Peter Duck: A Treasure Hunt in the Caribbees

by Arthur Ransome

  “Wind and sand,” said John. “I wouldn’t have thought they could have done it.”

  “Lucky it’s no worse,” said Nancy. “It might have been if we’d left her leaning up against a rock. What about the sail? My hat, it’s a good thing you stowed it properly. It would be flying over America with the tent if you hadn’t.”

  John was already casting loose the mainsheet which he had used in stowing the sail.

  “It looks all right,” he said, “but we can’t tell without opening it. Anything may have happened.” In his mind was the thought that the flying sand in one of those great squalls might have rubbed a hole somehow, even in the rolled-up sail. But when the old brown sail was spread out on the sand they could see that it was none the worse. The bit of it that had been outside was still wet, but the rest of the sail was dry. Indeed, as they unrolled it, little puffs of that red, coppery dust flew out from between the folds, driven in there, perhaps, by the wind, instead of being blown away. Titty looked at it curiously.

  “Doesn’t it seem ages,” she said, “since we were all hiding our heads in our sleeping-bags?”

  And indeed, it was hard to believe that it was only yesterday afternoon that they had noticed the first signs of something wrong, and had watched the copper cloud creeping up against the wind, and had seen Captain Flint race off into the forest to get across the island in time to help with the Wild Cat.

  “I say,” said Roger. “Just look at the place where we were digging.” He pointed up the beach. There, yesterday, had been the row of feathery palm trees, and that giant palm that had been a landmark for the Swallow. There, yesterday, had been the neat little cairns that marked the trenches of the explorers. Today all was chaos, and the fantastic roots of the trees stuck forlornly into the air, still clinging to the stones and scraps of earth that had been torn up with them.

  But it was Susan who had the worst news. She had gone straight to the place where the tent had been. The ridge-pole, broken, lay on the other side of the rocks. The two oars, still roped together, were twenty yards away up the beach. The stores had come off badly. One of the biscuit tins in which they were packed had been close under a rock and the rock had fallen on it, crushing it and all that was in it. Another, that had been half empty, had been bowled up the beach by the winds. Its lid had come off. It had left a trail of sardine tins behind it. The rest of the stores had disappeared altogether. Worst of all was the accident to the water-breaker. The little barrel had been neatly chocked up on stones, so that water could be drawn from its tap. The bung in the top of it had been left loose. And now, in the earthquake, the chocks had been shaken out, the little barrel had rolled along the beach, and had come to rest with the bunghole undermost. Every drop of water had run away.

  “We can’t have breakfast till someone goes to Nancy’s spring.”

  “I’ll go,” said Nancy.

  “So’ll I,” said Peggy. “What are we going to carry the water in?”

  “Oh, bother, bother!” said Susan. “The kettle’s gone, and so has the saucepan.”

  “There’s the kettle,” said Nancy, “wedged under that rock.”

  It was indeed the kettle, but when Susan pulled it out she found it had lost its spout, which was crushed flat and was hanging on the body of the kettle by a little strip of torn metal. Somehow this misfortune seemed to Susan much worse than the loss of the tent. She was slightly comforted by the finding of the saucepan. It was dented like an old hat. Its handle was bent double, but it would still hold water.

  “Come on,” said Nancy. “We’ll take the breaker with us and fill it there. Come on, Peggy. Let’s have one of those oars, and we’ll borrow Swallow’s painter to make a sling. Captain John won’t mind. There’s no point in carrying just a saucepanful at a time.”

  “It wouldn’t be a very full saucepan by the time we got back,” said Roger.

  “Not if you had the carrying of it,” said Nancy. “But, anyway, we’d better fill the breaker at once and get it over.”

  In two minutes they had slung the barrel from an oar, and John and Nancy scrambled over the rocks with it, and marched off along the beach with the ends of the oar resting on their shoulders.

  “Come along, Roger,” said Peggy.

  “Yes, go along,” said Susan. “Get your legs stretched after being cramped up all night. Titty and I’ll have the fire going before you get back. Some of the wood looks fairly dry.”

