Arthur Ransome - Swallows and Amazons (Complete Series)

“I wish I’d never thought of it. But I didn’t mean to kill her. I didn’t. All I wanted was for her to want to go to the seaside.”

“Pretty Polly. Pretty Polly,” said the ship’s parrot, who had come to the end of his bit of sugar and was wondering if he had any chance of getting another.

Titty looked at him through her tears, and wondered suddenly if she had truly done anything at all. Had she just planned to make a great-aunt and to cast a spell . . .? She had often planned things until they seemed quite as real. But when she wiped her face with her hands she felt the smudge of sooty candle-grease. She saw the frying-pan waiting to be cleaned . . . the empty lanterns. . . . No. There was no doubt about it. The thing had really happened.

Just then the others came climbing up into Swallowdale.

“A farmer’s cart gave them a lift,” shouted the ship’s boy.

“They’re going to be awfully late just the same,” said John grimly. “I wish they hadn’t waited for the hound-trail. Hullo, Titty, whatever’s the matter?”

“What have you been doing to the fire?” said Susan, “and the frying-pan? And the lanterns? And what have you got on your face?”

“Roger, go and get some more wood out of Peter Duck’s,” said Captain John. “There’s some just inside the door.”

The moment the boy had gone into the cave, Titty poured out the dreadful truth.

“I’ve done it,” she said, “but I didn’t mean to kill her. She slipped in my fingers and got melted and burnt up.”

“Who did?” asked John.

“The great-aunt,” said Titty. “I made her out of candle-grease and I meant to melt her just a very little, but she slipped.”

“Well, you can easily make another,” said John.

“But she’s dead,” said Titty. “They’ll find she’s dead when they get back to Beckfoot and they’ll know it’s my fault.”

“Rubbish, Titty,” said Susan. “She’s perfectly all right and scolding them like anything. All you’ve done is to make a dirty mess of a clean frying-pan. Go and wash your face and clean the frying-pan while I crack the eggs into a mug. I promised Roger I’d scramble them.”

“Look here, Titty,” said John. “It isn’t as if you’d had the proper wax, and even if you had you’d have had to burn it on purpose if you were going to do any good. Just dropping it in the fire by accident means nothing at all.”

Roger came out of the cave with an armful of wood and Susan’s torch.

“I found it in the middle of the floor,” he said. “It’s gone very dim.”

“I’m most awfully sorry,” said Titty. “I forgot it when I was casting the spell.”

“What spell?” asked John.

“Going round and round three times,” said Titty.

“Go and clean the frying-pan,” said Susan, “and let’s have supper.”

Susan built up the scattered fire and soon there was once more a cheerful blaze. Scrubbing the frying-pan made Titty feel rather better, and though at supper the scrambled eggs did taste a little of candle-grease, just eating her share of them by the fire with the others was enough to make black magic seem unreal.

But late that night Susan heard Titty stir uneasily in her tent. Susan wriggled a hand out from under her tent and into Titty’s which was close beside it. Titty found the hand and held it tight.

“I didn’t mean to kill her,” she whispered.

“Of course you didn’t and you haven’t,” said Susan.

“We’ll know in the morning.”

“We know now,” said Susan. “Go to sleep.”

Table of Contents

Titty woke in the morning from a muddled dream in which she was trying to save the great-aunt, who was being hunted by all the hounds of the hound-trail with Peter Duck urging them on. All she had to do was to tell Peter Duck that it was a mistake and that he must call the hounds off. Just to call “Peter” or “Mr. Duck” would be enough. But she opened her mouth and no sound came. She could not make any noise at all. And there was the great-aunt walking slowly along, not knowing that the hounds were on her track, and there was Peter cheering them on with yells like the yells they had heard in Swallowdale floating up from far away when the hound-trail was ending and each owner was shouting to his hound. If she could only make a noise enough to get him to look her way it would be all right. He would know then that she wanted the great-aunt to escape. But she could not get even a whisper out from between her lips. She woke almost choking and was very glad to hear nothing but the beck flowing by and to see nothing but the cool clean walls of her little tent.

She wriggled out of her sleeping-bag and went up to the bathing-pool, and plunged into the cold water and put her head under the waterfall. What a donkey she had been the day before. Nothing could really have happened except that she had wasted three good candle-ends and used up the battery of the last of the torches. Susan and John were quite right. They always were, especially Susan. And yet she dreadfully wanted to be sure. She was in a hurry to be off down to Swainson’s farm for the morning milk. Roger came too, and was surprised that Titty did not hurry him away, but waited while old Mr. Swainson sang one song after another. Old Mrs. Swainson asked her advice about what patch of colour to sew next into her patchwork quilt. Mary Swainson bustled in and out with the milk-can and told them the name of the hound that had won the hound-trail yesterday. (Melody was its name.) It was clear that nobody at Swainson’s farm had heard of any sudden illness of the great-aunt at Beckfoot.

But before she was back in Swallowdale with the milk, Titty remembered that it was still early and that even if anything had gone wrong at Beckfoot last night the news might not have reached this end of the lake. She pleased John very much by saying she would like to come down to the cove if he was going to work at the mast.

“Captain Flint may be coming too?” she asked.

“He said he would as soon as he could get away.”

Roger went fishing. Susan went with him and took her geography book as well, but kept on finding she was reading a bit that she had read before.

Unluckily Captain Flint did not come. Work on the mast was going on well, so Captain Flint was not really needed; but Titty spent a good deal of the morning among the rocks on the northern side of the cove, looking up the lake and hoping that every distant rowing boat was bringing the retired pirate with news from Beckfoot. Of course it was all right, but until news came she could not be properly sure.

When the captain and the able-seaman went up to Swallowdale for dinner the mate asked them at once, “Did he come?” and John said “No,” and, by the way both of them spoke, Titty knew that they, too, wanted news from Beckfoot. The captain and the mate felt that they were partly to blame for the lateness of the Amazons, though really it was the fault of the hound-trail, and they were wanting to know whether Nancy and Peggy had been able to get home so late without even worse trouble than they had feared. Roger alone was free from this kind of worry. His was of a different kind. He had not been able to catch any fish and he thought it was probably the fault of the worms. He remembered the bright red worms with yellow rings that John had brought for perch-fishing from Dixon’s farm last year and he wanted to ask Mary Swainson if there were any worms as good as that to be found in her farmyard.