Peter Duck

by Arthur Ransome

  “Fireflies,” said Captain Flint.

  “It can’t be,” said Titty.

  “This is the real thing at last,” said Nancy.

  And then the silence of the ship was broken by the loud, cheerful clanging of the bell inside the galley door.

  “We’re a bit late after all,” said Susan, “but supper is ready now.”

  “Come on,” said Peggy. “She’s made a regular thumper.”

  “Well, I think we deserve it,” said Captain Flint.

  CHAPTER XIX

  ISLAND MORNING

  THERE ARE SOMETIMES advantages in being small. If Titty had been bigger than Susan she would have been sleeping in the upper berth in their cabin, in which case it would have been difficult for her to get up without waking the mate on that first morning in the anchorage at Crab Island. As she had the lower berth, it was easy. She slipped into her bathing things, crept out of the cabin without hitting anything on the way, crossed the saloon on tiptoe, went quietly forward through the alleyway, and, before going on deck, stopped and listened for a moment below the open forehatch. She wanted to hear things before she saw them, so as to enjoy them twice over. She had been looking forward to a desert island ever since she could remember, and she wanted to make the most of it. She stopped at the foot of the ladder and listened. She could hear wind in trees, and grasshoppers, and birds. And then, besides these land noises, there was a noise of land and sea together, the endless noise that you hear when you put one of those big twisted sea-shells to your ear, a noise of waves rolling up and breaking on the shore. She heard, too, a stir in the parrot’s cage, but dared not say “Hush!” for fear Polly should choose not to understand her and should answer with a yell. Gibber, she could see, was still curled up asleep in his bunk.

  Titty took hold of the sides of the ladder, put her foot on its lowest rung, shut her eyes, and, keeping them shut, climbed up on deck. She wanted to come up on deck and then open her eyes suddenly upon the island scene. But before she was half through the hatch she heard the tapping of a pipe on the bulwarks and knew that, after all, someone had got up before her. She opened her eyes and saw Peter Duck away aft, by the deckhouse, leaning over the bulwarks as if he were looking down into the water. He had not heard her. So, just for a moment, she did not call out to him but pretended to herself that she had sailed alone across the ocean and brought to in this tropical bay.

  It was really there, with colours even brighter than she had seen them in her mind, the burning sky, the bright green feathery plumes of the palm trees, the black rocks of the hill towering above them. The sun was climbing up behind those rocks. They were already in blazing sunlight while the green jungle beneath them was still dark. There was sunlight now on the deck of the Wild Cat, but there was shadow under the hill. And out of that dark forest parrots were flying up and sparkling suddenly as their bright wings left the shadow and caught the sunshine high above the trees. Yes, the island was really there, and the smell of it drifted over the water, a musky, tropical smell, very different from the smell of tarred ropes that had been in Titty’s nostrils as she climbed up through the hatch.

  Peter Duck jerked suddenly upright and Titty saw that he was hauling in a line hand over hand. A moment later a rainbow-coloured fish, glittering, flashing in the sunlight, flopped on the deck. Peter Duck grabbed it, freed it from the hook, and dropped it back. Titty, who had run aft, looked over the side and saw the little fish splash into the water, hesitate for a moment, and then with quivering fins and tail swim down into a brilliant world.

  “Morning, Able-seaman,” said Peter Duck. “You and me’s first on deck in a strange port. Two A.B.s together. That’s as should be.”

  “Good morning,” said Titty. “But why did you put him back?”

  “It’s not the gay ones are the best eating,” said Peter Duck. “Look you here at these, now.” (He pointed to a heap of great fish in an old box he was using as a fish basket, on the deck beside him.) “There’s not one with a Joseph’s coat like what that fellow was wearing. But there’s not one of them here has half that fellow’s bones. All bones he is, and a gay coat on the back of them. There’s not chewing for a mouse on him. Well, we’ve enough now for a grand fish supper. What about turning to and sluicing down the decks?”

  “All right,” said Titty, looking down over the side again.

  “Clear enough,” said Peter Duck. “Five fathom it is here, and you’d think it no more’n a couple of feet. Well, I’ll be catching one more and put the line away.”

