Missee Lee

by Arthur Ransome

  “Thumping good mast,” they heard Captain Flint mutter to himself.

  And then, quite suddenly, they knew that the darkness was not what it had been. The cliffs on either side were further away and not so high. They could see the mainsail no longer as a curtain of solid black against the stars but dark and ribbed. Looking past it and under it they could see the door into the fo’c’sle, square windows, the high foredeck and up in the bows the two look-outs on their feet again now and peering forward. The water was smoother. The Shining Moon was moving more and more slowly down the widening channel, the wind behind her no longer gathered together by the funnel of the gorge. It was growing lighter every minute. A cock crowed somewhere on land. And now that they were clear of the echoing cliffs they could hear quite a lot of other noises, the beating of the alarm bell and the piercing shrill notes of a signaller far away in Dragon Town.

  “Open water now,” said Miss Lee and gave up the tiller to Captain Flint.

  The look-outs on the foredeck turned round.

  “We’ve done it,” shouted Nancy cheerfully. “Good for you, Uncle Jim!” and then, in an altogether different tone, “Miss Lee!”

  And with that call of Nancy’s the hearts of Titty, Roger, Susan and Peggy turned suddenly to lead. They were prisoners still. They had never thought of that. They had thought of Miss Lee only as being there in the very nick of time to save their lives and to save the ship. They scrambled unhappily to their feet. John and Nancy climbed up to the poop and joined them.

  “Well,” said Nancy. “I don’t care what you say, I think it’s pretty beastly.”

  Captain Flint spoke. “If Miss Lee hadn’t taken the tiller in time we’d never have got through at all. We’re lucky to be alive and we’re a lot better off as her prisoners than if we’d been caught by Bo’sun Wu or Mr. Chang.”

  Nancy turned her back on him. Suddenly she flung round again.

  “Rot,” she said. “No guards now. We’re not her prisoners. She’s ours. Shut her up in the cabin.”

  In the dim light of early morning a little smile showed on Miss Lee’s face. “Nansee,” she said. “You are a blave but foolish child. I am coming with you. Going back to Camblidge.”

  “Three thousand million cheers!” exclaimed Nancy, not even minding being called a foolish child. “Barbecued billygoats, I thought Captain Flint was right. Cat and mouse, you know.”

  Miss Lee looked at Captain Flint, who looked away and attended to his steering.

  “Giminy,” said Nancy. “Miss Lee, I’m jolly glad you’re coming. And you’ll come to Beckfoot for the holidays. …”

  “Long vacation,” said Miss Lee. “We will have a reading party. …”

  “Oh, Gosh!” murmured Roger. “Not lessons in the summer holidays! I say, Gibber isn’t up the mast. Gibber … Gibber!”

  “In the cabin, your monkey,” said Miss Lee, who, though thinking of other things and listening for other noises, had heard the fear in Roger’s voice. “He came in long ago.”

  “And you let him stay,” said Roger, remembering how Miss Lee had forbidden the monkey in the house. “Thank you very much.”

  “I thought it better,” said Miss Lee.

  Roger slipped down from the poop to open the cabin door and set Gibber free. Titty went down to fetch the parrot from the safe corner between poop and bulwarks where she had wedged his cage to be out of the way when first they came aboard.

  “He’s pretty wet,” she said, “but he’s all right.”

  “I say,” said Roger, “it was a good thing she was here when we were coming through that gorge. Even Captain Flint …”

  “I know,” said Titty.

  Titty passed the parrot-cage up to John on the poop and climbed up herself. Roger followed her.

  “That is a new signal,” Miss Lee was saying. “You heard the first signals?”

  “We heard them all right,” said Captain Flint, “but we did not know what they meant, except that after that bull-roaring horn we saw that they were closing the boom.”

  “The first signals said that you were in Shining Moon and that Miss Lee wanted you blought back alive or door-nail dead. Dead or alive. Miss Lee wanted the pallot and the monkey alive and the foleign devils alive or door-nail dead.”

  “That must be Chang,” said Titty. “He always rather liked old Polly.”

