Peter Duck

by Arthur Ransome

  Captain Flint shouted, and John leaned forward to catch what he said.

  “You steer for the end of the rocks, and keep the smoke and the big tree in a line behind it.”

  Swiftly riding on the swell, the Swallow swooped towards the line of spray and leaping water.

  John gripped the tiller and saw nothing at all but the end of the reef, a column of smoke and, where the smoke climbed into the sky, the feathery top of a gigantic palm. Nearer. Nearer.

  Captain Flint glanced once more over his shoulder.

  “Right,” he shouted. “Keep her so.”

  There were a few moments when breathing seemed impossible. Close on the starboard bow, the end of the reef showed under water in the trough of the waves. Spray was leaping high in the air as the swell crashed thunderously against a long breakwater of black rock that ran out from the shore. On the port side line after line of waves rolled in to smash themselves upon the golden beach. Swallow slipped past the end of the reef and was suddenly almost at peace. Behind that natural breakwater were little tossing harmless wavelets. There was a strip of sand on which there was no surf. There were more rocks. Figures, well-known figures, waving, probably shouting but quite unheard, clambered on the rocks ahead. The rocks seemed to open. For a stroke or two Captain Flint was rowing in a narrow alleyway of smooth water. One of the oars touched a rock. A moment later the Swallow grounded in that little sheltered basin where, more than half a century before, Peter Duck, a cabin boy, lashed to a spar, had been washed up in the storm that had wrecked his ship and drowned every other soul aboard. It was a busy place today. Nancy was there, hauling Swallow up and steadying her, while Captain Flint stepped eagerly ashore to count his diggers and to see that none was missing. Titty, Roger, Peggy, and Susan were all talking at once. Gibber the monkey saw his chance and leapt aboard and ran along the gunwale to make sure that John, busy unshipping the rudder, was someone whom he knew.

  “Jolly good thing you lit that fire, Nancy,” shouted Captain Flint in her ear. “You can’t see the high tree till you’re fairly near in, because of the woods behind it … Yes … Woods … Behind it.”

  Everybody was shouting because of the noise of the surf, and it was hard to disentangle what they said.

  “Did you put a lantern in?” That was Susan.

  “Finest voyage Swallow’s ever done.” That was probably Titty.

  “Jolly good harbour, isn’t it?” This was Nancy.

  “Scuttled away. They all scuttled away. But they’re coming back.” This could be no one but Roger.

  “Come on,” shouted Captain Flint. “Discharge cargo and quick about it. We’ve got to fix a tent up. Yes. With the mast. And how are the mates to cook supper? Food, they want. YES. POTS AND PANS.”

  CHAPTER XXIV

  DIGGERS’ CAMP

  THE LAND PARTY, travelling light, had made very good time. They had picked up the blazed trail without difficulty, and there had been no dawdling on the way. The only delays (and those slight) had been when Nancy had not thought much of one of Captain Flint’s new blazes and had called a halt while she used her pocket-knife to improve it. They had marched out on the beach at Duckhaven when the little brown sail of the Swallow, a mere spot showing and vanishing among the waves, was still far away, beating out to sea from the southwest corner of the island. Their guides, Titty and Roger, had shown them the little harbour, and the old wrecked boat, and the crabs, though the crabs, as Roger had complained, had been at first inclined to run away. Then Nancy had chosen a place on the shore exactly on a line between the big tree and the end of the reef where the waves were breaking, and they had all worked hard in building the fire that had been so useful in helping Swallow’s pilot to find the way in. Afterwards, while Susan and Peggy had been busy putting green leaves on the fire to make a smoke, Nancy, with Titty and Roger, had done a little exploring on her own account, north along the beach, and had made a discovery of which, by agreement with them, no one said anything that night. Susan had served out a ration of chocolate, but, by the time the Swallow berthed in Duckhaven, everybody was more than ready for a meal.

