Arthur Ransome - Swallows and Amazons (Complete Series)

The cove once more looked almost as it had on the day of the shipwreck. The tents had been struck, rolled up and stowed in knapsacks. The little bamboo tent-poles had been taken to pieces and made into bundles. Each explorer was to carry a knapsack and, besides that, one end of a carrying-pole, on which was slung a bale of other baggage, fastened up in a rug or a ground-sheet. Susan and John, who had the stouter of the two carrying-poles, had been trying how much they could manage between them. Titty’s and Roger’s load was to be a good deal smaller. But with everybody carrying all they could, there were still a lot of things left unpacked. It was clear that there would have to be a second journey.

This was the scene that Captain Flint found when he came rowing into the cove. And already, long before he had come so near, the explorers knew that he was bringing a great deal to add to their burdens.

“He’s got an awful lot of things in the stern,” Captain John had said, after taking his turn at the telescope. “Two sacks, as well as parcels.”

“Well I hope he’s brought some bread,” said the mate. “We’ve eaten nearly all the bunloaf.”

“It’ll be all the more to carry,” said John, who for some time had been wishing that the expedition had a camel or two.

“We’ll have to carry it sometime,” said the mate. “We all eat such a lot.”

“What’s he bringing a tree for?” said Roger.

“Hullo,” said Captain John, “there’s Swallow’s old mast.”

It was the tree which made them after all feel happier about going up to the camp on the moor. Captain Flint explained it at once.

“Give me a hand with the Norway pole, skipper,” he said, as he ran his boat ashore. “I thought you might like to be hurrying things on by making the new mast. It’s a good pole this, and they’ve done the rough shaping. All you’ll have to do is to copy the old mast.”

John took one end of a long bare pole, which showed the marks of the adze. Captain Flint took the other and brought it ashore and then Swallow’s old mast in two pieces. It was hard to believe that the rough pole could be made as clean and smooth as that old mast had been.

“We’ve only got knives,” said John.

“Shipwrecked sailors have made masts with knives before now,” said Captain Flint. “But you won’t have to. I’ve brought you a shaping plane and a pair of callipers. And when you’re ready, we’ll see about linseed oil.”

Somehow, just to have a mast to make, just to see it lying there in the rough, made it seem more certain that sooner or later Swallow would be back and the shipwrecked sailors free once more to live on their island and voyage as they wished.

“We’ll come down here every day to work at the mast,” said Captain John.

“Aren’t you moving somewhere along the shore?” asked Captain Flint, looking at the baggage on the beach.

“No,” said Titty and Roger together. “We’re going up the moor to our valley.”

“The valley we told you about,” Titty went on, “you know, when you said there was a trout tarn higher up.”

“By the way,” said Captain Flint, “if it is the valley I think it is, I know why you stopped me when I was telling your mother about the tarn. I couldn’t think what was the matter, but I know now. Hasn’t it got a cave in it, on the left as you go up?”

Titty’s face fell. Had all the discoveries in the world been made already?

“It’s Peter Duck’s cave,” she said.

“Thirty years ago I used to call it Ben Gunn’s. It’s a good place for a camp up there.”

“Do Nancy and Peggy know about it?”

“They’ve never been up this side of the moor, as far as I know.”

“Don’t tell them about it,” said Titty.

“All right,” said Captain Flint. “But won’t you have a bit of a job carting the pole all the way up there?”

“I’ll come down here to work at it,” said John.

“We all will,” said Roger.

“And you’re just off, are you? The rest of my cargo,” said Captain Flint, looking back at the rowing boat, “is ship’s stores. Your mother told me to hand them over to the mate. You’ll want them up on the moor, whether you want the mast or not. On the whole, don’t you think you’d better take me on as a porter?”

“Thank you very much,” said the mate.

“They do have native porters,” said Roger. “All explorers do.”

“But he isn’t really a native,” said Titty, “not after the battle last year.”

“Still, I can come up the moor to carry some of the stores.”

“Please do,” said Titty.

Captain Flint might be fat but he had a broad back and the explorers loaded him thoroughly. He had a long anchor rope in his boat, and with this and one of the old ground-sheets, he made an enormous bundle of all the bulkier stores, the bigger kind of pemmican tins, tins of biscuit and bread, and the two small sacks of peas and potatoes he had just brought from Holly Howe.

“Will he be able to lift it?” asked Susan doubtfully.

“Not if you put another matchbox in.”

So they roped it up as it was. Then Captain Flint bent and set his shoulder under the loose end of the rope and swung the bale on his back. He staggered under it, but he could still walk, and, as Roger said, that was the main thing.

“Hullo, what are you doing?” came a loud, cheerful voice over the water. “What’s Uncle Jim trying to run away with?”

The Amazon was already in the cove. Everybody looked round. The Swallows found it hard to believe that Captain Nancy Blackett and Mate Peggy Blackett, in their red knitted pirate caps, their brown shirts and blue knickers, hauling up the centre-board and lowering the sail, could be the same as those two little girls whom they had seen only yesterday, in white frocks, sitting primly side by side, being taken for a drive in a carriage with the great-aunt.

“How have you escaped?” asked Captain Flint, moving slowly round with the tremendous bale upon his back.

“As soon as she heard you’d gone, the great-aunt made up her mind it was a good day for going to the head of the lake. She said she wanted to tell the vicar how things used to be done. She’s heard he’s doing some things differently. Mother had to go too, of course. They won’t be back till lunch-time.”

This was Peggy.

“It’s a rattling good easterly wind,” said Nancy. “A reach both ways. No need for tacking. So we jolly well took our chance.”

“We’ve got to be back to lunch,” said Peggy.

“Another beastly drive this afternoon,” said Nancy. “But never mind that. What are you all doing?”

“We’re shifting camp,” said John.

“To the valley Roger and I found.”

“The valley with a . . .” said Roger, but he saw Titty’s face just in time.

“Well,” said Nancy, “you’re wasting Uncle Jim. You could put lots of the other things in his pockets. He’s got fine pockets, really big ones.”

“Captain John,” said Captain Flint, “you’ll be wasting these pirates if you don’t make them carry their share. They’ve plenty of time for that, and they’ll get cool again, sailing home.”

“Come on, Peggy,” said Captain Nancy. “Let’s have one of the oars. We’ll show them how to do it.”

So the two pirates took an oar from the Amazon and used it as a pole, and slung a bundle from it done up in the ground-sheet from which John and Captain Flint had cut a patch for Swallow. There were a few small things left over, but, as Nancy had said, Captain Flint had big pockets.

The expedition was ready to start.

“What about the parrot?” said Susan. Everybody was so much in the habit of thinking of Polly as part of the crew that it had been forgotten, even by Titty, that he could not very well carry his own cage, especially if he was inside it.