Arthur Ransome - Swallows and Amazons (Complete Series)

By the time mother’s basket had been unpacked, and Susan was ready with the kettle, Nancy and Peggy had their tent pitched again and mother had unrolled all the brackens that the old charcoal-burner had put round Roger’s foot, and had a good look at the foot for herself.

“I don’t suppose the brackens have done it any harm,” she said.

“It’s nearly all right to-day,” said Roger. “I can waggle it and it doesn’t hurt a bit, at least hardly at all.”

“Well,” said mother, “you shall have them all back again if you want them,” and Roger, who wanted to keep his bandaged foot for at least one more day, said he did.

STRETCHER-PARTY

And then, during the feast, the whole story of the climbing of Kanchenjunga had to be told, and the two stories of the fog, and of sleeping on the side of the mountain, and of how Roger tried to hold on to a rock and to point at wild goats with the same hand, and of the night in the wigwam, and of the glories of duck’s eggs. . . . It was not until late in the afternoon that mother said, “And I’m nearly forgetting one of the things I came to do . . . now is the chance while Bridgie is with Peggy in the big tent. . . . You know it’ll be Bridgie’s birthday in a few days, and I want to see just how your tents are made. I want to make a little one for her just like them. . . . And then I thought we’d have her birthday party on the island, like we did last year.”

“But shall we be back there?” said Susan.

“What about Swallow?” said John.

“Mother knows something about Swallow,” said Titty, looking at her mother’s face.

“Ask your Captain Flint about her,” laughed mother. “He’s coming to row us home. And here he is.”

Captain Flint walked into the camp. He was going to shake hands with mother, but didn’t.

“My hands are all oil,” he said, and wiped them on a tuft of grass, but found that no use, and had to borrow the soap from Susan and wash them in the beck.

“He’s been working on the mast,” said John. “Have you?”

“You’ve made a good job of that mast,” said Captain Flint.

“How soon do you think Swallow will be back?”

Captain Flint hardly seemed to hear this question.

“Hullo!” he said, “what on earth has the ship’s boy been doing to himself?” Roger had just come out from Peter Duck’s after trying how well he could get through the doorway without letting his bandaged foot touch the ground. And then, of course, he had to be told of all that had happened. And long before he had heard the whole story there was tea. And mother found a cake at the bottom of her basket.

They were still talking of the Kanchenjunga adventure when mother said, “It’s getting rather late for Bridget,” and Captain Flint jumped up.

All the explorers came down to Horseshoe Cove to see them off, even Roger, who had already found, privately, that when he put his foot on the ground it did not really hurt.

“I shall be seeing you all to-morrow at Beckfoot,” said mother, as they crossed the road.

“But that isn’t till Swallow comes back,” said John.

Mother caught Captain Flint’s eye and laughed.

“She isn’t back, is she?” said Titty.

“She wasn’t last night,” said John.

Mother, Captain Flint, and Bridget were left behind in a moment, as all six explorers rushed ahead through the trees, Roger almost forgetting to use his crutch in his efforts to keep up with the others.

“The mast’s gone,” shouted John, and a moment later, bursting out from the trees into the little cove, he saw where it had gone to. Amazon was no longer the only sailing boat in the cove. Drawn up on the beach beside her was another little boat, very like Swallow, but in such a glory of new paint that at first sight they could hardly believe she was the same dingy, beloved old Swallow they had known. The new mast had already been stepped in her, pale gold with sandpapering and linseed oil, and hung with new buff halyards for sail and flag. Spread on the beach, the damage done in the wreck already neatly mended, lay the old brown sail, and beside it lay the boom and the gaff, new-scraped and varnished, together with a coil of fine rope for the lacings.

Not one of the four Swallows could say a single word. They rushed at her, and tenderly touched the new paint and found it dry. They looked at the place where, when they saw her last, there had been a patch of old stained groundsheet over gaping broken planks. They could not have told, if they had not known, where that dreadful hole had been. She was a new ship, better than new, for she had renewed her youth and kept her memories and was still at heart the same old Swallow—more, far more, to them than any other vessel could be, anywhere, in all the world.

When Captain Flint had explained yet again in answer to the chorus of thanks that they had nothing to thank him for, because it was only a tiny bit of what he owed them, he helped mother and Bridget into his rowing boat and pushed off.

“And to-morrow,” he said, “we’ll see which is the faster ship. Start at the houseboat. Finish at Beckfoot. I’ll be aboard the houseboat pretty early in the morning. Come along with your fleet as soon as you’re ready.”

“Good nights” were shouted, and the rowing boat was just going out between the headlands, and John’s fingers were already unfastening the end of the coil of fine rope to begin the bending of the sail, when Captain Flint stopped rowing.

“By the way, Roger,” he called over the water, “I’ve got that barrel of gunpowder.” And his oars dipped again and the rowing boat had left the cove.

“Three cheers,” shouted Roger.

“What did he mean?” asked Susan.

“He’s going to let me fire the cannon,” shouted Roger, and waved his crutch in the air.

Table of Contents

The two little ships were swinging astern of the houseboat. Their captains and crews were up on the afterdeck drinking fizzy lemonade with Captain Flint, who had called at Rio on his way down the lake from Beckfoot and had brought a whole case of it, just the stuff for tropical days, in the Beckfoot motor launch which was moored alongside. Everybody was a little deaf, because not only had Captain Flint welcomed them with a salute of guns as they sailed into Houseboat Bay, but he had kept his promise and loaded and reloaded the little cannon, while Roger, still playing Long John Silver and leaning on his crutch, fired it with a long taper, not once only, but again and again. The smell of gunpowder hung about the houseboat as it had during the battle of last year.

“With the wind like this,” Captain Flint was saying, “northerly, pretty well straight down the lake, you’ll be beating all the way to the Amazon River, and that’s where the race must finish because they’re expecting you to a feast ashore at Beckfoot.”

“And we had one feast yesterday, when mother came to Swallowdale,” said Titty.

“By the time you get to Beckfoot to-day, you’ll be ready for another,” said Captain Flint. “I heard something about strawberry ices.”

“Anybody can eat a strawberry ice, any time,” said Roger. “They don’t take any room like other sorts of food.”

“That’s true,” said Captain Flint. “But about this race. All beat and no run is no test of a ship. You’d better start here, sail down the lake, round Wild Cat Island, and then finish in the Amazon River, the first ship past the boathouse to win.”