Arthur Ransome - Swallows and Amazons (Complete Series)

He paddled Swallow in with an oar and beached her between two of the wooden jetties below a big green shed. The rowing boat grounded beside her, and Captain Flint stepped out.

“So far so good,” he said, “and very good. I’ll be back in a minute.” Leaving Captain John in charge of both boats he went up a narrow alleyway between two of the sheds.

In this place John felt more like a ship’s boy than a captain. He tidied poor Swallow, hauled down her flag, rolled it round its stick and put it in the bows of the rowing boat. He pulled the rowing boat up another foot or two, when he saw that she was a little flustered by the wash of a passing steamer. When he had done all he could for his two charges, he began to use his eyes and nose and ears. There was something pleasant here for all of them. There was a smell of tarred rope, for one thing, one of the most heartening of all good smells. Then for his ears there was the sound of hammering, two quick taps and a good one to make sure, coming again and again from inside the green shed where a man and a boy hardly older than himself were busy putting in the copper fastenings in the planking of a little dinghy. Nor was hammering the only noise. There was the steady swish, swish of a plane taking long curling shavings off an oar that was being made. Further up the shed there was the noise of a saw cutting planks. In the next shed, into which John could see without moving more than a yard or two from the Swallow, there was a long wooden box with steam oozing out of it. It was not very deep or very wide, but it was more than half as long as the shed. That box, as John knew, was being used for steaming planks so that they could be bent to the right shape for the boats that were being built.

A long time in this place would have seemed short, but Captain Flint was gone only a few minutes. He came back with the chief boat-builder, a short square man with a cheerful ruddy face and a pleasant eye, who told John it was a grand day, which, considering what had happened, John thought most untrue. He looked at the patch on the outside of Swallow, prodded at the planking round the patch, felt the ribs inside, and lifted out the broken mast, as if he thought it much more natural for boats to be shipwrecked than otherwise. No one would have known, while he was looking at Swallow, that she was the most important ship on the lake and that the holidays of at least six people partly depended on getting her put right at once.

“Well, Mr. Turner,” he said, “we’re very busy just now, and I don’t like taking men off other jobs . . .”

And then Captain Flint just took him by the arm and walked off up the alleyway and out of sight. When they came back a few minutes later, the boat-builder was smiling, and things suddenly seemed less hopeless than for those few minutes John had thought them.

“You did well to get her off the bottom at all without sending for us,” the boat-builder said to John. “That’s saved a day or two at least with us so busy here. We’ll have to take those planks out and put in fresh and see what else there is to be done, but I promise we won’t lose any time at all.”

“And will she really be all right again?” asked John.

“Better than a new ship,” said the boat-builder. “Better than a new ship she’ll be, eh, Robert?” This last he said to another boat-builder who came out from the shed in his shirt-sleeves, dusting the sawdust from his trousers. This second boat-builder shook hands with Captain Flint, nodded to John, prodded the broken planking and peered inside and out, just as the first had done.

“Bit of a bump she’s had,” he said at last.

“She has that,” said the first, “but we’ll make her better than a new ship, eh?”

“And why not?” said the second.

“That’s all right then,” said Captain Flint. “And you won’t forget that we’re counting on you to put the job through as quick as you can.”

“That’s right,” said the chief boat-builder. “There’ll be no time lost.”

Captain Flint stepped into his rowing boat, John followed, and the boat-builder, with one push, sent her shooting out between the jetties without touching the motor boats moored on either side.

“We’ll row four oars,” said Captain Flint, and then, while they were getting the oars out, he went on: “Um! Shipbuilders always say that, but I think old James means it for once. I told him that every day without Swallow is a day wasted. I think it sank in. Well, now for Holly Howe.”

John thought Holly Howe was likely to be much worse than Rio. He hardly knew what mother would say when she heard that all four of them had had to swim from a sinking ship, even if it had only been for a few yards. But Captain Flint laid to his oars and set so fast a stroke that John, who, whatever else he did, was not going to let himself get out of time, had enough to do without worrying about what was still to come.

“Easy with the right. Pull left,” sang out Captain Flint, as they turned sharply round the point into the bay and headed for the Holly Howe boathouse from which, only two days before, Swallow and her crew had sailed so happily away.

Presently Captain Flint slackened his stroke, and John was able to take a quick glance over his shoulder. They were nearing the jetty, and looking up the field to the old farm he saw someone in a blue frock sitting on a chair outside it. That must be mother, and the small lump of blue beside her must be Bridget playing about on the grass.

“Easy,” said Captain Flint.

A moment later, John was scrambling up on the jetty.

“Hang on to the painter,” said Captain Flint. “I’m just going up to talk to your mother. If you give her the news you’ll tell her about Swallow first and then she’ll think that half the crew are drowned. Better let me tell her, and then she’ll begin by knowing that she hasn’t had the luck to lose any of you.”

He had vaulted up on the jetty and was through the gate and striding up the field before John had time to answer.

John wondered. Would he have begun by telling mother he had wrecked Swallow? Why, of course he would. What else was there to say? How on earth would Captain Flint begin in any other way?

UNDER JURY RIG

He looked up the long, steep field, up which Roger had tacked like a sailing ship that day, a year ago now, when daddy’s telegram had come to say they might sail in Swallow and camp on the island. He saw Captain Flint wave his hat, mop his bald head with his big red-and-green handkerchief, and shake hands, first with mother and then with little Bridget. Then he saw him sit down on the grass. Everything looked peaceful and happy, as if there could be no news of shipwrecks in the air. Suddenly mother jumped up out of her chair.

“He’s told her,” said John to himself.

But she sat down again, not quite so comfortably this time, leaning forward as if she were asking questions. She threw her head back. “He’s made her laugh,” said John. The next thing was that Bridget went off through the gate into the farm, and Mr. Jackson, the farmer, came round the corner from the barn, and Captain Flint went to talk to him and they shook hands. “He’s telling him about Swallow.” Then there was Bridget, running out again with a blue sunbonnet on and waving another in her hand. Then nurse came out to the little wicket gate of the garden. Then mother was putting on the blue sunbonnet Bridget gave her. “Bridgie’s tying the strings. She always does,” said John to himself. Then he saw that nurse was waving from the gate, and Bridget waving back. Then mother and Captain Flint came walking down the field towards the boathouse, and Bridget danced about beside them.