Swallows and Amazons

by Arthur Ransome

  “What are you doing?” he shouted to them.

  “Diving for pearls.”

  PEARL DIVING

  “Don’t stay in too long. No breakfast for anybody who isn’t dry and dressed by the time I’m back with the milk.”

  “Aye, aye, sir,” said Titty.

  Roger tried to say “Aye, aye, sir,” with his mouth under water. He failed.

  He could not open his eyes under water either with any ease, and, splashing about in two or three feet of water, he picked up his pearls by feeling for them. Able-seaman Titty swam about on the bottom with her eyes open, looking for the whitest stones. They were all rather big pearls, but no one really minds a pearl being big, and soon the pearl-divers had a pile of wet and shining jewels by the water-side. The worst of it was that as soon as the stones were dry – and they dried quickly in the sun – they stopped shining, and could not be counted as pearls any more.

  Pearl-diving came to an end as soon as the divers saw Captain John coming laden down the field from Dixon’s Farm. There was a sudden splashing rush for the shore, and towels, and long before Captain John came rowing in in Swallow, his crew, dry and dressed, were waiting for him on the beach. There was plenty for them to carry, two loaves of bread, a couple of big lettuces, a basket of eggs as well as the milk-can full of milk, and a small tobacco tin.

  “What is there in that?” said Roger.

  “Worms,” said Captain John.

  “Are we going fishing?” asked Roger.

  “Yes,” said Captain John. “Mr. Dixon gave me the worms. He says there are lots of perch between here and his landing-place. He says we’ll do better with minnows than with worms, and he says we’ll find the perch anywhere where there are weeds in the water.”

  Breakfast was soon over, and while Mate Susan was tidying up, the others took the saucepan for a bait-can, and half filled it with water. Then they fished for minnows in the shallows, and caught a good lot of them. Then they unstepped Swallow’s mast, and left it ashore with the boom and yard and sail, so that there would be more room in the boat. Susan joined them, and got her rod ready too. Then they rowed across from the island into the bay below Dixon’s Farm. The Boy Roger was in the bows, keeping a look-out for weeds.

  “Weeds,” he shouted, soon after they came into the bay. “Lots of them.” On either side of Swallow they could see the long green streamers of weeds under water.

  “We ought to be just off the edge of them, and where it’s not too deep. Are you ready to anchor?”

  Mate Susan told the boy: “Have the anchor over the bows, and drop it the moment I say ‘Let go!’”

  John was rowing a stroke at a time, and then looking down into the water, then rowing another stroke. “Can you see the bottom, anybody?”

  “I can, now,” said Roger.

  “All right. So can I. There’s grass on it. That means sand. And it’s close to the weeds. We couldn’t have a better place.”

  “Let go!” sang out the mate.

  Roger let go. Swallow swung slowly round. A moment later four red-topped floats were in the water, two on each side of the boat.

  “How deep are you fishing, Susan?” said Titty.

  “Very nearly as deep as my rod will let me,” said Susan.

  “Mine’s only about three feet down. I can see the minnow easily.”

  “That’s no good,” said John. “It ought to be about a foot from the bottom. Bring it in, and I’ll push your float up.”

  Susan’s float bobbed first. She struck at once, and brought up her hook with nothing on it.

  “He’s gone off with my minnow,” she said.

  “You struck too soon,” said John.

  “I wish the boat didn’t swing about so,” said Titty. “Look out, Roger, your float’s nearly touching mine. Now you’re lifting my float as well as yours. They’re both tangled.”

  John disentangled them, but when he had done it, he found the boat had swung the other way, and his own tackle was tangled in the same way with Susan’s.

  “This is no good,” he said. “We must have an anchor at each end so that the boat won’t swing. All rods in! Haul up the anchor, Roger. We’ll get a big stone on the shore. There’s plenty of anchor rope to spare.”

