Missee Lee: The Swallows and Amazons in the China Seas

by Arthur Ransome

  “We may see them any minute,” said Susan.

  “But if they were picked up by a liner like Captain Flint said?” asked Roger.

  “They couldn’t do much till they got to port,” said John. “But he’d know just where to look for us as soon as he could get a tug or something.”

  “Any ship we see may be them,” said Roger, looking out eagerly to sea where there were no ships at all.

  “Couldn’t they wireless to coastguards?” said Susan.

  “There won’t be coastguards here,” said John. “Anyhow, we’re all right. We’ve got grub. We’ve got that house to sleep in. We’ll just hang on and keep a look out all the time it’s light.”

  “But the people the house belongs to may come back,” said Susan.

  “With luck they won’t,” said John. “And they may be decent if they do. But it’ll be much better if Captain Flint and the others find us first.”

  All day they watched from the rock with the stone chair. As the day wore on and the sun moved round it was easier to look out over the sea. They grew sleepy, and each took a turn at being coastguard while the other three lay down in the shade close by. It was hard to keep awake after that night of tossing in the Swallow, but it was almost as hard to keep asleep. Birds, butterflies, the restless Gibber and worried dreams woke them one after another. The day wore on. The sun passed overhead and began to dip towards the land. Hour after hour they watched. The swell had gone. The sea was no more than rippled by a wind that would have suited Amazon. But the hours passed and there was never a sign of her.

  It was not until nearly dusk that they saw a sail.

  Roger, sitting in the stone chair was the first to see it. He jumped up and stood on the chair.

  “Sail-ho!” he shouted. “Wake up, John!”

  Everybody was awake in a moment. Roger was pointing.

  “Brown,” said Titty. “It’s not Amazon.”

  John had the telescope. “Three masts,” he said. “It’s only a junk. … Coming this way,” he added a moment later. “It’s nearer that point than it was.”

  “If it’s a junk we don’t want to be seen,” said Susan.

  “You never know,” said John. “We’d better lie low. … It is coming in.”

  “It’s going to be dark in a minute,” said Susan. “We ought to get back while we can see the path.”

  “All right,” said John. “Hang on just a minute. She’s sailing right along that shore. There must be a creek where I thought. There may even be a harbour.”

  “No lighthouses or buoys,” said Titty.

  “There must be something in there or that junk wouldn’t be coming in.”

  “We shan’t be able to see if we wait any longer,” said Susan.

  It was already growing dark. The brown sails of the junk were moving slowly against a green background of forest.

  “She’s coming in all right,” said John.

  “Hullo! They’re hanging up lanterns,” said Titty.

  “Come along,” said Susan. “Come on, Titty. Shall I carry Polly? Don’t let Gibber go off again.”

  They took a last look at the junk, and then, a little downhearted just because it was a junk and not Amazon, thinking of Captain Flint, Nancy and Peggy, still drifting about at sea, or being carried in a liner further and further away, they hurried back along the shadowy path. They came to the house. Susan groped for the hurricane lantern. John was ready with a match.

  “Keep the lantern right at the back,” said John. “So that nobody could see it from the mainland.”

  Susan took the lantern to the table and nearly dropped it. “Roger!” she cried. “What have you done with those books?”

  “I haven’t touched them,” said Roger. “You touched them last when you said I oughtn’t to have put in that picture.”

  “They’ve gone,” said Susan.

  They looked hurriedly round. Everything else was exactly as they had left it but the Virgil, the dictionary and the exercise-book had disappeared.

  “Someone’s been here and taken them,” said Titty.

  “It couldn’t be Gibber,” said Roger. “He’s been with me all the time.”

  “Someone’s been,” said John. “Someone knows we’re here.” He ran out and stared into the darkness towards the great cliff. There were no lights to be seen.

  Suddenly, almost as if from behind the cliff, there was a sharp bang, followed by another and another, and then by a whole lot. The others ran out.

  “What’s that?” cried Titty. “Fighting?”

