Peter Duck

by Arthur Ransome

  As the afternoon wore on, he grew more and more eager to be off, and at the first sign of slackening wind he hung his glasses round his neck, dropped his knapsack down to John, who stowed it with the bailer under the stern-sheets, clapped Bill on the back, shook hands with Peter Duck, flung a leg over the bulwarks and climbed down. John had already hoisted the little brown sail.

  “Goodbye, Mr Duck,” Captain Flint called. “The Wild Cat’ll be all right with you and Bill, and if the weather shows any signs of turning nasty I’ll come right back over the hill.”

  “Goodbye, Mr Duck,” sang out Captain John. “Cast off forrard.”

  Peter Duck laughed, brought the painter aft along the deck of the schooner, coiled it and dropped it down to them.

  “Goodbye, Cap’n John,” he said. “And a good passage!”

  The Swallow drifted astern. Her sail filled. Passing close under the stern of the schooner, she headed out of the bay.

  John glanced up at the letters, “WILD CAT LOWESTOFT” which he had painted himself in Lowestoft harbour. Lowestoft now seemed very far away.

  Bill looked down over the stern rail.

  “So long, Cap’n John,” he said. And then, “Good luck, sir.”

  “So long, Bill,” called John.

  “Good luck with the fishing,” called Captain Flint.

  For some time Peter Duck and Bill stood by the deckhouse, watching the little brown ship sail away towards the southern point.

  Then Bill began overhauling a fishing-line, coiled on the deckhouse roof.

  “What about them hooks, Mr Duck?” he said, and, as he got no answer, said it again.

  But Peter Duck, watching the brown sail now disappearing behind the point, was thinking of something quite different.

  “Well,” he said, “I’d be sorry for him not to find it after all this. If it’s worth finding. Eh! Less lip, young Bill. What’s that? Them hooks? You’ll find them in the forrard end of the locker under my bunk. We might as well be putting the lines out. Bait’s inside the galley door. They always do say the best fish bites at dusk. He’ll be meeting a bit of wind round there, but he’s sense enough to wait. What’s that? Less lip, my lad. Coming. Coming .…”

  He looked into the deckhouse, glanced at the chronometer, then at the clock, came out and struck the ship’s bell three times, two strokes close together and a single stroke by itself.

  “Three bells,” he said to himself, and then, as Bill looked up from his fishing-line, he added, “Quiet without them. It’s like being back in the old wherry.”

  A minute or two later, two splashes showed that two leads with their hooks and baits had been dropped overboard. Peter Duck smoked his pipe, leaning on the bulwarks with a hand ready to feel the slightest nibble from a fish. Bill, close beside him, chewed a small bit of tobacco given him by Peter Duck.

  “When’ll they be back?” he said at last.

  “He’s not one to give up in a hurry,” said the old seaman, spitting gravely into the water.

  Bill spat, too. “Nor the others neither,” said he. “They’re good ’uns, for children.”

  CHAPTER XXIII

  SWALLOW’S VOYAGE

  THEY WERE OFF. John had enjoyed yesterday, running cargoes of fresh water from the shore to the schooner. This was better. This was a real voyage. He thought of Lowestoft harbour and of the lake among the hills at home, and then he looked at the green feathery tops of palm trees, the green forest climbing the slopes of Mount Gibber, and the open sea. And here was he at the tiller of the Swallow sailing past these strange tropical shores in waters where the sharks made it unsafe to bathe. Yes, it was one of the moments at which John, if he had been asked if there was anything in the world he wanted, would have had to admit that there was not. What could be better than this?

  Captain Flint watched the Wild Cat until the neat green schooner, lying there to her anchors, with her sails furled, was hidden by the trees on the southern point of the bay.

  “She’ll be all right there,” he said, “with those two aboard her, unless there comes on something really bad. And that won’t happen without warning. There’ll be plenty of time to get back.”

