Peter Duck

by Arthur Ransome

  “Counting up the stores,” said Susan.

  “Good for you,” said Nancy. “I’d been hoping you would.”

  “Well, try to keep her a bit steadier,” said Susan. “It’s lucky everything’s in tins.”

  For a minute or two the mates stayed on deck. It was as if some sudden miracle had been worked with the smiling blue sea of the morning. The wind was still coming from the north-east, but, after two or three fierce squalls, it had settled down to blow much harder than they had yet known it.

  The sky had clouded, the waves were dark but for the white tops that blew across in white spray from one wave to the next.

  “What about the engine now, Roger?” said John.

  “I don’t want to use the engine when she’s really sailing,” said Roger.

  “Will she stand it?” said Captain Flint.

  Peter Duck looked up to windward, and looked up at the bending masts, and aft at the long wake of white foam.

  “She’ll carry what she’s got and not a stitch more,” said Peter Duck. “Nine knots she’ll do with this, and maybe ten. Aye. She’ll stand this. Stiff enough. And we’ll get the shelter of the Start.”

  “I’d been thinking of Brixham,” said Captain Flint.

  “We’ll be down by the Scillies tomorrow if this holds. We’d best be making the most of it. Blowing itself out. That’s what it is. And after that we’ll likely get it hard from the west.”

  The Wild Cat, after those first squalls, settled down to run like a scalded cat as well as a wild one. With this great wind blowing over her quarter, Captain Flint held her steady on her course, and she fairly tore through the water.

  And with the strengthening of the wind, the Viper seemed at first to have enough to think of without attending to the Wild Cat. She, too, seemed to be settling down to make the most of it. She raced away, a splendid sight, with the white spray leaping high from under her bows. The sailors of the Wild Cat, watching the Viper flying along like that, almost forgot how much they hated her. At dusk, she seemed to change her course, and they saw her heading northward, and then the dark came down and they saw her no more.

  It was not until the middle of that night that they had news of her again.

  It was just at the beginning of Peter Duck’s watch. John and the old seaman had come on deck sharp at midnight, to take over, and Nancy and Captain Flint should have been on their way to their bunks. But Captain Flint had taken Mr Duck with him into the deckhouse again, to have a look at the chart and the barometer. They had gone in only for a moment, and with the wind that was blowing, Captain Flint had thought it as well that there should be two at the wheel. So Captain Nancy and Captain John were holding the ship on her course. It was a pitch dark night and they could see nothing outside the bulwarks except the flashing lights on Start Point and the Eddystone Lighthouse. Sky, land, and sea were all black, though patches of star-sprinkled sky showed now and then between the black clouds overhead. But there was nothing to worry about. Far away over the water, there were the lighthouses flashing their cheerful messages. The two captains knew where they were. They had a course to steer. The compass card glowed bright inside the window, and beyond it, if they stooped, they could see Captain Flint’s hand, with a pencil in it, pointing to something on the chart. The sidelights were burning steadily. The shrouds were thrumming in the wind, and the Wild Cat was churning along at a really splendid pace.

  And then, suddenly, a new noise came out of the darkness. It was the noise of water under the bow of another ship. It was a noise very close at hand. There was a shout somewhere to windward.

  “Call them,” said Nancy, and John thumped hard on the deckhouse door. Peter Duck and Captain Flint came tumbling out in a moment.

  “There’s a ship,” said John, “close to us.”

  “Without lights,” said Nancy.

  At that instant, the Wild Cat came suddenly on an even keel. Her sails slackened and flapped dully. The green glow of her starboard light gleamed dimly on canvas where had been nothing but the blackness of the night. For one moment they all saw the glimmer of a light, not more than a dozen yards away. Another vessel, larger than theirs, was racing beside them in the dark.

  “Keep your course,” said Peter Duck, and John and Nancy felt his firm hand on the wheel.

  “Wild Cat, ahoy!” A voice came out of the darkness, so near that it almost seemed that someone was talking just across the starboard bulwarks.

  “Don’t answer,” said Peter Duck.

  The voice came again, a jeering, lilting voice, like the voice of a chanty-man singing his words before the crew join in.

  “Peter Duck! Peter Duck!”

