Arthur Ransome - Swallows and Amazons (Complete Series)

They tacked away up the inner harbour, past the dry dock and the vessels being repaired, past the grey dredgers at work getting up the mud from the bottom. They did not go very far before turning back. With Captain Flint and Peter Duck working so hard they did not want to be even a minute late. They were on their way home sailing with the wind down the middle of the Channel, and John was just going to turn across to the Wild Cat when Titty, looking at the Viper, suddenly said, “There’s that boy.”

“What boy?” asked Roger. “Where?”

“There,” said Titty, but she did not point. “The boy with the red hair. He’s fishing. Fishing from the Viper. Look!”

Everybody saw him now, sitting on the Viper’s bulwarks, with his feet over the side. He was holding the end of a fishing-line that went straight down into the water below him.

After what they had heard of Black Jake, and after what they had seen of him, they were inclined to be sorry for any boy who served aboard his ship. It must, they thought, be pretty awful. Not at all like being aboard the Wild Cat. Every time they had seen the red-haired boy that day he had seemed to be at work or on the run. But now, as they looked at him again, they thought better of Black Jake. At least he allowed his ship’s boy time to fish over the side.

They were about twenty yards from the Viper by that time, and John was hauling in the sheet to change course. Nobody saw exactly what happened, but there was a sudden squeak and the red-haired boy somehow shot forward off the bulwarks and dropped with a splash into the harbour.

THE RED-HAIRED BOY GOES OVERBOARD

“What a duffer!” said Nancy.

“Did someone push him in?” said Titty. “It looked like that.”

No time was wasted in thinking what to do.

“Jibe!” shouted John.

He turned Swallow round almost in her own length. The boom swung over and a moment later the little boat was shooting up into the wind close under the side of the black schooner.

“Stand by to lower sail!” said John quietly.

Close by the Swallow a tangled red mop came to the surface.

“Lower away,” called John, and Nancy and Titty brought the sail down just as John let go the tiller, leaned over and took a firm grip of the red mop.

“Yow! Yow!” squeaked the boy, spluttering and blowing as his head came above water. “Don’t you go for to pull my hair like that. And take hold of this line. It’s the only one I got. I can get aboard if you take a grip of the belt of my breeches. But let go my hair. Don’t take a hold of it again. Hoist away, now.”

“Up she raises!” said Nancy, getting a hold of the red-haired boy by the collar. Between them, she and John hoisted him in over the stern of the boat, though long afterwards he used to say he could have got in easier himself.

Titty, meanwhile, had taken the line and was coiling it in.

“Was he going to be drowned?” asked Roger, almost as if saving him had been a mistake.

“That’s all right,” said John, as the boy landed head first in the boat, soaking his rescuers with dirty water. “You’ll be aboard again in a minute.” He looked up at the steep black side of the schooner. Nobody was looking down. There was nobody there. Nobody seemed to have heard the splash or to know that they had just lost a man overboard.

“Viper, ahoy!” called John.

“Viper, ahoy!” called Roger shrilly from the bows.

There was no answer.

“That’s rum,” said Nancy, after giving a hail. “What’s become of that man with the ear-rings? Oh well, come on, John. Let’s take him across to the Wild Cat and then he can run round. It’s no good his trying to get up here without a ladder.”

She shook some of the wet off her, lugged the oars out from under the jumble of sail, and pulled across towards the green schooner. Titty had not quite done coiling in the fishing-line. She was going slowly towards the end. She knew the sort of things boys used for fishing in harbours. Far worse than worms. But when she came to the end she found nothing but two bare hooks.

Captain Flint had heard the splash and seen the rescue. He was waiting for them at the top of the rope ladder. Peter Duck was there too, and caught the painter which Roger, showing off a little to the red-haired boy, coiled and threw up to him.

“Up you go,” said John.

The boy took hold of the ladder and went up as easy as a monkey. It was clear that rope ladders were nothing new to him. Water dripped from him as he climbed. Titty went up next, not very easily, because she was carrying the fishing-line. Then Roger, who was beginning to tell the story of the rescue before he even got his head level with the rail. Nancy and John unstepped the mast, made all fast, and hurried after him.

On the deck of the Wild Cat the red-haired boy was standing in a pool of water from which little rivers trickled over the clean white planking to find their way into the scuppers. Peggy and Susan had come out from their galley, hearing that something was happening. Peter Duck was making fast the Swallow’s painter, and looking over his shoulder at the boy.

The red-haired boy was shifting uneasily from foot to foot, with all this crowd looking at him.

“Why, it’s young Bill,” said Peter Duck. “Everybody knows young Bill. Born on the Dogger Bank, he was. He ought to know enough not to fall overboard.”

The red-haired boy blushed hotly.

“He was fishing,” said Roger.

“And a big one pulled him in,” said Captain Flint. “What do you catch in the inner harbour? What sort of baits do you use?” His eye fell on the hooks and sinker at the end of the line that Titty was still holding. “What have you done with his baits, Titty?”

“There were none,” said Titty.

The red-haired boy looked more uncomfortable than ever.

Peter Duck laughed. “It’s the first time in his life young Bill’s fished without bait,” he said. “That I’ll be sure.”

“Let him have a mug of hot tea, somebody,” said Captain Flint. Susan was off into the galley and back in a minute with a mug of steaming tea and a hunk of cake.

“Look here, my lad,” said Captain Flint. “What’s the trouble? You needn’t be afraid of anybody in this ship. You’ve nothing to worry about. It’s no crime to go bathing. . . .”

Peter Duck was looking carefully at the hooks.

The red-haired boy burst out. “Well, I tell him there was nothing on them hooks, and he threw the line himself and made me get up on the rail, and then he tell me to tumble in natural. . . .”

“Oh, look here,” said Captain Flint.

“It’s all along of Mr. Duck there,” said the red-haired boy miserably. “They wants to know if he’s shipping with you, and where you’re bound for. And they’ll wallop the life out of me if I don’t find out.”

“That’s all, is it?” said Captain Flint. “No trouble about that, though you’ve taken a funny way of asking. But we’ve got no secrets. I’ll tell you, and you can tell them. Mr. Duck is shipping in the Wild Cat as able-seaman and acting bosun. And as for the rest of our crew, you can say we’ve three captains aboard and two mates, to say nothing of the others.”

“Oo,” said the red-haired boy.

The Swallows and Amazons looked at each other, but nobody even smiled.

“Drink that tea while it’s hot,” said Susan. “It’s not too hot. There’s a lot of milk in it. And you ought to have something hot at once after going in like that.”

The red-haired boy drank it up, gulp after gulp, while the others watched him do it.