Peter Duck

by Arthur Ransome

  “Not so fast, Cap’n. Not so fast,” Peter Duck would say from time to time, and then Captain Flint would say he was sorry, and would hang back and walk slowly, to let people get their breaths again. And then the noise of the sea would be too much for him, and, without knowing it, he would begin to forge ahead once more, faster and faster, impatient with the undergrowth that clutched at his knees.

  At last Peter Duck called out to him in vain. Captain Flint had caught a glimpse of the sea. He ran forward out of the palm trees, to look down on a steep beach of sand that threw the sunshine up most blindingly into eyes accustomed now to the cool green shadows of the forest.

  Peter Duck moved no faster than before. Bill galloped forward and Titty and Roger hurried after him, leaving the old seaman to come at his own pace out through the last fringe of tall palms. He heard a shout from Captain Flint and eager cries from the others, and then, at the very edge of the forest, something caught his eye where the grass was thin and burnt in the sand. He looked out through the trees. Captain Flint and the others were bending over some old half-filled diggings along the edge of the forest. Peter Duck shook his head and looked down once more at the scattered white bones that had first caught his eye. He stooped and picked up from among them a broken clay pipe, of odd pattern, with the bowl narrow and slanting forward from the stem. Then, stirring the sand with his foot, he moved a white and broken skull. He covered it up with the sand, and, with the pipe in his hand, went out from under the palm trees to join the others.

  “Black Jake’s been here all right,” said Captain Flint.

  “He has,” said Peter Duck.

  “Doing some hard work he was,” said Bill.

  “What’s that?” asked Titty.

  Peter Duck held it out. “See,” he said. “Stamped 1915 and 1915 that pipe is. Everybody was smoking them pipes round Lowestoft in the years after the war. There’s Lowestoft men been here.”

  “It looks as if Black Jake’s done an awful lot of digging,” said Captain Flint. “You don’t think he could have found it?”

  “He was digging in the wrong place,” said Peter Duck. “It’s not here I was throwed up. Bit farther north it was. There’s no rocks here. I’ll know the right place when I see it, I dare say.”

  Bill, Titty, and Roger did not wait for another word, but ran on northwards along the beach.

  Peter Duck turned to Captain Flint again.

  “Black Jake’s been here right enough,” he said, “and someone’s paid for it, too. Fighting, or murder. Likely enough they’d be fighting when they tired of digging, not rightly knowing where to dig.” He took Captain Flint back under the trees and showed him the bones and the broken skull. “It wasn’t no fall smashed that in,” he said.

  “I’m glad that able-seaman of mine didn’t see it,” said Captain Flint.

  “We’ll have no call to be going back this way,” said Peter Duck, as, after covering up the skull once more, they walked out of the trees.

  Captain Flint for a moment looked grave, thinking of the sort of men he would have to deal with if Black Jake and his crew were indeed to follow the Wild Cat to the island, as Peter Duck seemed to think they would.

  He put his glasses to his eyes and searched the eastern horizon. Not a thing was moving on the sea except the white crests of the waves.

  He turned to Peter Duck again. “Well,” he said, “the best thing we can do is to hurry up. We’ve only got to find your tree, get the stuff and clear out, and Black Jake can have the island and be welcome to it.”

  “I’ve nothing against that,” said Peter Duck, and they walked on after the children.

  CHAPTER XXI

  DUCKHAVEN

  CAPTAIN FLINT AND Peter Duck walked on after the others, who had hurried northwards along that shining beach. For a long way there were signs of old trenches and pits more than half-full of blown sand close under the trees. They stopped now and again to look at an old broken spade-handle, a rusty kettle or a battered stew-pot with a hole in it.

  “This looks like the end of their diggings,” said Captain Flint at last. “They seem to have got tired of it here.”

  “Likely enough,” said the old sailor. “Digging all the way along here from where we come out of the trees. Quarter of a mile they dug up. Foolishness, seems to me, digging and digging like that with nothing to show for it.”

