Peter Duck

by Arthur Ransome

  “Right,” said Captain Flint who was busy streaming the log.2 He knew just where they were at the moment, but it might be some time before they saw land again.

  John and Susan went up to the foredeck. Peggy and Roger sat, one each side of the Swallow, on the skylights between the two masts. Titty leant against the side of the deckhouse. Nancy waited by the galley door ready to give the bell another couple of whacks.

  “No more, Cap’n Nancy,” said Peter Duck, just in time. “She’s moving now, and Black Jake’d know at once the sound was nearer.”

  Just then the parrot, indignant at being left alone in the saloon, sang out, “Pieces of eight! Pieces of eight!” at the top of its voice.

  “Lucky I didn’t bring him on deck,” said Titty as she hurried down the companion to suppress the parrot by putting his blue cover over his cage. “It’s in a very good cause, Polly,” she said, as she left him and ran up on deck again in time to hear that same short, single blast on a horn, somewhere in the fog in the direction in which the Wild Cat was now heading.

  “Due south,” said Peter Duck quietly to Captain Flint. “Pretty near due south that foghorn’s bearing now.”

  Very slowly, hardly leaving a wake, slipping silently over the smooth Atlantic swell before that breath of wind out of the north-west, the Wild Cat moved south in the fog. Titty looked up and found she could not be sure whether the burgee was at the mainmast-head or not. John and Susan, up in the bows, looked like ghosts, and the white jib beyond them seemed to be made of fog, not canvas. Outside the ship she could see nothing at all except a few yards of grey-green water.

  There was a gentle squeak as Peter Duck turned the steering-wheel. Titty saw the old seaman say something to Captain Flint, who moved into the lee of the deckhouse to speak to Nancy. Nancy slipped forward to whisper to Roger, who was sitting on the skylight. Roger, on tiptoe, hurried to the companion and disappeared below. He was up again in a minute with Gibber’s oil-can, which he gave to Mr Duck. Mr Duck put a drop or two of oil in the right place and the steering-gear squeaked no more.

  The fog signals from the lighthouses, the double boom from the Longships every five minutes, and the howl from the Wolf every half-minute came regularly, but they were all listening for something else.

  The Viper’s foghorn presently sounded again.

  “Still bearing south,” said Peter Duck under his breath.

  “A bit odd that, if he’s been sailing west on starboard tack with the wind from nor’-west.”

  “It’s more’n odd,” said Peter Duck.

  Roger slipped as he made his way forward on the decks, wet with the fog.

  “Sh!” whispered Peggy.

  Everybody looked that way, and then at each other, listening.

  The Wild Cat made hardly any noise at all, hardly as much noise as the wind blowing over soft grass.

  But suddenly John, in the bows, held up his hand. Susan signalled to Peggy. Peggy to Nancy. Everybody froze. There was no doubt about it. Somewhere in the fog, close to them, was the creak of steering-gear. Everybody knew that it was not the steering-gear of the Wild Cat. Then, away to leeward, came the noise of a wooden block on a slack rope, tapping a mast. Then the noise of men’s voices, angry, muffled.

  Titty looked at Peter Duck. He was not so much steering as holding the steering-wheel so that it should not move the millionth of an inch. He was not going to trust to oil alone to keep it quiet. The Wild Cat moved on, slowly, slowly. The muttering that, when they had first heard it, had sounded near the bows, sounded now astern.

  “Them,” Titty whispered to herself. “It must be them.”

  Everybody except Peter Duck was peering away into the fog. Peter Duck was looking at nothing but the compass card inside the deckhouse window. He leaned forward and wiped the window with a red and green speckled handkerchief.

  And then that same short blast on a foghorn sounded ahead of the Wild Cat, as it had sounded before.

  Everybody stared forward, except Peter Duck. Peter Duck stuffed his speckled handkerchief into his pocket and went on watching the compass card, keeping a firm, steady grip on the wheel.

  “Was that the Viper, or wasn’t it?” whispered Captain Flint.

  “We’ll soon know,” whispered Peter Duck. “Still bearing south, that foghorn of his.”