  “Sounds like the bird-fancier,” said Captain Flint.

  “The new signal is diffelent,” said Miss Lee. “It tells the junks to take no plisoners and to sink the Shining Moon.”

  “But why?”

  “Whoever sent that signal,” said Miss Lee, “knew that I was aboard and did not want me back.”

  “Who knew you were coming with us?” asked Captain Flint.

  “Nobody. Not even my amah. I did not know myself. Only, when I thought of my students gone. …” Miss Lee was silent for a moment. “I did not mean you to know till we were out at sea. But when they closed the boom and you turned into the gorge …”

  “We heard the cabin-door,” said Peggy.

  “Who knew we were taking Shining Moon?”

  “My amah … And my signaller, perhaps. He helped to take your things aboard.”

  “They were awfully quick in spotting we’d gone,” said Nancy.

  “Chang is a clever man,” said Miss Lee.

  “Well, we’ve done them, anyway,” said Nancy. “With their junks bottled up inside the river, looking for us when we’re not there. They’ll never guess we got through the gorge. We’re out now, and they’ll never catch us.”

  “Light for us is light for them,” said Miss Lee. “There was a signal from the junks just now to say you were not in the river.”

  “It’ll take them some time to get out. And longer to get the junks under weigh on this side,” said Captain Flint, glancing towards the little green pagoda on the southern point of Dragon Island and at the mouth of the Dead Water beyond it.

  There was the billowing roar of a horn from close at hand.

  “Ah,” said Miss Lee. “They have seen us from the pagoda. I was wondering if they were all asleep.”

  “Watchtower?” asked Nancy.

  “Yes,” said Miss Lee. “Evellybody knows where we are now.”

  “No matter,” said Captain Flint. “We’re out now and we’ve got a good start.”

  “This wind will dlop at dawn,” said Miss Lee.

  *

  Dawn was coming fast, as the Shining Moon sailed out past the green pagoda on the point and into the open sea. Watching Miss Lee, they saw her start as her eye fell on the ropes about the mizen-mast. They saw her glance forward.

  “All the halyards are in an awful mess,” said Nancy.

  “We did it in the dark, you know,” said John.

  “Come on,” said Captain Flint. “We want to get the most out of those sails. Here you are, Titty. Easy steering. We’ve got to tidy up.” And with John, Susan, Nancy and Peggy, he set out to put things right. That night, in hoisting sail aboard a strange ship, they had had to feel for ropes and feel for cleats. Halyards had been twisted and belayed across each other. Yards had not been hoisted as far as they would go. Now, in the half light before dawn, working like ants, they went from mast to mast, from rope to rope, Miss Lee going with them and showing them how things should be. Then the two dinghies that had been towing astern were hauled alongside, emptied of gear and baled by happy captains who had thought that the little boats must have been smashed to pieces in the gorge. “Hurry up,” called Captain Flint. “We’ll have them aboard and she may move a little faster.” There was no need now to heave to while the Swallow and the Amazon were hoisted in. The wind was dropping already.

  Minute by minute the sky was growing lighter.

  “Hullo,” shouted Roger. “Sampans coming down to those junks at anchor.”

  Looking back up the Dead Water they could see black dots moving towards the junks.

  “Lucky they didn’t think of that at first,” said Captain Flint.

/>   “They never thought of our coming out this way,” said Titty.

  “We’ll do them yet,” said Captain Flint. “It’ll take them some time to get going. We’ll do them yet, if only the wind would buck up.”

  *

  But the wind was slackening more and more as the glow in the sky grew brighter. The Shining Moon was hardly more than clear of the islands, when, in the East, the rising sun split the horizon like an explosion. A path of fire ran from it towards them over the sea. The bulwarks cast a shadow. Sunlight lit all faces, and the crew of the Shining Moon looked at each other as if meeting for the first time. Far away to port, under the black cliff, the sunlight lit the trees of Temple Island like an emerald. The parrot, in his cage on the poop, began to preen his feathers. The monkey perched to sun himself on the anchor burton in the bows, high over shimmering water.