  He put the Wild Cat out of his mind, and, lying on the tightly packed cargo of the Swallow, tilted back his sunhelmet and hummed the tune of “Hanging Johnny,” a most melancholy tune that generally came to his lips when he was thoroughly happy.

  “Nothing could be better than this,” he said at last. “The smaller the boat the better the fun. I say, Skipper, have you ever handled a small boat in a big swell before? We’ll be feeling it you know, when we get out of the shelter of the island.”

  “Falmouth harbour,” said Captain John. “And, of course we had it pretty rough on the lake once or twice in the summer.”

  “Um,” said Captain Flint … “This is different. But nothing to worry about. She’s a jolly good sea-boat. She’ll be all right if you keep her sailing.”

  They were reaching fast across the southernmost of the bays on the western side of the island. Long splashes of sparkling white on the farther side of the point, where it ran out, bare of trees, showed where the swell from the Atlantic was breaking on the sand. The noise of the surf was louder than John had yet heard it.

  “We shall be in the open in another few minutes,” said Captain Flint. “If you think the wind’s too strong we could hang about here for a bit. It’s still from the north-east, and we shall be beating against it when we’re round the point.”

  “She’ll stand an awful lot,” said John, “and we’ve stowed all the heavy things in the bottom of her.”

  “You know her,” said Captain Flint. “She’s your ship. Speaking as a pilot, though, I’ll just say one thing. You’ll find the easier water farther out. It’s when the seas begin to feel the shore they turn nasty. But you know that as well as I do.” And Captain Flint rolled on his side to get shelter for his hands while he struck a match and lit his pipe. Then he worked himself up to the windward side, so that his weight would be useful as ballast, had a look at the way the halyard was made fast, in case he might have to take the sail down in a hurry, and saw that he would be able to get the oars out if they should be wanted.

  “Mr Duck said the wind would be going down, didn’t he?” said John.

  “There’s less already, if I’m not mistaken, and we may get it off the land as the sun goes down, though we can’t count on that.”

  “I think we’ll go right on,” said John.

  The waving palms on the southernmost point of the island seemed suddenly to slip away astern of them, so that they could see an ever wider stretch of sea over the low sandy spit that ran out beyond the trees. The Swallow began to lift and fall, as if she felt already that she was out of shelter. John was clear of the island almost before he knew it. Captain Flint, lying hunched along the top of the cargo on the windward side, pulled himself forward a few inches, and tucked in a loose bit of old sail between cargo and gunwale, as a lick of spray flew up and spattered over his face.

  John bit his teeth together, sniffed the wind off the Atlantic, hauled in his sheet, made up his mind just how far he could keep it in without skimping her, leant well back, squinted up at Titty’s little Swallow flag flying from the mast-head, felt a throbbing in his throat that was half pleasure, half fear of making a mistake, swallowed that throbbing and said, almost as much to himself as to Captain Flint: “She doesn’t mind this at all.”

  “No,” said Captain Flint. “There’s no wickedness in it. These waves look big enough but they don’t mean to do anybody any harm.”

  Big they certainly were. They came rolling down to meet the little Swallow, caught her on their wrinkled lower slopes, tossed her up and up until she was high on a broad mountain ridge of blue water, and then passed on, not exactly in a hurry, but as if on business that would not wait, while Swallow rushed down again on the other side, and it seemed a marvel that she did not somehow lose her footing and tumble over and over. But she never did. Just at first
John felt that he was leaving the whole of his inside behind on the top of each big wave as it passed, but he found his inside was still there as the next wave rolled along and Swallow began to climb once more. He had plenty to think about. There were the big waves, that were really the ocean swell, and besides them, on their slopes, and between them and across them were smaller waves made by the wind. Presently John stopped wondering what was going to happen as he met each wave. He was enjoying himself very much indeed. After all he had had plenty of time to get used to such waves while sailing in the schooner. They seemed a good deal bigger when seen from Swallow, but he was delighted to find that nothing but spray came aboard. He knew now why Captain Flint had reminded him to keep his vessel sailing. Down in the trough between the bigger waves the Swallow seemed to lose the wind. Her little brown sail flapped as if in a calm, filling again suddenly, with a snatch at the boom, when the next wave caught her and shouldered her up and up before letting her fall once more while it rolled on towards the distant beach. John saw Captain Flint looking at him with a smile. He laughed.

