Arthur Ransome - Swallows and Amazons (Complete Series)

“They’ve got tents just like ours,” said Roger, as he swung desperately from foot to crutch and from crutch to foot, determined not to be last.

Nancy and Peggy charged at the big tent. The others rushed past the fireplace, across the open ground.

“But they are ours,” said Susan.

“Pretty Polly!” said a harsh voice.

The camp had no defenders. The fire in Susan’s old fireplace had burned very low, and at the farther side of the camp with his back propped against a tree, was Captain Flint, just opening his eyes, while the ship’s parrot, perched beside him on one of the roots of the tree, was trying to pull his pipe to pieces.

“Hullo,” said Captain Flint, “what time is it? I sat down for a minute to play with old Polly. Hot work, you know, shifting all these things down to the launch, and that tree takes some climbing, too. Why, what on earth’s the matter with you all?”

The Swallows and Amazons looked at each other.

“Oh, nothing,” said Captain Nancy. “We mistook you for somebody else.”

Captain Flint stretched himself, and felt for his pipe.

THE CHARGE

“Back at your old tricks again, eh, Polly? I must have been asleep.”

“Fast asleep,” said Roger.

“And did you bring the whole caboodle across by yourself?” asked Nancy.

“Mary Swainson helped, and a young man, a friend of hers who seemed to have a day off.”

“I expect Peter Duck lent a hand,” said Titty, “with the things in his cave.”

“He must have done,” said Captain Flint, “but I may have put the wrong bags in the wrong tents or something like that at this end. Mary Swainson’s going to have another look round up there, and if anything’s left she’ll bring it down to the farm.”

“Let’s go across to-morrow and make her come to tea,” said Titty.

“There’s another hole coming in my knickerbockers,” said Roger.

“But whatever made you think of doing it?” asked Nancy.

“Well,” said Captain Flint, “it was just as well to make sure of your island, and besides that there’ll be grouse-shooting all over those moors to-morrow, and both your mothers seemed to think you’d be best out of the way.”

“So that was why they hadn’t put a place for you at the feast,” said Nancy. “But you haven’t asked who won the race. We lost, if you want to know.”

“I thought Swallow had a good chance when I saw you go into Rio Bay while John went up the other side of the islands.”

“But you don’t know what John did with her at the end.”

There was the whole story of the race to tell him, and after that they changed their minds and told him how they had seen the lantern and the smoke on the island and had thought the island had been taken by enemies.

“And now we’ve got it for ever and ever,” said Roger.

“Until you have to go away,” said Captain Flint. “And if I don’t go away at once I shall be getting into trouble.”

“But she’s gone,” said Titty.

Captain Flint laughed.

“Cook’s nearly as bad,” he said.

A few minutes later he was aboard the launch, chug, chugging away past Look Out Point, while everybody shouted their thanks after him and asked him to come again to-morrow.

“You can give me supper,” he shouted back. “I’ll be sleeping in the houseboat to-morrow night. Oh, yes, and I was to tell you that Mrs. Dixon will have milk for you in the morning.”

The Swallows and Amazons went down again into their camp.

“Well,” said Nancy, “the holidays have really begun now.”

“We’ve got a good lot to put on our map already,” said Titty.

“Pouf!” said Susan, raking the sticks together in the fireplace. “Isn’t it a blessing to get home?”

Table of Contents

1Mixed Moss By a Rolling Stone. Pub. 1930, 8th edition 1931.

Table of Contents

Note on the Pictures

Book One

Chapter I. Quayside

Chapter II. Red-Haired Boy

Chapter III. Trial Trip

Chapter IV. Washing the Anchor

Chapter V. Peter Duck Spins His Yarn

Chapter VI. And Winds It Up

Chapter VII. Outward Bound

Chapter VIII. First Night at Sea

Chapter IX. Beachy Head to the Wight

Chapter X. Captain Flint’s Fidgets

Chapter XI. Words in the Dark

Chapter XII. Blind Man’s Buff

Chapter XIII. Decision

Chapter XIV. Quit of the Viper

Chapter XV. Bill Finds His Place

Chapter XVI. The Madeiras at Dusk

Book Two

Chapter XVII. Trade Wind

Chapter XVIII. Land Ho!

Chapter XIX. Island Morning

Chapter XX. Blazed Trail

Chapter XXI. Duckhaven

Chapter XXII. Good-Bye to the Wild Cat

Chapter XXIII. Swallow’s Voyage

Chapter XXIV. Diggers’ Camp

Chapter XXV. Diggers at Work

Chapter XXVI. Threatening Weather

Chapter XXVII. Great Guns

Chapter XXVIII. The Finding of the Treasure

Chapter XXIX. Spanish Galleon

Chapter XXX. Dirty Work

Chapter XXXI. The Only Hope

Chapter XXXII. Whose Steps in the Dark?

Chapter XXXIII. All Aboard Once More

Chapter XXXIV. Waterspout

Chapter XXXV. “Bonies” and “Mallies”

Chapter XXXVI. “Spanish Ladies”

Footnotes

THE ADVENTURERS SET SAIL

Table of Contents

When we began to do these pictures we decided that each of us was to put her (or his) name to her own works of art. But this was hopeless. Everybody wanted to help with every picture, even passing natives who saw what we were doing. So we had to leave all names out except in the case of Roger’s two pictures which anybody would know anyhow.

CAPTAIN NANCY BLACKETT

TO

MRS. ROBERT BLACKETT AND MRS. E. H. R. WALKER

A HUMBLE APOLOGY FOR THE UNGRATEFUL

BRUTALITY WITH WHICH THEIR

CHILDREN ELIMINATED

THEM FROM THESE

ADVENTURES

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

“He turns his head, but in his ear

The steady trade-winds run,

And in his eye the endless waves

Ride on into the sun.”

BINYON.

Peter Duck was sitting on a bollard on the north quay of Lowestoft Inner Harbour, smoking his pipe in the midday sunshine and looking down at a little, green, two-masted schooner that was tied up there while making ready for sea. He was an old sailor with a fringe of white beard round a face that was as brown and wrinkled as a walnut. He had sailed in the clipper ships racing home with tea from China. He had sailed in the wool ships from Australia. He had been round the Horn again and again and knew it, as he used to say, as well as he knew the crook of his own thumb. But for a long time now he had left the sea. He lived in an old wherry on the Norfolk rivers, sailing this way and that between Norwich and Lowestoft and Yarmouth and Beccles, sometimes with a cargo of potatoes, sometimes with a cargo of coals, and sometimes with the deck of his wherry piled so high with reeds for thatching that the sail would hardly clear them. But he had not very much to do and every now and then he used to leave his old wherry in Oulton Broad and slip down to Lowestoft to look at the boats and the fishermen and to smell the fresh wind blowing in from the sea. And for two or three days now he had been coming along to smoke his pipe on this particular bollard because he liked the looks of the little green schooner that was lying there moored to the quay.