Arthur Ransome - Swallows and Amazons (Complete Series)

The Wild Cat was steadily moving faster and faster through the water, and she had left the Wolf Rock far astern, and long out of hearing when, at last, Titty, who had been with Roger in the stern looking at Bill, wondering what he was really like, and watching him pump at the foghorn when Mr. Duck nodded to him, saw that the jib no longer seemed to be made of fog, and that John and Susan up in the bows could no longer be mistaken for ghosts.

“Fog’s lifting,” said Peter Duck suddenly. “We could do with it a bit longer, barring them screw steamers.”

“We can’t have it both ways,” said Captain Flint. “I’d like to let Black Jake go cruising up to Ireland looking for the Wild Cat, and that’s likely enough if the fog holds. But I wouldn’t mind it if we met no more of these blundering tramp steamers, not as near as that one, anyway.”

“Was Black Jake going up to Ireland?” said Bill. “What about me? He’d have had to pick me up first.”

“Likely he would,” said Peter Duck. “Valuable you are. He might have come back for his boat or his foghorn, but I reckon he’d made up his mind to be losing the both of them, and you think he’d be coming back for you. Not likely.”

“Lucky I caught your rope,” said Bill.

“Lucky for you,” said Peter Duck. “What about us?”

“With all them cap’ns aboard,” said Bill, “one of em’s bound and sure to want another boy.”

The fog did indeed begin to lift. It was soon possible to see a hundred yards or so from the deck of the schooner. It was as if she were sailing in the exact middle of a round pond, shut in by a high wall of fog. Only, though the pond was so small, a swell was rolling across it of that tremendous kind that does so often come sweeping out of the Atlantic down into the Bay of Biscay. Beyond that wall they could hear faint, distant sirens. Within it they were alone.

“What do you think about it, Mr. Duck?” said Captain Flint at last. “Nobody’s going to run us down now. Titty, run along forward and tell John and Susan they can come aft. And Nancy’s there with them. I want one of them to take the wheel from Mr. Duck, while we’re hearing what the passenger has to say for himself. . . .”

Bill looked suddenly grave.

Titty hurried away forward. She hurried because she did not wish to miss a word of what was coming? How had it happened that the red-haired boy had been drifting alone in the fog? Was he on Black Jake’s side or theirs? Had they rescued him or made him prisoner? What had been going on last night when the Viper had nearly crashed into them in the dark? What had been happening in the fog, while Peter Duck had been pretending the Wild Cat was heading north for Ireland when really she was heading south for Spain?

“Come on, Susan,” she said, almost as if Black Jake were listening out on the bowsprit end. “Come on, John. Come on, Nancy. Captain Flint thinks it’s all right now; the fog’s not so bad. He wants somebody to take the wheel. They’re just going to decide about the red-haired boy. . . .”

They all hurried aft together, in time to hear Captain Flint say: “We’ll do better for him than that, if we think he’s worth keeping at all.”

“But you can’t throw him back,” said Titty.

“Why not?” said Captain Flint.

“I’ve got a spare toothbrush he could have,” said Susan. “I brought two for each of us.”

The red-haired boy looked doubtfully, first at Peter Duck then at Captain Flint, then at the children of whom this schooner seemed so full.

“Sou’west by south and a half south,” said Peter Duck, giving up the wheel.

“Sou’west by south and a half south it is,” said John, taking it over.

Peter Duck turned sharply on the red-haired boy.

“And now, young Bill,” he said, “let’s hear what you was doing in a dinghy letting on with a foghorn as you was a sailing vessel on the starboard tack. What have you got to say about that? Don’t let’s hear nothing but the truth.”

“It wasn’t my fault I shipped along of he,” said Bill.

“Never mind that,” said Captain Flint. “Let’s hear what you were doing with that foghorn.”

“Black Jake he send me down into the dinghy with the horn, and then he tell me to sound it, once at a time, every so often, so he’d know where I was and pick me up when he come back.”

“Back?” said Captain Flint. “Where from?”

“He was going to lay aboard you in the fog and get a hold of Mr. Duck.”

“H’m. Was he? And how many did he think would be enough for that?”

“Five of ’em there was. There was Black Jake. Then there was Simeon Boon, that’s just come out after two years’ hard. Then there was Mogandy, the nigger, blacker’n Black Jake. Then there was a brother of Black Jake that was hiding in the fo’c’sle till we’d sailed. Police wanted him for something. Then there was the man that was chucker-out at the ‘Ketch as Ketch Can’ . . .”

“That’s a fishermen’s tavern in Lowestoft, sir,” said Peter Duck. “It’s got another name. You’d not know it.”

“And then there was me.”

Captain Flint threw back his head and laughed.

“There was six of us altogether,” said Bill.

“All right,” said Captain Flint. “So the five who stayed in the Viper were going to board us, were they?”

“Black Jake tell ’em it’d be easy. There’d be no more’n two of you on deck, and if one of ’em was Mr. Duck, why that was all he wanted. If Mr. Duck wasn’t on deck, Black Jake he reckoned to hold down the hatches and offer to blow you up with dropping something down if you didn’t send Mr. Duck up quick.”

“Pleasant,” said Captain Flint. “But if that was what he was thinking, why didn’t he try that game last night, when he ran up alongside us with all lights out in the dark?”

“Half of ’em was drunk last night,” said the red-haired boy, “and some of ’em was frighted. And Black Jake was letting fly at ’em all night for the chance they’d missed, and then, when the fog come on this morning, he fair drove ’em to it. ‘Cap’ns and mates and all,’ he says, ‘I’ve that here as’ll send ’em squealing. Give up Peter Duck,’ he says, ‘they’ll throw him overboard to us and be thankful.’ ”

“And so you were to sound the foghorn while they were to creep up to us in the fog?” said Captain Flint.

“I didn’t have nothing to say neither way,” said Bill. “They’d all had a go at me about one thing and another ever since we was clear of Lowestoft pier heads. I’m all one bruise, I am. What could I do when Black Jake drop me over into the dinghy. ‘Pass up them oars,’ he says. ‘You won’t want ’em. And now,’ he says, ‘if you don’t sound that horn regular you’ll be run down and sunk.’ ‘And what if he is?’ says Mogandy. ‘There’s no name on the boat,’ says Black Jake. And he throw down the painter into the boat and let her drop astern, and the next I knowed they was gone into the fog, and what could I do without oars? Swim ashore? What could I do but sound that horn?”

“Well, there’s something in that,” said Captain Flint.

“And then you come right down on top of me and throw me a rope and I come aboard. I’ll work my passage, sir,” he added eagerly, “if you’ll let me stay with you back to Lowestoft.”

“What if we aren’t going there?” said Captain Flint.

John and Nancy looked anxiously at Susan.

“What if we aren’t going there?” said Captain Flint again. “What do you think about it now, Mr. Duck? Eavesdropping wasn’t enough for him. Kidnapping he was up to. Piracy. The fellow’d stick at nothing. Why not spike his guns for good by lifting that treasure of yours, Mr. Duck, and bringing it home? Once he knows it’s gone, you’ll have a quiet life.”