Peter Duck

by Arthur Ransome

  A minute or two later they saw him come out on the south quay and speak to some men who were busy with the schooner’s warps. They saw him pointing across at the Wild Cat.

  “Why do they call him Black Jake?” Titty asked. “Is it because of his hair?”

  “Because of his heart,” said Peter Duck.

  “Queer sort of cove,” said Captain Flint. “Now, Mr Duck, will you come along and stow your dunnage in the deckhouse. There’s a good big locker under that starboard bunk. And then we’ll see what sort of a breakfast these mates of ours are going to give us.”

  At that first breakfast with Peter Duck at one end of the long narrow table and Captain Flint at the other, everybody was rather shy. Captain Flint and Peter Duck talked a little, mostly about the Thermopylae and old days in sailing ships, while everybody else watched and listened. As soon as it was over, work began in earnest. Every rope in the ship was to be overhauled, for one thing. “You don’t want gear going bad on you at sea,” Peter Duck had said, and Captain Flint agreed. There was no point in going out even for a trial trip until everything was as right as they could make it. He had got rid of the carpenters a month before. Then there had been all the painting and varnishing. Then there had been the storing of the ship. He had stored her so well that he had the happiness of knowing that nothing was out of his reach, the Mediterranean, America, or the South Seas. And yet, it seemed there was still a tremendous lot to do before he could even take his ship outside the harbour.

  “No. No. Wait to see how we get on,” he had said when Titty had asked about the launching of the Swallow. “We shall want help this morning, but if all goes well we’ll put her over in the afternoon.”

  All that morning they worked, and, all morning, people passing along the quay stopped to look down at the little schooner and up at Mr Duck, who spent most of the time at the top of one or other of the two masts. Everybody seemed to know him. Everybody had a word for him. Even the harbourmaster, the greatest man of the whole port, with gold on his cap and on his dark blue coat, strolled up and stopped for a minute or two.

  “Quite like old times for you, Mr Duck,” he called up.

  “And old times were good times,” Mr Duck called down from the mainmast cross-trees.

  Roger and Gibber had vanished soon after breakfast. Everybody knew they must be in the engine-room. Susan and Peggy went marketing. John, Nancy, and Titty were helping on deck, passing things up at the end of a line to Captain Flint or Peter Duck when they were up the masts, or just hanging on to a rope here or a rope there when they were told. They were being very useful, but they had plenty of time to look about them, and they could not help seeing that all morning they were being watched from the black schooner at the other side of the harbour. The men over there had stopped shifting her warps. She was clearly not going to sea that day.

  Everybody aboard the Wild Cat was very hungry when Susan and Peggy, after coming back laden from the market and trying what they could do with the galley stove, decided that the potatoes had been boiled long enough and that the mutton chops would be burnt if they tried to give them another minute’s cooking. When Peggy banged the big bell just inside the galley door there was a cheerful rush from all parts of the ship. There was no hanging back. The cooks of the Wild Cat did not have to complain that people let their dinners get cold. Indeed, Roger was very unwilling to go and wash some of the dirt off first, when he came crawling out from the dark engine-room, round the companion steps and into the saloon.

  Work had gone very well.

  “We’ll be going to sea tomorrow, eh, Mr Duck?” Captain Flint said as they sat down at the saloon table.

  “There’ll be nothing to stop us by the time we knock off tonight.”

  “Where are we going?” Everybody shouted at once.

  “Trial trip,” said Captain Flint, “and if all’s right, we’ll be off down Channel next day.”

  “What about Swallow?” asked Titty, when things had quietened down again after this bit of news.

  “You can take her sailing this afternoon,” said Captain Flint.

  *

  For an hour after dinner John and Nancy were still wanted on deck, and Titty was helping the mates with washing up and the cleaning of an obstinate frying-pan. But the moment to which they had been looking forward came at last. Captain Flint and Peter Duck stopped work for a minute or two while they lowered the little sailing boat into the water, and fixed a rope ladder over the side of the Wild Cat so that the crew could go down her side into the Swallow like a lot of pilots going down into a boat at sea.