  “If it wasn’t them, who was it?” thought Titty, and Captain Flint and everybody else aboard was thinking the same thing, except perhaps Peter Duck, for whom nothing seemed to matter but the compass card inside the deckhouse window.

  The deep booming of an Atlantic liner’s siren startled them.

  “Far enough,” whispered Peter Duck, “and her course is a long way south of this. She’ll be ten miles west of the Scillies before we cross her wake.”

  Again, and nearer now, came the single hoot on exactly the note of the horn they had heard from the Viper soon after the fog had rolled over her and hidden her.

  RUN DOWN IN THE FOG

  “Still south?” asked Captain Flint, who had slipped into the deckhouse for a moment, to look at the chart, and now came out again after seeing for himself that Peter Duck was right and that they had nothing to fear from the liner.

  “South,” said Peter Duck. “If she’s been sailing all this time on the starboard tack she must have got an anchor out over her stern. Stand by, sir, now, with that big foghorn of ours, the bull-roarer, not that Board of Trade toy.”

  Captain Flint brought the big foghorn out again, and rested it on the roof of the deckhouse.

  Again there was the hoot of a foghorn, close ahead of them.

  “Let fly now, sir,” said Peter Duck. “Three blasts to stir old Davy out of his bed.”

  Captain Flint took a long breath, set his mouth to the bull-roarer and let fly, and if Davy Jones had been sleeping anywhere within a mile or so, the noise would surely have tumbled him off his locker. It was a long, tremendous roar, so loud that Titty was almost deafened by it, and Nancy, who was by the door of the galley and had not seen what was going on behind her, looked as startled as if an Atlantic liner were at that moment looming over them out of the fog. Peggy and Roger were startled almost into squeaking, though they instantly hushed each other. Susan and John, up in the bows, turned round wondering what was happening, just as Captain Flint, taking a second long breath, let fly again.

  Before his second blast was finished, they heard the foghorn ahead of them. Weak, plaintive it seemed after that tremendous roar. It sounded this time not a single short blast, but one after another, in quick succession, as if it were afraid to stop.

  Captain Flint let fly for the third time.

  The other foghorn hooted desperately now from close under the very bows of the Wild Cat.

  Titty saw Captain Flint look questioningly at Mr Duck. Mr Duck did not stir.

  Suddenly there was a yell from John.

  “Boat right ahead! On the port bow.”

  “Guessed as much,” said Mr Duck.

  There was a wild scream, from close under the bowsprit as it seemed to Titty and the others in the stern. But they saw Susan running aft along the port side.

  “Throw him a rope,” she cried. “Quick! Quick!”

  Everybody hurried to the port bulwarks. Drifting by close under the Wild Cat was a small ship’s gig, tarred black. In it was a smallish boy clutching a mechanical foghorn, and looking up with terrified eyes at the Wild Cat gliding past him and at the faces looking down at him over her rail.

  “Catch,” called Captain Flint, picking up the loose end of the mainsheet, which was hanging in loose coils on a belaying-pin in the rail, and dropping it neatly across the boat as it slipped by.

  The boy did not hesitate. He dropped the foghorn, grabbed the rope as high as he could reach, threw himself clear of the boat, and scrambled up. In another moment Captain Flint was hauling him over the rail, while the boat, empty except for the foghorn, drifted away into the fog and disappeared astern.

  The boy, trembling all over, stood on the
deck, looking round him and holding to the bulwarks.

  “Why, it’s Bill,” said Peter Duck.

  “It’s the red-haired boy,” said Titty.

  The boy’s wet red face broke into a smile.

  “Come aboard, I have, Mr Duck.”

  1 Better get this clear. Starboard is right hand, when facing forward. Port is left. A vessel is on the Starboard tack when the wind is coming the Starboard side. Port tack is when the wind is coming from the port side. Now you know. – CAPT NANCY.

  2 The log is one of the finest dodges in a ship. It works rather like the speedometer of a motor car. A thing like a propeller spins in the water at the spinning of the line twirls the wheels inside a little dial where a pointer shows just how far ship has moved. – ROGER, SHIP’S ENGINEER.

  CHAPTER XIII

  DECISION

  “BARBECUED BILLYGOATS,” CRIED Captain Nancy, “but …”

  Peter Duck interrupted.