  So they rowed ashore, and fastened a big stone to the other end of the anchor rope. Then they rowed back to another place not far away. Roger let go the anchor, and Susan lowered the stone over the stern of the boat. This time Swallow rested broadside on to the wind, and did not swing at all. But they found it was no good fishing on the windward side, because the wind, even though there was so little of it, brought the floats in under the boat. So they all four fished on the same side. As the boat was not swinging, this did not matter, and everybody tried to watch all four floats at once.

  “Whose float will go first?” said Roger.

  “Mine,” said Titty. “It’s bobbing already.”

  “Look out, John,” said Susan. “Your float isn’t there.”

  John looked round. His float was gone. He pulled. The top of his rod bent and jerked, and up came a fat little perch with bright red fins and dark green bars on his sides.

  “That’s one, anyhow,” said John, as he put on another minnow.

  After that the perch came fast, one after another. Sometimes three floats bobbed together. There was soon a pile of perch in the bottom of the boat.

  Roger was counting them “Twelve, thirteen, fourteen …”

  “IT’S A SHARK!”

  “Where’s your float, Roger?” said the mate.

  “And look at your rod,” said Titty.

  Roger jumped up and caught hold of his jerking rod, which he had put down while he was counting the catch. He felt a fish at the end of his line. Just as he was bringing it to the top there was a great swirl in the water, and his rod was suddenly pulled down again. Roger hung on as hard as he could, and his rod was bent almost into a circle.

  “It’s a shark! It’s a shark!” he shouted.

  Something huge was moving about in the water, deep down, pulling the rod this way and that.

  “Let him have line off the reel,” said John, but Roger held on.

  Suddenly a mottled green fish, a yard long, with a dark back and white underneath, came to the top. It lifted an enormous head right out of the water, and opened a great white mouth, and shook itself. A little perch flew high into the air. Roger’s rod straightened. For a moment the great fish lay close to the top of the water, looking wickedly at the crew of the Swallow as they looked at it. Then, with a twist of its tail that made a great twirling splash in the water, it was gone. Roger brought in the little perch. It was dead, and its sides were marked with deep gashes from the great teeth of the pike.

  “I say,” said Roger, “do you think it’s really safe to bathe in this place?”

  After that nobody caught any more perch. The pike had frightened them away. And when the perch were not biting, nobody but John wanted to go on fishing. At last Susan said that they had enough perch anyway, and if they were going to eat them they would all have to be cleaned. So they hauled up the stone and the anchor, and rowed back to the island.

  The cleaning was a dreadful business. The mate did it, slitting up the perch with a sharp knife, and taking out their insides. The insides were burnt in the fire, and Roger took the perch down one by one to the landing-place to wash them in the lake. The mate tried to scrape the scales off the first of them, but soon gave it up. She fried them in butter in their scales, first putting a lot of salt in them. When they were cooked the skin with the scales came off quite easily, and there was the perch ready to be eaten. The mate said it was rather a waste of good butter, but the captain and the crew said it was worth it.

  In the afternoon they careened Swallow. They took the ballast out of her, and pulled her high on the beach, and laid her over first on one side and then on the other while they scrubbed her bottom, though she did not need it. But you never know. She might have been covered with barnacles, or draped
with long green weed. Anyhow, ships ought to be careened. So Swallow was. Then they launched her, and put the ballast in her again, and stepped the mast and took her round to the harbour.

  After that the mate called for more firewood, and the whole ship’s company set to work and brought all the really good driftwood from the island shores, and piled it in the camp, close by the other pile that had been left there. After that they were tired, and went up to the look-out place to watch the shipping on the lake, and to agree about the names for all the places on the island. There was Look-Out Point, of course, under the tall tree. Then there were the Landing-Place, the Harbour, the Western Shore, and the Camp. Then there were the places that could be seen from the island. There was Darien, Houseboat Bay, Dixon’s Bay (this name was given up, and it was called Shark Bay instead after Roger’s great fish), and Cormorant Island. Far away to the south there was the Antarctic. Far away to the north beyond Rio was the Arctic. As for their own island, they could not agree on a name for it. They thought of Swallow Island, Walker Island, Big Tree Island, but were bothered by the thought of the fireplace which they had found there, and were using, and the neat pile of wood which, somehow, they did not like to use. Perhaps the island had a splendid name already. That did not matter for places like Darien or Rio, but for the island itself, they felt that it did.