  “Are you all right?” called Captain Flint, when John and Nancy had stepped the mast and everybody was aboard.

  “Quite all right,” said John, though he was feeling a little nervous at sailing Swallow in strange waters and for the first time for nearly a year.

  “Catch!” Captain Flint dropped the end of the painter. Roger coiled it away before the mast. Nancy pushed off from the Wild Cat’s green side. Susan and Peggy were hauling up the old brown sail with its well-remembered patch. Titty’s little flag was already fluttering at the mast-head. They were off.

  The wind was coming down from Oulton, and for a moment or two John tacked up against it, just to get the feel of the tiller, but as soon as he was sure that Swallow was still the same old Swallow and that he had not forgotten how to sail her, they decided they would go through the swing bridge to have a look at the outer harbour.

  “The Wild Cat does look fine,” said John.

  “I should think she does,” said Nancy. “That green paint just suits her. And all the new halyards. I say, John, let’s have a look at the black schooner.”

  “She’s rather a beauty, too,” said John, as they slipped across towards her.

  “Much too good to belong to a man like that,” said Nancy.

  “Sh!” said Susan.

  “There he is,” said Peggy.

  They were close to her now and looking up they saw Black Jake scowling down at them over the stern of his vessel.

  The wind freshened a little, and Swallow felt it. She was moving very fast. They had just time to read the name painted in big white letters across the stern of the schooner, “VIPER BRISTOL,” and then they were slipping away towards the bridge and hoping that the puff of wind would last them through it.

  “What a funny name for a boat,” said Roger.

  They had a fine sail round the outer harbour, looking into one basin after another. They saw the Government fishery vessel, with the reindeer horns from Lapland fastened up on the bridge. They watched one of the fishing ketches sail out between the pier heads. “That’s where we’ll be going tomorrow,” said Nancy. Then John gave Nancy the tiller, and she sailed the Swallow into Hamilton Dock, where they saw the steam trawlers. By that time Susan and Peggy were thinking they ought to be putting a kettle on to boil, so they sailed back, though they had to use oars in getting through under the swing bridge. They put the cooks aboard, and then John, Nancy, Titty, and Roger went off for a last half-hour of sailing.

  They tacked away up the inner harbour, past the dry dock and the vessels being repaired, past the grey dredgers at work getting up the mud from the bottom. They did not go very far before turning back. With Captain Flint and Peter Duck working so hard they did not want to be even a minute late. They were on their way home sailing with the wind down the middle of the Channel, and John was just going to turn across to the Wild Cat when Titty, looking at the Viper, suddenly said, “There’s that boy.”

  “What boy?” asked Roger. “Where?”

  “There,” said Titty, but she did not point. “The boy with the red hair. He’s fishing. Fishing from the Viper. Look!”

  Everybody saw him now, sitting on the Viper’s bulwarks, with his feet over the side. He was holding the end of a fishing-line that went straight down into the water below him.

  After what they had heard of Black Jake, and after what they had seen of him, they were inclined to be sorry for any boy wh
o served aboard his ship. It must, they thought, be pretty awful. Not at all like being aboard the Wild Cat. Every time they had seen the red-haired boy that day he had seemed to be at work or on the run. But now, as they looked at him again, they thought better of Black Jake. At least he allowed his ship’s boy time to fish over the side.

  They were about twenty yards from the Viper by that time, and John was hauling in the sheet to change course. Nobody saw exactly what happened, but there was a sudden squeak and the red-haired boy somehow shot forward off the bulwarks and dropped with a splash into the harbour.

  “What a duffer!” said Nancy.

  “Did someone push him in?” said Titty. “It looked like that.”

  No time was wasted in thinking what to do.

  “Jibe!” shouted John.

  He turned Swallow round almost in her own length. The boom swung over and a moment later the little boat was shooting up into the wind close under the side of the black schooner.

  “Stand by to lower sail!” said John quietly.

  Close by the Swallow a tangled red mop came to the surface.