  “Sun lise,” said Miss Lee. “The Dlagon Feast is over.”

  Suddenly the great mainsail of the Shining Moon flapped, flapped again and hung limp. Titty’s eyes grew bothered. She moved the tiller this way and that. “I can’t steer,” she said suddenly. “She isn’t moving … She hasn’t got steerage way … She’s stopped.”

  “Never mind, Titty,” said Captain Flint. “Nothing to be done. I’ll lash the tiller. Fine weather. Land breeze by night, sea breeze by day. Calm at sunset and sunrise. We’ll be getting wind again as soon as the sun’s a bit higher.”

  “There’s a sail going up on one of the junks in Dead Water,” said Roger.

  “We’ll get the wind before they do,” said Captain Flint.

  “Telescope, Titty,” said Roger. “Quick … One of the sampans hasn’t stopped by the junks. It’s coming after us.”

  “We can deal with sampans all right,” said Captain Flint, “and all the better if they come one at a time. It’s the junks in the other river I’m worried about. Miss Lee, ma’am, how long does it take them to open that boom once they’ve closed it?”

  Miss Lee, who had been standing on the poop, looking at the bright green of the trees on the little island that held her father’s grave, turned. “Longer to open. Velly easy to close. Because of the cullent,” she said.

  “Well, they’ve done it,” said John.

  One after another, four war junks, with their big brown sails, came into sight beyond the cliff, slipping slowly out along the shores of Tiger Island.

  “How are they moving with no wind?” exclaimed Titty.

  “Current out of the river,” said Captain Flint. “When the wind does come, we shan’t have much of a start.”

  “We haven’t escaped after all,” said Susan.

  It was as if the flying hare had been frozen stiff, in full view of the pursuing hounds.

  “When you can do nothing,” said Miss Lee, “it is better to be calm. Loger, you will please go to the cabin and bling me up my Holace. You will find it with the other books. … And I have there a chart for Captain Flint.”

  Roger came up from below with the chart and Horace. Miss Lee took the Horace, but, for a moment or two watched John and Captain Flint, as they unrolled the chart and spread it on the deck. It was an old chart, of 1879. “My father’s,” said Miss Lee. Captain Flint took a scrap of paper from his pocket, a bit of a page from the Nautical Almanac on which was a pencilled latitude. A moment later he marked a cross on the chart.

  “Let me see,” said Miss Lee … “Yes … Velly nearly light. How did you know?”

  “I took an observation that day we were with you on Temple Island,” confessed Captain Flint.

  Miss Lee’s eyes narrowed. Then she took his pencil and made a mark herself. “We are here,” she said.

  “Thank you, ma’am,” said Captain Flint humbly, and looked in the left-hand bottom corner of the chart for the entrance to Singapore.

  “It’s not much good now, if they’re going to get us,” said John.

  “She’s a nippy little boat,” said Captain Flint.

  “All our things are in the cabin,” said Roger. “But no food.”

  Miss Lee looked up from her Horace with a smile. “Plenty of stores fo’ward,” she said. “And plenty of water.”

  “Susan,” said Captain Flint. “Could you do something about it? If we’re going to be sunk, we may as well not sink hungry.”

  “Come on, Peggy,” said Susan, and the two mates went forward and into a door under the foredeck.

  “Those junks are towing,” said John a little later. “They’ve each got sampans towing ahead.”

  “Look here,” said Nancy, “I can’t stand this. Simply sitting here and waiting for them. Let’s tow too.”

  “No good,” said Captain Flint. “And we’ll need all hands presently if that chap in the sampan think’s he’s going to board us.”

  Miss Lee glanced at the small boat with a round matting roof over a little cabin that was coming fast towards the Shining Moon, swaying to one side and to the other as a man standing in the stern worked his long sweep.

  “Dlagon town sampan,” she said. “Fisherman pelhaps … Thinking I shall pay him much money for catching you dead or alive …”

  She closed her book suddenly and stood up listening. A pink spot showed on the gold of her cheeks. She tapped with one finger on the rail listening again to a shrill whistling far away.

