Arthur Ransome - Swallows and Amazons (Complete Series)

“Look! Look!” said Roger suddenly. “Do look at Gibber.”

Gibber was solemnly trotting along after Captain Flint. He had a belaying-pin in one hand, and when Captain Flint used the telescope, Gibber put the belaying-pin to his eye, and copied the skipper exactly.

Everybody shouted with laughter, and laughed the more when Captain Flint wondered what they were looking at, turned sharp round and caught Gibber at it, sweeping the horizon with the belaying-pin in a most professional manner.

And just at that moment, when not a single one of them down on deck was thinking of the island, there was a shout, almost a yelp, from the top of the foremast, far over their heads.

“Land ho!”

Bill had been in a tremendous hurry to get those two words out.

FIRST SIGHT OF CRAB ISLAND

“Where? Where?” Shouts floated up from the deck and across from the mainmast where Nancy was eagerly straining her eyes to see something more than that unending rim of sea.

“Starboard bow!” shouted Bill. “Let’s have that telescope, Cap’n John.”

“I see it, too,” said John. “Nearly dead ahead. Well done you for spotting it.”

“Well done, Bill!” Shouts came from all over the ship.

Gibber, seeing everybody looking up at Bill, dropped his belaying-pin, raced up past him, and clung to the truck at the very top of the foremast.

Captain Flint ran up the foremast shrouds.

“I want Mr. Duck to see this,” he said. “Look here, John, will you run down and take the wheel a minute?”

Peter Duck, alone of all the ship’s company, had not said a word on hearing Bill’s shout. He had hardly glanced up. At the moment he was at the wheel. His job was to steer the ship and keep her on a compass course, no matter what other people might be shouting, hanging about in the shrouds up there, or perched on the cross-trees.

But he gave John the wheel on getting the message from the skipper, and a moment later he was going up the foremast shrouds.

“It’s land all right,” said Captain Flint, handing him the glasses, which he had got from Susan in exchange for the big telescope before going aloft.

“Crab Island,” said Peter Duck. “There’ll be two hills there, but we’ve got ’em in line on this bearing, so’s they look like one. Maybe we’d better alter course a little to bring it on the port bow. With this wind we’ll be better going round the north end to look for an anchorage. There’s no place this side, only for wrecks. Well, I tell you, sir, I never thought to be seeing that place again.”

Everybody could see the land now, the faint, pale hump rising out of the sea, because everybody knew exactly where to look for it. Yet it was a long way distant when it had first been sighted. Very, very slowly the Wild Cat seemed to bring the island nearer. It was difficult to believe that she was sailing just as fast as she had been the day before. It was not until quite late in the day that they could see the long line of white surf that marked the shore. All through the afternoon, they were taking turns with glasses and telescopes, watching that pale sketch of a hill turn into something solid and dark, with green forest spreading over its slopes. In the end Captain Flint could bear it no longer, gave up looking at the island, and went into the deckhouse to play Miss Milligan’s patience, one game after another.

Towards evening they could see that there were indeed two hills, or rather three, one low one to the south, a large one in the middle with a black, rocky peak lifting above the trees, and another large one, though tree-covered, that had at first been hidden behind the shoulder of the other. And all along the western shore of the island there seemed to be a continuous line of breakers crashing in white surf upon the beach.

“And where was it your ship was wrecked?” asked Titty.

“It was black dark,” said Peter Duck, “so I couldn’t rightly say. But it’s my belief she’d be driven on the shallows on this side, and then, with the swell lifting her up and letting her drop, pounding her on the bottom, she’d break up in no time at all. And there’s not a boat could have lived that night, driving ashore with a big sea running. It’s a miracle I come ashore alive. There’d have been a lot of trouble saved, to Black Jake for one, and maybe to our skipper for another, if I hadn’t. There’s only one place along that shore where there’s a bit of quiet water. A foot or two, one way or the other, and I’d not be looking at the island now. The crabs or the fish would have had me long ago.”

“Palm trees,” said Titty suddenly, her mind taken from the thought of that old wreck by the new sights before her. “Look at them against the sky, up on that hill.”

“Can you see any of the crabs?” asked Roger, tugging at Captain Flint, who had put away his cards by now, and was looking at the island through the telescope.

“Not from this distance,” said Captain Flint. “Now, tell me, Mr. Duck, it was somewhere by this shore that you saw the stuff buried.”

“It was under my tree I see them two putting a bag in a hole. And that was right on the edge of the woods, where the palm trees grow down to the beach. Yes, it was down this side they come, and I followed ’em back over the shoulder of the big hill, and down t’other side to where they’d a boat ashore in a bay there is there. They likely knowed the island well, them two, bringing their boat ashore with a stream of water handy.”

“We’ll use their anchorage to-night,” said Captain Flint. “Mate Susan will be pleased enough to have her tanks full again.”

“Fresh-water washing for everybody to-morrow,” said Susan.

“Bathing,” said Titty.

“Nancy’s going to wash her hair,” said Peggy.

“Well, aren’t you going to wash yours?” said Nancy.

“The parrot’ll enjoy having a good splash, too,” said Titty. “He’s never really seemed to think much of salt water when I’ve offered him a bath.”

“Pretty good hills, they are,” said John. “There ought to be splendid climbing on those rocks.”

“We’ll do some exploring once we’ve got the treasure aboard,” said Captain Flint. “Bill’s Landing, it’s going to be. That’s one good name. What about Mount Gibber for the big hill? We’ll get no end of fun out of this place.”

“It’s when the anchor goes down that troubles begin,” said Peter Duck, who cared nothing at all for islands and wanted only to be sailing once more.

Bill watched the island but did not say a word. He knew the North Sea as well as most people know the place where they were born, and going to sea, for him, had usually meant fishing on the Dogger Bank. This was something different. Madeira, seen at dusk, with Black Jake close in pursuit, and the Viper coming up astern, had meant little more to him than a lucky bit of cover to allow the Wild Cat to throw the enemy off her track. But to come to this green island, with its beaches of bright sand, its black, cliff-like peaks, rising out of feathery palms swaying and blowing in the trade wind, this was indeed going foreign, and Bill would not trust himself to speak lest, for once, he should let the others see he was surprised. It was better to see all he could and to say nothing. These children would say everything that wanted saying.

And then another thought troubled his mind. These children seemed to find it easy to forget Black Jake, but Bill knew him. Peter Duck had been mighty sure that Black Jake would think they had run down to the Canaries when he found that they were not in Funchal harbour, but what if he hadn’t? What if somehow or other he had reached the island already? The Viper was a fast vessel and carried more sail than the Wild Cat. Bill looked eagerly enough at feathery palms and shining beach, but he looked for something else. Was anyone moving on those shores? Was anyone digging under those waving trees?