  All hands turned to discharging cargo, and as soon as the water-barrel had been lifted out and chocked up among the rocks in a handy place so that the kettle could be filled at the tap, Susan and Peggy hurried off to the fire with it. Captain Flint fetched them back for a moment, when he had taken all the ballast out of Swallow, so that all hands working together could haul her up the beach above high-water mark, in the tiny cove among the rocks. After that they went back to their cooking. They were going to heat up some pemmican. Meanwhile, Captain Flint and the others were busy with the tent. Nancy had found a good place, with a bit of smooth sand, sheltered from the north-east by the ridge of rock that ran down into the sea. Another rock, poking up out of the sand, gave some shelter on the other side, and, at the back of it, a bit of the main ridge stuck out at just the right height to carry one end of a pole. Captain Flint lashed Swallow’s oars together to make a crutch to carry the other end.

  “If only we’d had the saw with us instead of letting you bring it round in Swallow,” said Nancy, “we’d have cut a tree to make a proper ridge-pole. We’ll cut one tomorrow. The mast’s a bit short but it’ll do all right for tonight.”

  The mast certainly was rather short, because a good bit of it had to rest on the rock at one end, and some of it had to stick out beyond the oars at the other, but when the old staysail was spread over the top they had a pretty good tent, even if it was small for so many. They decided to cram into it. Of course some of them could have slept inside the old wrecked boat, but they had looked into it and given up the idea, for the wreck was simply boiling with crabs.

  “Botheration,” said Nancy. “How are we going to peg the edges?”

  “With these,” said Captain Flint, emptying a small bag of wooden tent-pegs on the ground.

  “That was the noise I heard last night,” said Titty. “Chipping and chipping. I couldn’t think what it was.”

  “And Mr Duck’s stitched a lot of rope loops into the sail.” Ten minutes later the tent was ready for the night. Nancy, Titty, and Captain Flint were all inside it, when Roger came hurrying from the fire. He had shouted from there, but no one had heard him, though they were already learning to hear what they were saying in spite of the noise of the surf.

  “Kettle’s boiling,” he said. “Susan sent me to tell you to bring the mugs. She and Peggy can’t leave the fire because of the crabs.”

  “Why, the crabs aren’t trying to grab the kettle, are they?” said Captain Flint.

  “They will go sidling into the fire,” said Roger. “Peggy and I have been fending them off, but the moment anyone looks the other way there’s one of those crabs scorching himself like anything. A whole lot have got burnt in spite of us.”

  “Half a minute,” said Captain Flint, “and I’ll come and see what can be done. Try to straighten out that side if you can, Nancy. Howk up those two pegs and shove them in again farther out.”

  “I say,” said Roger.

  SETTLING IN AT DUCKHAVEN

  “What do you say?” said Captain Flint.

  “Do you think these crabs can be the same sort as the crabs that bit Mr Duck’s trousers? They seem so much smaller.”

  “They’d seem big enough if you were on the island all by yourself,” said Captain Flint, “and anyhow, I bet they’ll have grown a bit when you come to tell your grandchildren about them.”

  “Perhaps the night ones are bigger,” said Roger.

  “They probably seemed bigger in the dark. You see the young P.D. hadn’t even got a fire to see them by, and he hadn’t got a whole lot of friends to help scare them off. I don’t wonder he was glad to get away from them.”

  It was getting dark quickly now. Captain Flint climbed over the rocks and went up the sandy beach to the fire, to find Peggy and Susan both busy heading off the yellow crabs that looked almost orange-coloured in the light of the flames into which they seemed det
ermined to sidle. A good lot of them had reached the fire and lay scorched and dead round the edge of it, in spite of the two mates’ efforts to save them.

  “It’s no good,” said Peggy. “If I turn away for one moment there’s a new one beginning to sizzle.”

  “They’re worse than moths,” said Susan, “bobbing into candle flames.”

  “Well be quit of them for a bit anyhow,” said Captain Flint, and taking a stick from Peggy, he raked away the dead crabs from round the fire and threw them a little way off. Instantly the other crabs lost interest in the fire and turned on the dead bodies of their relations.

  Captain Flint hurried back to the tent to help Titty and Nancy to bring along the rest of the mugs.

  “Here’s a crab crawling into the tent,” shouted Nancy, just as he was coming down over the rocks.

  “Kick it out,” called Captain Flint.