  “Good work, eh, John?” said Captain Flint.

  “Going about’s going to be a bit of a job.”

  “Pick your time for it and don’t be in a hurry. We shan’t lose anything by standing on. Simple-hearted fellows the seas out here. Nearer in, you can’t count on them. The only thing to remember in going about is not to change your mind halfway.”

  John grinned. He had said just that, himself, to Titty, last summer, when teaching her how to sail.

  He held on until he was a long way out, then waited until one of the larger waves had gone by, and went about without difficulty in the smooth that followed it. Swallow headed in towards the island.

  “That was all right,” said Captain Flint, who had wriggled across on the top of the cargo to bring his weight on the other side, and lifted his head again now that the boom had swung safely over. “Remember to luff a bit or bear away if you see anything that looks like slopping over us. By Jove, we get a fine view of Mount Gibber from out here. That’s where we crossed, right up under those black rocks. Sorry, John. You look after your steering. Never mind me. You see where there’s been another landslide beside the one we had to go round yesterday. More to come, too. That slope up at the top’s too steep to last. Queer thing it is, the way these islands keep changing all the time.”

  SWALLOW AT SEA

  “I wonder if Nancy and the others can see us from up there. Swallow’s sail must look pretty small.”

  “If Cap’n Nancy knows her job and hasn’t let them hang about on the way, they’ll have passed the landslide a long time ago and be well down the hill on this side. You can’t see anything from among those trees. We never got a glimpse of the sea yesterday after we started coming down until we came right out on the beach.” Captain Flint rolled over and pulled his watch from a hip-pocket. “Time’s going on, you know. I shouldn’t be surprised if they’re not down at Duckhaven by now and wondering when we’re turning up with the grub.”

  John stood out to sea once more. Captain Flint, who had, at first, been carefully watching what was happening while he seemed to be idly lying about on the top of the cargo, no longer troubled now to keep a hand within easy reach of the halyard. Swallow went switchbacking out to sea again, up and down, up and down, with a motion to which John was already growing accustomed. Just once, when John, over-confident, was glancing over his shoulder at the shore, she butted her nose into a wave, but took very little of it aboard, because her bows were tightly packed, and Peter Duck had covered things over with a bit of old tanned sail to keep them dry, and had jammed it in all round, so that it was almost as if she had a solid deck before the mast.

  “No damage done,” said Captain Flint, “but ease her a bit if she’s meeting another like that.”

  “All right,” said John, and Captain Flint noticed that in Swallow, John was captain, and not he. Aboard the Wild Cat, John would most certainly have said, “Aye, aye, sir.” He was as particular about it as Titty herself.

  The shape of the island seemed to be changing all the time. The little hill in the south-west corner of the island, which was covered with trees to the very top of it, stood out for a time like somebody’s knee pushed up under a green blanket. Then, as they came along the southern shore, it had gradually seemed to be part of Mount Gibber, and now that they were working northward it had disappeared altogether behind the green lower slopes of that strange black-topped hill. The peak of Mount Gibber changed, too. At one time it looked like a smooth black cone rising out of the forest. At another they could see the chasms in it and black precipices above the trees, where the rocks had broken away.

  The sun was dropping down behind the island when, suddenly, there was no wind. Swallow lost way. The brown sail flapped. The little flag drooped at the mast-head. There was no more kick in the tiller. John had the horrible feeling of having no control at all over his ship.

  “She won’t steer,” he said, trying hard by quick, desperate waggling of the rudder to make her keep her head up to the waves.

  “Wind’s changing,” said Captain Flint. “We shall have it off shore in a minute. Mr Duck was right.”