  “Sound carries in a fog, Cap’n Nancy,” he said, “and we’ve made enough noise already, what with shouting and getting him aboard. Cap’n John, I’m ashamed of you. What’s the look-out doing, hanging round the poop? Mate Peggy, I thought you was amidships. Mate Susan, wasn’t you up on the foredeck with Cap’n John? Tidy mess it seems to me with the whole crew aft. Time enough we’ll have to settle with Bill when we’re farther out of this. Cap’n Flint, sir, would you mind now giving another three blasts on that bull-roarer? Just in case they’re listening for it in the Viper. I wouldn’t like to set them wondering too soon why they only heard it once. Three blasts, sir, as before.”

  Captain Flint leaned forward again over the deckhouse roof and blew three more great blasts on the old horn.

  “Oo,” said Bill. “Sounds better like this than it does when you hears it coming down on you out o’ the fog. I thought I was a goner just now.”

  “Less lip,” said Peter Duck. “We ain’t begun to think of you yet. And why hain’t you coiled the mainsheet as you come aboard by? No. Begin at the right end, where it’s made fast. You ought to know as much as that.”

  Everybody had hurried back, each to his post.

  “And what now, Mr Duck?” said Captain Flint.

  “That’s for you to say, sir,” said Peter Duck. “Maybe we ought to pick up that little dinghy and go and look for Black Jake to give it him back and his cabin-boy as well. He’d be sorry to lose that little boat, and the foghorn too …”

  “I’ll see him fried first,” said Captain Flint, and there was a laugh, instantly choked, from Nancy, who was near enough to hear.

  “I’d rather stay,” said Bill.

  “You wasn’t asked,” said Peter Duck.

  “I’m only sorry we didn’t sink the boat,” said Captain Flint. “He may find her again when the fog lifts.”

  “Then we’d better be shifting,” said Peter Duck. “Fog may last an hour or two yet, or it may not. But the wind’s nor’-westerly, right enough, and that’s a grand wind for Spain. Sou’-sou’-west half west’s the course, to put us outside Cape Villano coming from the Longships. And topsails would help her along.”

  Just then the liner’s siren sounded, and Captain Flint reached for the bull-roarer.

  “No,” said Peter Duck. “We’re a different vessel altogether. We’re not that one with a bull-roarer, no, nor yet the Wild Cat that had nothing but a dinner-bell to clatter on, the vessel Black Jake’s seeking away there between Land’s End and the Seven Stones. We’ll sound on the Board of Trade horn if we sound anything, but it don’t matter for a bit if we do keep quiet.”

  “I’ll be getting those topsails up then,” said Captain Flint. “Give me a hand, Nancy.”

  He brought up the topsails from the sail locker, gave Titty the bundle of the foretopsail to look after while Nancy and he hooked on the halyard sheet and downhaul, mousing the hooks with twine so they should not slip open. And then, just as the little jib-headed sail was up at the mast-head, the sheet jammed. Nancy tugged. Captain Flint tried it. No. The thing was stuck somewhere or other.

  “Have it down again,” said Captain Flint.

  It would not come.

  There was a sudden patter of bare feet on the wet deck. A small figure ran forward. A mop of red hair, two red feet, a ragged coat, a pair of old blue trousers with a black patch across the seat of them, shot between Captain Flint and Nancy, and leapt at the mainsail’s wooden mast-hoops. The blue trousers and the black patch faded upwards into the fog.

  “All clear, sir.” A hoarse whisper sounded above their heads. A small figure dropped hand over hand down the halyards to the deck, and as Nancy and Captain Flint hauled again on the topsail sheet, the clew of the sail moved out along the gaff and all was as it should be.

  “That’s not a bad boy,” said Captain Flint, as Bill bolted back again to stand by in case he was wanted by Mr Duck.

  “He and Gibber are two for a pair,” said Nancy. “But what was he doing in that dinghy, all by himself with a foghorn?”

  “I’ve a pretty shrewd idea,” said Captain Flint. “But we’ll hear presently. There’s the foretopsail to set now. Thank you, Titty. Out of the way, you two. Peggy, what about scaring up a mug of hot cocoa for the passenger? But don’t rattle your pans in the galley.”

