dry.”

  At a good jog trot, in soaked clothes, the water in their seaboots squelching at every step, they hurried in single file along the top of the dyke. Bridget, in front, set the pace, easing to a walk now and then, but never for long. Titty and perhaps Roger knew what a narrow escape they had had but for Bridget the adventure on the Wade was already no more than a wetting and a wetting already past. She was thinking of something else. Tonight it was to be, tonight she would be taking Daisy’s place, a human sacrifice, the very centre of the ceremony.

  *

  “Gosh! Look what they’ve done!” Roger was the first to see the huge bonfire, ready for the lighting, that had been built while they had been away.

  They came into the camp, and stared about them. There was Susan’s fire, also ready for lighting, in Susan’s neat fireplace, and there, below the dyke, was this colossal pile of driftwood, and old bits of boats and sticks, and broken up boxes and baskets, and bits of broken barrel.

  “It’s a beauty,” said Roger.

  “What’s this post for?” asked Bridget, looking at a stout post driven firm into the ground.

  Titty looked at it and then at Bridget. “Probably for you,” she said.

  “Oh,” said Bridget rather doubtfully.

  “More totems,” said Roger.

  “They must have brought theirs,” said Titty. “That’s the Mastodon’s. And look, they’ve hung a lot more shells on ours. But where are John and Susan?”

  The camp was empty but for themselves.

  “They’ve been here,” said Roger, looking into John’s tent. “Here’s his map with the road to the town on it. They must be somewhere about.”

  “Quick,” said Titty. “Let’s get our wet things off before they come back. It won’t be so bad if they find us all dry.” She squeezed out Roger’s shirt which had served as a signal of distress, wrung the last drops from it and spread it on a bush.

  “Go on, Bridgie. Off with your things. Undies too. No. Don’t go all wet into Susan’s tent. I won’t be a minute changing, and then I’ll dig out a frock fo
r you. You change too, Roger.”

  “I’m going to get into bathing things,” said Roger, “and go down to the landing place and wash the mud off.”

  “Good idea,” said Titty. “It’s no good getting all muddy into clean things. I’ll do the same. But Bridget mustn’t bathe, and she isn’t really very muddy, only wet. Here you are, Bridgie. Here’s a towel. You just rub down for all you’re worth.”

  Titty’s wet things and Roger’s joined Bridget’s spread to dry on the bushes. Six seaboots were stood upside down to drain. Titty and Roger, in bathing clothes, raced down to the landing place, splashed into the water, got the mud off, and splashed out again.

  “I’ve got another lot on my feet,” said Roger, as they staggered up through the mud of the saltings.

  “So’ve I,” said Titty. “Hurry up. We’ll sit on the bank and dabble our legs in the pond.”

  “Look at Bridget,” said Roger. “Going to a party. …”

  Bridget, dry and in a clean white frock, was earnestly tying her hair ribbon. “Am I all right?” she said.

  “Quite,” said Titty. “Haven’t you seen the others?”

  “No,” said Bridget. “And Sinbad’s gone straight to sleep.”

  “Let’s give a yell,” said Roger.

  “Ahoy!” they shouted.

  There was no answer.

  “Come on, Roger, let’s get clean anyway,” said Titty.

  They paddled their feet in the pond, sitting on the bank, and were already drying themselves, when, at last, they saw John and Susan coming along the dyke to the north of the camp.

  “Here they are,” shouted Roger. “Hullo!”

  Neither John nor Susan answered him. They came on in grim silence.

  “Something’s happened,” said Roger as soon as he could see their faces.

  John and Susan walked into the camp.

  “Titty,” said Susan. “Where have you been?”

  “Look here,” said John. “It’s really rather too bad. We’ve been half round the island looking for you.”

  “We did leave a patteran,” said Titty.

  “Where?” said John, but did not wait for an answer. “We can’t get the map finished, and it’s your fault. Daddy’s coming for us in the morning. Nine o’clock. I told him the map wasn’t done and he said we’d have to leave it. He wants everything packed up and ready to put aboard at high tide, so as not to waste a single minute. He’d sent a message through the farmer. Didn’t you see it stuck on the stick of the meal-dial?”

  He held out a crumpled bit of paper, on which they read: “Your dad say he come for you at high water tomorrow. You was all away when I look for you.”

  “Tomorrow?” gasped Titty.

  “Oh gosh!” said Roger.

  “I’d got the rudder mended before three o’clock,” said John, “and we got Daddy on the telephone first shot, and Susan and I raced home, and there’d have been just time for me to go and settle that North West Passage if only you’d waited in the camp instead of putting Susan in a stew and making us waste hours in looking for you. And now we can never do it. It’s too late now, and the map’s a failure without it.”

  “But we weren’t in the camp,” said Roger.

  “Bridget!” said Susan. “Who told you to put on a clean frock?”

  “The other one was wet,” said Bridget, looking at the bushes, where clothes of all kinds were drying.

  “Bridgie … Oh, I say Titty. You haven’t let her fall in. … And Roger too. And you. What on earth have you been doing?”

  “We couldn’t help it,” said Roger. “It might have happened to anybody. It did happen to the Egyptians, only much worse.”

  “We got caught,” said Titty. “You see. …”

  *

  A long shrill whistle sounded from somewhere behind the dyke. Susan started, dipped into a pocket, and brought out her hand empty.

