Arthur Ransome - Swallows and Amazons (Complete Series)

Mother did not think it was a good thing to make candle-grease images even of great-aunts in order to do magic with them, but when she and Titty walked back together to the camp, where Susan had a kettle on the boil, and a ground-sheet spread for tea, Titty was looking happier than she had looked for two days.

Later in the evening when they went down to the cove to see mother off with half a dozen little trout Roger had caught in the stream during the day, John said, “I say, mother, if you do hear anything about what happened to the Amazons the other night, could you put it in a letter and send it us by native post?”

Titty said, “Let’s all go there at once and ask to see them, and then we’ll know.”

But mother said that this would only make things worse for Mrs. Blackett.

Again, on the third day after the surprise attack, there was no direct news. Captain Flint did not come. The morning was spent in mending the dam, now that the beck had gone down again after the rain. The afternoon and evening were spent in the cove, where Susan made a fire and they had their tea, going up to Swallowdale only in time for supper. There was still too much water coming down to let them go through under the bridge at all comfortably, and anyhow, they were feeling too glum about the fate of the Amazons to mind just crossing the road. After all Nancy and Peggy had even gone home by it. And as they crossed the road they saw Mary’s woodman going off with his three horses and load of great trees, and were in time to call to Mary, who had been talking to him, when they saw her hurrying along the cart-track towards the farm. She came back at once.

“I saw Jack this morning,” she said. “He happened to be coming by, and I asked him to find out if anything was gone wrong at Beckfoot, and he’s just been telling me, though how you should know it beats me.”

Titty stiffened. But it was not what she feared.

“He saw the cook there, who’s second cousin to Tom’s wife, that’s Jack’s brother, and she was in a fair taking about Miss Turner. Knows her own mind, Miss Turner does, so Jack says, and there’s no pleasing her. And it’s not as if the Blackett lasses aren’t as good-hearted a couple as any. But she’s always on to their mother about them, and there was a fair to-do when they came in late two nights gone by, and there’s to be no more of their being out all day, and if Miss Turner doesn’t leave soon Mrs. Blackett’ll be losing her cook. Jack says she was boiling properly with what old Miss Turner had said about plates not being hot to meals.”

It was comfort to Titty at least to hear all this. Miss Turner could hardly be dead if she were complaining of cold plates. But for the others it showed that they had been right. Nancy and Peggy had been late once too often.

“Everything’s gone wrong this time,” said John. “First I go and wreck Swallow, and now the Amazons are done for.”

“I wish Captain Flint would come,” said Susan. “They’d probably send a message by him.”

The day after that the message came, but not through Captain Flint.

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The day began badly. They were late with breakfast, and after that there had been a wooding party, and then when at last John had gone down to work at the mast he found that Captain Flint had been and gone. He had done a lot of work on the mast. He had indeed done two things that John had wanted to see done. A round hardwood cap with an eye for the flag halyards had been neatly fitted to the top of the mast, and the sheave for the main halyard had been fitted in below it, a piece of neat work with the chisel. The pin on which it moved was flush with the mast which had, at this point, been smoothed with sandpaper. John ran his hand over the place.

“I’d have liked to see him do it,” he said to himself.

This was not all. Close beside the mast Captain Flint had left a lot of provisions, a huge roll of coarse sandpaper, and a big can of linseed oil. Tied to the roll of sandpaper was a page from a notebook, on which was written, “Hurry up. Get it good and smooth and then don’t stint the oil.”

John packed the provisions into his knapsack, which was empty except for the plane, which he had thought might perhaps be needed. He then settled down to hard work with the sandpaper to give the whole mast as smooth a finish as Captain Flint had given to the masthead.

In doing this he soon forgot all worries about what had happened to the Amazons. The smoothing of the mast left no room for any other thoughts. The wood changed colour and grew pale under the rubbing of the sandpaper, so that it was easy to see just how far the final smoothing had gone. Each foot of the paler colour seemed to bring Swallow nearer to coming back. It was about half done when John suddenly remembered the time, looked at his chronometer, slung his stuffed knapsack on his back, and hurried off up the beck to Swallowdale.

In Swallowdale he found Susan, Titty, and Roger, more disappointed at his missing Captain Flint than pleased to hear that the mast was nearly done.

“Why didn’t he come up to Swallowdale?” said Susan.

“Perhaps he’s gone native, too,” said Roger.

“Oh, no, he wouldn’t,” said Titty. “Not this year. Not unless he had to.”

“He’s done the masthead most beautifully,” said John. “If he’d gone native he wouldn’t have bothered.”

There was something in that, but not enough to raise the spirits of the explorers very much. After dinner Roger said he wanted to fish. Titty said she would come too. Susan said that she was busy, with all that wood to stack in Peter Duck’s. Roger and Titty said they would help for a bit. Susan said they needn’t bother. John said he was going down to the cove to go on rubbing down the mast.

Down in the cove he forgot about tea, and went on rubbing away with the sandpaper until the whole mast felt like soft velvet. He tried it with his fingers, looked at it sideways, to see if there was the slightest roughness, and decided at last that it would do. It seemed almost a pity to put the oil on. But he soon found that the oil made the mast look even better. He rubbed it with a handful of cotton waste that he had found pushed into the handle of the can, and the mast shone under the oil like a gleaming pebble from the lake before it has had time to dry. The clean Norway pole was thirsty for oil, and John rubbed away and rubbed away, turning the mast a quarter of a turn every now and then on the chocks of wood on which it lay.

“It’s a better mast than the old one, I do believe,” said John to himself. “I wonder what Captain Nancy would think of it now?”

And with that he remembered that, except for Mary Swainson’s gossip, there was still no news from the Amazon River.

Just then, while he was resting and looking at the shining yellow mast, he heard the chug, chug of a motor launch. It was coming down the lake, and it sounded as if it were coming much nearer along the shore than most of the launches and steamers he had heard during the day. Or perhaps it was that he had been too busy to listen to the others. Now the whole mast was done and oiled and he had to give it a little time to let this first coat of oil soak in. So his ears were awake to noises, and this chug, chug sounded to him so near the shore that he slipped out on the rocks on the northern side of the cove to see just what it was.

Yes, it was a motor launch, and he was right, it was very near the shore.

“They’ll have to turn out again before they get here,” Captain John was saying to himself, “or they’ll be running on the Pike Rock, just like we did.”