  Titty stared down into the water that was clearer than good glass. Far down below, on the sandy bottom, where there were patches of green ribbon weed, a shoal of rainbow-coloured fish were swimming. They moved all together, slowly, from one underwater forest to another, and then, suddenly, like one fish, they all darted sideways, or darted forward, or changed their minds and hurried back by the way they had just come.

  “That’s the big-mouths feeding on them,” said Peter Duck. “There. Four or five of them. Grey. Slow they comes, slow, and then, skat! and Joseph’s coats go flying and big-mouth gets the one that’s thinking of something else and maybe slow in dodging. Now. Watch that one. Coming this way. He’s going to make a mistake.”

  There on the bottom between two patches of weed Titty saw the scrap of silvery fish that Peter Duck was using as a bait. It moved. She saw one of the big grey fish that Mr Duck called big-mouths turn slowly towards it. The bait jerked upwards, just a foot, like a small fish trying to escape. And then it was gone, so suddenly that Titty hardly knew that the big-mouth had pounced until Peter Duck said: “Got him!” and began hauling in the line, when she saw the flashing of the broad silver sides of the big-mouth as it flung itself about trying to shake free. Up it came to the top of the water, followed by a crowd of other fish, and then, just as Peter Duck lifted it into the air, there was a splash, the bait was swinging at the end of the line, the big-mouth was swimming down again, and all the little fish that had followed him up were paying for their curiosity by fright, and were flying in all directions.

  “Lost him, after all,” said Peter Duck. “Well, maybe we’ve got more’n enough without him. What about getting at them decks before the sun’s too hot on them?”

  “Can’t I have the rope ladder out and go for a swim first?”

  “It don’t seem fair to give a shark his breakfast before you’ve had your own.”

  “But it doesn’t look sharky a bit. And Captain Flint promised we should bathe when we got here.”

  “Twice this morning I’ve had one come up after a big-mouth when I was hauling him in, aye, and bite him off neat as nothing and leave me the head of him on my hook.”

  “Oh, well,” said Titty, “perhaps I’d better not.” But she was not at all sure whether Mr Duck was teasing her or really meant it.

  She did the next best thing to swimming. She dropped a canvas bucket overboard at the end of its rope, hauled it up full, and turned it upside down over her head. Peter Duck filled a bucket too, and sent the water flying over her. And then the two able-seamen, Titty and Peter Duck together, settled down in earnest, beginning up in the bows of the ship, hauling up buckets of water, emptying them on deck, and driving the running sheets of water along the planking with a couple of big, long-handled mops.

  They had worked their way right aft as far as the deckhouse when Captain Flint startled them by coming out of the deckhouse door and taking a header clean over the bulwarks.

  Peter Duck dropped his mop and had the rope ladder hanging over the side in a moment.

  “Sharks about!” he shouted, as Captain Flint came up and shook his bald head and wiped the salt water from his eyes. “Look out, sir!”

  Titty found suddenly that she could not breathe. She had just seen what it was that had made Mr Duck put so much hurry in his voice.

  A big, triangular fin, above a huge dim shadow in the water, was moving fast towards the swimmer. Peter Duck stooped, snatched one of the big-mouths out of the box that he
ld his morning’s catch, and threw it, hard, so that it hit the water with a splash, just between Captain Flint and that dark moving fin. As it touched the water there was a tremendous swirl, in which the dead fish and the big triangle of fin vanished together. Captain Flint struck out instantly for the ship and was climbing up the rope ladder on the Wild Cat’s green side just as a long grey shadow flashed white in the water, and the shark turned over and a horrible mouth snapped only an inch or two below his foot. For a moment Titty thought that she was going to be sick. She grabbed Captain Flint’s wet arm, as if he could not, by himself, climb fast enough over the bulwarks.

  “All right, Titty,” said Captain Flint. “And I’m very much obliged to you, Mr Duck. That brute might easily have left me with a leg too few for comfortable walking.”

  The others came tumbling up in their bathing things.