  “It’s all very well,” said Nancy, as she and John marched along the beach, “but how are we going to know where to turn into the forest. I’d blazed a tree, a twisted one that looked as if it had been broken and mended again. And now, with all these trees down, everything looks alike. I’m sure we hadn’t gone much farther than this when I saw all those birds and went up into the forest to see what the fuss was about.”

  “We’d better walk along the edge of the forest,” said John, and they moved up well above high-water mark though it was tougher going there than on the hard sand lower down. It was a dismal sight, the forest that only the day before had been rich and green, with tall palms overhead, and ferns as high as Captain Flint himself, and flowering trees, and the long, twisting tendrils of the climbing plants. The trees had been tossed this way and that, and in their fall had crushed the ferns, and brought down with them all those gay curtains of flowers round which so lately had hovered the busy hosts of tiny humming-birds. Not a bird was to be seen. They had vanished like the crabs. Even the parrots were silent, and cowering somewhere among the wreckage.

  “It’s no good trying to carry the breaker through that mess,” said Nancy. “Nobody could do it. When we find the place, we’ll leave the breaker outside.”

  “Isn’t this your tree?” said John.

  Nancy looked. So many trees had been twisted and broken in their fall. But she knew this one. “There’s my blaze,” she said, “but everything else is different. Where’s the black rock above the pool?”

  Over the tangle of fallen trees they could see into what had once been green, shady forest. There, only yesterday, had been the rock on which they had climbed to catch dripping water, and to look down into the little pool among the ferns. Now, there was nothing of the sort. The great rock had been split into a hundred pieces. Trees and ferns had been smothered in earth, sand, and stones. It was as if Nancy’s spring had never been.

  “You’d better stay out here,” said Nancy to Peggy and Roger.

  She and John put down the water-breaker, and struggled into the forest, climbing about over the wreckage, looking for that trickle of water. It had found some other way to earth. Even after that tropical rain not a sign was left of it, not even a damp patch on a stone. The two captains, searching this way and that, lost sight of each other, and both at once called out, each the other’s name. “John!” “Nancy!” It was horrible, even for a moment, to feel alone in such a wilderness. They scrambled out again, over the fallen trunks.

  “You’ve spilt all the water,” said Roger, looking at Nancy’s empty saucepan.

  “There isn’t any water to spill,” said John.

  “But what about our breakfast?” said Roger.

  “You’ll have to do without drink,” said Nancy.

  They looked back along the beach. There were the grey, weathered bows of the old boat in which they had spent the night, sticking up out of the sand, and the black rocks of the long reef that sheltered Duckhaven, and there, beyond Duckhaven, was the blue smoke of Susan’s fire. Already, they knew, she must be wondering what was keeping them, and what was the good of making a fire if they went off with the only saucepan and did not bring it back with plenty of water for the most important part of the most important of all meals?

  It was a sad party that carried the empty water-breaker back to Duckhaven.

  Titty came running to meet them.

  “Susan says, ‘Hurry up!’ We’ve got a grand fire.”

  “We’ve got no water,” said Roger.

  “Nancy’s spring isn’t there any
more,” said Peggy.

  Susan took the news calmly.

  “Oh, well,” she said, “we’ll want the fire anyhow, to get those sleeping-bags dry. Come along and eat sardines. I’ve opened three tins. That’s half a tin for each of us. And some of the biscuits out of the tin that got squashed are still eatable. We’ll be all right till Captain Flint comes back, and then he’ll take Swallow round and fill the breaker from the stream.”

  “What if the stream’s gone too?” said Roger.

  “It won’t have gone, and if it has, there’s all the water we’ve stored in the Wild Cat.”

  “But what if the Wild Cat isn’t back?”

  “There’s your tin,” said Susan. “You share with Titty. One fork between you. Sit down and tuck in.”

