Peter Duck

by Arthur Ransome

  Everything was going like clockwork. Madeira was in sight. They had passed the little island of Porto Santo and were looking forward to anchoring in Funchal and going ashore to do some shopping in this foreign port, besides filling up the tanks with fresh water, when, late one afternoon, Roger, playing with the telescope, caught sight of another schooner a long way astern of them.

  Earlier in the day they had sailed through a small fleet of Portuguese fishermen, and now Roger was amusing himself by resting the big ship’s telescope on the stern rail and trying to have a look at them. The whole little fleet of them had hoisted their sails and were coming after the Wild Cat, no doubt bringing their catch to Madeira. Just for a moment they bobbed into sight for Roger as the Wild Cat’s stern dropped low, bringing the telescope down with it. Then the Wild Cat’s bows would go down, her stern would go up, and Roger looking through the telescope could see nothing at all but sky. Still, taking his chance when the Wild Cat gave it him, Roger saw enough of the little fleet of fishermen to notice that away beyond them was another sailing vessel of a different rig.

  “There’s another ship coming after the fishermen,” he said.

  Nobody took any notice. Everybody knew Roger and the sort of thing he was always seeing when he had the big telescope to himself. Bill and John were at the wheel. All the others, except the skipper and Peter Duck, were up in the bows, looking eagerly at Madeira, which was fast becoming clearer right ahead. Captain Flint was in the deckhouse, busy with the charts, and wondering if he could manage to bring the Wild Cat into Funchal without taking a pilot aboard. Peter Duck was taking his afternoon sleep.

  “It’s got two masts,” said Roger, “and big sails on both of them.”

  Bill heard that all right.

  “Let’s have a look.” He left the wheel to John, squatted down, and steadied the big telescope.

  The next moment he dived head first into the deckhouse, startled Captain Flint, and shook Peter Duck by the foot, as he lay there snoring in his happy, contented manner.

  “Wake up, Mr Duck! Cap’n Flint, sir. It’s him! He’s after us again.”

  “Less lip,” said Mr Duck, sitting up. “What’s all the noise about?”

  But even he looked grave when, after they had both had a look through the telescope, they agreed that if this was not the Viper it was a vessel very like her.

  “Coming on fast, too,” said Captain Flint.

  The others had hurried aft when they saw Captain Flint and Peter Duck outside the deck-house.

  “What is it?” said Nancy.

  “Black Jake again,” said John.

  “Not really,” said Susan.

  “Of course, really,” said Roger. “I saw him first.”

  “What I would like to know,” said Captain Flint, “is, has that fellow seen us? And, if so, what we’d better do about it.”

  “Well, we’d better have tea anyhow,” said Susan, a little later.

  They had tea, but by the time it was ready, it was clear to all of them that this schooner, coming south like themselves, was the Viper. They would have seen her before if it had not been for the Portuguese fishing boats.

  “How did he guess what we were going to do?” said Captain Flint rather crossly, when they were all down in the saloon, except Nancy, who was steering.

  “No guessing about it,” said Peter Duck. “He’s going the shortest way to Crab Island. That’s one thing. He’d know you’d be doing the same. And he’d know you’d be putting in to Funchal or the Canaries to fill up with fresh water, same’s he will himself.”

  Captain Flint got suddenly up out of his chair. There was a new look in his eye.

  “Susan,” he said, “let’s have another look at all that water arithmetic of yours.”

  Ten minutes later they were back again.

  “Thanks to Susan,” said Captain Flint, patting the mate on the back, lifting his mug of tea to her and swallowing all that was left in it. “Thanks to Susan, we’ll do him yet. We’ll carry right on. We’ve more than enough water to last. Funchal’s on the south side of the island, It’ll be getting dark before we turn the corner of the island and then, instead of stopping in Funchal Roads, or going into the harbour, we’ll carry right on for the Caribbees and Mr Duck’s island.”

  Peter Duck looked deep into the bottom of his mug. He was thinking.

  “Well, Mr Duck?”