  “Who was first in?” shouted Nancy. “I heard someone splashing about. I’m going to be second, anyhow. Come on, John. I’ll race you. Can you swim ashore from here?”

  “No bathing, Nancy,” said Captain Flint.

  “Hullo, what’s the matter?” said Nancy.

  “He’s just this minute nearly been eaten by a shark,” said Titty.

  Roger ran to the side and craned his head over the bulwarks. Captain Flint laughed.

  “Do you remember looking for sharks over the side of the houseboat, that day you made me walk the plank? You were afraid the sharks wouldn’t be big enough to eat me.”

  “This is different,” said Roger.

  “Giminy!” said Nancy. “It really was a shark. Look!”

  They all saw that three-cornered fin cutting through the water seventy or eighty yards away. It disappeared, and after that, oddly enough, they never saw another.

  “It was very silly of me to go over like that,” said Captain Flint. “It was just being so jolly pleased to be here. I’d been promising myself a swim. Today’s the day, you know. That kind of feeling. By Jove, you two have done the decks already. Come on, let’s sluice some water over the lazybones, and then get breakfast over.”

  *

  “And now,” said Captain Flint at breakfast, “the first thing to do is to get across the island, find Mr Duck’s tree, and bring the stuff aboard.”

  “Begging your pardon, sir,” said Peter Duck, “the first thing’s the ship. You never know how soon we may be off again, or bothered with a bit of bad weather, and the first thing we ought to do is to have them water tanks all filled up again and be quit of all fear of running short. And then there’s the rigging to overhaul. Chafing there’s bound to be on a long passage, and I’ll be taking the chance to get things ship-shape before we sail.”

  “We’ve used forty-three tanks full from the starboard side and forty-four from the port side,” said Susan. “Eighty-seven altogether.”

  “We couldn’t be having better weather for taking the tanks ashore and bringing them off,” said Peter Duck. “It’s too good a chance to be missing, I’m thinking. Barometer’s as steady as a rock.”

  “I know it is,” said Captain Flint. “But that’s the very reason why we ought to go straight across to the other side of the island to lift that stuff. Look here. You’re going to show me where it is.”

  “As near as I know, I’ll show you. Not that there’s anything there. Whatever it was, it’s maybe gone by now.”

  “That’s all right,” said Captain Flint. “If it’s gone, it’s gone. But you can’t show me the place without coming across the island. And that means leaving the ship. And you say yourself we can’t count on settled weather. This may be the only chance of you and me being able to get across there together without worrying about what’s happening to the schooner.”

  For a moment, it almost looked as if Peter Duck and Captain Flint were going to quarrel. But they didn’t.

  Susan said: “Why can’t we be getting the water in while you and Mr Duck go across the island?”

  “Why not?” said Captain Flint. “We must leave somebody in charge of the ship, and with us away Captain John and Captain Nancy take command, and if they and the two mates can’t manage those tanks as well as we can I’ll be much surprised.”

  “Well, there’s something in that,” said Peter Duck, pushing the tobacco hard into his pipe. “If I got to leave the ship, better when it looks like easy weather.”

  And then, of course, Roger started.

  “But aren’t we all going to fetch the treasure?”

  “It won’t take long. Let’s all go,” said Nancy.

  “Oh, look here, Nancy,” said Captain Flint, “I’m counting on you and John to look after the ship and give the mates a hand with the water supply .…”

  Bill sat there saying nothing, but looking rather glum. All he cared about was that he did not want to lose sight of Mr Duck. These children were all very well, but where Mr Duck was, there Bill wanted to be. Sailormen ought to stick together.

  “All right, Bill,” said Captain Flint, laughing, “he won’t leave you behind.”

  Bill grinned and cheered up very much, though he wondered how much Captain Flint had guessed of what he had been thinking.

  In the end it was agreed that John, Nancy, the two mates, the monkey, and the parrot should stop in charge of the ship. Captain Flint, Peter Duck, Bill, Titty, and Roger were to cross the island. Roger had been so sure he was going that Captain Flint felt it would be hard to leave him behind. And if he were taken, why not Titty? Mr Duck had said the going was not so bad. Susan and Peggy set to work to put rations together for the explorers. Then they were all to go ashore together and have a look at the stream.

