Arthur Ransome - Swallows and Amazons (Complete Series)

He was watching for the launch to alter course, when he began to think that there was something familiar about it. Suddenly, he knew. It was the Blacketts’ motor launch, from Beckfoot, the launch that he had seen first by the light of a torch in the boathouse in the Amazon River, and seen again when Mrs. Blackett came down to Wild Cat Island in it on the morning after the great storm nearly a year ago.

“Hurrah,” he said aloud, “it’s all right. They’re forgiven. They’re coming here.” He jumped up and was going to wave to them when he thought that perhaps he had better not. There were several people in the open forepart of the launch, and, after all, he might be mistaken. Better wait till he was sure. There would be plenty of time to wave later. So he dropped into hiding, and wriggled his way like a snake towards the mouth of the cove. The chug, chug of the launch came rapidly nearer and nearer. When, at last, John cautiously lifted his head among the heather and rocks of the northern of the two headlands the launch was hardly a dozen yards away.

He was right. It was the launch from the boathouse up the Amazon. But he was glad he had not waved.

The forward part of the launch was open, with seats running round it, and here were seated Mrs. Blackett and that same grim, elderly lady whom the Swallows had seen driving that afternoon when they had looked down on the road from among the trees. They were both sitting with their backs towards Horseshoe Cove, and Peggy Blackett, looking not at all like a pirate mate, but like an ordinary little girl at a school speech-day or a garden-party, was pointing towards Wild Cat Island or the woods on the far side of the lake, so that all their attention was drawn that way.

Nancy Blackett was nowhere to be seen, and John wondered whether she was in such awful disgrace that she had been left behind. He was thinking that perhaps she would have liked best to be left behind when, suddenly, he saw her.

The launch was passing close by the mouth of the cove. John could even see the remains of a tea spread on the table in the little cabin amidships. Aft of the cabin was an open well, and there was Captain Flint, dreadfully smartly dressed, steering the launch. And there, too, was Nancy Blackett. She was crouching low so that nobody in the forepart of the launch should see what she was doing. Captain Flint, somehow, seemed to be too much taken up with the steering to notice her. She was in a best frock, as unnatural as Peggy’s. But, as she crouched there, John saw that she had a crossbow in her hand. He saw her take one look forward through the glass-windowed cabin. Everybody seemed to be following Peggy’s finger and watching something far away on the other side of the lake. Just as the launch had passed the entrance to the cove Nancy loosed her arrow. John thought he heard the twang of the bowstring even through the noise of the motor, but perhaps he didn’t. The arrow flew over the water and stuck in a heather bush among the rocks of the southern headland, where they had landed after the shipwreck.

Again, for a moment, John thought of jumping up and waving, this time to show that he had seen. But, after loosing her arrow, Captain Nancy was no longer looking towards the shore. In a moment she had pushed her crossbow out of sight, under a seat in the steerage, slipped through the cabin and was already looking as proper as Peggy, talking to the natives in the forepart of the launch. Not even Captain Flint was looking towards Horseshoe Cove. A moment later the launch was hidden behind the southern headland and John could not see it, though he could hear it chug, chugging away towards the foot of the lake.

He heard a shout from among the trees where the beck ran out into the cove. “Hullo!”

“Hullo!” he called back, hurrying over the rocks on his way round the cove to look for the arrow.

Roger came out of the wood, smelling his hand after touching the newly oiled mast.

“Titty’s close behind,” he said, “and Susan says we’re to tell you you’ve had no tea and she’s cooking supper early. She’s cooking it now. And she says, Don’t be late. And you mustn’t. Titty and I caught two trout each, fat ones, one for each of us, and Susan’s cooking them, and . . .”

“Did you see the launch?” asked John.

“I can hear one,” said Roger, just as Titty joined them on the beach.

“It was the Amazons’ launch from the Amazon River. The one we saw in the boathouse last year. And Captain Nancy was in it, and she shot an arrow from it. It’s on the south cape. Mrs. Blackett was there too, and Peggy, and Captain Flint and . . .”

“Was the great-aunt all right?” asked Titty.

“She was there,” said John. “Come and get the arrow. It’s sticking in the heather out there.”

“Did Nancy really shoot at you?” said Roger. “Is it war?”

“I don’t think she saw me,” said John. “But of course she knew I’d be down here finishing the mast. Come on and let’s get the arrow.”

Titty was already scrambling out over the rocks. If the great-aunt was going for picnics in launches, the candle-grease couldn’t have done much harm. John and Roger hurried after her.

She found the arrow easily enough, sticking in the heather with its feathered end high in air.

“It’s a new arrow,” said John. “It’s not a good one like the arrows they had last year. It’s not half so well made.”

Titty was looking at its green feathers.

“They must have just made it,” she said. “This is one of the feathers I brought them this year. I know it, because it got clipped with the scissors when I was cutting something else.”

“The ship’s parrot wouldn’t like it if he knew they were using his feathers to shoot at us,” said Roger.

“It didn’t look exactly as if she was,” said John. “It was too secret from the others.”

He looked carefully at the arrow. There was a curious wide band on it, near the green feathers. It had been neatly spliced with red string. In a moment John had his knife out and had cut the end of the splice and begun unwinding the string.

“Don’t spoil their arrow,” said Titty.

“Well, they shot it at us,” said Roger.

John unwound the red string and almost at once they could see the end of a narrow, folded strip of paper that had been wound round the arrow and fastened to it by the very splice that hid it.

“It’s a message,” said Titty. “Be quick. Now we shall know.”

The little strip of paper that had been wound round the arrow and then hidden by the splicing of red string curled up tightly the moment it was taken off. John straightened it out. They looked at it together.

On it was written in capital letters and the usual red pencil of the Amazon pirates:

“SHOW THE PARROT HIS FEATHERS.”

There was no signature, but only a skull and crossbones drawn in black ink.

“It’s a very silly message,” said Roger.

“I don’t see what it means,” said Titty.

“It doesn’t explain anything,” said John. “You can’t call it even a declaration of war.”

They went slowly back into the cove to the old camp, and John gave another dose of linseed oil to the mast, and the others helped to rub it in.

“There they are,” said John suddenly, pointing out through the trees and between the headlands of the little cove. Far away on the other side of the lake the Beckfoot launch was moving along the farther shore. The Swallows ran out of the trees, climbed up among the rocks, and watched the launch disappear behind Wild Cat Island.

“They’re going to land there without us,” said Titty bitterly.

But they did not. The launch soon showed again beyond the island, and they watched it going fast up the lake, not stopping even in Houseboat Bay, and vanishing at last behind the Peak of Darien.