  “I’ll not say but it’s a good plan, if you’re right about the water, sir. He’ll be bound to take in water here himself. It’s not one schooner in a thousand carries all them tons of fresh water ballast. He’ll be taking in water at Funchal, and he’ll be looking for you to be doing the same. Now there’s more places than one where you might likely do it. He’ll be a couple of days before he guesses you ain’t stopped. And then he’s all but bound to think you’re aiming farther south to call for water at Tenerife or Grand Canary. He’ll never think of a little vessel like yours heading right across and stopping nowheres.”

  Not one of the crew could have a word to say against a plan so good, even if it did mean no run ashore to drink iced sherbet in Funchal. They would give Black Jake the slip once more, and if Peter Duck was right, and Black Jake went on to the Canaries, it might very well give them time to get to Crab Island, see what it was that was buried there under Mr Duck’s tree, and be sailing home again before ever the Viper arrived.

  So, as the early dark of the tropical evening rose over the sea, the crew of the Wild Cat looked astern at the black schooner racing after them, but still far away. They hoped, now, that Black Jake and his friends had seen them heading for the island. Close past the eastern end of Madeira they steered in the dusk. By the time the Viper had turned the corner, it had long been pitch dark. It would have been a miracle if anybody aboard the Viper had thought for a moment that the Wild Cat was not putting into Funchal. But the Wild Cat sailed on. She did not head in for Funchal lights that glittered down on the sea front and high on the hillside. She kept steadily on in the darkness, and at midnight was heading west-south-west into the wide Atlantic.

  As the lights of Funchal faded astern, Captain Flint let fall one sentence of regret.

  “Blow it,” he said, “and I’d been counting on getting a decent spade in Madeira.”

  BOOK TWO

  CHAPTER XVII

  TRADE WIND

  AT DAWN NEXT day a low bank of cloud on the horizon was all that, could be seen of Madeira. There was no sign of the Viper, and the Wild Cat settled down once more to regular routine. The steady trade wind from the north-east hurried her on her way from dawn till sunset, slackening a little in the evenings, so that during this part of the voyage Captain Flint and Peter Duck agreed that there could be nothing against carrying the topsails all night. Every morning, before the sun grew hot, the whole crew came on deck in bathing things, dipped canvas buckets full of salt water, and sluiced the decks and each other by way of beginning the day. Day after day was like the one before it. Watches were kept, bells were struck, meals were cooked and eaten, pots and pans were cleaned and plates and mugs were washed. Most of the time Peter Duck had a line out with a big hook and a bundle of strips of bacon rind, hoping to catch a shark, but never catching one, though now and then on smaller hooks he did catch something that was good to eat besides the flying-fish that sometimes flew aboard by mistake and were always warmly welcomed in the galley. For real good fishing, he used to say, you couldn’t beat the Norfolk Broads.

  Peter Duck taught everybody a good many things about knots and ropes that are not to be found in books. Captain Flint taught both John and Nancy how to take an observation with the sextant, and together they wrestled with problems in mathematics a great deal harder than any they had met at school. At first the sums they worked out after taking their shots at the sun (and it is not easy to use a sextant on a swaying deck) ended up by making out that the Wild Cat was sailing in the Sahara Desert, crossing the Andes, or passing within hail of well-known cities in the Middle West. But before long they
could be pretty sure of finding that she was somewhere in the Atlantic, and during the last few days of the voyage there was seldom more than fifty or sixty miles’ difference between the results of their calculations and those of Captain Flint. This was perhaps the nearest thing to lessons anybody had while aboard ship. Captain Flint used to tell them all about the famous mining rushes of the past, but you could hardly call that history, any more than you could put down as natural science Peter Duck’s yarns about being towed by a shark, or the truth about the sea serpent, which he had seen more than once, or about Pelorus Jack, the fish that used to pilot vessels into Sydney harbour, and had a law made in his own protection.