  Peggy on tiptoe went off into the galley, closing the door carefully behind her. She knew, like Captain Flint, and all the others, that Peter Duck was right. There were more urgent things to think of than the red-haired boy. They were still in the fog. They had heard the Viper pass them, going north to look for them, but for all they knew she might have turned again and might be no more than a few yards away hidden in that loose choking blanket of fog that made it all but impossible to see from one end of the ship to the other. The wind was getting up, though as yet it blew the fog in thick curling wisps through the rigging and across the decks instead of lifting it up and driving it away. With topsails set, the Wild Cat was moving fairly fast through the water. All to the good, to get away from Black Jake, but, at the same time, with every minute they were coming nearer to the great thoroughfare of shipping. And, bad as it would be to be found by Black Jake and his men, it would be not much better to be run down by some big steamship hurrying on its way. They had heard the howl of the Wolf every half-minute, and knew that it was no longer south of them but north. They had passed it, and, steering south-south-west, were heading as it were into the middle of the road, with traffic that they could not see coming both ways at once. Peter Duck was right. This was no time to ask the red-haired boy questions. The only thing to do was to keep quiet, to keep a sharp look out, and to hope at the same time that the fog would last and they would be able to sail through it without being run down by someone else. How right Peter Duck was they were not very long in finding out.

  Captain Flint and Nancy were looking up at the foretopsail, trying to see if it was setting properly, when a steam siren sounded somewhere away off the starboard bow. It was a shriller noise than the booming note of the big liner, which, as Peter Duck had said it would be, was already far away to the west. It sounded again, a long, shrill blast.

  “Steamship,” said Captain Flint.

  “That one seems a bit nearer,” said John quietly. “The big one’s much farther away.”

  “Quite near enough,” said Captain Flint, and turned to go aft.

  Just then a foghorn sounded from close by the deckhouse. Three clear hoots it gave, loud, but not so loud as the horrible noises made by the bull-roarer.

  Captain Flint and Nancy hurried aft, in time to see the red-haired boy sounding the Board of Trade foghorn, that works like a pump. Roger was standing watching him open-mouthed and envious.

  “Three times,” said Peter Duck. “Put some beef into it. We’re getting into the track of the Channel shipping.”

  Again that shrill siren sounded, close on the starboard bow.

  Everybody stared into the fog. A minute passed. Another.

  “Let them have the horn again,” said Peter Duck. But t
he red-haired boy had only time to get a single blast out of it.

  “Something right ahead,” shouted John at the very top of his voice as the steam siren sounded again, this time as if out of the sky immediately above him.

  The white fog turned suddenly black before them. Peter Duck spun the wheel, putting the helm hard aport. The Wild Cat came sharply round into the wind, with her sails all shaking. Her bowsprit end just cleared the towering, rusty walls of an ocean tramp feeling her way in from the Atlantic. From high above the Wild Cat faces looked down out of the fog on the startled group at the stern of the little schooner.

  “What are you playing at down there?” sounded an angry voice.

  “Aye, it’s you to shout,” said Peter Duck, “when as near as nothing you sent us to the bottom.”

  “I thought steamships had to keep out of the way of sailing vessels,” said Nancy.

  “So they have, by law,” said Peter Duck, “and there’s a whole town full of good sailormen at the bottom of the sea for thinking the same. They have to keep out of our way, the clumsy, racketty, bangetty bundles of scrap-iron, but do they, I asks you? Do they ever? And least of all in fog.”

  The big tramp steamer lurched on her way. Her propellers beat the water as the Atlantic swell lifted her stern. Her wash, cutting across the line of the swell, sent small, steep waves to run amuck, one of which, all unexpected, heaped itself up and slopped over the Wild Cat’s waist, sluicing aft past the galley door just as Peggy came out with a mug of cocoa.

  “What’s happening?” asked Peggy, seeing the startled faces, the sails slack and flapping, hearing the noise of the tramp’s engines, and the splash, splash of her propeller, going off into the fog.

  “Narrow shave of being run down,” said Nancy.