“Between the Isle of Barbadoes in the West Indies and England we had three mighty stormes, many calmes and some contrary windes. And upon the foureteenth day of June, 1597, there being divers whales playing about our pinnesse, one of them crossed our stemme, and going under, rubbed her backe against our keele …”
“Oh,” said Titty, her eyes lighting up at the thought, “why don’t things like that happen to us? Exciting things, I mean …”
Captain Flint looked over the top of the book at her in great surprise, and then at Bill’s broken arm, still in its sling, but setting quite nicely. It seemed to him that they had had all the excitement they needed.
“Oh yes,” said Titty, “but not whales!”
“Well, you can’t have everything,” said Captain Flint.
They carried the westerly winds with them to the mouth of the Channel, and then, as if to laugh at them, the wind came out of the east, a contrary wind, and they had to beat against it the whole way up Channel, until they came to the Wight. But even that had its good side. If they had had the wind with them, they would never have seen the stone cross on Dodman Point, and seeing the Dodman was like coming home for John and Susan, for sailing out of Falmouth with their father, they had once passed close under it, between the point and the wild water over the sunken rocks outside. And then another tack brought them in towards Plymouth and they had a good look at Rame Head, and at the brave pillar of the Eddystone Lighthouse rising out of the sea.
“And the first land we made, it is callèd the Dodman,
Next Rame Head off Plymouth, Start, Portland and Wight …”
Titty was singing to herself, and Peter Duck heard her.
“Aye,” he said, “you can tell that them chaps in the song had the wind against them. What for else should they be singing about the thirty-five leagues between Ushant and the Scillies? They wouldn’t be thinking of the Scillies if they’d raised Ushant light, and were coming from Spain with a fair wind. No, and they wouldn’t be poking into Plymouth Bay neither. Not they. They was plugging up Channel against a north-easter, and that’s how they come to be there. They was looking for the Dodman and Rame Head and the rest to show them what they’d made on each tack. If they’d have had the wind with them they’d be looking for nothing before St Catherine’s.”
John and Nancy saw the Start Light, for it was abeam at four in the morning, just when they changed watches. John had seen it coming nearer and nearer, and Nancy watched it fade astern, weakening in the morning light, while Captain Flint steered for the buoy in the middle of Lyme Bay. Everybody was on deck to have a look at it, with its black and white stripes and its name, “Lyme Bay,” painted round it. And everybody heard it, too, tolling its melancholy bell. As for the long, low wedge of Portland, it was about three in the afternoon when they came nearest to it, and four hours later they were nearing St Alban’s Head. That night they were within sight of the flashing light on St Catherine’s Point, and then, some time after the watches changed at four in the morning, the easterly wind slackened, and then worked away round to the north-west, and at eight bells, when Titty, and Roger, and the two mates came hurrying on deck, the Wild Cat was bowling along on her course for Beachy Head, with a fine breeze off the land, and the Owers Lightship plain to see.
“And we sailéd by Beachy, by Fairlight and Dungeness,” sang Titty. “I wonder if we’re going to see them all.”
Nobody could bear wasting time on meals in the saloon that day. Mate Susan and Mate Peggy filled people’s mugs and bowls for them on deck. They sat in a row with their backs against the deckhouse watching the English coast. They passed by Beachy with its seven white cliffs (eight, Roger said), and ran through a regular fleet of small fishing boats that deeply stirred Bill and set him talking of the Dogger Bank. Then there was the Royal Sovereign lightship, and then, high on its hill, the church of Fairlight, a square, dark tower, rising out of dark green trees. Dungeness, long and low, they saw in the late dusk, and then, passing by Dover in the very early morning, they did indeed bring to, not exactly off the South Foreland light, like the sailors in the song, but not so very far from it, off Deal, because the tide was hard against them, and the wind weakening and not strong enough to carry them over it.
“Between us, we’ve really seen the whole song now,” said Titty.
They sailed again a few hours later, with the wind round at south-west, that suited them well, but made Captain Flint talk of bad weather. They passed once more the remembered lightships, marking the way home for them as they had marked the way out. That night there was mutiny aboard. Not even Roger would go to bed in proper time. They stayed up counting the flashes of the lights, running in and out of the deckhouse to see on the chart just where the lightship was, or the lighthouse, that made just the number of flashes they had counted. Titty and Roger fell asleep for an hour or two in the saloon, when they had been bribed below decks by hot cocoa, but they were out again to see the lights of the Rotterdam steamer out from Harwich. After that Susan did get them to bed, but they went only because they heard Captain Flint say that he didn’t want to bring his ship home with all his sailors good for nothing because they could not keep their eyes open.
And then, at last, in a grey, cloudy morning, the Wild Cat headed in for Lowestoft pier-heads. Bill, his arm still in a sling, but really better, stood by to lower away the jib. Susan was ready with the staysail halyard in her hand. As they shot through the pier-heads the orders rang out. John and Nancy gathered and smothered the headsails as they came flapping down. Peter Duck was at the wheel. “Lower away the foresail!” “Lower away the main!” John, Nancy, Susan, Peggy, Titty, Bill, and Captain Flint brought the great sails down for the last time. The engine was already working, chug, chug, chug. Roger was standing by the clutch waiting for the word. He got it, and the noise changed as he set the lever to “Half Speed Ahead,” and the engine settled down to its work. The Wild Cat moved slowly in towards the inner harbour. The swing bridge opened before her. Foot passengers, held up by the opened bridge, looked down on the little schooner as she passed through. They looked down at her busy, sunburnt crew, at the parrot in his cage, at the restless monkey, who hardly knew which way to turn, torn between his loyalty to Roger (who never left his post by the engine lever) and his natural interest in the wharves and the harbour, so different from the open sea, Crab Island, or the quiet Caribbean anchorage. They stared down at the old brown sailor at the wheel, who did not think it worth while to waste a single glance on any one ashore until he saw his friend, the kindly harbourmaster, waving the Wild Cat towards an empty berth, the very berth she had left when she slipped away in the early summer morning, little knowing what high adventure was before her.