  “Lower away,” called John, and Nancy and Titty brought the sail down just as John let go the tiller, leaned over and took a firm grip of the red mop.

  “Yow! Yow!” squeaked the boy, spluttering and blowing as his head came above water. “Don’t you go for to pull my hair like that. And take hold of this line. It’s the only one I got. I can get aboard if you take a grip of the belt of my breeches. But let go my hair. Don’t take a hold of it again. Hoist away, now.”

  “Up she raises!” said Nancy, getting a hold of the red-haired boy by the collar. Between them, she and John hoisted him in over the stern of the boat, though long afterwards he used to say he could have got in easier himself.

  Titty, meanwhile, had taken the line and was coiling it in.

  “Was he going to be drowned?” asked Roger, almost as if saving him had been a mistake.

  “That’s all right,” said John, as the boy landed head first in the boat, soaking his rescuers with dirty water. “You’ll be aboard again in a minute.” He looked up at the steep black side of the schooner. Nobody was looking down. There was nobody there. Nobody seemed to have heard the splash or to know that they had just lost a man overboard.

  “Viper, ahoy!” called John.

  “Viper, ahoy!” called Roger shrilly from the bows.

  There was no answer.

  “That’s rum,” said Nancy, after giving a hail. “What’s become of that man with the ear-rings? Oh well, come on, John. Let’s take him across to the Wild Cat and then he can run round. It’s no good his trying to get up here without a ladder.”

  She shook some of the wet off her, lugged the oars out from under the jumble of sail, and pulled across towards the green schooner. Titty had not quite done coiling in the fishing-line. She was going slowly towards the end. She knew the sort of things boys used for fishing in harbours. Far worse than worms. But when she came to the end she found nothing but two bare hooks.

  Captain Flint had heard the splash and seen the rescue. He was waiting for them at the top of the rope ladder. Peter Duck was there too, and caught the painter which Roger, showing off a little to the red-haired boy, coiled and threw up to him.

  “Up you go,” said John.

  The boy took hold of the ladder and went up as easy as a monkey. It was clear that rope ladders were nothing new to him. Water dripped from him as he climbed. Titty went up next, not very easily, because she was carrying the fishing-line. Then Roger, who was beginning to tell the story of the rescue before he even got his head level with the rail. Nancy and John unstepped the mast, made all fast, and hurried after him.

  On the deck of the Wild Cat the red-haired boy was standing in a pool of water from which little rivers trickled over the clean white planking to find their way into the scuppers. Peggy and Susan had come out from their galley, hearing that something was happening. Peter Duck was making fast the Swallow’s painter, and looking over his shoulder at the boy.

  The red-haired boy was shifting uneasily from foot to foot, with all this crowd looking at him.

  THE RED-HAIRED BOY GOES OVERBOARD

  “Why, it’s young Bill,” said Peter Duck. “Everybody knows young Bill. Born on the Dogger Bank, he was. He ought to know enough not to fall overboard.”

  The red-haired boy blushed hotly.

  “He was fishing,” said Roger.

  “And a big one pulled him in,” said Captain Flint. “What do you catch in the inner harbour? What sort of baits do you use?” His eye fell on the hooks and sinker at the end of the line that Titty was still holding. “What have you done with his baits, Titty?”

  “There were none,” said Titty.

  The red-haired boy looked more uncomfortable than ever.

  Peter Duck laughed. “It’s the first time in his life young Bill’s fished without bait,” he said. “That I’ll be sure.”

  “Let him have a mug of hot tea, somebody,” said Captain Flint. Susan was off into the galley and back in a minute with a mug of steaming tea and a hunk of cake.

  “Look here, my lad,” said Captain Flint. “What’s the trouble? You needn’t be afraid of anybody in this ship. You’ve nothing to worry about. It’s no crime to go bathing .…”

  Peter Duck was looking carefully at the hooks.

  The red-haired boy burst out. “Well, I tell him there was nothing on them hooks, and he threw the line himself and made me get up on the rail, and then he tell me to tumble in natural …”

  “Oh, look here,” said Captain Flint.