  “Don’t hurt it,” said Titty.

  But long before supper was over, by that bright fire in the blue dusk on the beach, even Titty’s heart was hardened, in the matter of dealing with the crabs. For the crabs themselves had no hearts at all. They grabbed at each other and tore each other to pieces, and the noise of the crunching which they made was horrible in itself. The only way to be rid of them was to throw a few of the corpses away, when the others instantly fell on them, crunching them up and waving their pincers and goggling their eyes. There was nothing to be afraid of for the six Swallows and Amazons and Captain Flint. The crabs were not big enough. They were just nasty, and they would not take “no” for an answer. Nothing seemed to teach them that they were not wanted. All the same Nancy said, “Well, I wish Bill was here. He wouldn’t mind batting them at all.” None of the Swallows and Amazons liked batting crabs, but Gibber was the only one who learnt to be afraid of them. He was amusing himself by poking at one or two of the crabs, picking them up by their shells and throwing them away, while keeping his fingers out of the way of their pincers, when a big crab happened to crawl up just behind him, found his tail, and thinking that in spite of its hairiness it might be worth trying, took a tremendous grip of it. Gibber let loose a squeal of pain and went spinning round and round, chasing his tail, with the big crab at the end of it flying like a ball at the end of a string. It let go in the end and shot away into the dark, but Gibber, after that, was wary of crabs, and used to give warning by loud whimpering if ever one of them came near him.

  The crabs made a queer, disturbed supper of it for everybody. It was not safe for anyone to put a scrap of pemmican or a bit of biscuit on the ground even for a moment while drinking. It was gone at once. There was no difficulty in getting rid of any unwanted scraps.

  “They’ll be much better than we are at tidying up after a meal,” said Susan.

  “That’s all right so long as they don’t do their tidying up before we’ve had a chance,” said Captain Flint. “That was a perfectly good bit that one just got, the one with the big eyes that’s chewing it up now.”

  “Was it a bit you were keeping till the last?” asked Roger gravely.

  “I don’t know about that,” said Captain Flint, “but it was far too good a bit for any crab.”

  The crabs were a nuisance at night, too, when the diggers had settled down in their tent. But they were not a nuisance to everybody. John was much more tired than he knew after sailing Swallow round from Bill’s Landing to Duckhaven. Careless of crabs and deaf to the noise of the surf, he fell asleep the moment he had wriggled down into his sleeping-bag. Peggy, too, slept almost at once. Susan lay awake for a time, thinking of how the feeding and cooking was best to be done while in camp, and going through the list she had in her mind of the things that she hoped had not been forgotten. Suddenly she started up and flung a small crab across the tent and out into the night. She had felt it crawling over her bag. Titty and Roger stayed awake for a little while after that, waiting to see if the crabs would not begin exploring them too. But they, like Susan, went to sleep before they meant to. Captain Flint had spent some time after supper in walking up and down the sandy beach in the dusk, disturbing the fireflies, and treading, perhaps, on the very place where Peter Duck’s treasure had been buried so long ago by the captain and the mate of the Mary Cahoun. The others were all in their sleeping-bags, and most of them were already asleep when he came back to the tent and lay down across the mouth of it, to discourage invaders. He lay there, planning tomorrow’s diggings, but was so often disturbed by small crabs, who wanted to know what he was made of, that in the end he got up and banged about with one of the wooden shovels and threw a lot of crabs down towards the water. After that there was peace. It was Captain Nancy, the Terror of the Seas, the successful leader of the land party, who lay awake the longest, listening to the noise of the surf along the shore, and thinking of crabs. She hated the thought of live crabs. She hated the thought of dead ones. Most of all she hated the feel of them. Everything she touched seemed to be crab, and she was only just in time to stop herself from waking everybody else with a wild yell when the hem of her own sleeping-bag happened to tickle her chin. “Jibbooms and bobstays!” she said to herself, “but that would never have done. Worse than Peggy in a thunderstorm!” She chuckled at her escape and soon after that had forgotten all about the crabs. The noise of the surf seemed now to come from under the bows of a great ship moving before a gale of wind. Nancy was steering the Wild Cat on, on, and on, among tremendous seas. She could not have had a happier dream.