  “Guns,” said Susan.

  “It’s like the Fifth of November,” said Roger.

  “Firecrackers,” said John. “There must be a harbour somewhere in there. It’s that Chinese junk coming home. Good catch of fish or something. That’s all her friends giving her a welcome. Gosh! I wish I knew who took those books.”

  “We can’t do anything about it,” said Susan. “They haven’t touched our things. Ration of sardines all round. Ration of dates. And then bed. Nobody’ll come now. But we’ll have to be ready for them in the morning.”

  CHAPTER VI

  IT’S THEM!

  THEY woke soon after dawn after a restless night. Wriggling their bones because a sleeping-bag is not much of a mattress when you sleep on a wooden floor, they scrambled up, and remembered the visitor they had not seen.

  “It’s no good looking at the table,” said John. “The books have gone.”

  “I thought perhaps I’d dreamed it,” said Titty.

  “I wish you had,” said John. “What I can’t understand is why whoever it was didn’t touch anything else.”

  “Somebody get the kettle filled,” said Susan, who was already busy with the Primus.

  Roger was off in a moment. John and Titty followed him, round the queer Chinese house where they had slept, and down among the trees towards the place where John had found that trickle of fresh water. Roger running ahead with the kettle, stopped short and came darting back.

  “Man in a boat,” he said. “Coming this way.”

  “Crouch!” said John, and all three of them dropped into hiding.

  “What sort of a man?” whispered Titty.

  “There he is,” whispered Roger. “Look at his hat.”

  The man was sitting in the stern of a long, brown punt. He was not hurrying. Working a paddle only now and then, he was moving crabwise across the channel between their island and the great cliff on which the morning light showed up that climbing track. His hat, yellow and round, going up to a point in the middle, seemed as big as an umbrella. Along the gunwale of his punt was a row of ten or a dozen black lumps. Suddenly one of them stirred and spread and shook black wings.

  “Cormorants,” breathed Titty.

  Just then, close to the punt, they saw the long head and neck of a cormorant with a fish in its beak showing above the water. The bird came alongside, and the fisherman scooped it into the punt with a net.

  “He’s emptying it,” said Roger, as they saw the fisherman holding the cormorant while another three or four fish fell from its open beak.

  “There’s another,” said Titty.

  “’Sh!” said John.

  Another cormorant came up by the punt, was scooped out, emptied and set on the gunwale to flap and dry its wings. The punt was coming nearer. The fisherman laid down his paddle, prodded over the side with a long bamboo, found bottom and began poling his punt over the shallows close along the island shore.

  John made up his mind.

  “He’s harmless enough,” he said. “Just a fisherman.”

  “He might give us some of those fish,” said Roger.

  “He doesn’t look as if he knew English,” said Titty.

  “He isn’t a pirate, anyway,” said John. “I’m going to hail him. Come on.”

  They stood up.

  “Ahoy!” called John.

  There was a sharp echo from the opposite cliff. The fisherman, standing in the stern of his punt, slowly poling it a
long, looked at the cliff, looked towards the island and saw John, Titty and Roger standing there and waving to him.

  The punt swayed violently. For a moment they thought the fisherman was going to capsize her. He shouted something. He steadied himself, shouted again and, instead of bringing his punt in, drove it into deeper water, dropped his pole, took his paddle and paddled away as if for his life.

  “Ahoy! Ahoy!” shouted John and Roger.

  “We’re friends,” shouted Titty.

  He only paddled the faster.

  “What’s he frightened about?” said Roger.

  “Did you hear what he shouted?” asked Titty.

  “Something or other in Chinese,” said John.

  “He said something about Missee Lee,” said Titty. “I heard ‘Missee Lee’ quite plainly, twice.”

  “You couldn’t have, really,” said John. “When people talk a foreign language it sounds just like one long gabble.”

  “No need to hide now,” said Roger. “Let’s go out on the jetty.”

  They went out there, and stood watching the fisherman until he was out of sight.

