Arthur Ransome - Swallows and Amazons (Complete Series)

Titty thought for a minute.

“I’ve got it,” she said. “Let the first one who sights land be the first one to step out of the boat. You see it won’t be quite such a desert island for any of the others, because somebody will be ashore already.”

“That seems to be fair enough,” said Captain Flint. “And we might name the landing-place after him, too. Or her. It’ll probably be a her in this ship.”

After that people kept walking up to the bows to look ahead into the west, although Captain Flint had said there would be nothing to be seen until to-morrow.

“We may have gone a bit farther than he thinks,” said Roger. Telescopes and glasses were overworked. Everybody was wanting a turn with them.

“Who’s going to stay up all night?” said Nancy, as she came up on deck after tea.

“Nobody,” said Captain Flint. “The watch below goes to bed to-night exactly as if we were still a thousand miles from land.”

“Pity we aren’t,” said Peter Duck. “There’s no good comes of land anyhow, except ship’s stores, and they’re mostly not what they’re sold for.”

Nobody minded. Everybody knew that Peter Duck would have liked a clear passage, round and round the world with no land to bother about anywhere. He would have been a proper sailor to join the Flying Dutchman, that old ship that has been sailing on and on for hundreds of years and will sail on for ever.

“There’ll be nothing to see in the night,” said Captain Flint. “You and I’ll take one watch, Nancy, and Mr. Duck and John’ll take the other, and if we want anybody else on deck, we’ll send down to roust them out. There’ll be hard work for everybody to-morrow, and a good night’s sleep is the way to get ready for it. Sighting land’s nothing. The real work comes after.”

All the same, that evening, nobody was in a hurry to go below. Peter Duck and John had the first watch, but they were never really alone on deck until just before Captain Flint and Nancy turned out to take over at midnight. Even Susan was not as sensible as usual. She was very pleased with the way things had lasted out. They were not nearly half-way through the tinned foods, and they had a full six weeks’ water supply still in the tanks. She was feeling, perhaps, that she need not be so careful any longer. On any other night she would have chivvied Roger and Titty to bed, and gone to bed herself so decidedly that Peggy would have gone too. But, on this last night of the ocean voyage, she was walking up and down the deck with Peggy till nearly ten o’clock. Titty hung about the deckhouse, looking at the path of the moon over the sea and thinking of Columbus on his high poop. Roger, after he had begun to go to bed, came up again through the forehatch to tell the others that he had been to say good night to Gibber and had found the ship’s monkey so restless and jumpy that he was sure there must be a smell of palm trees in the air already. Nancy, knowing that her watch was to come, was the only one who went to bed in anything like proper time. Bill, of those who were not on duty, stayed up longest. He was never one to waste any sleep he could get, but, that last night, he did not go to his cabin after supper. Everybody thought he had, but he took his chance, and went up through the forehatch, and climbed out to the very end of the bowsprit, and sat there, astride of the spar, swaying on and on ahead of the ship, above the dark water in the moonlit night.

“What are you doing out there?” called Captain Flint, when he came on deck just before midnight, and strolled up forward, and saw Bill riding the bowsprit away out there under the foot of the jib. “Your watch below!”

Bill wriggled back inboard and shot down the forehatch like a startled rabbit down its burrow.

“Out on the bowsprit end, was he?” said old Peter Duck, when Captain Flint told him about it. “Many’s the night I’ve done that when I was a lad. It’s a grand place to see the stars from and to feel the driving of the ship.”

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An hour before the usual time, the crew and the deck of the Wild Cat were dripping with good salt water. Captain Flint and Nancy had turned in at four o’clock, when Peter Duck and John took over to watch for the last time the dark sails pale as the sky lightened, and for the last time to see the fiery ocean sunrise over the stern of the ship. But Captain Flint was up again at seven bells, and so were all the others. John, at the wheel, could hear drawers being pulled out and banged in again inside the deckhouse, and then Captain Flint came out with a hand lead for sounding and a big coil of line, with the depths marked on it with tags of bunting and bits of leather and string tied with knots. That certainly looked as if they were nearing land, although, for all that could be seen, the Wild Cat might have been no nearer land than she had been a week before. All round her, the sea stretched to the horizon. But there was the skipper bringing out the lead and hanging the lead line over a belaying-pin all ready for use. The dripping crew looked at the horizon in a new way, as if they expected to see something on the other side of it.

At breakfast everybody was bothering Peter Duck to tell them again just what the island would look like.

“It’ll be full forty year since I see it,” said Peter Duck, “and then it was a seaman point it out to me when we was passing far out. Two hills there are, and they open out as you goes to nor’ard of ’em. The biggest of ’em’s in the middle of the island. The other big one’s nor’-west from it, and then there’s a smaller you’d hardly notice away to south-east. That seaman as was telling me, he’d been there for water. I dare say I’ll remember the place when I see it, but it’s no use my telling you what I don’t know rightly myself.”

“You’ll be staying on deck to catch first sight of it?” said Titty, when Peter Duck was going off into the deckhouse.

“We shan’t sight it no sooner for my staying on deck,” said the old sailor. “I’m bringing to in my bunk till it’s my spell at the wheel. I’ll trust it to the rest of you to keep a look out for that island.”

Indeed not one of them could think of anything else. Even Gibber and the parrot, both of whom were brought on deck, were very restless. This may have been because they knew in some way of their own that land was near, or just because they felt the disturbance in the minds of all the crew. Nobody could settle down to anything, and Susan complained that that morning’s breakfast plates were the worst wiped of any plates on the whole voyage.

At midday Mr. Duck came on deck again and Captain Flint took observations of the sun and worked out the ship’s position. Everybody, except Mr. Duck, crowded into the deckhouse to see the little cross marked in pencil and then inked in in red ink. It showed how very near the island they really were.

“Any time now,” said Captain Flint, “but if it’s all the same to you,” he added, grabbing Peggy, who was just going to bolt forward to get a good place to look out from, “the cooks will let us have our dinners just the same.”

Dinner was quickly over, and for once even Susan thought it might be as well not to wash up right away. “We’ll wash up better after we’ve sighted it,” said Peggy, and Susan agreed. Everybody was on the look out. Bill had been the first to go aloft. He had climbed right up the foremast and was standing on the cross-trees. John had climbed up the ratlines and was waiting up there in the shrouds, close below Bill. Nancy had gone up the mainmast shrouds. Peggy, Susan, Roger, Titty, Gibber, and the parrot were all up on the foredeck. Captain Flint had let them have the glasses. John had the little telescope. Peter Duck was at the wheel. Captain Flint was walking up and down the starboard side of the deck, from the deckhouse to the capstan and back again, now and then sweeping the horizon with the big telescope.