  Meanwhile they took turns with the telescope to watch the shipping on the lake. There were the big steamers going up and down. A steamer would pass, and they would watch the spreading waves of her wash and listen for them to break along the shores. Then there were the motor launches. Then there were people fishing in rowing boats. There were also sailing yachts, but not many. But all of these vessels, steamers, launches, yachts, and even rowing boats, were much bigger than Swallow, and were put down as native craft. It was not until the third day of their life on the island that they saw another vessel of their own size, tacking out from beyond Darien, and disappearing into Houseboat Bay.

  CHAPTER VIII

  SKULL AND CROSSBONES

  IT MUST HAVE been about eleven o’clock in the morning of that third day when all four of the ship’s company were at the look-out place at the northern end of the island. The mate was sewing a button on the boy’s shirt, and as the boy was inside it, she was finding it difficult. The captain was busy with some string, trying some of the knots in The Seaman’s Handybook. Able-seaman Titty was lying on her stomach in the heather, now and then looking through the telescope at the woody point that hid Houseboat Bay and the houseboat of the retired pirate.

  “It’s still in there,” she said.

  There was a loud bang and a puff of smoke showed above the woody point. Everybody jumped up.

  “It must be fighting the pirate,” said Titty.

  “I told you he had a cannon,” said Roger, squirming in the hands of the mate.

  “Let’s go and help,” said Titty.

  Just then a small sailing boat, with one sail, shot out from behind the point. She was about the same size as Swallow, only with a white sail instead of a tanned one. She was sailing close-hauled against a south-westerly wind.

  The little boat sailed right across the lake on the port tack, and then came about and headed almost directly for the island.

  “There are two boys in her,” said Titty.

  “Girls,” said John, who had the telescope.

  When the little boat was on the other side of the lake, the crew of the Swallow could be sure of nothing, but they watched her as closely as they could, and took turns with the telescope. She was a little varnished sailing dinghy with a centreboard. They could see the centreboard case in the middle of the boat.

  “That’s why she sails closer to the wind than we do,” said John, “though Swallow sails very close,” he added, out of loyalty to his ship.

  In the little boat were two girls, one steering, the other sitting on the middle thwart. The two were almost exactly alike. Both had red knitted caps, brown shirts, blue knickerbockers, and no stockings. They were steering straight for the island.

  “Lie down everybody,” said Captain John. “We don’t know whether they are friends or enemies.”

  Roger, the button now fixed to his shirt, dropped flat. So did Titty. So did Susan. Captain John rested the telescope on the edge of the rock so that he could see through it while his head was hidden by a clump of heather.

  “I can read her name,” he said. “AM am, AZ az, O … N … Amazon.”

  The others, hiding in the heather, looked out as much as they dared. The little boat came nearer and nearer. The girl who was steering (they could see now that she was the bigger of the two) pulled something from under the stern-sheets. The other reached aft to take it, and then went forward, and was busy with something about the mast.

  Suddenly the Amazon, now only twenty yards from the island, went about. They heard the girl who was steering say, “Ready about,” and saw the other duck to let the boom pass over, when she stood up again at once, holding some halyards in her hands. She began to haul downwards, hand over hand, and a little flagstaff with a flag on it went bobbing and jerking up to the masthead.

  “They’re hoisting a flag,” said John.

  The little staff straightened itself at the top of the mast, and the flag, a three-cornered one, blew out in the wind.

  Titty drew a long breath that nearly choked her.

  “It is …” she said.

  The flag blowing out in the wind at the masthead of the little boat was black and on it in white were a skull and two crossed bones.

  The four on the island stared at each other.