  “Don’t say a word to them,” said Captain Flint.

  The voice came again, a hard voice, jeering as before.

  “Where are you bound for, Peter Duck?”

  John felt Nancy grip his arm.

  The voice came again.

  “Better ship along with us, Peter Duck.”

  And then from among that little group at the wheel of the Wild Cat came a voice that John and Nancy had never heard before, though it was the voice of Captain Flint, whom Nancy had known all her life. It was a roar more than a hail.

  “Haul your wind there! Haul your wind, or, by crumbs, I’ll sink your ship!”

  There was a noise of sudden quarrelling in the other vessel. A deckhouse door swung open, and then closed again, throwing for a moment a light on struggling men.

  “Look out,” cried Peter Duck. “Her stern’ll swing aboard us.”

  “Where’s that fender?” said Captain Flint half under his breath, groping along the bulwarks.

  Luckily it was not needed. Almost the vessels touched, but not quite, as the Viper drew ahead and hauled her wind. Voices came again, already farther off.

  “Away to Rio. Away to Rio. Oh, fare you well, my bonny young maid, for we’re bound for Rio Grande!”

  “They’ve been getting at the rum,” said Peter Duck.

  Nancy loosened her grip on John’s arm, and John, in the darkness, knowing that she could not see, allowed himself to rub the place.

  “I say, Uncle Jim,” said Nancy, “would you really have sunk them?”

  “How could I?” said Captain Flint.

  How could he, indeed? But, from that moment, John and Nancy knew that something had changed aboard the Wild Cat. Something had happened to bind Peter Duck and Captain Flint together. The Viper was an enemy now, for both of them, and not for Peter Duck alone. Captain Flint was not the sort of man to stand Black Jake’s playing monkey tricks in the dark, tricks that might easily have damaged the Wild Cat’s new paint, and, if there had been any nervousness in her steering, might even have ended in a serious collision.

  “Time you went below, Nancy,” said Captain Flint.

  “All right,” said Nancy, “but I’m coming up when it’s our watch, and anyhow you’ll call me if they come again.”

  “You shall have your whack at them if they try to board,” said Captain Flint. He said it with a laugh, but anybody could tell from the way he said it that he no longer thought of the English Channel as so safe a highway that nothing of that kind was likely to happen.

  That was the last they saw or heard of the Viper that night. She raced off again into the dark, and though Captain Flint took no more rest, so that there were three of them on deck keeping a keen look out, not knowing what next might come into BlackJake’s dark mind, they saw no lights nor any other sign of her. It was not until Nancy came on deck again, sleepy-eyed, but eager for news, that they saw the black schooner again. She must have crossed their bows in the dark and waited for them, for when they first caught sight of her, in the first pale light of a grey morning, she was a couple of miles away to the south-east or perhaps rather more.

  That great wind had swept them along at a tremendous pace. They had seen the flashing light on the Lizard first over the starboard bow and then abeam, and now it flashed out for the last time when they had already passed it
and looking astern could see the steep cliffs of the Head, cold and grim against the dawn.

  “Where are we going now?” said Nancy.

  “To have a look at the Land’s End and the Scillies,” said Captain Flint. “And then, if the wind holds and that fellow won’t leave us alone, we’ll give him a run up to Ireland.”

  “We’d best get quit of him,” said Peter Duck.

  But the wind had blown itself out, as Peter Duck had thought it would. After sweeping them down from one end of the Channel to the other, it dropped to nothing. They had hardly steerage way through the water when the tide, running out of the Channel, carried them past the Land’s End. The mates, the able-seaman, and the boy were dawdling over breakfast, hearing from Nancy of that wild business of the night that they had missed by being asleep. Captain Flint, Peter Duck, and John were on deck, looking at the lighthouses at the Longships and on the Wolf Rock, and at the black schooner which seemed, in spite of the lack of wind, to be creeping up to them again when, with only a few minutes’ warning, they lost sight of everything in a thick blanket of white fog.

  CHAPTER XII

  BLIND MAN’S BUFF

  In fog, mist, or falling snow … a sailing ship under way shall make with her foghorn, at intervals of not more than two minutes, when on the starboard tack one blast, when on the port tack two blasts in succession, and when with the wind abaft the beam three blasts in succession.