  “My whistle,” she exclaimed. “Nancy must have got it, or Peggy. But what were you doing to get wet all three of you?”

  “Sinbad discovered a creek,” said Roger. “It wasn’t Titty’s fault.”

  A curious drumming noise sounded from somewhere north of the camp. It was answered by another, like that of two sticks being rapidly beaten together, somewhere to the south.

  The explorers looked about them.

  The drumming noise came again from close behind the camp.

  It came again as if from the landing place, and again from somewhere else.

  “What’s that?” said John.

  And then from all directions came the noise, not deep enough for a drum, a thin quick rattle, as if half a dozen corncrakes were calling to each other. There was nothing to be seen, but the noises were coming nearer and nearer, from all sides.

  The story of the Egyptians was not told until much later, for suddenly wild yells sounded close at hand, “Kara … Kara … Kara badang … Baraka … Baraka … Karabadangbaraka!”

  Two seconds later the savages rushed the camp.

  CHAPTER XXVIII

  CORROBOREE

  THE EXPLORERS, CAUGHT unprepared, had no time in which to make ready for defence. Nobody had expected anything quite like this. At one moment they had been standing rather miserable in the camp. Everything had gone wrong. Each one of them, except Bridget, was feeling somehow to blame and therefore ready to be cross with all the others.

  And then, at that blast of Susan’s whistle, blown by someone who had no right to have it, at that noise of drumming, now here, now there, now all about them, everything was changed. The savages were among them. Six of them, not four. And what savages! Feathers in their hair, bodies striped and splashed with mud for war-paint, faces patterned with mud, black bars on cheeks, rays of mud upwards from each eye, like the rays of the setting sun; Nancy had done her work well; even the Eels, who had helped her at it, had hardly known each other, when she had finished. And as for the explorers, when that howling mob rushed the camp from all sides, they stood there dithering.

  But they had small time to dither. John, Captain John, the leader of the explorers, found himself hurled to the ground with two savages, striped like tigers, on top of him. A noose was slipped over his kicking ankles and pulled tight. The rope was taken twice round the middle of him and knotted, and the two savages, leaving him trussed and helpless, rushed on to help a small and rather skinny savage who was struggling with Susan. Roger found himself lifted off his feet by a savage of enormous strength, who cried, “Eels for ever! Don’t wriggle like a lugworm. My war-paint’s hardly dry.” Roger put his knees together, planted them in the stomach of the savage and straightened out. The savage lost grip. Roger fell, was up in a moment and away. The powerful savage dived after him and caught him by the ankle. This time there was no escape. The savage sat on the top of him, roped his ankles and tied his wrists behind his back. The small and skinny savage had been having a difficult time with Susan who stood firmly on her feet fending off attack after attack, but three to one was too much, and while the two savages who had made short work of John held the struggling Susan, the small and skinny one wound a rope about her, binding her elbows to her sides and hobbling her legs. “Eels! Eels for ever!” they shouted, and left her beside John and Roger, just as two other savages, with black bodies and striped arms and legs, brought along the captured Titty, wound round and round with rope, one carrying her feet, the other her shoulders.

  PUTTING ON THE WAR-PAINT

  “Don’t frighten Bridget!” whispered Susan urgently.

  The savages laughed and ran back to join the others.

  Bridget, standing in the middle of the camp, had watched the swift defeat of the explorers. Just for one moment she had been startled by those leaping painted creatures. Then she had understood. She had seen John, Susan, Titty, Roger brought to the ground and roped as prisoners.

  “What about me?” she said. Susan need not have worried.

  “Food … Food … Food. …”

  The savages were closing in around her.


  “Food … Food … Food … food for the Sacred Eel.”

  They were dancing in a circle, leaping and shouting. The moment had come, and Bridget, in her clean white frock, stood in the midst of a ring of jumping whirling figures. She stood there, smiling, wondering what was going to happen next. She began to recognize the savages. That large, long-legged one must be Nancy. She knew the tear in the back of Nancy’s bathing dress. She knew the Mastodon by his stiff mop of sandy hair. Those two who had set upon John in the first attack must be Dum and Dee. She could not tell them apart anyway, and certainly not when they were all over stripes of mud. And that skinny one, who danced more fierily than any of the rest, must be Daisy who would have been the human sacrifice if they had not found a better.

  Bridget waited eagerly. What exactly were they going to do?

  The fiery, skinny savage left the ring for a moment, dived into the long grass and was back again, dancing nearer and nearer with something in her hands. She swung it to and fro, she waved it before Bridget’s eyes, darted backwards, shot forward again and suddenly flung the thing over Bridget’s head. Bridget clawed at it and was relieved to find that it was only a necklace of seashells.

  “Marked for the Eels,” sang the skinny savage, her eyes sparkling through black rings of mud.

  “Marked for the Eels,” she sang and the others took up the chorus.

  “Marked for the Eels,

  A juicy dish

  To feed the wrig-

  gliest of fish.”

  “Marked for the Eels,

  So plump and fat

  They’ll smack their lips

  To think of that.”

  There was a loud noise of smacking lips as the savages came nearer. Bridget, in spite of herself, drew back from them. First one finger then another prodded her plump arms. They were all round her. She moved again. Foot by foot she moved as a savage finger touched her now here now there. Suddenly she found that she was close to that big post that had been driven into the ground.