  “Do you think he took the books?” said Roger.

  “I don’t believe he knew anybody was here,” said Titty.

  “The person who took the books,” said John, “may have come from straight across. You can see there’s a landing place. Or he may have come from the same place as that fisherman.”

  CORMORANT FISHER

  “It wasn’t a he,” said Roger. “Look at this.” He held out a long tortoiseshell pin with a green knob on the end of it. “It was lying just here. She must have dropped it getting into her boat.”

  “Sort of hairpin,” said John. “Look here. Susan’ll be raging. What about that water?”

  They filled the kettle and took it back to Susan and told her what had happened, and showed her the pin.

  “Which way did he go?” asked Susan.

  John pointed. “He went across and then along under the cliff. He’ll have gone to that harbour round the corner, where people were letting off fireworks last night.”

  “Oh well,” said Susan. “He’ll tell the harbour people, and they’ll send a boat.” She put the kettle on the stove. “John, you open three tins of sardines.”

  “It was somebody else took the books,” said Roger, looking at the pin with its big green knob.

  “We’ll put it on the table where the books were,” said Titty. “So that she’ll find it when she comes again.”

  “You know what it means?” said John, licking sardine oil from his fingers before going on to pemmican and dates. “Some of us’ll have to stay here, in case people come.”

  “They’re sure to now,” said Titty, “when the cormorant fisher tells them he’s seen us.”

  “I know,” said John. “But what about looking out for Amazon? Some of us’ll have to keep watch on the other side of the island as well.”

  “Titty and Roger,” said Susan at once. “If they see Amazon or anybody coming in from the sea they’ll have plenty of time to slip back here for us. But if people come here, we’ve got to explain about using their house and the Primus and everything. At least I have. And if people come from the harbour John ought to be here to tell them where they ought to send a ship to look for the others.”

  “I’ll stay here,” said Roger.

  “No good Titty being there alone,” said John. “There ought to be two of you … one to signal to Amazon and one to bolt back and fetch us.”

  “Oh, all right,” said Roger. “Three of us. I’ll take Gibber.”

  “And I’ll take Polly,” said Titty, putting a fresh supply of parrot food in the feeding-box in the cage, and putting a handful in her pocket in case of need.

  “Have a look at Swallow and see she’s all right,” John called after them as they went off along the path dappled with shadow and sunlight under the trees.

  They came to Titty’s blaze, now covered with dead butterflies and moths drowned in the syrup that had oozed out of the tree. Their own trail was clear enough. Anybody could see by the cut climbers and trampled undergrowth that people had passed that way. They hurried down to the cove to find Swallow lying as they had left her, except for a large green lizard with a blue head that was sunning itself on the gunwale.

  “Regular dragon,” said Roger. “Let’s keep it.”

  But the lizard gave him no chance. There was a quick green flicker down the side of the boat and the lizard was gone.

  “Come along,” said Titty. “We’ll see lots more and we ought to have been at the stone seat hours ago.”

  “We’ll never see a bigger dragon than that,” said Roger.

  They forced their way back to the path and hurried on till they came to the stone seat.

  “We needn’t have hurried,” said Roger. “There’s nothing in sight.”

  There was a dead calm. The sun blazed on a deserted sea. Away to the left green forest and the long hill behind it was reflected in the glassy water. They lay by the stone chair, watching. The ship’s parrot went on with its breakfast and Gibber was eating some green bananas from the tree that Roger had found when they landed. An hour passed, perhaps more. Suddenly, far away, they heard the beating of a gong and a faint noise of shouting.

  “It isn’t exactly harbour noises,” said Titty.

  “No cranes,” said Roger. “And no dredger, and no pile-driver and nobody banging rust off the side of a ship.”

  “Just people,” said Titty. “I wish we could see what they’re like.”

  “We’ve seen one, anyway,” said Roger. “That man with the cormorants. Gosh! I never thought we’d see anybody really fishing with them. Do you remember when we tried to be cormorants when we saw them on the lake?”