  BOARD OF TRADE REGULATIONS

  THE FOG CAME suddenly, and with it a slow swell from the Atlantic, lifting the Wild Cat lazily up and dropping her gently down smooth hills and valleys of greenish-grey water. There was still a faint breath of wind from the north-east. The moment he had seen the fog closing in, Captain Flint took a bearing of the Longships and another of the Wolf Rock and went into the deckhouse to plot the position on the chart, and to set down the time, 8.57 a.m. At 8.57 a.m. they knew exactly where they were, south-south-west of the Land’s End, south by west from the Longships, north by east from the Wolf Rock. They knew where the Viper was too, at that moment. Before the fog blotted her out they had seen her, heading west and about a mile south by east from the Wild Cat.

  Just before the fog hid her, Peter Duck had changed the course of the Wild Cat.

  “We couldn’t ask for nothing better than this fog,” he said, and without waiting a moment, spun the wheel, and headed the Wild Cat due north. “Now,” he said, “will you and Cap’n Nancy rattle in them sheets? There’s no weight in the wind. But I’d like him to see us aiming for Dublin ….”

  For a minute or two, before the fog hid the two vessels from each other, the Wild Cat was sailing close hauled as if to round the Longships, bound north for the Irish Sea.

  John went into the deckhouse and asked for the foghorn.

  “Better take the big one,” said Captain Flint, who was busy with his calculations, and John came out again with a huge foghorn of the old sort that has to be blown through but makes almost as much noise as the steam syren of a small tug. He was just gathering breath to blow it, when Peter Duck stopped him.

  “No,” he said quickly. “Leave that and bang the bell. Quick, while he knows where we are. Let him think we’ve got no horn. Lost it overboard, maybe. Anyway, don’t let him think we’ve one of them bull-roarers that’d scare the life out of a liner’s fourth officer and give him something else to think about than berthing in Southampton on time. Let him think we’ve nothing but a bell. Cat’s eyes that man’s got. Dark’s like day to him. But I don’t know but what we may give him the slip in a fog.” And with that he gave one hard blow on the ship’s bell, just outside the deckhouse door, within easy reach from the wheel. “Starboard tack1 we’re on, heading north.”

  Captain Flint shot out of the deckhouse.

  “What’s that bell?” he said.

  “Against regulations, sir,” said Peter Duck. “And Black Jake’ll likely report us to the Board of Trade for not having what they call an efficient foghorn.”

  “But we’ve got a couple,” said Captain Flint. “One of the new horns you work with your hand, and the old thing I gave John just now, that makes four times the noise.”

  Peter Duck reached forward and gave one more sharp stroke on the bell.

  “It’ll carry a fair way, that bell,” he said, “and we may need the foghorn later.”

  Three hoots on a foghorn came dully through the fog.

  “There’s the Viper,” said Nancy.

  “Aye,” said Peter Duck. “Heading west she was. Still got the wind abaft the beam.”

  “But what are you thinking of doing?” asked Captain Flint. “Anything you like, of course, if we can get rid of that fellow.”

  “There’ll be a wind coming behind this fog,” said Peter Duck. “There’s all but no wind now, but if Black Jake had his eyes on us these last few minutes he’ll have seen us heading north and heard our bell.”

  “But why north?” said Captain Flint.

  “If the wind comes out of the nor’-west, and it will, by the smell of the fog and the way the swell’s moving, we can take our choice, close hauled up the Irish Sea or running free for Spain, while the Viper’s butting into it across the Bristol Channel. Sound that bell again, will you, Cap’n John?”

  “The dinner bell’s louder,” said John.

  “Lay into that then,” said Captain Flint. “One stroke every two minutes. We’re on starboard tack. It can’t do any harm. Spain, did you say, Mr Duck? Why not Madeira?”

  “There’ll be no lack of sou’-westerlies to bring us home,” said Mr Duck.

  Bang. Bang. Two dull reports sounded somewhere not so very far away over the starboard bow. A long-drawn-out hoot, four whole seconds of it, sounded somewhere to southward.

