Arthur Ransome - Swallows and Amazons (Complete Series)

“Sh!” said John. “Listen!”

They listened but could hear nothing.

“It was awful. The first thing I saw on the lawn in front of the house, just the other side of the wood, was Captain Flint and Mrs. Blackett and the great-aunt herself. . . .”

“Did she look all right?” asked Titty.

“Of course she did. She was walking about with a stick pointing at things on the lawn. I couldn’t see what she was pointing at. So I slunk on in the wood till I had got right round behind the house. Then I gave the owl call.”

“We heard it,” said Roger.

“Nancy Blackett was at one of the upstairs windows at once. She put her hand to her lips as if she meant me to shut up. Then I saw Nancy and Peggy creeping out of a back door and going off the wrong way. So I had to do the owl call again, just to show them where I was. But it only made them bolt like anything.”

“If they’ve seen you and heard the owl call, we needn’t do anything more,” said the mate. “They know where we are, because we’ve done just what they told us to do.”

“Well, I hope it’s all right,” said John. “Everybody else must have heard the owl calls too.”

“They were both beauties,” said Roger.

“What’s that?” said John, sharply.

Steps were coming nearer through the wood.

“Here they are.”

Suddenly there was the noise of heavier steps. Someone was running hard, and then close to them, behind the screen of pale reeds and dark green leaves, they heard a sort of squeak cut off short.

“Sh! You tame galoot.” This was Nancy’s voice and it went on in an altogether different tone. “Friends or enemies, Uncle Jim?”

“Betwixt and between,” came the answer of Captain Flint.

“Lurk, lurk,” whispered John, and the four explorers crouched in the boat. The voices were only a yard or two away.

“Betwixt and between,” Captain Flint was saying. “I don’t know what you’re up to, and I won’t ask. But you’re up to something, and all I want to say is that it won’t be fair on your mother and me if you don’t get back by five o’clock. Remember it’s the last day. I’ll hold the fort for you till then, driving her round. But if you fail to show up when we come back, it’ll be more than I can manage to put things straight.”

“Honest pirate! We’ll be back.”

“That’s all right,” said Captain Flint. “Now then, I haven’t seen your allies and I’d rather not, but just you tell them from me, if you should happen to meet them, that if they want to give a signal right bang in the middle of the day, it wouldn’t be so hard on their friends if they’d choose blackbirds or jays instead of owls. Your Aunt Maria wants to write to the Natural History Museum about it. She says she’s never heard one at midday before. You tell them to be jays next time. Easier for me.”

“Come on and see them.” This was Nancy’s voice again. “They must be close here.”

“I don’t care where they are. I haven’t seen them and I’d rather not know anything about them. The midday owl’s put a weight on my conscience already, to say nothing of ‘Casabianca.’ ”

There was a laugh, quiet for Nancy’s, and the noise of Captain Flint’s footsteps going away.

John jumped ashore again, through the rushes. The boughs parted, and Captain Nancy, with a big fishing-creel slung on her back, and Mate Peggy, carrying a big white bedroom jug, pushed their way out from among the trees.

“Well done, Skipper,” cried Nancy, on seeing John. “You’ve hit the very place. Others all here? Hullo, Mister Mate. Did you hear my mate squeak just now? A galoot she is, a tame galoot. Anybody might have heard her. Hullo, Roger. How are you, Able-seaman? Let’s get aboard. There isn’t a minute to lose. You heard what Captain Flint said?”

“What was it he said about ‘Casabianca’?” asked Titty.

“Not that. I mean about our having to be back by half-past five. We really must, and there’s only just time to show you the way. Come on, Peggy. Easy there with the grog.”

“Well, you take it,” said Peggy. “It’s an awful weight. And you needn’t talk about my squeaking. Anybody would have squeaked just then. I thought we were done for.”

“All the more reason for not squeaking,” said Nancy. “The trouble with you is, you never know when not to squeak.”

“Yes, I do.”

“No, you don’t. You very nearly went and squeaked over the ‘Casabianca’ business, and then you’d have got Uncle Jim and mother into trouble too.”

“Well, who’s making a noise now?”

“True for you,” said Nancy under her breath. “Let’s be moving, Captain John. It would be too awful if the G.A. found out you were here.”

“Sit down everybody,” said John quietly.

Susan, Titty, Roger, Nancy, and Peggy, sat down, where they were, in the stern and amidships. John pushed off with an oar over the bows. The war canoe, now heavily laden and more like a rowing boat than ever, brushed out through the reeds and, the moment it was clear of them, began to drift downstream. It was now Nancy’s turn to squeak.

“Shiver my timbers,” she said. “Out with those oars. Quick! Quick! Another ten yards and we’ll be below the wood and in full view of the lawn.”

There was a desperate scrabble to get the oars out, and one of them hit the water with a splash. That very instant Peggy quacked like a duck, indeed, so very like a duck that Roger looked about him expecting to see a duck rise out of the reeds.

“Well done,” said Captain Nancy. “She really is good at ducks. And they often come in handy.”

John had the oars in the bow rowlocks by now and had pulled a hard stroke or two. The war canoe moved upstream again along the wooded bank.

“That was a narrow shave,” said Nancy. “They’d have been bound to see us from the lawn.”

“What are they doing on the lawn?” asked John. “The great-aunt was poking at things and showing them to Mrs. Blackett.”

“Daisies, probably,” said Nancy. “Ragging mother about them. She says there never used to be any on the lawn and now there are lots, and every time she gets mother into the garden she tells her about the daisies all over again.”

“Daisies?” said Roger, with wide open eyes.

“She’s never missed a day,” said Peggy. “It’s always the same. As if mother could help it.”

“Straight up the river, Captain John,” said Nancy. “Keep her moving.”

“But what was it Captain Flint said about ‘Casabianca’?” asked Titty again.

“It was very sporting of him,” said Nancy. “If it hadn’t been for him we shouldn’t be here now, and you would have made your march for nothing, and everything would have gone wrong. You don’t know what it’s been like the last few days. . . .”

“Was it very bad when you got back that night after watching those hounds?” asked Susan.

“Dreadful,” said Nancy. “All leave stopped. Boathouse out of bounds. . . .”

“We wanted to bail out Amazon, and had to get out of bed and creep out and do it in the middle of the night,” said Peggy.

“We weren’t allowed to come and see you any more,” said Nancy. “That’s why the message had to be so secret. . . .”

“And on the way back from the boathouse there was an awful moment,” said Peggy. “We were pretending she was a heathen goddess, and she looked out when we thought she was asleep and saw us bowing our heads to the ground in the moonlight under her bedroom window.”

Titty interrupted them both.

“Was the great-aunt ill when you came back that night after being in Swallowdale?”

“Ill?” said Nancy. “Ill? Never in better form. She made the worst row that night she’s made ever since she came to stay. What are you looking so pleased about?”