  Every day at noon Captain Flint worked out the ship’s position and marked it on the chart with a little cross of red ink and the date neatly written beside it. Everybody used to go into the deckhouse to take a look at it. That chart, and those little red crosses marking out a line that ran from the Lizard down to Finisterre, and then to Madeira, and then south-west down into the North-east Trades and then west, on and on, was almost the only thing that made it seem possible that they were really moving, and nearing the other side of the Atlantic. One stretch of sea is very like another. But for these little red crosses, each one a little farther across the chart, it might have seemed that they had been sailing in the middle of an enormous dish, sailing hard and fast but somehow fixed in the middle of it, so that they had never moved at all.

  MORNING SPLASHES

  For days and days they saw no other vessels. And then one morning, as the sky lightened and the stars faded out and the sun rose over the stern, Nancy and Captain Flint, who were on watch together, saw a three-masted ship, full-rigged, under a tremendous press of canvas, far away on the horizon before them and heading about north-west. For some time they had seen, dimly, that there was something there, but now the rays of the sun, slanting low across the water, lit up her sails like pale hedge-roses. Every sail, filled by the wind, seemed curled and coloured like a petal.

  “It’s worth fetching Mr Duck out of his bunk to see that,” said Captain Flint, and Nancy took the wheel, while he went into the deckhouse.

  Peter Duck was out of his bunk in a moment, alert, ready, as if he were still on watch. He came out of the deckhouse, took the telescope, and looked at the distant vessel. The rose on her sails was paling every moment as the sun climbed higher.

  “Minds me of the Louisiana Belle,” he said. “Yankee clipper, homeward bound, that’s what she is. Does me good, it does, to see a ship like that. Skysails over her royals. And main and mizen staysails set.”

  He looked sadly over the sails of the Wild Cat, wishing she could carry a little more canvas somewhere.

  Captain Flint laughed.

  “Can’t help it, Mr Duck. There isn’t another stitch we can put on her.”

  Mr Duck said nothing. He was thinking of the Thermopylae, of his own youth, of days gone by. He lifted the telescope again and watched the ship, far, far away on the horizon. Her sails shone now like white sparks in the sunlight, even to Nancy and Captain Flint, who were looking at her with the naked eye.

  “Hull down she’ll be in an hour,” said Peter Duck at last. “We’ll maybe not see another all the voyage. Rot screw steamers,” he burst out fiercely, “driving vessels like her off the seas where they belong!”

  When the others came on deck, the vessel was already below the horizon. Nancy told them about her.

  “We really must be getting across,” she said. “Mr Duck thinks she’d come up from the Horn, bound for Boston or New York.”

  “We ought to begin to look for branches then,” said Titty, “and birds. Columbus saw lots before he sighted land.”

  “His course was a bit north of ours,” said Captain Flint, “so he saw the weeds of the Sargasso.”

  “He found a crab and kept it,” said Titty. “And lots of flowers. Don’t you remember reading us that bit last week?”

  “We’ll begin keeping a look out for them,” said Captain Flint, though not as if he thought they would be seeing anything very soon.

  But two nights after that, while John was at the wheel, keeping watch with Peter Duck, he heard a frightened cheeping in the dark, and when it grew light he found a little bird like a spotted flycatcher, only with green on its wings, sheltering under the dinghy. It would not eat rice, or oatmeal, or even biscuits. Everybody was afraid it would be starved. But then Peggy remembered some flour that Susan had wanted to throw away because it had maggots in it. Roger had said, “Think if we were wrecked. We wouldn’t mind the maggots then.” And Susan had said he could keep it if he liked, so long as it didn’t get loose. Roger had put it in an old cocoa tin, and kept it in his cabin, in case of shipwreck. This was very lucky, because the little bird took no interest in any of the ordinary kinds of food, but was delighted with the maggots. It ate about a dozen, sipped some water, had a bath in a saucer, dried itself, perching on the mainsheet in the sunshine, and then suddenly flew away over the bows, on into the west.

  “We must be getting near land,” said Titty, “or he’d have stayed longer.”

  “Birds is foolish like,” said Bill. “I’ve knowed ’em fly slap bang into the lantern, when we was lying to our nets out in the North Sea. Same as moths, birds are. No sense to ’em.”

  “Well, we must be very near land all the same,” said Titty.

  “I wonder if it’s the right land,” said Peggy.