  The dinghy was already afloat. The moment things had been decided, Captain Flint and Peter Duck, with John and Nancy helping, and Titty watching anxiously for fear of damage to Swallow’s new paint, brought the little sailing boat to the side, hooked on the davit tackles, hoisted her up, and lowered her into the water.

  “These davits’ll be the very thing for lifting in the water tanks,” said Peter Duck. He brought one of the empty tanks up on deck, and showed Nancy how to put a rope sling through the handles at the side of the tank, how to hoist it up with the davit tackle, and then how to swing the davit inboard so as to lower the tank on deck.

  “It’s not that these little tanks are all that heavy,” he said, “but you may as well handle them easy as not.”

  At last everything was ready. The water-breaker from the galley had been lowered into the dinghy. “Whatever else happens,” Susan had said, “we’ll give that barrel a rinse.” Two of the water tanks had been lowered into Swallow. John had stepped Swallow’s mast, and Nancy was standing by all ready to hoist the sail. Titty and Roger were sitting on the tanks. Bill had obeyed orders and taken his place in Swallow, not very willingly, for he had seen that Peter Duck was already afloat in the dinghy, with both the mates. He was hanging on to the rope ladder.

  “Hi! Hi! Uncle Jim! Captain Flint!” called Nancy. “We’ll start without you and then where’ll you be?”

  But Captain Flint was swinging himself over the bulwarks and coming down the ladder. In his hand was a long paper parcel, and as soon as he was in the boat he began unwinding the generous string of the Cowes confectioner. He stuffed the paper away under the thwart, and felt the bright blue ironwork of the two toy spades.

  “They certainly are pretty rotten ones,” he said, “but I dare say they’ll do.”

  Bill pushed off from the side of the Wild Cat. Nancy hoisted the old brown sail. The little Swallow filled on the starboard tack and was off.

  Titty drew a long breath.

  “And the last time we sailed her was in Lowestoft,” she said.

  “And before that on the lake,” said John. “We never thought when we were sailing home from Horseshoe Cove that this year we’d be landing in her on a desert island.”

  “I wish Amazon were here,” said Nancy, looking at the little brown dinghy in which Peter Duck, with one of the mates behind him in the bows, and the other facing
him in the stern, was already pulling for the shore.

  “She’s a proper little sailor, your Swallow,” said Bill.

  “The Wild Cat looks a beauty, too,” said Titty, thinking that Captain Flint might be hurt if they spoke of nothing but the Swallow.

  And, indeed, the green schooner, lying there at anchor, was a lovely sight.

  But Captain Flint and Roger had no eyes for ships that morning. They were thinking of nothing but Crab Island and what they might find when they landed.

  The Swallow sailed across the bay before going about and heading back again for the strip of bright sandy shore where the little stream ran out. John found he had to tack once more before getting in because of a little spit of land that divided into two what had seemed to be a single bay. Afterwards they came to understand how this had happened when they saw that at some time the stream had shifted, leaving its old bed dry and making a new one for itself. The spit of land had built itself between the old outlet of the stream and the new.

  Peter Duck and the two mates came rowing in just as Swallow’s nose touched the shore.

  “Go on, Bill,” said Titty, as she felt the scrunch of the keel on the sand. “It’s really desert. You’re the first to put your foot on it.”

  Bill splashed overboard with the painter and pulled Swallow a foot or two up the beach.

  “What did you say this bay was to be called, sir?” he asked with a grin.

  “Bill’s Landing,” said Captain Flint.

  “Pleased and proud to welcome you,” said Bill.

  CHAPTER XX

  BLAZED TRAIL

  THE OTHERS SCRAMBLED ashore after Bill, and ran to meet Mr Duck and the mates, who were just coming in the dinghy. At least, they tried to run, but found that something had gone wrong with their legs, or else with the shore. There they were, on solid ground at last, after so many days and nights of rolling and pitching at sea, and yet for a minute or two they found it much harder to balance themselves on the island beach than on the swaying decks of the Wild Cat.