Arthur Ransome - Swallows and Amazons (Complete Series)

But just then someone stamped on the deck overhead, and he heard John and Roger struggle out of their cabin and race for the deck. Toothbrush in hand, he was after them in a moment. Queer sort of clothes they seemed to have on, the sort of thing you’d see minstrels wearing, giving a show on Yarmouth Pier. He dashed up the companion after them, and out on deck.

“Morning, Captain Flint! Morning, Mr. Duck,” they said as they hurried, not too steadily, forward along the heaving deck. He said the same, and hurried after them, getting a nod from the skipper, on the way.

Captain Flint and Peter Duck were busy, with sextant and chronometer, trying to get an observation. The sun was showing now and then through scurrying patches of grey cloud. There was not quite so much white water as there had been, and though the wind was still strong it was no longer lifting whole tops of waves.

“Come on,” shouted John, flinging his pyjamas down the hatch and swinging a canvas bucket over the side.

“Come on,” said Roger, tearing off his pyjamas, throwing them after John’s, ready for the bucketful of salt sea water that John emptied over him.

Those queer clothes of theirs certainly did seem to come off easily. Bill pulled at his ragged jersey, after wedging his jacket in a safe place among the halyards. He struggled out of his patched blue trousers. He pulled off the vest that for some weeks had been keeping him warm underneath. It was pretty cold, but if these children could stand it, he would.

“Come on,” said Bill, bracing himself to meet the bucketful that got him full in the face.

“Come on,” said John. “You take the bucket and chuck one at me. . . . I say, you do know how to dip full buckets. I never get a really full one first chuck. Hullo! Haven’t you got a towel? Skip along, Roger, and bring one up. Let’s have the bucket. I’ll try to give you a really good one, too.”

A few minutes later Bill rubbed a good deal of himself dry with the towel that Roger pushed up through the hatch. Somehow or other he forced damp arms and legs into his clothes and felt surprisingly warm. He would do the whole thing properly while he was about it. He took the canvas bucket and filled it once more over the side. Then, pulling out the toothbrush, he dipped it in.

“No need for that,” said John, thinking of the taste of salt water. “Susan always gives us a ration of fresh for teeth.”

“I was just giving it a bit of a damp,” said Bill. That was wrong, was it? Well, a fellow couldn’t learn all these tricks at once. He glanced hopefully aft. Perhaps they would be making sail. If it came to sails he’d be one up on these children again. Not like toothbrushes!

But he had to wait till after breakfast for his chance, and then it did not come with sails.

Breakfast was late. But the queer thing was that there was no shouting at anybody, though everybody must have been hungry. The two mates just came pelting up, saying they were sorry, and bolted round the corner into the galley, where the skipper himself had put the porridge on to boil in the double cooker. There was no doubt about it. The Wild Cat was a very queer ship indeed. And later, when everybody but the skipper was down in the saloon, and Susan was ladling out the porridge, while Peggy was sluicing hot cocoa into the mugs, Bill looked from face to face and wondered. There was probably a catch about it somewhere. But old Peter Duck blew the steam off his cocoa and swigged it as if everything was perfectly usual. Well, folk did say that there was nothing about the sea that Peter Duck didn’t know. Life in the Wild Cat was a bit different from life in a Grimsby trawler, and still more different from those days in the Viper which had left a fair lot of bruises on Bill but he supposed that the longer he lived the more he was likely to learn. With one eye on Mr. Duck, he blew the steam off his own cocoa, and pitched the porridge into his gullet, in the same calm, business-like manner that he admired in the old seaman. As for those children. . . . When breakfast was over and Captain Flint had come down for his, while Mr. Duck had gone on deck, and when Captain Flint had gone, too, and the crew were alone in the saloon, Bill saw his chance of showing that he, too, knew something. It came with a word that Nancy let slip about the horrible way in which the Wild Cat was shaking things up. Bill felt in his pocket. Yes, he still had that quarter plug of black tobacco. . . .

Captain Flint and Peter Duck had been on deck for some time smoking their morning pipes in the shelter of the deckhouse and wondering how soon things would have calmed down enough to let the Wild Cat square away once more for Finisterre. Captain Flint tapped his pipe out on the rail and noticed that nobody except himself and the old seaman had come on deck after breakfast.

“Funny, they’re so quiet down there,” he said. “I suppose they’ve a lot to talk over with young Bill. Hullo! There’s Nancy. . . .”

Nancy had come up through the forehatch. She moved unsteadily to the side, and looked over the bulwarks at the grey water and at the white-topped waves that came rolling down to the Wild Cat one after another, threatening to come aboard but never doing so.

“Hullo, Nancy?” called Captain Flint.

Nancy looked round, but did not answer.

“What’s the matter with Nancy?” said Captain Flint. “I thought she’d got over it for good, that first day.”

Just then Titty, very pale and green, came out of the companion, and stood there, holding on to the mast.

“You too?” said Captain Flint. “What have you been up to below decks? You were all right last night, and it was much worse then.”

Titty looked at him as if he were three yards farther away than he was. She slid and scrambled, keeping her feet but nearly falling, down to the bulwarks where she clung on by the shrouds.

“What’s happened?” asked Captain Flint again.

“It’s . . . it’s quite all right,” said Titty, and was dreadfully sick over the side.

“What can they be doing down there?” said Captain Flint, and he walked round the deckhouse and down the companion into the saloon.

He found no one in the saloon. But there was a noise of talking in the fo’c’sle. Captain Flint started forward. This is what he heard.

“That’s two.” The voice was the voice of Bill, who was sitting on a coil of rope talking to John, Susan, Peggy and Roger.

“Well, I told them not to try it,” said Susan. “And don’t spit on the floor again, please, Bill. Go on using the old paint can.”

“I think I’ve had enough for now,” said John.

“Can’t I try just a tiny bit?” said Roger.

“No,” said Susan.

“I’m not going to try it,” said Peggy.

“I can turn you all up without that,” said Bill. “This seasickness, it’s just nothing. Chewing tobacco ain’t got nothing to do with it. Shall I tell you how they cure me? ‘Don’t you never hold in,’ they said. ‘Get it over the side and feel better,’ they said. And the way they cure me was bacon fat. Have you got any bacon fat?”

“Yes,” said Peggy.

“Well, you wants a bit of string,” said Bill. “Then you ties the string to the biggest bit of bacon fat you can swallow. Then you swallows it, keeping a hold on the other end of the string. Then you . . .”

There was a noise of scuffling up the ladder and out of the forehatch.

Roger, with a face the colour of old mousetrap cheese, came bolting out of the fo’c’sle, was brought up sharp by a lurch of the vessel, grabbed at a bulkhead, came skidding through the alleyway into the saloon, dodged Captain Flint, struggled round the table, flung himself at the companion steps and climbed desperately.

The voice of Bill came again from the fo’c’sle, in, tones of mild surprise.