  “I never thought of that,” said Roger, and went into the deckhouse to make sure. “Where are we now?” he asked Captain Flint.

  “Have a look for yourself,” said Captain Flint.

  Roger looked.

  On the chart on the deckhouse table, the red crosses had been coming nearer and nearer to the outer islands and towards a tiny speck round which a red ink circle had been drawn.

  John, who was looking over Roger’s shoulder, measured to see how far the red crosses were from each other, and how far the last one was, from the little circle that marked Crab Island.

  “I say,” said John, “if we do as much today as we did yesterday we ought to get there tomorrow.”

  “I’m not sure about that,” said Captain Flint. “We’re not doing quite what we were, but unless it falls calm again, we ought to be seeing Crab Island some time before tomorrow night.”

  As he spoke, coming out of the deckhouse, to look round, the wind freshened a little. It was almost as if the Wild Cat had heard him and had made up her mind to have a good run to finish up with.

  “Oughtn’t we to nail a gold ducat to the mast?” said Titty, “to be given to the one who first sights land? Or was it some other bit of money? Anyway, Columbus did it.”

  “There isn’t a ducat aboard,” said Captain Flint.

  Titty thought for a minute.

  “I’ve got it,” she said. “Let the first one who sights land be the first one to step out of the boat. You see it won’t be quite such a desert island for any of the others, because somebody will be ashore already.”

  “That seems to be fair enough,” said Captain Flint. “And we might name the landing-place after him, too. Or her. It’ll probably be a her in this ship.”

  After that people kept walking up to the bows to look ahead into the west, although Captain Flint had said there would be nothing to be seen until tomorrow.

  “We may have gone a bit farther than he thinks,” said Roger. Telescopes and glasses were overworked. Everybody was wanting a turn with them.

  “Who’s going to stay up all night?” said Nancy, as she came up on deck after tea.

  “Nobody,” said Captain Flint. “The watch below goes to bed tonight exactly as if we were still a thousand miles from land.”

  “Pity we aren’t,” said Peter Duck. “There’s no good comes of land anyhow, except ship’s stores, and they’re mostly not what they’re sold for.”

  Nobody minded. Everybody knew that Peter Duck would have liked a clear passage, round and round the world with no land to bother about anywhe
re. He would have been a proper sailor to join the Flying Dutchman, that old ship that has been sailing on and on for hundreds of years and will sail on for ever.

  “There’ll be nothing to see in the night,” said Captain Flint. “You and I’ll take one watch, Nancy, and Mr Duck and John’ll take the other, and if we want anybody else on deck, we’ll send down to roust them out. There’ll be hard work for everybody tomorrow, and a good night’s sleep is the way to get ready for it. Sighting land’s nothing. The real work comes after.”

  All the same, that evening, nobody was in a hurry to go below. Peter Duck and John had the first watch, but they were never really alone on deck until just before Captain Flint and Nancy turned out to take over at midnight. Even Susan was not as sensible as usual. She was very pleased with the way things had lasted out. They were not nearly half-way through the tinned foods, and they had a full six weeks’ water supply still in the tanks. She was feeling, perhaps, that she need not be so careful any longer. On any other night she would have chivvied Roger and Titty to bed, and gone to bed herself so decidedly that Peggy would have gone too. But, on this last night of the ocean voyage, she was walking up and down the deck with Peggy till nearly ten o’clock. Titty hung about the deckhouse, looking at the path of the moon over the sea and thinking of Columbus on his high poop. Roger, after he had begun to go to bed, came up again through the forehatch to tell the others that he had been to say good night to Gibber and had found the ship’s monkey so restless and jumpy that he was sure there must be a smell of palm trees in the air already. Nancy, knowing that her watch was to come, was the only one who went to bed in anything like proper time. Bill, of those who were not on duty, stayed up longest. He was never one to waste any sleep he could get, but; that last night, he did not go to his cabin after supper. Everybody thought he had, but he took his chance, and went up through the forehatch, and climbed out to the very end of the bowsprit, and sat there, astride of the spar, swaying on and on ahead of the ship, above the dark water in the moonlight night.