  But minute after minute passed, and the Swallow rolled about with the yard swinging overhead and the boom tossing itself from side to side only an inch or two above Captain Flint’s white sun-helmet.

  “What about the oars?” said John.

  “Nothing else for it,” said Captain Flint. He lowered the sail, and pulled the oars out.

  At once there seemed to be reason in things again. Swallow stopped tossing round and round like a cork. Captain Flint, taking a pull when he could, kept her head up to the seas.

  “That was jolly unpleasant,” said John.

  “Helpless sort of feeling,” said Captain Flint.

  And then, before they expected it, came a faint breath off the land. John felt it on the back of his neck, and turned round as if he could hardly believe it. Captain Flint felt it on his cheekbones. They looked up at the little flag. It was lifting, dropping, lifting, and then, rippling from hoist to fly, blew straight out from the mast.

  “She’d sail,” said John.

  A moment later Captain Flint had pulled her round to meet this new wind. The brown sail went up, and they were off again, reaching along to the north, though a good way out from the shore.

  “You can see that northern hill now,” said Captain Flint. “Queer to think of Mr Duck seeing those hills forty years ago and not wanting to come any nearer, in spite of knowing what he did.”

  “Where was it you found Black Jake’s digging places?” asked John, and Captain Flint looked suddenly out to sea and round the horizon before he answered.

  “Just about there,” he said, pointing to the shore. “Nowhere near the right place.”

  “And where’s Duckhaven?”

  “Not so very much farther. You’ll see the rocks coming down there out of the trees. Better be working in a bit. I took a bearing from a big tree there, and I’d like to get a sight of it. It’s a tall enough tree, but I’d forgotten the ground was so high behind it.”

  “Are there any other landing-places if we can’t find it?”

  “Not one. It’s the only place the whole way along that shore where the swell doesn’t break. It’s the only place where we could bring the boat in right side up.”

  They sailed on in silence, watching the endless line of white surf along the shore.

  “What if we can’t find the place?” John asked at last.

  “Nothing for it but sailing back. There’d be no trouble about that, but the others would have something to say to us for leaving them without water or food or a tent for the night.”

  John thought of Susan. He could almost hear her telling Roger that he should have his supper as soon as Swallow came in. Perhaps at this moment, somewhere on the shore, the lot of them were watching the brown sail. What would they think if they were to see it turn round and go back the way i
t had come? And the sun was already down behind the island. And in this part of the world the dark came on so quickly.

  Suddenly he saw something that reminded him of last summer. Dim blue smoke was curling up against the background of the trees. How often the smoke of the camp fire had hurried him home, when he saw it far away.

  “Well done, Nancy,” said Captain Flint. “Now we’re all right. But we’ve no time to lose if we’re to get things fixed up while we can see what we’re doing.”

  “Are you going to begin piloting?”

  “All right. Begin working her in.” Captain Flint looked at his pocket compass and took a rough bearing of the smoke that was now a thick column pouring up from the beach. “Short tacks. That smoke’s bearing just about right as it is.”

  A few short tacks this way and that brought Swallow nearer in. They could see specks moving round the fire. But they could see no way in. There seemed to be no opening at all in the long line of breaking water. It seemed a hopeless place for a landing. But, suddenly, John called out, “Is that the tree? Sticking up. Against the sky. Behind the smoke. Hullo. There are rocks between us and the shore.”

  “You don’t seem to need a pilot,” said Captain Flint. “Have you been here before? Yes. That’s the tree. It’s those rocks that make the harbour. We’ve got to go in just south of them and turn up into the smooth water behind them.”

  “The wind’s dropping again.”

  “We’ll have to go in under oars anyway.”

  As he spoke, Captain Flint brought the sail down and took to the oars. He glanced in towards the shore. “You see the end of the reef, where the water’s breaking. We want to keep that in line with the big tree, or with Nancy’s smoke. She’s made her fire in the right place. Good girl.”

  “What?” The noise of the surf was getting louder.