The voyage of the Wild Cat was over.
After that, of course, the Swallows and Amazons had to hurry back into ordinary life, and to make up for lost time. “Though you can’t really call it lost,” as Nancy says, “because of all we learnt.” The treasure turned out not to be worth such a tremendous lot, after all, but Captain Flint did not mind. He had been to look for treasure a hundred times before, and now, for the first time in his life, he had not had to come back without it. He had a grand new chapter to add to his book (Mixed Moss, by A Rolling Stone), so that he could very well do without the treasure itself, and gave most of his share to young Bill. Peter Duck had a pearl necklace made up for each of his three daughters, and gave a new coat of paint to the Arrow of Norwich. Young Bill he took with him, up to Acle, and to Potter Heigham, and to Beccles. Bill liked the Beccles daughter best, and she liked him, and Bill went to live at the farm with her and her husband while he was getting a bit of schooling, and weekends and holidays and any other time he could get away he spent with Peter Duck in the old wherry, going here and there with one cargo and another along these inland waters, and doing a little fishing. As for Black Jake and his friends, no questions were ever asked about them, so none were answered.
1 This is what they say when the white foam spurts from
under the bows of a vessel sailing really fast. – CAPT NANCY.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Arthur Ransome was born in Leeds in 1884 and went to school at Rugby. He was in Russia in 1917, and witnessed the Revolution, which he reported for the Manchester Guardian. After escaping to Scandinavia, he settled in the Lake District with his Russian wife where, in 1929, he wrote Swallows and Amazons. And so began a writing career which has produced some of the real children’s treasures of all time. In 1936 he won the first ever Carnegie Medal for his book, Pigeon Post.
Other books by Arthur Ransome
in Red Fox
Swallows and Amazons
Swallowdale
Winter Holiday
Coot Club
Pigeon Post
We Didn’t Mean to Go to Sea
Secret Water
The Big Six
Missee Lee
The Picts and the Martyrs
Great Northern?
THE ARTHUR RANSOME SOCIETY
The Arthur Ransome Society was formed in June 1990 with the aim of celebrating his life and his books, and to encourage both children and adults to take part in adventurous pursuits – especially climbing, sailing and fishing. It also seeks to sponsor research, to spread his ideas in the wider community and to bring together all those who share the values and the spirit that he fostered in all his storytelling.
The Society is based at the Abbot Hall Museum of Lakeland Life and Industry in Kendal, where there is a special room set aside for Ransome: his desk, his favourite books and some of his personal possessions. There are also close links with the Windermere Steamboat Museum at Bowness, where the original Amazon has been restored and kept, together with the Esperance, thought to be the vessel on which Ransome based Captain Flint’s houseboat. The Society keeps in touch with its members through a journal called Mixed Moss.
Regional branches of the Society have been formed by members in various parts of the country – Scotland, the Lake District, East Anglia, the Midlands, the South Coast among them – and contacts are maintained with overseas groups such as the Arthur Ransome Club of Japan. Membership fees are modest, and fall into three groups – for those under 18, for single adults, and for whole families. If you are interested in knowing more about the Society, or would like to join it, please write for a membership leaflet to The Secretary, The Arthur Ransome Society, The Abbot Hall Gallery, Kendal, Cumbria LA9 5AL, or email to [email protected].
THE ARTHUR RANSOME TRUST
“I seem to have lived not one life, but snatches from a dozen different lives.”
Arthur Ransome wrote twelve adventures about the Swallows and Amazons and their friends. He also wrote many other books and articles. He had a lot to write about, because in “real” life he was not only an author, but also a sailor, journalist, critic, story teller, illustrator, fisherman, editor, bohemian, and war reporter, who played chess with Lenin, married Trotsky’s secretary, helped Estonia gain independence and aroused the interest of both MI6 and MI5.
The Arthur Ransome Trust (ART) is a charity (no: 1136565) dedicated to helping everybody discover more about Arthur Ransome’s fascinating life and writings. Our main goal is to develop an “Arthur Ransome Centre” in the Lake District. If you want to know more about Arthur Ransome, or about ART’s projects, or think you would like to help us to put Ransome on the map, you can visit us at:
www.arthur-ransome-trust.org.uk
[email protected]
PETER DUCK
AN RHCB DIGITAL EBOOK 978 1 446 48374 9
Published in Great Britain by RHCB Digital,
an imprint of Random House Children’s Books
A Random House Group Company
This ebook edition published 2011
Copyright © Arthur Ransome, 1932
First published in Great Britain 1932 by Jonathan Cape
The right of Arthur Ransome to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Peter Duck: A Treasure Hunt in the Caribbees Page 36