  “H’m,” said Captain Flint. “I shouldn’t like to count up all the digging I’ve done one time or another, and often in ground that looked as good as anybody could want, and with a man in the next claim shovelling the stuff out in panfuls and going home in a month with a fortune made.”

  “Gold-mining?”

  “Yes,” said Captain Flint, “and never enough to show for it to make a ring for the little finger of a monkey.”

  “They say custom eases all,” said Peter Duck. “With all that bad luck astern of you, you won’t be taking it so hard when our time comes to up-anchor and get away back to sea after digging up an old sack with maybe nothing in it worth spitting at.”

  “Well, Mr Duck, the sooner we get to digging up that sack the better. Hullo, what are those children up to?”

  Half a mile ahead of them a rib of dark rock ran out of the forest, crossed the sand and plunged into the sea. And every now and then, as one of the big waves rolled in, it was as if a fountain shot up there, a feathery white plume of spray that blew across the beach like steam. And on the rocks they could see Titty waving to them, while Bill and Roger were looking at something on the sand.

  Anybody could see that Titty was probably shouting. But Peter and Captain Flint could hear nothing, because of the roar of the surf.

  “Water spouting over,” said Peter Duck. “I mind that well enough. Looks to me as if they’ve found the place for themselves without my showing them.”

  “Come on, Mr Duck,” said Captain Flint and hurried along the beach.

  As they came near the rocks, Titty came running to meet them.

  “It’s a harbour,” she was shouting. “A harbour. And a real wreck.”

  Bill and Roger were crab-hunting.

  “If you’d only been a little quicker,” said Roger reproachfully, “you’d have seen them. There were lots under this rock just now. Yellowy ones. But anyhow there are millions in the wreck.”

  “Isn’t it a lovely harbour?” said Titty, and then she saw that Captain Flint was not listening to her. He had no eyes for anything or anybody but Peter Duck.

  Peter Duck was looking down into a narrow gully between the black rocks. There was a little sandy beach at the head of it, a perfect boat-landing. There were rocks on each side of it, and between the rocks water rose and fell and lapped against them, stirred by the swell from outside, but quiet and almost smooth. Beyond the rocks to the north, as to the south, a long churning line of breakers rolled over and broke in foaming white surf. In this one place there was peace. The Atlantic swell broke on the reef outside, and fell over the rocks already tamed and harmless. Where the reef joined the rocks on the beach the breakers rushed along it, and it was here, where the rocks rose steeply out of the sea close to the land, that every now and then an angrier breaker than the rest flung itself up into the air in that fountain of blown spray that they had seen from far away.

  “There’s been some fine big crabs about,” said Bill. “Look at them clippers. How’s this for hanging clothes on a line with?” He picked up a fine orange-coloured pair of clippers from a lot of old bits of crab shells washed into a crevice of rock.

  “But it really is a gorgeous harbour,” said Titty.

  “Yes,” said Captain Flint. “You could beach Swallow in here all right.” But Titty knew he was not really thinking about Swallow. He was looking at Peter Duck. Peter Duck was screwing up his eyes and smiling queerly.

  “Well, Mr Duck? Well?” said Captain Flint eagerly.

  “I never would have thought it was such a little place,” said Peter Duck at last. “Shrunk it has, like them crabs. They was a sight bi
gger when I was here and all alone with them.”

  “This is the place?” Captain Flint was already looking up the beach towards the coconut palms along the edge of the forest.

  “Aye,” said Peter Duck. “This is the place. Spouting water and all.” He wiped some blown spray from his face. “Funny I should remember that. Aye. This is the place. If I’d missed it and been washed up in surf I’d have been pounded to nothing, and if I’d hit the reef I’d have been smashed like them crab shells. I must have just missed the end of the reef and been swept up in the smooth water. Miracle, it seems to me. If I’d come ashore anywheres else I’d have missed sixty years of sailing. Sixty good years I’d have missed. Think of that now.”