  “That was a million years ago,” said Titty. “It was before the first time we went sailing in the Wild Cat.”

  “Pretty beastly not having her any more,” said Roger.

  “Yes,” said Titty.

  “And having to go home in a steamer after all,” said Roger. “But we’ve still got Swallow. And Nancy and Peggy have still got Amazon. And Captain Flint’s still got the old houseboat.”

  “It isn’t the same thing,” said Titty.

  “He’ll buy another schooner, I bet,” said Roger.

  But Titty said nothing. Swallow and her crew were all right. They soon would be, anyway. But where were the others? What if no one had picked them up and all day yesterday and all night and even now Amazon was lying out there under the blazing sun, with no land in sight, and their rations getting shorter and the water getting used up. How did that poem go? “Water, water, everywhere, nor any drop to drink.” John and Susan had never said that there was any danger. But she had seen their faces when they were talking to each other. She stared out to sea and shook her head because of a mist in her eyes. There was a blinding glare off the water. It was easier to look at the green trees and brown hills. …

  “Ahoy!” she shouted suddenly at the top of her voice.

  “What is it?” cried Roger, startled.

  “Look, look,” she almost whispered. “Is that Amazon, or isn’t it?” She was tugging at her pocket to get out the telescope. “Over there. … Without her mast. … Between us and the trees.”

  Never had the telescope been so hard to focus. She got it right at last.

  “It’s them! It’s them! I can see Peggy and Nancy. … But she isn’t rowing. … She’s paddling. … Captain Flint isn’t there. She’s paddling like mad. … But, I say, they’re going away, not coming in. Stern first. There must be a current. Quick. Let’s get Swallow. … No. … Roger. … I’ll look after Gibber. You bolt for John and Susan. I’ve got to keep her in sight.”

  “Let me look,” demanded Roger.

  She grabbed Gibber’s lead and gave Roger the telescope. Roger took one look through it, pushed it at Titty and was gone, elbows out, head back, running as if in a race at school.

  Titty wriggled her arms into the canvas slings
that let her carry the parrot-cage on her back and have her hands free. She stared through her telescope. Yes, there was Amazon, with Nancy frantically paddling, moving stern first out to sea.

  “Ahoy!” Too far away. Peggy had her back to her and she could see by the splashes how Nancy was paddling. How soon would John be at the cove? He would want help to get Swallow out. It had taken all four of them to pull her up. But till the very last minute she must keep Amazon in sight. And then she saw that Amazon seemed nearer to that distant shore. Nancy must have worked her out of the worst of the current. She was no longer going backwards. She was getting nearer to those trees. And then, just as Titty heard John and Roger shouting together, Amazon disappeared. She had seen Amazon with the trees behind her. Now there were only trees. Creek or something, thought Titty, and, with her eyes on the place where Amazon had been, she remembered a dodge from old days. She took marks. “Coming! Coming!” she shouted. Just over that place was a tall palm-tree high above the rest, and over that there was a dip in the skyline of the hill behind the forest. She looked at them again to make sure and then, with the parrot-cage jolting on her back, the parrot screaming and Gibber scurrying and leaping beside her, she ran to join the others.

  “Look here, Titty,” said John, the moment she reached the little cove. “Are you dead sure? It wasn’t only Roger who saw them?”

  “You know what Roger is,” said Susan.

  “We both saw them,” said Roger.

  “I know it’s them,” said Titty. “Nancy and Peggy in Amazon. Something had gone wrong and Nancy was paddling her, not rowing. They were drifting stern first, but they worked her into the trees and then I couldn’t see them any more.”

  “Have you got marks to find the place?”

  “A tree and a dip on the skyline.”

  “That’s all right. We’ll go after them. You see there’s something happening on the cliff. There were people on the top and then we saw them coming down. They’ll be coming across.”

  “We can get back to meet them,” said Susan. “Finding Captain Flint and the others matters most.”