  “It really is just like Morse,” said Roger.

  “I wish we knew what it meant,” said Titty.

  “So do I,” said Miss Lee. “That was an order … my order … for a Taicoon Council in the yamen … my yamen …”

  “Never mind that,” said Captain Flint. “If you’re going back with us to Cambridge, to be a don and a doctor and what not, you can’t be worrying all the time about what tunes are whistled at the other side of the world. Just forget about it. Somebody’ll be whistling when we’re all dead, and the tune won’t matter to us a twopenny … not twopence if you know what I mean … What we’ve got to do is to whistle for a wind and to hope the Shining Moon can show a clean pair of heels to all those junks. Hi! Nancy, John. Get those capstan bars off the fo’c’sle head. All hands on deck. This fellow’ll be aboard us in a minute.” The sampan was hardly thirty yards away.

  Peggy came running out of the fore-cabin. Susan followed with a steaming saucepan. Nancy and John were tossing capstan bars down into the waist. Susan wedged her saucepan in a coil of rope and took a bar. Peggy doubtfully picked up another. John and Nancy jumped down into the waist as the sampan came ranging up alongside.

  “A capstan bar for everybody,” cried Captain Flint, picking a bar and whirling it round like an Indian club, suppling his wrist. “Bring it down hard on any paw that touches our rail. Hold off there. What do you want?”

  “It is my signaller,” said Miss Lee quietly from the poop above their heads. “Let him come alongside.”

  They knew the signaller now and saw that he had his signalling flute slung on his back. The next moment his hands were on the rail. No capstan bar came down upon his knuckles. John gave him a rope and he made fast. Nancy hung a couple of bamboo fenders over the side. From under the matting shelter in the middle of the sampan came the old amah in her blue coat and trousers. Sitting just inside the shelter, combing his beard, they saw the aged counsellor.

  “Let them come aboard,” said Miss Lee.

  With the help of Captain Flint and the signaller, the amah was hoisted over the rail, followed by the counsellor. The old woman clambered up to the poop, knelt on the deck and threw her arms round Miss Lee’s feet, weeping and talking as if she would never stop. The old man went up to the poop, bowed to Miss Lee, sat himself down on a coil of rope and waited in silence, running his long nails slowly through the sparse hairs on his beard.

  Miss Lee lifted her hand and the amah stopped talking. Miss Lee signed to the old man and he began. The crew of the Shining Moon waited and listened, while the signaller lay panting in the bottom of his sampan, and the big junks were coming slowly nearer.

  At last the Chinese talk came to an end, and Miss
Lee spoke in English. “They Ian away,” she said, and went on to tell what little she now knew of what had happened. Chang had asked for the little dragon the moment the big ones had come back to the yamen without it. He had asked for Miss Lee, and the amah had told him he could not see her. He had asked again, after the counsellor had given orders for sounding the alarm, and the amah, going into Miss Lee’s room had found her gone. She had seen gaps in the bookshelves and had guessed at once that Miss Lee had gone with her prisoners. She had told the counsellor. At that moment they had heard the great horn giving the signal for the closing of the boom, and knew that the Shining Moon was trapped in the river. It had been the old counsellor who had remembered the gorge and how Miss Lee had sailed through it long before. They had taken the signaller with them, slipped out through the garden, and taken a sampan from below the place where the new junk was being built, and had got away long before anyone in the town had thought of that way out for the Shining Moon.

  “And now?” said Nancy. “They’ll have to come too … if we don’t get grabbed.”

  “They want me to go back,” said Miss Lee, and, for the first time, looked doubtful.

  “They heard the signal to sink the Shining Moon,” said Miss Lee. “The signaller told them what it meant. The counsellor says that Chang must have found I was gone. He wants to sink me with the Shining Moon. He will take the Thlee Islands for himself.”

  “But they’ll never let him,” said Titty.

  “And if they fight,” said Miss Lee.

  “Those junks are getting pretty near,” said Roger. “Hullo. What’s that?”

  “Wind coming,” said John.

  “Not that,” said Roger. “Listen! There it goes again. That’s the second.”