  Captain John was the first to speak.

  “Roger stops here,” he said. “The mate watches the landing-place. Titty watches the western shore. I watch the harbour. No one will show themselves. It’s quite likely they haven’t seen us. Wait till they’re well away on that tack and then we’ll get to our places. They could see us if we moved now.”

  The Amazon, sailing fast on the port tack, was soon half across the lake.

  “Now,” said John; and the three of them, leaving Roger, slipped down from the look-out place into the camp. Susan hid herself behind some bushes close to the landing-place. Titty crawled through the undergrowth till she could see out over the steep rock that ran along the western side of the island. John hurried through the trees until he came to the harbour. There he found a place from which he could look out without being seen. He unstepped the mast of the Swallow in case it could be seen over the rocks, and then hid himself and waited.

  Titty saw more of what happened than any of the others, and she really saw very little. The Amazon went about once more, and sailed round the southern end of the island. Titty watched her until the trees at that end of the island hid her. John saw her only for a moment as she passed across the opening in the rocks outside the harbour. Then he could not see her any more. Then he heard voices not far away but dared not move for fear of showing himself. Presently he heard the voices further away, near the landing-place. He hurried back through the trees to help Susan. But Susan had seen them as they passed, for a moment only, through the trees. They had not stopped at all. Sailing fast, with the wind with them, they had run through between the island and the mainland, and were already north of the island, sailing straight on towards Houseboat Bay and Darien. Susan and John hurried together to the look-out point, where Roger, his legs kicking with excitement, was lying in the heather watching the Amazon growing smaller and smaller.

  “They hauled down the flag almost as soon as they were clear of the island,” he said.

  “Then they must have hoisted it only because they saw us,” said John.

  Titty joined them.

  “If they were pirates,” she said, “why did the pirate on the houseboat fire at them?”

  “Perhaps he didn’t,” said Susan. “Watch if they run into Houseboat Bay again.”

  “They haven’t got a cannon,” said Roger, “and he has, a beauty. I know it was the pirate on the h
ouseboat who fired.”

  The Amazon did not run into Houseboat Bay. The little boat, with her white sail well out, held on her course, leaving a long line of wake astern of her, as straight as if it had been laid off with a ruler.

  “They know how to steer,” said Captain John. One of Swallow’s weak points was that she was inclined to yaw about with a following wind. It was none too easy to leave a wake like that. And, as John could not admit that there might be easier boats to steer than Swallow, he had to give all the credit for that straight line to the sailors of the Amazon.

  They watched the little white sail grow smaller until at last it disappeared beyond the Peak of Darien.

  “She must be going to Rio,” said Susan.

  “We’d better follow and see where they come from,” said Captain John. “They can’t get back here without our seeing them. Now we can’t see them, and they can’t see us. So even if they do see us afterwards, they won’t know we have come from the island.”

  “Unless they have seen us already,” said Susan.

  “They didn’t see Swallow, anyhow,” said John. “I took her mast down. Let’s have a pemmican day. Then we needn’t wait to cook dinner. Don’t let’s waste a minute. A loaf of bread and a tin of pemmican and some apples, and we’ll get four bottles of ginger beer, grog, I mean, in Rio. Then we needn’t bother about anything but tea when we get back. Come on, Roger. We’ll bring Swallow round to the landing-place. Will you be ready with the stores, Mister Mate?”

  “Aye, aye, sir,” said Mate Susan.

  John and Roger ran to the harbour, cast off Swallow’s moorings, and scrambled in. John stepped the mast, paddled her out through the narrows, and then began rowing as soon as there was room to use the oars. You can’t do much sculling over the stern against a south-west wind. He rowed round to the landing-place. Susan and Titty were waiting there with a tin of pemmican, a tin-opener, a knife, a loaf of bread, a hunk of butter wrapped up in a bit of paper, and four large apples. A moment later the brown sail was hoisted and set, and Swallow, with her whole crew aboard, was slipping out from behind the island.