Arthur Ransome - Swallows and Amazons (Complete Series)

Almost everything was to be kept in the stores tent, but Roger had got a new fishing-rod and would not let it be stacked with the others, but wanted it with him in his own tent. “It doesn’t take any room longwise,” he said, “and I might want to fish with it any time.” Titty would not be parted from her box of writing things. And, of course, John kept in his own tent the tin box with the ship’s papers, and had his watch and the little barometer he had won as a prize at school hanging from hooks on the bamboo tentpole at the head of his tent, so that he could unhook them and look at them in the night without having to get up.

THE ISLAND CAMP

“It’s a far better camp than last year,” said Titty, looking at the four sleeping-tents and the stores tent that once had been hers and Susan’s. “And it’ll be better still when the Amazons have put their tent up in the old place. Let’s put some damp stuff on the fire to make a smoke they can’t help seeing.”

“It doesn’t matter how soon anybody comes now,” said the mate.

Titty and John pulled handfuls of damp green grass and threw them on the fire until a thick column of bitter grey smoke poured up and nearly choked them.

“Is the boy up at the Look Out Point?” said the mate.

Roger crawled hurriedly out of his tent where just for a minute he had been practising being asleep, ready for the night.

“Can we explore now?” he said. “And can I take the telescope?”

“It’s in the captain’s tent,” said the mate.

“No. I’ve got it,” said the captain, and handed it over to the ship’s boy, who dashed off with it at once to Look Out Point, to lie there hidden behind a clump of heather with the telescope poking through it so that without being seen he could look far up the lake, as far as the islands off Rio.

The parrot, who had been quiet for some time, suddenly called out, “Pieces of eight! Pieces of eight!”

Titty opened the door of his cage.

“Come on, Polly. You can come out and enjoy yourself like everybody else.”

The parrot scrambled out at once, but took no notice of Titty who offered him her hand to perch on. The parrot had its cold eye on the arrow with the green feather that Roger had stuck in the ground by the wood pile, and the moment his cage was opened, he made straight for it. Titty saw what he was after and quickly pulled up the arrow and put it out of the parrot’s sight, on the top of the wood pile.

“No, no!” she said. “You know you’ll only chew them and rumple them till they’re no good for anything. It isn’t as if you moulted such a lot of them. There aren’t any to spare. Susan, may I give him a lump of sugar?”

But the parrot was not to be comforted with sugar. What he wanted was his own green feathers from the Amazons’ arrow, and as he could not have them, he went back into his cage to sulk.

They left the parrot to forget his bad temper, and hid the arrow behind some of the boxes in the stores tent because, as John said, the Amazons were sure to want it, and as Titty said, Polly didn’t seem to like seeing his feathers being useful after he’d thrown them away himself. The captain, the mate and the able-seaman went together along the path by the western shore of the island down to the harbour to see Swallow lying there in her old snug berth. It was no use waiting for Roger. After all there would be the boat from Holly Howe, bringing the best of all natives and the ship’s baby. And then there might be Captain Flint in his big rowing boat, and at any minute the little white sail of the Amazon might come into sight from among the Rio Islands. There was really some sense in being a look-out, and nothing would stir Roger from his post.

On the beach in the harbour there were the marks of several boats. One, of course, showed where John had landed in the Swallow. The others, they thought, must have been left by the Amazon.

“They probably beached her here while they were putting the new paint on the leading mark,” said John.

“And piling up all that wood,” said Susan.

“They’ve painted it very well,” said Titty, looking at the white cross painted on the tree stump that served, with the forked tree behind it, to show the way to mariners who wished to bring their ships in safely through the rocks outside. “And the nails are still there where we had the lanterns last year.”

“Mother says, ‘No more night sailing,’ ” said John, “and I’ve promised, so we shan’t want the leading lights.”

“We can easily plan things that don’t need night sailing,” said Titty. “There’s lots of the Antarctic unexplored and all the Arctic at the other end of the lake.”

“It’s no good talking about that till the Amazons come,” said John.

“And Captain Flint,” said Titty.

There was a great deal to look at. There was the rock where Titty had lain flat on her stomach and seen the dipper bob at her and fly under water. There was the rock she had hidden behind when Nancy and Peggy had come ashore with a lantern in the dark and she had been alone on the island. John, looking at the little waves lapping on the rocks outside was remembering how Nancy had first shown him how to use the marks. Susan, looking down the lake, was trying to find the place where she had made a fire on the shore after their visit to the charcoal-burners up in the high woods. This year there was no trickle of smoke up there among the trees, and, indeed, Mrs. Jackson, the farmer’s wife at Holly Howe, had told them already that the charcoal-burners were not working on this side of the lake but up beyond the moor on the other side, in the next valley.

All three, even Susan, who, as mate, felt herself in charge of the others, for John, though captain, was a boy and not to be counted on in some things, walked on their toes, springily, and talked very quietly. To be back on Wild Cat Island was almost too good to be true. Titty dipped her hands in the cool water of the harbour, just to show herself that she was really there. They went slowly back, pushing their way through the bushes above the western shore, looking out through the leaves at the bright glint of evening sunshine on the lake below them. They had been all over the island and were just thinking of bathing, when they heard a shrill yell from the Look Out Point.

“There they are!”

All three of them ran up through the camp and under the tall tree. Roger was lying on his stomach at the edge of the cliff that dropped down there into the lake.

“Where? Where?” asked John, looking everywhere for the little white sail of the Amazon. There were rowing boats, motor boats, a few big yachts and a steamship, but no little white sail was to be seen.

“Mother and Bridget,” said Roger.

“Let me have the telescope,” said the mate.

She took one look, then gave the telescope to Titty, and ran down again into the camp.

Titty looked. Already this side of Houseboat Bay she could see the native rowing boat from Holly Howe. Mother was rowing and Bridget was sitting in the stern in the middle of a lot of parcels.

Titty ran down into the camp to help Susan. Susan was right. There was no time to lose if a kettle was to be brought to the boil, and everything else made just as it should be. John and Roger waited together up on Look Out Point, watching the rowing boat grow larger until even without the telescope it was easy to see who was in it. At last the rowing boat was within hailing distance. Bridget waved and mother looked over her shoulder as the captain and the ship’s boy called to her over the water. Presently they were looking down into the rowing boat as mother rowed past, and then they ran down through the camp to join the mate and the able-seaman at the landing-place.