  Titty stared at him. She tried to think of him sixty years ago, small and wet and wretched, tied to a spar, and washed ashore from a wreck, not like Robinson Crusoe, with lots of useful things to help him, but with nothing at all but a pocket-knife.

  “Was the old boat here then?” she asked.

  Just beyond the rocks they had found the remains of an old decked boat. Just the bows of it were visible, sticking up out of the sand. The caulking had rotted away and you could see between the planks. A great gaping hole had been smashed in one side of it, so that anybody not very large could have crept in between its ribs. The moment they had seen it, they had wanted to get inside, but not when they came nearer and saw that it was alive with yellow crabs that crawled in and out through the hole. Even Bill had hardly liked the idea of crowding in there with the crabs.

  Peter Duck came to the edge of the rocks and looked over at the wreck on the other side.

  “Since my time,” he said, “but a good few years it’s been here to be sanded up like that.”

  “But what about your tree, Mr Duck?” Captain Flint was bursting to use his little spades. He had not seemed to hear that there was a wreck to look at.

  Peter Duck walked slowly up the beach, looking at the coconut palms that swayed in the fresh breeze off the Atlantic. All the others followed him. At any moment he might give the word and they would know where to dig.

  “I’m beat,” said Peter Duck at last. “They’re as like as belaying-pins, them trees. They’re as like as links in chain cable. There’s no man alive could tell t’other from which.”

  “But it was a tree close here?”

  “Close above the rocks it was. The smallest it was, and the easiest to climb. I wasn’t no bigger than Roger here.”

  “It’ll have grown since then,” said Titty. “It might be the biggest of all.” There was indeed one tall palm that waved its feathery crest high over the tops of the others.

  “The lot of them’ll have growed,” said Peter Duck.

  “Hang it all,” said Captain Flint. “They may have grown up, fallen down, been eaten by ants, rotted into fibre and blown away in dust before this. I don’t know how long palm trees live. They may not be as tough as old sailors.”

  “And that’s true,” said Peter Duck, “and I was forgetting it. I was thinking I’d have to be picking out my old bedroom tree, and with all them trees as like as clincher nails I was feeling like a man making the Finnish coast without a chart. Ever been along the Finnish coast, Cap’n? Peppered, it is, with pink rocks as like as a lot of bollards.”

  “Hadn’t we better have dinner?” said Roger.

  Bill looked round hopefully.

  “Best thing we can do,” said Captain Flint. “This is going to be a longer job than I thought. I’d been forgetting there might be trouble over finding the right tree.”

  “Let’s have dinner at the harbour,” said Titty.

  They walked down the beach again and dumped their knapsacks by the rocks, where they could look down towards that little sheltered sandy bay. Captain Flint dug out the bananas he had cut on the way across, and a big package of pemmican Peggy had made up after breakfast. Everybody had a packet of ship’s biscuits, and a packet of sweet ones. Nancy had made Mr Duck borrow her knapsack, and among the things Susan had put in it was a big hunk of one of the Dutch cheeses they had bought that last day at Lowestoft. She knew he particularly liked it. Everybody had a waterbottle.

  It was already very late for their midday dinner, and they were hungry. But, for all that, it was an unsettled meal. Captain Flint could not forget for a moment that they were within a very few yards of the treasure, whatever it was. He kept getting up and walking about. He crossed the rocks with a biscuit in his hand to have for the first time a close look at the old wrecked boat, and came back to ask Mr Duck if he didn’t think somebody else besides Black Jake might have been after the treasure. Mr Duck said he didn’t know, but that nobody had come ashore in that boat on purpose. It was nothing but an old boat stove in and washed up in a storm.

  “It might do for a hut,” Captain Flint said.

  “Not with all those crabs,” said Titty.

  “We’ll have to have a tent then. We may be digging a week.”

  “If we’re going to stop here,” said Titty, “couldn’t we bring Swallow round to try the harbour? It’s the best she’s ever had.”

  Captain Flint flung himself down again.