  CHAPTER XXV

  DIGGERS AT WORK

  AT SUNRISE EVERYBODY was astir, feeling a little queer after their first night ashore when they had been so long afloat. Captain Flint was already scraping about in the sand at the foot of the palm trees. He was in such a hurry to begin digging that they were almost ashamed when Nancy asked him: “Are there any sharks in Duckhaven?” But he said they couldn’t do better than start fresh with a bathe, though they must take care not to tread on the sea-urchins, of which there were many among the rocks. He went out near the mouth of the little harbour to keep watch for sharks, so that they could have a morning dip. This took time, but it was worth it, as they probably worked all the harder for having begun the day by wallowing about in the water, though Duckhaven seemed rather a small swimming-pool when they looked out beyond the rocks to the Atlantic.

  The camp fire had died down and gone out during the night, but crabs had gone on crawling into it as long as there was a flicker of flame. There was a ring of dead, scorched crabs round it, and in the morning the cooks found a lot of live crabs feeding on these corpses. They swept them out of the way, live crabs and dead crabs together, while they made up the fire anew for breakfast.

  After breakfast, digging began.

  Captain Flint had seen when he had first come to Duckhaven that not even Peter Duck himself could have gone straight, after all those years, and pointed to the place where the bag had been hidden. But he still thought that they knew enough to be sure of finding it without having to dig very long. After all, Mr Duck had given them all the help he could.

  “The only trouble is,” he said, as he marched up the beach at the head of his gang of diggers, “that we don’t know just which is Mr Duck’s tree, if any of them is. I don’t know how long coconut palms live. His may have gone long ago. Or it may be one of these. But we do know that this is where he was thrown up after the wreck, and his tree was somewhere close by.”

  “Let’s dig the whole place up,” said Titty.

  “We’ll take the big tree as a centre and dig from it both ways,” said Captain Flint. “Yes. That’s right. John and Nancy go ahead with the tin spades. You two others use the wooden ones till the mates are ready. Now, then. Stand clear. Here goes!”

  He swung the queer little pick that Peter Duck had made out of an old boat-anchor and a capstan bar and brought it down close at the foot of the biggest of the palm trees. It sank into soft sandy earth. He swung it up again and brought it down.

  There was a clink of something hard against the iron of
the pick.

  “Ha! What was that?” he cried, and worked away furiously for a minute or two, but it was only a small black stone deep in the sand.

  John and Nancy waited only for a moment, and then started digging away with the two little spades from Cowes. Titty and Roger chose a likely-looking place on their own account and attacked it with the wooden spades, and then, finding the spades not much good, used their knives, their hands, and a bit of stick. After all, they had found the treasure on Cormorant Island all by themselves, and, somehow, they thought, privately, that they would have the same sort of luck at Duckhaven. And this was much more exciting. At Cormorant Island they had known that there were no ingots in the treasure, and indeed that most people would hardly have called it a treasure at all. But here, at Duckhaven, no one knew anything. The only people who had known what was buried there were the two who had buried it, and they had been drowned off Ushant sixty years before. Titty and Roger were prepared to dig all day.

  So was Captain Flint, but after the first eager half-hour of working round the big tree with the pickaxe, when he was thinking that every next blow would bring the thing to light, whatever it was, he began to be sorry that there were not enough tools to go round. What was wanted was half a dozen picks, big and little. John and Nancy were doing pretty well with the tin spades, but it was already clear that the main use of the wooden ones would be to shift the earth loosened by the pick. They were no good for making a hole by themselves. And, anyhow, there were only two, even of them.

  “I wish we had a lot more spades,” he said at last, stopping to mop his forehead. “And we want a pick apiece. It’s all very well burying a treasure with a sheath knife. It’s a very different job digging it up, with all these roots and stones all over the place.”

  Then he set to work with the pick again, working along in a line so as to loosen as much earth as possible and give the spades a chance. The spades were doing their best. John and Nancy were digging a regular trench, and Titty and Roger had struck a patch of loose sand and were burrowing like rabbits.