Arthur Ransome - Swallows and Amazons (Complete Series)

“I promise.”

“You know you’ve only got about three days left. We are going home at the end of the week. It would be a pity if two or three of you were to get drowned first.”

“Only three more days,” said John.

“The weather can’t keep on like this much longer and when it breaks you’ll have to come away from the island anyhow. A camp of drowned rats is no fun for anyone. I’ve tried it. You make the most of your three days. We’ll come again next year. You’re sure you’d rather I didn’t write to say you had never touched the houseboat?”

“Much rather.”

“Very well. Come in and see Vicky and have some tea.”

As soon as they had watched Swallow’s brown sail disappear beyond the Look-out Point and the north end of the island, Able-seaman Titty and the boy left the landing-place and went to the harbour.

“This isn’t a secret place,” said the boy.

“Any place is secret if nobody else is there,” said Titty. “Besides, we’re going up on my rock, where I was when I saw the bird that bobbed and flew under water.”

“Will the bird be there?”

“I don’t know. He may be.”

“Then it won’t be secret.”

“Yes it will. Birds don’t count. There’s nobody on the whole island except us and the mate, and she’s sewing on buttons. How many buttons has she got to sew?”

“Dozens,” said the boy. “One from each sleeve and then all the others came off the front when I tried to get both my shirts off at once.”

“That’ll take her a long time,” said the able-seaman. “This place will be as secret as any place could possibly be. Come on. Take your shoes and stockings off.”

They took their shoes and stockings off and left them on the beach. Then they paddled across the shallow to the big rock at the side of the harbour, climbed up it and settled themselves on the top of it, dangling their legs in the sunlight and looking out over the rippled lake.

“Anybody could see us here,” said the boy.

“Nobody could hear us,” said the able-seaman.

“What is the plan?” said the boy.

“Treasure,” said the able-seaman. “But I can’t tell you unless you promise to come, all by yourself with me. . . .”

“Nobody else?”

“Nobody else.”

“Not even Susan?”

“Nobody. We’ll go to a desert island, a really desert island, not this one, and there we’ll dig for treasure buried by pirates. For a long time we shan’t find it. They never do. But then, at last, there will be a hollow sound under our pickaxes and thousands of gold pieces will be rolling about in the sand.”

“But where is the island?”

“You haven’t said you’ll come. Treasure-seekers only tell each other. If I told you, you might go and let it out to a pirate or somebody.”

“I wouldn’t.”

“Well, will you come?”

“All right,” said the boy.

“You swear. Properly we ought to have a bit of paper and you ought to make a mark with your own blood. Can’t you prick your finger?”

“No,” said Roger.

“Well, you promise to come?”

“Yes.”

“Then lean over a bit that way. Bend down so that you can see under that bough. That’s the island.”

“But that’s Cormorant Island.”

“It’s Treasure Island too.”

“How do you know?”

“I heard the pirates burying their treasure there last night when I was in Amazon.”

“Real pirates?”

“Of course, real ones. They swore like anything.”

“Real treasure?”

“Of course, real treasure. I heard them say how heavy it was.”

“How shall we carry it if it’s very heavy?”

“Bit by bit. Some of it will be in ingots of gold. And then there’ll be lots of gold pieces, guineas and things. And precious stones. Diamonds. We’ll carry away a little at a time.”

The boy listened while the able-seaman told him all she knew about treasure islands. She knew a great deal. She told him how pirates captured ship after ship and took all the treasure out of each ship and made the crew walk the plank and fall into the sea to feed the sharks, and then how the pirates sank their prize and sailed on to capture another, to be emptied and sunk in the same way. She told him how, when the pirate ship was so crammed with treasure that there wasn’t room for dancing on the decks and the pirates could hardly get into their own cabins when they wanted to go to sleep, they sailed to an island and buried all the treasure in a safe place. She told him how they made a chart so that they could come and find the treasure when they were tired of pirating and wanted to retire and live in a house by the seashore, where they could spend their days looking out to sea with a telescope and thinking of the wicked things they had done. (“Or live in a houseboat, like Captain Flint,” said Roger.) She told him how the pirates always, or nearly always, lost the chart and how the treasure-seekers (“That’s you and me”) sometimes found the treasure instead of the pirates. She told him how sometimes the pirates fought among themselves till none were left, so that nobody knew where the treasure was. (“But we know, because I heard them putting it there.”) She was still talking about it when they heard Susan calling from the camp and, paddling back to the island, put on their shoes and stockings and ran to the camp for tea.

Just when they were finishing washing up after a tea that had been very native, probably because Susan was still not feeling happy about having let them stay up until morning, Captain John came home.

His first words were, “I told mother about our being out all last night and not coming home till to-day.”

“Was she very upset about it?” said Susan.

“I think she was rather, inside. But she hid it, and it’s all right now. Only, I’ve promised not to do it again.”

After that, Susan cheered up and became much less like a native and more like a mate.

“The worst of it is,” said John, “that mother says we’ve only got another three days, even if the weather does hold out.”

“We can do a lot in three days,” said Susan.

“There’s one thing we must do now,” said John. “And that’s make our chart. The Amazons will be here to-morrow, and they’ve got their own names for everywhere. We must make our chart to-day. Who’s going to help?”

Everybody wanted to help. A few minutes later Captain John was lying flat on his stomach on the ground with the guide-book and its map open before him. The others squatted round him, watching him copy the outline of the lake on two pages of the big exercise-book that had been brought for a log.

“There isn’t room to do it here really properly,” he said, “but this is a sketch chart and we’ll do a good one after we get home.”

“A huge one,” said Roger, “like daddy’s chart of the China Seas.”

“And we’ll hang it up on the schoolroom wall to show where we’ve been,” said Susan.

“And to plan more explorings,” said Titty.

“Will it have colours?” said Roger.

“Colours for the lights. We’ll put a blob of yellow for our lighthouse and two little blobs for the leading lights.”

“What colour will the land be?”

“They leave the land white on charts. It doesn’t count, except where you can see it from a ship. And even then only bits of it count. They’d put in Darien, because it’s a high point, but they wouldn’t bother to mark Holly Howe.”

“We will, won’t we?”

“We’ll put it in as a native settlement. They do that sometimes.”

“With a little picture?”

John drew a tiny house with trees and three little figures, a quarter of an inch high, for the natives, mother, Vicky and nurse. Then, in Houseboat Bay, he wrote its name and made a picture of the houseboat. Then again there was Dixon’s Farm, with a little figure and a cow, to show the produce of the country.