  “Lighthouses taking a hand,” said Captain Flint. “That’s the Longships and the Wolf Rock. I’ve just been looking them up. Every five minutes we’ll be hearing those bangs, and the Wolf does its howl every thirty seconds. Precious little wind there is now to get us out of this.”

  The booms were swinging across with the swell. The gaffs swung overhead. The sails flapped heavily.

  “It’s coming,” said Peter Duck.

  “Well, I wish it would come soon,” said Captain Flint. “We don’t want to lose our reckoning and go drifting about here, between Land’s End and the Scillies, with the Wolf Rock and the Seven Stones too near to let us feel comfortable.”

  “It’s coming,” said Peter Duck. “Lay into that bell again, one good whack. Now listen.”

  Out of the fog to the south of them came three blasts on a small foghorn.

  “He’s keeping his way,” said Peter Duck. “Or wants us to think so.”

  The others came up on deck, laden with breakfast things for the galley and washing up, thinking that the bell they had heard was to tell them to hurry up, but wondering what the other noises were.

  “Hullo,” said Nancy. “A real fog. What were those guns?”

  “Fog signals,” said John.

  “This is just like a fog on the fells,” said Peggy.

  “It’s very coughy,” said Roger.

  “I’ll let Polly stay down in the saloon,” said Titty. “And, Roger, you’d better not bring Gibber up to let him catch a cold.”

  “Both of you go below at once and dig out your mufflers,” said Susan. “You too, Peggy. Bring up mine at the same time, somebody.”

  “And mine,” said Nancy. “I left it below when I went off watch to have breakfast.”

  An astonishing cold had come with the fog.

  “You’d almost say it was icebergs,” said Peter Duck, half to himself. “I’ve felt the cold of them through fog many a time. But it ain’t. It’s a nor’-westerly blowing up behind it. We’ll likely have a gale before night. It often comes hard from nor’-west after an easterly.”

  Almost as he spoke jib and staysail flapped and were held aback.

  “Let go jib and staysail sheets,” said Peter Duck. “Now then, haul in to starboard. So. Don’t bring th
at jib in too flat, Cap’n John.”

  The wind, a light wind, sweeping the fog with it, but not lifting it from the water, was coming from the north-west. The Wild Cat was now on the port tack, though still heading north as if to round the Longships and make up across the Bristol Channel.

  “Well, sir,” said Peter Duck. “We’ve a chance now of giving him the slip and leaving him guessing, if the fog stays with us, as it likely may.”

  “No harm in trying,” said Captain Flint.

  “Ready about,” said Peter Duck. “And quietly, now. Will you help her round with the staysail to windward if she needs it. There’s but a light air to go about in.”

  Captain Flint hurried forward. The Wild Cat slowly, almost unwillingly, came up into the wind, seemed for a moment to hang in stays, and then paid slowly off again on the starboard tack. Round she came, until she was heading a little west of south.

  “Fetch that bell two smart strokes, Cap’n Nancy.”

  “But oughtn’t it to be three?” said Nancy. “We’ve got the wind abaft the beam.”

  “Two strokes, Cap’n Nancy. We want him to think we’re on port tack now and still heading north. You see, the wind’s changed.”

  “Giminy,” said Nancy, “this is war.” And she gave the bell a couple of blows that fairly made it ring.

  “Now, listen,” said Peter Duck.

  “Boom. Boom,” came from the Longships, and again the long-drawn-out howl from the Wolf Rock.

  “No. Not that. Listen.”

  Somewhere away to the south of them they heard a single blast on a small foghorn, the same that up till then had been giving three hoots at a time.

  “Starboard tack now, and still going west,” said Peter Duck, and looked round at Nancy with a smile. “Or not. I wouldn’t put it past him to be trying the same tricks on us we’re going to play on him. Now then. We wants no noise. It’s my belief he’ll be coming north after us this very minute. Who’s got good eyes? Cap’n John. You’re in my watch. Will you go forrard, right up to the stem-head, and keep your eyes skinned. If you see anything, sing out sharp. If you hear anything, keep quiet, but let us know. Cap’n Flint, sir, how’d it be to have the whole crew right along the deck so’s we can send messages without no shouting?”