  “That’s exactly what we’ll have to do,” he said. “We’ll have to come over here, all the lot of us, and dig over the ground at the foot of every one of those trees. Well, there’s no road for carrying things. We can’t bring all the food and bedding on our backs, let alone the drinking water. We’ll have to turn Swallow into a cargo boat and bring the stuff round by sea. Then we’ll camp here and stick at it till we find it.”

  “And we’ll call the harbour Duckhaven,” said Titty, “because it’s where Mr Duck was washed up. If he doesn’t mind.”

  “It’s no odds to me,” said the old sailor, “and Duckhaven sounds a good place for Ducks, and this was that all right, barring them crabs. There’s one duckling would have died young if it hadn’t been for this Duckhaven of yours. Duckhaven’s a likely name, too. Look well, it would, on an Admiralty chart.”

  “Can I have another pemmican sandwich?” said Roger.

  “You haven’t finished that one,” said Titty.

  “I want to use the last bit of it,” said Roger. “I want to use it to bring the crab out that went into that hole, and I can’t unless you let me have another for myself.”

  “Give him two,” said Captain Flint, “and tell him to eat them both at once. Look here, Mr Duck, what about bringing Swallow round here? Could it be done without risking her overmuch?”

  “Easy as falling off a yard in a Cape Horn buster,” said Peter Duck, “only you don’t want to try it while the trade wind’s blowing. Bring her round before sunrise or at dusk when the wind drops and comes off this shore, and there’d be nothing to it, if you bring her in at the right place.”

  “I’ll take a mark for it,” said Captain Flint, and was up again and striding up the beach. Mr Duck followed him. Titty waited a moment and then ran after them, leaving Bill and Roger still busy trying to tempt a crab out of its hole.

  “What about the biggest of those trees of yours?” Captain Flint said, taking out his pocket compass. “No one could miss that. And it’s bang above the rocks. Keep it just clear of the end of the reef and you want no better mark.”

  He walked right up to the tree and leant his back against it, looking out to sea, and then down at his little compass.

  “East-south-east the end of the reef bears from this tree. If we keep the tree bearing west-north-west when we’re coming in, we can’t miss the place.”

  “You left your sandwich behind,” said Titty.

  “Thank you very much,” said Captain Flint. “That harbour of yours is going to be useful.”

  “You’ll have to pick your time to come round when you’ve an off-shore wind,” said Peter Duck. “But you’ll do it easy enough.”

  “Hullo, what are those two up to now?” exclaimed Captain Flint, looking down the beach towards Duckhaven, where Bill and Roger were hurriedly slipping backwards down the near side of a r
ock.

  “Help,” shouted Bill, “them crabs is scoffing the vittles.”

  The others went to the rescue. There, where they had thrown themselves down to eat their dinner beside the quiet water of the tiny harbour, they found the crabs once more in full possession. There were hundreds of them. Roger explained.

  “We were watching the bit of sandwich to see that crab come out of his hole, and he didn’t come, and then we heard a noise and looked round, and there were the others all over the knapsacks, and we couldn’t do anything because Bill’s stick was right in the middle of them.”

  “Well, you are a couple of duffers,” said Captain Flint, and jumped over the rock to rescue the knapsacks. Crabs, yellow and brown, scuttled in all directions. One clung to a knapsack as Captain Flint grabbed it up. He shook it off. It fell hard against a rock, and in a flash the others had it and were pulling it to bits.

  “Horrible. Horrible,” said Titty, turning away.

  “Them crabs ain’t got no feelings,” said Bill.

  Peter Duck gave an odd kind of shiver.

  “Quite like old times,” he said. “Gives me the shakes, it does, just to see them. But they seems so small to what they was. Maybe they growed with me thinking about them and spinning the yarn so often. But at night …”

  “I expect these same crabs seem bigger in the dark,” said Captain Flint. “We’ll have to deal with them some way if we’re going to camp here.”

  “You’ll have to set a watch at night, or they’ll steal the skins off you,” said Peter Duck.