  Susan shared a tin with John. She had found only two of the forks, so she had given one to Nancy and Peggy, and the other to Able-seaman Titty and the ship’s boy, whom she could not trust to eat with their fingers without getting into a mess. John and she could manage well enough. And now, picking a sardine from the tin, leaning forward so that the oil should drip on the sand instead of on herself, getting the sardine neatly into her mouth, and licking the oil from her fingers, she was thinking things over.

  She was thankful that they had come through the night so well. Anything might have happened to them, with the whole island shaken by earthquake and landslide, and with the forest mown down by those wild squalls that had come from all points of the compass. Anything might have happened to them, and, after all, nothing had. Here they were, all of them, sitting round the fire eating sardines. (She took the tin from John and, holding it at arm’s length, pulled out another sardine.) A bit damp they certainly were, but, thanks to that old wrecked boat and the sleeping-bags, she did not think they would be much the worse for it. In this heat things dried at once even though there was no sun. It would be pretty bad, though, if the weather grew worse again. And then she thought of Captain Flint. How far to sea had he taken the Wild Cat? How soon would he be back? Anyhow, there was nothing to be done but to keep Roger from getting nervous. But this water business was serious. Who could possibly run a camp without water and without tea? Sardine oil was not much of a drink, and there wasn’t enough of it, anyway. For some minutes she hardly heard what the others were saying. They seemed as cheerful as usual.

  “Until he comes back it’ll be just like it was for Peter Duck when he was wrecked here,” said Titty. “Nothing to eat and nothing to drink.”

  “Coconut milk,” said Nancy. “He lived on coconuts and crabs.”

  “We can’t eat crabs,” said Peggy.

  “Where are the crabs?” said Roger. “I haven’t seen one since yesterday.”

  “They must have known the earthquake was coming,” said Titty, “and all got out of the way together. You know. Just like cows all looking the same way when it’s going to rain.”

  “Well, I couldn’t eat them even if there were any,” said Peggy.

  “Not crabs,” said Nancy with a shudder.

  “We’ll have bananas and coconut milk,” said Roger. “It won’t be half bad. And there’s enough chocolate left to last till Captain Flint comes. He promised to bring some more.”

  “He’s going to have a horrible time getting across the island,” said Nancy. “It’ll take him hours and hours. It was all we could do to move while we were looking for the spring.”

  “He may have sailed miles away in the Wild Cat,” said John. “In weather like last night’s they’d want to be as far from land as they could get. And there’s not much wind now, so it may bother them a bit to get back.”

  “Let’s lay in a good store of coconuts,” said Roger, “and there were some bananas in the forest just behind the big tree.”

  Everybody glanced up the beach. Great tangled roots waved in the air where once the gigantic palm tree had served as a landmark to show the way into Duckhaven.

  “Nobody would think it was the same place,” said John.

  “Nobody would think it was the same island,” said Titty. “What do you think of it, Gibber, now that your mountain’s lost its head?”

  But the monkey was busy with some nuts that Roger had found in his pocket. It had cheered up by now, and was no longer the whimpering, frightened thing of yesterday. Now that the earthquake was over it did not seem to mind what sort of changes had been brought about in geography.

  The last drops of oil in the sardine tins were poured down thirsty throats. Fingers were licked for the last time, and, as there was nothing to wash up, the whole party moved together up the beach to look for bananas and coconuts among the fallen trees.

  “Captain Flint’d be awfully pleased if we went on with the digging,” said Nancy.

  “Digging,” said John. “The earthquake and the winds have done more digging in one night than we could do in a whole year. Just look at the mess.”

  All along the edge of the forest, where the palms had stood above the beach, there was now nothing but ruin. Not many of the trees had been broken, but not one was standing. It was as if the earthquake had loosened the hold of their roots and made it easy for the winds, blowing in hard squalls first one way and then another, to twist them up out of the ground. The trenches of the diggers, the work of their makeshift pick and feeble spades, seemed shallow scratches beside the gaping holes left by the uprooted trees. Close together the trees had stood. And the great pits they had left were joined one into another, open to the beach in places, and elsewhere screened by a melancholy tangle of torn roots, fallen trunks and feathery tops that would wave in the trade wind no more.

