Arthur Ransome - Swallows and Amazons (Complete Series)

“Time you went below, Nancy,” said Captain Flint.

“All right,” said Nancy, “but I’m coming up when it’s our watch, and anyhow you’ll call me if they come again.”

“You shall have your whack at them if they try to board,” said Captain Flint. He said it with a laugh, but anybody could tell from the way he said it that he no longer thought of the English Channel as so safe a highway that nothing of that kind was likely to happen.

That was the last they saw or heard of the Viper that night. She raced off again into the dark, and though Captain Flint took no more rest, so that there were three of them on deck keeping a keen look out, not knowing what next might come into Black Jake’s dark mind, they saw no lights nor any other sign of her. It was not until Nancy came on deck again, sleepy-eyed, but eager for news, that they saw the black schooner again. She must have crossed their bows in the dark and waited for them, for when they first caught sight of her, in the first pale light of a grey morning, she was a couple of miles away to the south-east or perhaps rather more.

That great wind had swept them along at a tremendous pace. They had seen the flashing light on the Lizard first over the starboard bow and then abeam, and now it flashed out for the last time when they had already passed it and looking astern could see the steep cliffs of the Head, cold and grim against the dawn.

“Where are we going now?” said Nancy.

“To have a look at the Land’s End and the Scillies,” said Captain Flint. “And then, if the wind holds and that fellow won’t leave us alone, we’ll give him a run up to Ireland.”

“We’d best get quit of him,” said Peter Duck.

But the wind had blown itself out, as Peter Duck had thought it would. After sweeping them down from one end of the Channel to the other, it dropped to nothing. They had hardly steerage way through the water when the tide, running out of the Channel, carried them past the Land’s End. The mates, the able-seaman, and the boy were dawdling over breakfast, hearing from Nancy of that wild business of the night that they had missed by being asleep. Captain Flint, Peter Duck, and John were on deck, looking at the lighthouses at the Longships and on the Wolf Rock, and at the black schooner which seemed, in spite of the lack of wind, to be creeping up to them again when, with only a few minutes’ warning, they lost sight of everything in a thick blanket of white fog.

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“In fog, mist, or falling snow . . . a sailing ship under way shall make with her foghorn, at intervals of not more than two minutes, when on the starboard tack one blast, when on the port tack two blasts in succession, and when with the wind abaft the beam three blasts in succession.”—Board of Trade Regulations.

The fog came suddenly, and with it a slow swell from the Atlantic, lifting the Wild Cat lazily up and dropping her gently down smooth hills and valleys of greenish-grey water. There was still a faint breath of wind from the north-east. The moment he had seen the fog closing in, Captain Flint took a bearing of the Longships and another of the Wolf Rock and went into the deckhouse to plot the position on the chart, and to set down the time, 8.57 a.m. At 8.57 a.m. they knew exactly where they were, south-south-west of the Land’s End, south by west from the Longships, north by east from the Wolf Rock. They knew where the Viper was too, at that moment. Before the fog blotted her out they had seen her, heading west and about a mile south by east from the Wild Cat.

Just before the fog hid her, Peter Duck had changed the course of the Wild Cat.

“We couldn’t ask for nothing better than this fog,” he said, and without waiting a moment, spun the wheel, and headed the Wild Cat due north. “Now,” he said, “will you and Cap’n Nancy rattle in them sheets? There’s no weight in the wind. But I’d like him to see us aiming for Dublin. . . .”

For a minute or two, before the fog hid the two vessels from each other, the Wild Cat was sailing close hauled as if to round the Longships, bound north for the Irish Sea.

John went into the deckhouse and asked for the foghorn.

“Better take the big one,” said Captain Flint, who was busy with his calculations, and John came out again with a huge foghorn of the old sort that has to be blown through but makes almost as much noise as the steam syren of a small tug. He was just gathering breath to blow it, when Peter Duck stopped him.

“No,” he said quickly. “Leave that and bang the bell Quick, while he knows where we are. Let him think we’ve got no horn. Lost it overboard, maybe. Anyway, don’t let him think we’ve one of them bull-roarers that’d scare the life out of a liner’s fourth officer and give him something else to think about than berthing in Southampton on time. Let him think we’ve nothing but a bell. Cat’s eyes that man’s got. Dark’s like day to him. But I don’t know but what we may give him the slip in a fog.” And with that he gave one hard blow on the ship’s bell, just outside the deckhouse door, within easy reach from the wheel. “Starboard tack1 we’re on, heading north.”

Captain Flint shot out of the deckhouse.

“What’s that bell?” he said.

“Against regulations, sir,” said Peter Duck. “And Black Jake’ll likely report us to the Board of Trade for not having what they call an efficient foghorn.”

“But we’ve got a couple,” said Captain Flint. “One of the new horns you work with your hand, and the old thing I gave John just now, that makes four times the noise.”

Peter Duck reached forward and gave one more sharp stroke on the bell.

“It’ll carry a fair way, that bell,” he said, “and we may need the foghorn later.”

Three hoots on a foghorn came dully through the fog.

“There’s the Viper” said Nancy.

“Aye,” said Peter Duck. “Heading west she was. Still got the wind abaft the beam.”

“But what are you thinking of doing?” asked Captain Flint. “Anything you like, of course, if we can get rid of that fellow.”

“There’ll be a wind coming behind this fog,” said Peter Duck. “There’s all but no wind now, but if Black Jake had his eyes on us these last few minutes he’ll have seen us heading north and heard our bell.”

“But why north?” said Captain Flint.

“If the wind comes out of the nor’-west, and it will, by the smell of the fog and the way the swell’s moving, we can take our choice, close hauled up the Irish Sea or running free for Spain, while the Viper’s butting into it across the Bristol Channel. Sound that bell again, will you, Cap’n John?”

“The dinner-bell’s louder,” said John.

“Lay into that then,” said Captain Flint. “One stroke every two minutes. We’re on starboard tack. It can’t do any harm. Spain, did you say, Mr. Duck? Why not Madeira?”

“There’ll be no lack of sou’-westerlies to bring us home,” said Mr. Duck.

Bang. Bang. Two dull reports sounded somewhere not so very far away over the starboard bow. A long-drawn-out hoot, four whole seconds of it, sounded somewhere to southward.

“Lighthouses taking a hand,” said Captain Flint. “That’s the Longships and the Wolf Rock. I’ve just been looking them up. Every five minutes we’ll be hearing those bangs, and the Wolf does its howl every thirty seconds. Precious little wind there is now to get us out of this.”

The booms were swinging across with the swell. The gaffs swung overhead. The sails flapped heavily.