Arthur Ransome - Swallows and Amazons (Complete Series)

“Isn’t it our turn?” said John.

“You may be sure it is that,” said Peter Duck, as he hurried out of the deckhouse door, pulling an old muffler round his neck, cramming on a sou’wester, and shuffling an oilskin round his shoulders. “Been too long ashore,” he said. “Don’t keep watches on the Arrow of Norwich. You shouldn’t have let me sleep, sir. What’s the course, Cap’n Nancy?”

“Sou’ by west.”

“Sou’ by west it is,” said Peter Duck.

“We’ll be changing the course in another ten minutes,” said Captain Flint, “and we’ll have the booms to shift over.”

For a few minutes they were all four together by the wheel. Peter Duck took a look about him. “Doing well, she is. There’s the Varne. Opening up Dover lights. Fast little packet she is and all.”

Then came the bustle of changing course.

“Will you handle her, Cap’n John, while we look after them booms?” said Peter Duck.

“You’ve done it in daylight,” said Captain Flint.

“It feels a bit funny in the dark,” said John.

“Don’t worry about the dark. You watch the compass. Keep her south by west a minute or two longer.”

“What’ll the new course be?”

“Sou’-west by west.”

“I steered nearly all our watch,” said Nancy.

“Don’t talk to the man at the wheel,” said Captain Flint. “You come along forward with me to tend jib and staysail sheets.”

“I’ll never find them in the dark,” said Nancy.

“You’ll have to learn,” said Captain Flint. “Come along. Any time you like, Mr. Duck.”

“We might get them over now,” said Mr. Duck.

Nancy and Captain Flint disappeared. John, with his eyes fixed on the glowing compass card inside the window, was yet aware of Mr. Duck busy with the mainsheet. Captain Flint came aft again to help him.

“Luff,” cried Peter Duck, and as John brought the Wild Cat a little nearer to the wind he heard the creaking of blocks as the sheets were hauled in.

“Bear away now.”

“South-west,” said John aloud. “South-west by west. West-south-west.” Over went the boom with a great creaking, but none of the violence he had expected, and John, putting her now on the new course, knew that Captain Flint and Peter Duck were letting the sheets out again and making them fast.

“South-west by west,” said Peter Duck sharply.

“South-west by west it is,” said John.

Captain Flint had hurried forward again to help Nancy with the sheets of the headsails.

“Well, that’s that,” said Captain Flint a few minutes later, as they came aft. “She’ll do unless the wind changes.”

“It’s not going to do that,” said Peter Duck.

“Skip along down, Nancy,” said Captain Flint. “You’ve done jolly well. Go and get your sleep now.”

No one would have guessed from Nancy’s cheerful “Good night” that she had been seasick all that day.

“Good night,” called Captain Flint. “Well, Mr. Duck, I’m turning in, too. I’ll take on again at four.” He went into the deckhouse and John and Peter Duck had the ship to themselves, just as Captain Flint and Nancy had had her before them.

It was pitch dark now, but the Narrows were ablaze with lights, and Peter Duck was checking them over as if he were an old hen counting chickens. Anybody would have thought he had invented those lights, it was so clear that he was pleased to be seeing them again.

“There’s France that is. Cape Gris Nez. Aye, and there’s Folkestone. Now you see them Dover lights. Last time I were past here there were the Prooshian, five-masted German, piled up under the cliffs just east’ard of them lights.”

Peter Duck was looking all round him, recognising in the darkness the places he had known twenty years before. But presently he remembered something else.

“Cap’n Flint say anything about the Viper when you come on deck?”

“No,” said John. “I forgot about her. I wonder where she is now.”

“I wouldn’t say no to you if you was to tell me that was her,” said Peter Duck.

“What?”

“Over the starboard quarter now. Them lights.”

John looked round. Away there in the dark were a red and green light close together. As he watched them, the red light disappeared. The green light was left alone. John glanced down at the compass, and when he looked back again the green light was showing on the port quarter.

“Sailing vessel, that’s certain,” said Peter Duck. “And I’m just a-wondering if that ain’t the Viper. One green light’s much like another, and you can’t tell t’other from which, but seems to me that vessel’s got her eye on us. She’s not steering a course. See! There’s her port light, red again. Now it might very easy be that Black Jake was holding of her wheel. Well, skipper’s set a course, and it’s not for us to change it, but I doubt he wouldn’t mind us finding out if that vessel ain’t following us and not shaping no course of her own. Just you let me have the wheel.”

Peter Duck spun the wheel and suddenly headed the Wild Cat in, as if for the lights of Folkestone.

“You tell me what lights she shows us.”

“Red and green,” said John.

“Heading down Channel same as us.”

“Now then?”

“Green light’s gone,” said John.

“I thought so,” said Peter Duck. “She’s headed in to see what we’re going to do in Folkestone.”

Once more he spun the wheel and put the Wild Cat back on her course. “Aye,” he said, “and now he’ll show his green and come after us again.” As he spoke the green light shone out again beside the red, the red disappeared, and the other vessel was once more heading down Channel.

“The Viper sure enough,” said Peter Duck. “Plain as talking that was.”

“But why?” said John.

“He thinks I’m taking you to Crab Island,” said Peter Duck. “That’s what it is. He’d better have left me in Lowestoft, had the skipper.” And then suddenly he spoke of other things. “You and me’s got this vessel in charge,” he said, “and ought to be watching our course, and keeping a look out, and picking up the lights as they falls due. Now, what should you say that light was, over there, starboard bow, flashing away as if it was in a bit of a hurry about something?”

“I don’t know,” said John.

“Dungeness, that is, and if it was daylight, we’d see the fine black tower of it, a proper candlestick, a black tower with a white belt about its middle and a white lantern and gallery to it overhead, a good mark from anywhere, and we’d be seeing Lloyd’s signal station, and the red house where they make the fog signals, and the little white tower that holds a low light down near the end of the point. There’s more than one man taken his ship into shoal water for not knowing Dungeness and mistaking a water tower there is inland for Dungeness high light. And then beyond Dungeness we’d be seeing Fairlight Church, another good mark for poor sailormen coming up Channel with their stomachs sickened of salt pork. I’ve come right up Channel before now and known that be the first land we sighted, that and Beachy Head and before we sighted them nothing at all but the noise of foghorns, and us groping our way in blind and wishing all steamships was at the bottom of the sea.”

Roger, of course, would have gone on asking questions about Black Jake and the Viper, but John knew at once that Mr. Duck did not want to talk about them just then, so he asked no more, though now and again he glanced over his shoulder to see the green light belonging to the sailing vessel that had altered course when they had, still not very far away over the port quarter. The other vessel, whatever she was, was keeping her distance and following the Wild Cat down Channel. John wondered if Black Jake was at the wheel and if that red-haired boy they had fished out of the harbour was watching for the Wild Cat just as he himself was looking away into the dark for the green starboard light of the Viper. If indeed that vessel was the Viper. Well, morning would show that, and John put most of his mind into steering a straight course. This was better than that night when he had sailed Swallow in the dark and all the lights had gone out, and he had so nearly run her on a rock.