  The diggers of yesterday stood looking at this tremendous digging of the night. Without knowing it, every one of them must have seen, under the roots of what had yesterday been the landmark of Duckhaven, the thing that, suddenly, Susan and Peggy noticed at the same moment.

  Peggy could not speak. Not a single word would come to her lips. She just pointed.

  “What is it?” said Susan. “Is it –? Is it –?” She could get no farther.

  “What?” said the others, and then, following Peggy’s outstretched arm and pointing finger, they all saw the thing at once. Brown and sandy, in the brown and sandy earth, they saw the corner and a bit of the side of a box.

  Everything else was forgotten in a moment.

  What could it be but the thing they had crossed the world to find?

  John and Nancy jumped together down into the hole and began scraping the earth away with their hands.

  “What’s this?” said John, as the sand, trickling through his scrabbling fingers, left a small, flat, metal ring in his hand.

  “Here’s another. And another.”

  Nancy found one, too, and looked at it carefully.

  “We’ve got it,” she shouted suddenly. “Of course I know what they are. Remember the eyelet holes round the mouth of your kitbag. Mr Duck said it was a bag they buried. These are all that’s left of it. The box was inside, just like Uncle Jim said. The bag’s all rotted away, but these are the eyelet holes where they tied it up. There ought to be more of them.”

  “There are,” cried John. “Look here.” On the top of the box, that he was now clearing from sand, there were half a dozen of the little metal rings all close together.

  “Can’t we come down?” said Roger.

  “Better not,” said Susan. “And don’t go too near the edge. The sides might cave in.”

  She spoke too late. The words were hardly out of her mouth before the ground on which she was standing slipped from under her, and she, Titty, Roger, and a very startled monkey found themselves, half covered with sand, beside John and Nancy, under the roots of the great fallen tree.

  “Look out, Susan,” said John. “We’ve lost half those rings.”

  “Never mind,” said Nancy. “They don’t really matter.”

  “I bet Captain Flint would like to see them. No. Don’t try to climb out again now you’re in. Hang on to the rings while Nancy and I get on with cleari
ng the box. It’s fairly wedged in among those small roots.”

  “I’ll hold them,” said Roger. “No, you don’t, Gibber! Botheration! He’s got one.”

  “Do look after the others,” said John.

  Titty and Roger took the eyelets and handed them up to Peggy, who alone had not fallen in. They scraped about in the sand for themselves and found one or two more. Gibber had climbed out of the pit and was biting the one he had stolen, and wondering what all the fuss was about. It was only metal, after all.

  THE TREASURE FOUND

  “Susan, will you hang on to this root and hold it out of the way,” said Nancy. “Now then, John, haul away on that side, and I’ll give it a bit of a boost downwards. That’s done it.”

  The box was free.

  “It isn’t so very heavy,” said John.

  “It’s a very little box,” said Roger.

  “Anyway, it’s it,” said Titty. “We’ve found it. At least Peggy did, and Susan. They saw it first.”

  “Swallows and Amazons for ever!” cried Nancy. “And three cheers for Peter Duck! If Captain Flint isn’t busting pleased he ought to be. Heave it out. Carefully, Peggy! Don’t let it drop.”

  Peggy took it from them and carried it quickly a little way from the pit, while the others pushed Titty and Roger up, and then, slipping and scrambling in the loose earth and sand, struggled out themselves.

  “Let’s have a decent look at it,” said Nancy, shaking the sand out of her hair and dusting her hands against her shorts.

  Peggy put it on the ground and blew at it gently to shift the sand from it.

  “It’ll stand more than that,” said John. “It’s all right, Susan,” he went on. “It’s worth a hand-kerchief.” Taking his own from the pocket of his shirt, he carefully wiped the dirt away. Everybody crowded round to look at the thing.

  It was a small, teakwood box, with brass bindings at the corners of it, and a brass clasp and staple to hold the lid down, fastened with a rusty padlock. John took the padlock in his fingers, meaning to flick away the dirt round it, and, rusted right through at the hoop, it came away in his hand.