Arthur Ransome - Swallows and Amazons (Complete Series)

Peter Duck taught everybody a good many things about knots and ropes that are not to be found in books. Captain Flint taught both John and Nancy how to take an observation with the sextant, and together they wrestled with problems in mathematics a great deal harder than any they had met at school. At first the sums they worked out after taking their shots at the sun (and it is not easy to use a sextant on a swaying deck) ended up by making out that the Wild Cat was sailing in the Sahara Desert, crossing the Andes, or passing within hail of well-known cities in the Middle West. But before long they could be pretty sure of finding that she was somewhere in the Atlantic, and during the last few days of the voyage there was seldom more than fifty or sixty miles’ difference between the results of their calculations and those of Captain Flint. This was perhaps the nearest thing to lessons anybody had while aboard ship. Captain Flint used to tell them all about the famous mining rushes of the past, but you could hardly call that history, any more than you could put down as natural science Peter Duck’s yarns about being towed by a shark, or the truth about the sea serpent, which he had seen more than once, or about Pelorus Jack, the fish that used to pilot vessels into Pelorus Sound (New Zealand), and had a law made for his protection.

Every day at noon Captain Flint worked out the ship’s position and marked it on the chart with a little cross of red ink and the date neatly written beside it. Everybody used to go into the deckhouse to take a look at it. That chart, and those little red crosses marking out a line that ran from the Lizard down to Finisterre, and then to Madeira, and then south-west down into the North-east Trades and then west, on and on, was almost the only thing that made it seem possible that they were really moving, and nearing the other side of the Atlantic. One stretch of sea is very like another. But for these little red crosses, each one a little farther across the chart, it might have seemed that they had been sailing in the middle of an enormous dish, sailing hard and fast but somehow fixed in the middle of it, so that they had never moved at all.

MORNING SPLASHES

For days and days they saw no other vessels. And then one morning, as the sky lightened and the stars faded out and the sun rose over the stern, Nancy and Captain Flint, who were on watch together, saw a three-masted ship, full-rigged, under a tremendous press of canvas, far away on the horizon before them and heading about north-west. For some time they had seen, dimly, that there was something there, but now the rays of the sun, slanting low across the water, lit up her sails like pale hedge-roses. Every sail, filled by the wind, seemed curled and coloured like a petal.

“It’s worth fetching Mr. Duck out of his bunk to see that,” said Captain Flint, and Nancy took the wheel, while he went into the deckhouse.

Peter Duck was out of his bunk in a moment, alert, ready, as if he were still on watch. He came out of the deckhouse, took the telescope, and looked at the distant vessel. The rose on her sails was paling every moment as the sun climbed higher.

“Minds me of the Louisiana Belle,” he said. “Yankee clipper, homeward bound, that’s what she is. Does me good, it does, to see a ship like that. Skysails over her royals. And main and mizen staysails set.”

He looked sadly over the sails of the Wild Cat, wishing she could carry a little more canvas somewhere.

Captain Flint laughed.

“Can’t help it, Mr. Duck. There isn’t another stitch we can put on her.”

Mr. Duck said nothing. He was thinking of the Thermopylae, of his own youth, of days gone by. He lifted the telescope again and watched the ship, far, far away on the horizon. Her sails shone now like white sparks in the sunlight, even to Nancy and Captain Flint, who were looking at her with the naked eye.

“Hull down she’ll be in an hour,” said Peter Duck at last. “We’ll maybe not see another all the voyage. Rot screw steamers,” he burst out fiercely, “driving vessels like her off the seas where they belong!”

When the others came on deck, the vessel was already below the horizon. Nancy told them about her.

“We really must be getting across,” she said. “Mr. Duck thinks she’d come up from the Horn, bound for Boston or New York.”

“We ought to begin to look for branches then,” said Titty, “and birds. Columbus saw lots before he sighted land.”

“His course was a bit north of ours,” said Captain Flint, “so he saw the weeds of the Sargasso.”

“He found a crab and kept it,” said Titty. “And lots of flowers. Don’t you remember reading us that bit last week?”

“We’ll begin keeping a look out for them,” said Captain Flint, though not as if he thought they would be seeing anything very soon.

But two nights after that, while John was at the wheel, keeping watch with Peter Duck, he heard a frightened cheeping in the dark, and when it grew light he found a little bird like a spotted flycatcher, only with green on its wings, sheltering under the dinghy. It would not eat rice, or oatmeal, or even biscuits. Everybody was afraid it would be starved. But then Peggy remembered some flour that Susan had wanted to throw away because it had maggots in it. Roger had said, “Think if we were wrecked. We wouldn’t mind the maggots then.” And Susan had said he could keep it if he liked, so long as it didn’t get loose. Roger had put it in an old cocoa tin, and kept it in his cabin, in case of shipwreck. This was very lucky, because the little bird took no interest in any of the ordinary kinds of food, but was delighted with the maggots. It ate about a dozen, sipped some water, had a bath in a saucer, dried itself, perching on the mainsheet in the sunshine, and then suddenly flew away over the bows, on into the west.

“We must be getting near land,” said Titty, “or he’d have stayed longer.”

“Birds is foolish like,” said Bill. “I’ve knowed ’em fly slap bang into the lantern, when we was lying to our nets out in the North Sea. Same as moths, birds are. No sense to ’em.”

“Well, we must be very near land all the same,” said Titty.

“I wonder if it’s the right land,” said Peggy.

“I never thought of that,” said Roger, and went into the deckhouse to make sure. “Where are we now?” he asked Captain Flint.

“Have a look for yourself,” said Captain Flint.

Roger looked.

On the chart on the deckhouse table, the red crosses had been coming nearer and nearer to the outer islands and towards a tiny speck round which a red ink circle had been drawn.

John, who was looking over Roger’s shoulder, measured to see how far the red crosses were from each other, and how far the last one was from the little circle that marked Crab Island.

“I say,” said John, “if we do as much to-day as we did yesterday we ought to get there to-morrow.”

“I’m not sure about that,” said Captain Flint. “We’re not doing quite what we were, but unless it falls calm again, we ought to be seeing Crab Island some time before to-morrow night.”

As he spoke, coming out of the deckhouse, to look round, the wind freshened a little. It was almost as if the Wild Cat had heard him and had made up her mind to have a good run to finish up with.

“Oughtn’t we to nail a gold ducat to the mast?” said Titty, “to be given to the one who first sights land? Or was it some other bit of money? Anyway, Columbus did it.”

“There isn’t a ducat aboard,” said Captain Flint.