Arthur Ransome - Swallows and Amazons (Complete Series)

“Well,” he said, “if they won’t wait to be told . . .”

Captain Flint smothered his laughter, turned back, and went up again on deck. By now the whole ship’s company was there, except, of course, Bill. Nancy, Susan and Peggy were up in the bows, looking doubtingly at each other. John was holding on to the capstan, swallowing hard and fast. Titty and Roger were leaning over the bulwarks together. Titty was holding Roger’s head. Mr. Duck was taking no notice of them at all, looking at clouds racing across the sky.

Captain Flint said nothing. He walked slowly forward, in time to see a shock of red hair come up out of the forehatch. Bill, the ragged ends of his blue trousers tucked into a spare pair of sea-boots, lent him by Peggy, climbed out.

“You keeps a hold of the end of the string,” he was saying, “and you jiggles it, just so’s to shift the bacon . . .”

Nancy, Susan and Peggy turned hurriedly away. John gulped.

“Look here, young man,” said Captain Flint to Bill. “We can’t have you aboard here if you begin the day by putting three-quarters of my crew out of action.”

“I was just telling ’em how to cure seasickness,” said Bill.

“Well, suppose you don’t,” said Captain Flint. “Those two mates are doing the cooking, and if you go on the way you’ve started there won’t be any dinner. You’d better stop this and give them a hand with the potatoes.”

“I’m a rare hand with potatoes,” said Bill willingly. “Gutting herrings, too. There ain’t a boy in Lowestoft can gut herrings like what I can. . . .”

“All right,” said Captain Flint. “Get those mates to give you some potatoes to peel. But don’t talk to them about herrings. Not yet.”

“Don’t seem as if they likes to learn about them things,” said Bill.

Nothing more was said about Bill’s cure for seasickness. Nobody bore him any malice for it, but he learnt that day that there were some things allowed in the Viper that were not allowed in the Wild Cat. After the middle-day dinner Captain Flint, impatient to be getting on, decided that under very much shortened sail she could stand what was left of the gale. Bill showed then, while they were setting the reefed foresail, that at some jobs not one of these children could touch him. Then, when the tiny headsail had been let draw, and the Wild Cat had heeled over and picked herself up to run, and was flying away to the south-west across the Bay of Biscay, Bill went aft, dug out once more his plug of black tobacco, cut himself a small scrap, braced himself close by the steering-wheel, and, silently chewing, settled down to watch with an expert eye Captain Flint’s performance as a helmsman.

“How long have you been chewing tobacco?” asked the skipper suddenly.

“I begin when I were young,” said Bill. “You needn’t be feared, sir. I always spits to loo’ard.”

“All right,” said Captain Flint. “But don’t waste tobacco on the others, and no chewing below decks or in your cabin.”

All the rest of that day, all that night, and all the next day, no one was allowed to touch the wheel but Captain Flint and Peter Duck, while the Wild Cat raced for the south among rolling seas that seemed like mountains. Whenever he could, Bill was on deck, watching them. It was only on the second day when the wind began to lessen, that he was at all dissatisfied. He admitted to himself that Captain Flint could steer well enough, though not up to Black Jake. With Peter Duck’s steering he had, of course, no fault to find. But he did think, that second day, that they might have shaken out a reef and carried a bit more sail.

Once, when Peter Duck sent him into the deckhouse with a message, he stopped to look at the sporting guns that Captain Flint had there standing upright in a rack, each with a bit of oily rag stuffed into the mouth of the barrel to keep dirt out.

“What’s this one?” he asked.

“Rifle,” said Captain Flint, glancing up from the chart.

“And this?”

“Shotgun.”

“Rabbits and such?” said Bill, looking with greater interest at the third.

“Elephant-gun, that,” said Captain Flint. “I had it in Ceylon.”

“There ain’t no elephants aboard the Viper,” said Bill, “but I reckon it’s lucky you got them guns.”

“We’ve lost the Viper all right, after that last blow,” said Captain Flint, “even if he didn’t go right up the Irish Sea looking for us in that fog.”

“When Black Jake’s got his teeth into something he don’t let go as easy as that,” said Bill.

“Cheer up,” said Captain Flint. “We won’t hand you over.”

“I wasn’t thinking you would,” said Bill.

Queer ship, the Wild Cat was, and queer folk aboard her, too. They didn’t seem to take things seriously. They didn’t know Black Jake and his friends. Bill said no more, and went out.

But Nancy, who had been looking at the pencilled spot on the chart, that Captain Flint had just been putting there to mark their position, followed him. She found him in the lee of the deckhouse looking up at the sails.

“What’s up, Bill?” she said.

“If this ship was mine,” said Bill, “and I had Mr. Duck aboard her, and knowed that Black Jake was after him, I wouldn’t be sailing her easy. I’d crowd on sail, and carry on till her masts went or I sailed her under. That’s how I’d sail, if I knowed that Black Jake was a-sailing after me.”

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On the fourth day after the Wild Cat had dodged the Viper in the fog and picked up the red-haired Bill, the look out (Peggy, as it happened) got a first sight of Finisterre. There had been a good deal of mist after the storm, and Captain Flint had been looking at the log every half-hour or so and spending a lot of time in the deckhouse doing one sum after another to find out how far they must have sailed. He had been very pleased indeed when Peggy had suddenly called out that she saw land. The mist was lifting to the south-east, and there, below it, was the long, steep-browed cape and the rock of Centolo lying off the point, and two or three tunny-fishers with their tall sails. Captain Flint came out and sat on the roof of the deckhouse staring proudly at Finisterre almost as if he felt it was his own. After all, he had left the Land’s End in a thick fog, and been hove-to for a good many hours in the storm, and found his way here right across the Bay of Biscay. Anyone thinks well of a point or a lighthouse if it turns up just when and where he has been expecting to see it. And all the crew of the Wild Cat crowded along the rail and took turns with glasses and telescopes in looking at the famous cape.

It was a long way off, and there was no point in going nearer to it. At least, so Captain Flint thought, and in the end everybody agreed about it. Some of them had at first been thinking that it would be fun to land in Vigo and Lisbon, and anyhow to sail close along the coasts of Spain and Portugal. But there were good reasons why they should not waste a single moment on mere sightseeing.

“Suppose we go into Vigo,” said Captain Flint, “and spend a couple of days there. Those two days may be just enough to let Black Jake get to Crab Island before us.”

Peter Duck agreed with Captain Flint, and he had other reasons of his own. “Harbours,” he said, “are all one and all dirt. Well enough if we was hard up for grub or run out of water, but a well-found ship’s no need of them. Now the Thermopylae, she’d be as much as a hundred and twenty days out of Shanghai, and did she ever run into a port where she’d no cargo to land? Of course she didn’t. And why should we? I’m not so set on Crab Island, but that’s where we’re bound for, and I’m all for keeping her sailing till she makes it. We owes it to the ship.”