Arthur Ransome - Swallows and Amazons (Complete Series)

“But where are all them cap’ns and mates?” asked Bill at last, lowering his voice. “Sleeping, are they?”

“There just aren’t any,” said Titty.

“We’re them,” said Nancy.

And they tried to explain to Bill about the adventures they had had in the Swallow and the Amazon, but somehow it didn’t seem much good. Bill just roared with laughter. “And me creeping on my toes,” he said, “for fear of ’em.” Suddenly his face grew solemn. “Lucky for you your skipper telled me what he did. Why, if Black Jake had knowed. . . . If he’d knowed that, why he’d have had Mr. Duck out of here before you was half-way down Channel. He wouldn’t have waited for no fog. . . .”

Just then Captain Flint, with a new confident ring in his voice called down through the skylight.

“Come up and have a look round, you people. Fog’s gone. We’ve done it!”

They crowded up on deck. The lurching of the vessel had already told them that there had been a complete change in the weather, just as Peter Duck had guessed there would be. They found the wind blowing hard from the north-west and strengthening every minute. Besides the ocean swell there were waves now, hurrying so fast that their tops tumbled head over heels in a smother of white spray. The wind thrummed in the rigging, and the Wild Cat left a long troubled wake streaming away astern of her. There was no fog. There was no land in sight. And there was no sign of the black schooner.

“We’ve done it all right,” said Captain Flint. “That’s one, two, three steamers, two cargo boats, and a tanker . . . more of them hull down . . . there’s another of those French fishermen. . . . Not a sign of the Viper. No. We’ve done it.”

“Hope he’ll like Dublin,” said Nancy.

“Or the North Pole,” said John. “The farther he goes the better.”

“Aye,” said Peter Duck, after a slow careful look all round the horizon. “Seems we’re quit of him, right enough.”

“Thanks to you, Mr. Duck. We’ve got clear from him, and we’ve got one of his crew instead of him having one of ours,” said Captain Flint gleefully. “Well, Bill, I wonder if Black Jake’s missing you much?”

“There’s nobody aboard the Viper what anybody can lay into now.”

“So you think they’re cruising round the Wolf Rock looking for you with a rope’s end?”

“Well, I ain’t there, anyhow,” said Bill.

Dinner that day was hours late, a joyful but a most unsteady meal. The sea was getting rapidly worse and worse. They had had a taste of wind that last night coming down Channel, but then the wind had been off the land. Now, running south for Spain, they were exposed to the full drift of the Atlantic. Old Peter Duck was enjoying it. “I knows this bit of water,” he told the mates, while they were giving him his dinner. “By Ushant right down across the Bay I knows it. I were in them Frenchy boats fishing round here when they give me to the skipper of the Louisiana Belle for a bag of tobacco. But I telled you that yarn before. First an easterly, then a fog, and then a blow from the nor’-west. We’ll be hove to before night, but we’ll be getting better weather in the morning.” He had his dinner, lit his pipe, and went up again to take the wheel while Captain Flint came down.

Captain Flint had been the first to ask for food, but Susan said it was waste of time cooking for him if he would talk instead of eating. He came down with two volumes of Hakluyt’s Voyages from the shelf in the deckhouse, and he had brought the big chart down again, and nothing would stop him from using plates to keep the chart spread out over the fiddles while he was looking first in one of the books and then in the other. But in the end he remembered that Mr. Duck had been up most of the night, and he sent John and Bill up to take the wheel, and gulped down his food and hurried after them.

He found them together at the wheel when he came on deck, but Peter Duck had not yet gone to his bunk. He was standing in the deckhouse, leaning out of the doorway, watching the two boys at the wheel and looking at the weather.

“Blowing up quick, it is,” he said when he saw Captain Flint. “Wind after fog. Always the way. It’s a right wind for us, if it don’t blow up a bit too hard.”

“There’s no shelter to look for out here,” said Captain Flint.

“We don’t want none,” said Peter Duck. “With every mile we make to the southward we gets deeper water. We don’t want no better. Get her into deep water and she’ll ride out anything. It’s shoal water makes the trouble and drowns poor sailormen. We’ll best be putting a reef or two in her sails, and then if it don’t get no better, we can heave her to for the night, and she’ll lie as snug as a gull.”

Reefing was no easy job but it was done, at last, and then, with Captain Flint on deck, the old sailor went to his bunk and lay down for a minute or two, but he could not stay there. He came out again and stood there, watching the way the little schooner ran.

“Aren’t you going to get a bit of sleep, Mr. Duck?” said Captain Flint.

“Time enough for sleep later on,” said Mr. Duck.

Hour after hour she ran on, easier now under her shortened sails. But the sea was growing steadily worse, and the wind blew harder and harder. The mates tried washing up on deck after dinner, but so much water was coming aboard that it felt rather as if they were being washed up themselves. Roger brought Gibber up to have a look at things, and sat with him on the top step inside the companion-way. But a bucketful of spray flew in there and soaked him as well as the monkey, and they had to close that door to keep the saloon dry. They had already closed the skylight. It was oilskins that afternoon for everybody who came on deck. Those who were not at the wheel found shelter for themselves under the lee of the deckhouse and tried to keep the water that blew across the roof from pouring down their necks. There were always two at the wheel, and all the time the spray came blowing over, slap, slap, against their oilskin backs. The motion grew worse again, and Susan and Peggy, taking turns with it, had a hard job to keep the kettle in its place when they wanted a drop of hot water. At last, just as it was falling dark John heard Peter Duck, who was at the wheel with him, shout to Captain Flint who was standing close by: “She’s done very well, she has. How’d it be if we was to heave to now, for a quiet night, before anything carries away?”

“What if that fellow races us across?” said Captain Flint, who, now that he was bound for Crab Island, hated the idea of stopping even for a moment.

“He’ll have to come down this way,” said Peter Duck, “unless he wants contrary winds the whole way across. There’s no good way but the old sailing ship track by Spain and Portugal to the North-east Trades away down by Madeira and the Canaries. If the weather’s bad for us, it’s worse for him. If the Viper’s not hove to at this minute, somewheres north of the Land’s End, Black Jake’s wishing she was. She’s a flyer, the Viper, but she won’t carry sail in bad weather.”

“Shall we ever have it worse than this?” Nancy asked, snuggling down into her oilskins.

“We’ll be having good weather when we get by Finisterre,” said Peter Duck, “but it won’t last as bad as this beyond the morning.”

“So long as it doesn’t get any worse, it’s all right,” said Nancy, who was very pleased indeed to find that she was not feeling sick.

“Well,” said Captain Flint, “you know the Bay better than I do. And there’s one thing about it. We could all do with a bit of sleep after last night.”

Bill earned good marks from everybody in the half-hour of tremendous business that followed. He never quite managed to be in two places at once, but worked so hard and made himself so useful that it almost seemed as if he had. When they had done, and rested, panting for breath, they had the heavy booms lashed down in their places, stowed all the ordinary sails, and left the Wild Cat under a tiny storm-jib and a trysail, balancing each other, so that she lay quiet, meeting the waves as they came but no longer driving on her way.