Arthur Ransome - Swallows and Amazons (Complete Series)

“I’ll be getting those topsails up then,” said Captain Flint. “Give me a hand, Nancy.”

He brought up the topsails from the sail locker, gave Titty the bundle of the foretopsail to look after while Nancy and he hooked on the halyard sheet and downhaul, mousing the hooks with twine so they should not slip open. And then, just as the little jib-headed sail was up at the mast-head, the sheet jammed. Nancy tugged. Captain Flint tried it. No. The thing was stuck somewhere or other.

“Have it down again,” said Captain Flint.

It would not come.

There was a sudden patter of bare feet on the wet deck. A small figure ran forward. A mop of red hair, two red feet, a ragged coat, a pair of old blue trousers with a black patch across the seat of them, shot between Captain Flint and Nancy, and leapt at the mainsail’s wooden mast-hoops. The blue trousers and the black patch faded upwards into the fog.

“All clear, sir.” A hoarse whisper sounded above their heads. A small figure dropped hand over hand down the halyards to the deck, and as Nancy and Captain Flint hauled again on the topsail sheet, the clew of the sail moved out along the gaff and all was as it should be.

“That’s not a bad boy,” said Captain Flint, as Bill bolted back again to stand by in case he was wanted by Mr. Duck.

“He and Gibber are two for a pair,” said Nancy. “But what was he doing in that dinghy, all by himself with a foghorn?”

“I’ve a pretty shrewd idea,” said Captain Flint. “But we’ll hear presently. There’s the foretopsail to set now. Thank you, Titty. Out of the way, you two. Peggy, what about scaring up a mug of hot cocoa for the passenger? But don’t rattle your pans in the galley.”

Peggy on tiptoe went off into the galley, closing the door carefully behind her. She knew, like Captain Flint, and all the others, that Peter Duck was right. There were more urgent things to think of than the red-haired boy. They were still in the fog. They had heard the Viper pass them, going north to look for them, but for all they knew she might have turned again and might be no more than a few yards away hidden in that loose choking blanket of fog that made it all but impossible to see from one end of the ship to the other. The wind was getting up, though as yet it blew the fog in thick curling wisps through the rigging and across the decks instead of lifting it up and driving it away. With topsails set, the Wild Cat was moving fairly fast through the water. All to the good, to get away from Black Jake, but, at the same time, with every minute they were coming nearer to the great thoroughfare of shipping. And, bad as it would be to be found by Black Jake and his men, it would be not much better to be run down by some big steamship hurrying on its way. They had heard the howl of the Wolf every half-minute, and knew that it was no longer south of them but north. They had passed it, and, steering south-south-west, were heading as it were into the middle of the road, with traffic that they could not see coming both ways at once. Peter Duck was right. This was no time to ask the red-haired boy questions. The only thing to do was to keep quiet, to keep a sharp look out, and to hope at the same time that the fog would last and they would be able to sail through it without being run down by someone else. How right Peter Duck was they were not very long in finding out.

Captain Flint and Nancy were looking up at the foretopsail, trying to see if it was setting properly, when a steam siren sounded somewhere away off the starboard bow. It was a shriller noise than the booming note of the big liner, which, as Peter Duck had said it would be, was already far away to the west. It sounded again, a long, shrill blast.

“Steamship,” said Captain Flint.

“That one seems a bit nearer,” said John quietly. “The big one’s much farther away.”

“Quite near enough,” said Captain Flint, and turned to go aft.

Just then a foghorn sounded from close by the deckhouse. Three clear hoots it gave, loud, but not so loud as the horrible noises made by the bull-roarer.

Captain Flint and Nancy hurried aft, in time to see the red-haired boy sounding the Board of Trade foghorn, that works like a pump. Roger was standing watching him open-mouthed and envious.

“Three times,” said Peter Duck. “Put some beef into it. We’re getting into the track of the Channel shipping.”

Again that shrill siren sounded, close on the starboard bow.

Everybody stared into the fog. A minute passed. Another.

“Let them have the horn again,” said Peter Duck. But the red-haired boy had only time to get a single blast out of it.

“Something right ahead,” shouted John at the very top of his voice as the steam siren sounded again, this time as if out of the sky immediately above him.

The white fog turned suddenly black before them. Peter Duck spun the wheel, putting the helm hard aport. The Wild Cat came sharply round into the wind, with her sails all shaking. Her bowsprit end just cleared the towering, rusty walls of an ocean tramp feeling her way in from the Atlantic. From high above the Wild Cat faces looked down out of the fog on the startled group at the stern of the little schooner.

“What are you playing at down there?” sounded an angry voice.

“Aye, it’s you to shout,” said Peter Duck, “when as near as nothing you sent us to the bottom.”

“I thought steamships had to keep out of the way of sailing vessels,” said Nancy.

“So they have, by law,” said Peter Duck, “and there’s a whole town full of good sailormen at the bottom of the sea for thinking the same. They have to keep out of our way, the clumsy, racketty, bangetty bundles of scrap-iron, but do they, I asks you? Do they ever? And least of all in fog.”

The big tramp steamer lurched on her way. Her propellers beat the water as the Atlantic swell lifted her stern. Her wash, cutting across the line of the swell, sent small, steep waves to run amuck, one of which, all unexpected, heaped itself up and slopped over the Wild Cat’s waist, sluicing aft past the galley door just as Peggy came out with a mug of cocoa.

“What’s happening?” asked Peggy, seeing the startled faces, the sails slack and flapping, hearing the noise of the tramp’s engines, and the splash, splash of her propeller, going off into the fog.

“Narrow shave of being run down,” said Nancy.

“And there wasn’t nobody handy with ropes to haul us aboard like you hauled me,” said Bill, who had been so much afraid of being run down when he was floating alone in a dinghy that he was almost cheered at the thought of being run down with so many others to keep him company. “Thank you kindly, miss.”

“Look out. It’s pretty hot,” said Peggy.

“You may well be thankful for that,” said Peter Duck. “There’s plenty as would have drowned you, fooling about in a boat trying to make us think you was the Viper.”

“But I didn’t, Mr. Duck,” began Bill. “I really didn’t.”

“Sound that foghorn,” said Mr. Duck. “We’ll have the truth out of you when we’re ready for it.”

He swung the Wild Cat back on her course again. The sails filled and everything settled down; settled down that is, as far as anything can be said to have settled down when a little ship is sailing in a dense fog across the mouth of the Channel. The big tramp steamer had scared them, towering above them suddenly, out of the fog, and though everybody was bursting to find out what the red-haired boy had been doing alone in a boat, everybody knew now that the most important thing of all was to listen and to keep sailing. The whole crew were on deck, excepting the parrot and the monkey. Peter Duck never left the wheel, and every two minutes, at a word from him, the red-haired boy was sending out three blasts on the foghorn, while Captain Flint kept walking quietly fore and aft, listening for noises, and now and then slipping into the deckhouse to have yet another look at the chart that by now he almost knew by heart.