Arthur Ransome - Swallows and Amazons (Complete Series)

Captain Flint did not bother about asking them all how they were. As soon as he saw that something serious had happened, he rowed in to the shore, stepped out, pulled his rowing boat a little way up out of the water and joined the others by the wounded ship.

“Lost a mast? Holed her too? Well, these things will happen.”

As Nancy Blackett always said, one of the best things about her Uncle Jim was that he never asked you why you tumbled down.

He looked carefully at the hole in Swallow’s planking, but asked no questions except about the parrot.

“He’s quite all right,” said Titty. “He’s looking after the island. He doesn’t know yet about Swallow.”

“And you’ve left old Peter Duck behind?”

Titty looked at him and for a moment was not very pleased. But, after all, everybody there knew all about Peter Duck.

“You know he’s only for a story,” she said.

“I know,” said Captain Flint, bending down and working his hand through the hole to feel if the ribs had been damaged. “I know. But has he been up to much since he steered us home from the Caribbees when the waterspout came just in time and licked up the pirate ship?”

“No,” said Titty. “Just staying at home in his boat and doing a little fishing.”

Captain Flint stood up again.

“It’s a boat-builder’s job,” he said. “I’ll row along there and tell them to send out a salvage party.”

“Couldn’t we patch her up?” said John. “I wanted to take her to Rio to find out how much the mending would cost before going to tell mother about it. That’s why we got her up.”

“Got her up?” said Captain Flint. “Where was she?”

“I ran her on the Pike Rock and she sank right away.”

“We all had to swim,” said Roger.

“You got her up from out there?”

“Yes.”

“By yourselves? Well done. How did you manage about the ballast and the anchor?”

“I had time to throw the anchor out before she sank. That helped when we were ready to pull her up.”

“And the ballast?”

“He dived again and again and we pulled it up one pig at a time,” said Nancy.

“Good work,” said Captain Flint. “And don’t you worry about the boat-builders. It won’t cost much anyway, and I’ve just got another dollop of pocket-money from my publishers, and you know my book 1would never have been published at all if you people hadn’t saved it for me, so that you’ve got at least as much right as I have to the money it makes. You needn’t bother your mother about that.”

Susan and John looked at each other. Roger was hardly listening. He was looking at a promising-looking box in Captain Flint’s rowing boat. Titty said, “Not really?”

“Of course,” said Captain Flint, “you went treasure-hunting and found my book. My book goes on turning into publisher’s cheques. They’re the next best thing to Spanish gold. It’s as if you’d found a barrel or two of doubloons on Cormorant Island. So don’t you worry about the money.”

“I’ve got to go and tell mother anyway,” said John, “to find out what we can do next. We’ll probably have to go back to Holly Howe.”

“No more sailing,” said Titty.

“But we’ve only just begun,” said Roger, hearing something in Titty’s voice that told him things were serious.

“Something’s got to be done,” said Nancy desperately. “Of course we could lend them Amazon.”

“No, no, no.” Neither John, Susan nor Titty would hear of that. Roger would not have minded, though he did not think much of the look-out’s place in Amazon. There was not enough room before the mast.

Captain Flint looked from face to face. Then he had another look at Swallow’s broken planking.

“There’s only one sensible thing to do,” he said at last. “You are shipwrecked. Why not be shipwrecked? Stay where you are and make the best of it until your ship’s been mended and is ready to put to sea.”

“Mother’ll never let us. It’s the wrong side of the lake for her,” said Susan.

“Why not?” said Peggy. “It’s the right side for us.”

“It’s not really much farther than the island,” said Captain Flint. “Look here. You’ve got to sleep somewhere. Pitch a camp here. Make it a good one. Nancy and Peggy’ll help to bring your things across. The skipper and I will see what can be done with Swallow, and when we go to Rio we’ll bring Mrs. Walker back with us and I bet she’ll let you stop if you’ve made a really good show of it. Settled. Get a move on, you pirates. Now then, Skipper, what are we going to stop this hole with? We don’t want her sinking in deep water on the way to Rio.”

“In ‘Sir Patrick Spens,’ ” said Titty, “they wapped it with silk and cloth. But the sea came in all the same.”

“We must do better than that,” said Captain Flint. “A bit of tarpaulin’s what we want.”

“We could take a bit of one of the old ground-sheets,” said John. “There’s a spare one in the stores tent.”

“Polly’s looking after it.”

“Hi, Titty, are you coming across?” shouted Captain Nancy, who was already getting Amazon ready for launching.

“We’re coming too,” said Captain Flint. “We’ll give you a passage, Able-seaman.”

A minute or two later Captain Flint in his rowing boat, with John and Titty, was pulling hard after the Amazon, sailed by Nancy, with Susan and Roger. Peggy alone stayed in Horseshoe Cove to keep the fire going and to turn the clothes on the stones when they had toasted enough on one side. Susan had to leave the fire to Peggy, because she knew where everything was, and so had to look after the striking of the island camp.

Striking camp on Wild Cat Island would have been a more melancholy business than it was, if everybody had not been in such a hurry. Captain Flint and John would hardly wait for a few more small bits of cargo as soon as they had taken the spare ground-sheet, and the tin box that had fishing tackle and tools in it with the hammer and the box of mixed nails which was what they really wanted. Captain Nancy kept the others at it like slaves. “Quick, quick,” she was saying. “Jump to it. Save all you can before the ship goes to pieces.”

“But it isn’t a ship,” said Roger, “it’s an island.”

“Lucky for you it’s so stoutly built,” said Nancy. “It might have broken up long ago.”

“Besides, the tide may be coming in with a rush to sweep everything away,” said Titty, hurriedly rolling up her sleeping-bag.

“That’s enough for one load,” said Nancy, who was seeing to the stowing of the cargo. “We don’t want to be swamped. Look out, Able-seaman; the boom won’t clear the parrot’s cage. He’ll get swept overboard. Burrow his cage down between the tents and the sleeping-bags. Hi, Roger! Come along. We’ll make another voyage yet. Shove her head round. Don’t wet the tents more than you can help. Scramble in.”

But long before the Amazon, with a full cargo, returned from her first trip to the island, Captain Flint and Captain John had landed from the rowing boat and were hard at work. A big patch of waterproof canvas had been cut out of the ground-sheet. (“In time of shipwreck,” said Captain Flint, “you don’t think twice about a scrap of tarpaulin.”) It had been fitted and tacked roughly in place, and Captain Flint was now hard at it with the hammer. “Just listen to the ship’s carpenter,” said Titty, as the Amazon sailed into the cove.

Captain Flint was putting in a neat row of small flat-headed nails round the edge of the patch and beating the canvas close down on the planking as he did so, to make as tight a fit as he could. John was picking out the smallest flat-headed nails from the mixed lot in an old tobacco tin that had been given to him by the farmer at Holly Howe, and Captain Flint was holding two or three in his lips all ready, so that there was no waiting between banging in one nail and beginning to bang in the next. “The last time I had this job to do,” he was saying, mumbling a bit because of the nails he was holding in his lips, “it was when I’d come a nasty bump in a ship’s gig against the coast of Java. Better patch than this, though (bang). We melted some rubber to bed it in properly (bang). Didn’t leak a drop (bang). Didn’t have to (bang). Shouldn’t be here if it had (bang). Ready for some more nails, Skipper. That’s my last.”