  “It’s all along of Mr Duck there,” said the red-haired boy miserably. “They wants to know if he’s shipping with you, and where you’re bound for. And they’ll wallop the life out of me if I don’t find out.”

  “That’s all, is it?” said Captain Flint. “No trouble about that, though you’ve taken a funny way of asking. But we’ve got no secrets. I’ll tell you, and you can tell them. Mr Duck is shipping in the Wild Cat as able-seaman and acting bosun. And as for the rest of our crew, you can say we’ve three captains aboard and two mates, to say nothing of the others.”

  “Oo,” said the red-haired boy.

  The Swallows and Amazons looked at each other, but nobody even smiled.

  “Drink that tea while it’s hot,” said Susan. “It’s not too hot. There’s a lot of milk in it. And you ought to have something hot at once after going in like that.”

  The red-haired boy drank it up, gulp after gulp, while the others watched him do it.

  “As for where we’re bound for,” Captain Flint went on when the mug seemed to be empty. “We don’t yet know ourselves. Now then, my lad, you skip along, get into some dry clothes, and tell that skipper of yours that if there’s anything else he wants to know, he’d better come and ask. Got another slice of cake there, Susan? And give him his hooks and line, Titty.”

  The red-haired boy grinned for the first time.

  “Thank you, sir,” he said.

  “Skip along,” said Captain Flint. “You know as much as we do now. And you could have learnt it all without going swimming.”

  “And take a word from me, young Bill,” said Peter Duck. “You’ll come to no good shipping with Black Jake.”

  The boy looked round the little group. “I must go to sea somehow,” he said. “And if the others won’t take me …”

  “Well, skip along,” said Captain Flint. “We’re busy. Sailing in the morning.”

  And with that the boy, munching one hunk of black juicy cake and carrying another, given him by Peggy, for future use, climbed up the ladder to the quay and went slowly off towards the bridge, on his way round to the other side of the harbour and the black schooner that lay there without a sign of anybody being aboard her.

  *

  “As for where we’re bound, we don’t know ourselves,” and “Three captains aboard and two mates .…” If Captain Flint had been trying to find the very words that would make Black
Jake more curious than ever, he could not have chosen better.

  *

  “I’d think twice about jumping in like that just for the sake of asking a question,” said Captain Flint when the red-haired boy had gone.

  “But he was pushed in,” said Titty. “I’m sure he was.”

  “Oh, rubbish,” said Captain Flint, but a minute or two later he spoke to Peter Duck. “Who does that boy belong to?” he asked.

  “He don’t belong to anybody, properly speaking,” said Peter Duck. “He was born in a trawler. His mother died when he was a baby. His dad was lost in a gale a year or two back and young Bill looks after himself mostly. There’s hardly a vessel out of Lowestoft that hasn’t found him stowing away to get to sea.”

  “H’m,” said Captain Flint, and glanced across the harbour. “I wonder if we ought to have let him go back.”

  But there were many other things to think of in the Wild Cat that night. Swallow had to be brought inboard again and lashed down under a canvas cover. Many a long day was to pass before she would be afloat again. After all that day’s work on the rigging, there was a lot of rubbish, scraps of rope and wire, to be cleared off the decks. Then there were one or two more last-minute purchases to be made. John, Susan, Nancy, and Peggy went off into town to make them. Captain Flint took Titty and Roger with him to the harbourmaster’s office. He wanted to make sure that the Wild Cat should not lose her berth by going out for a trial trip. He wanted to be able to come back to the same place after the trial trip. Roger took his chance and told the harbourmaster the story of Bill’s tumbling overboard and the rescue. Titty once more said she thought Bill had been pushed in. The harbourmaster laughed. “Well,” he said, “I wouldn’t let a boy of mine ship with that fellow. He’s in with every bad lot about the place. Not that I think he’d push a boy into the harbour. There’s no sense in that, no sense that I can see.”

  By the time they got back, supper was ready, and soon after that, knowing that they were to start with the morning tide, Captain Flint hurried his crew to bed.