Arthur Ransome - Swallows and Amazons (Complete Series)

“I’ll be saying good-bye to you,” said Mary Swainson, “or I’ll have that butter spoiled yet.” And she clattered back into the farmhouse after getting Peggy, Titty and Roger safely beyond the porch.

“I wish he’d sung more songs,” said Roger, as they went off. But they were not more than a few yards on their way before they heard the high creaky old voice singing again:

“Of such a fox chase there niver was known,

The huntsmen and followers were instantly thrown.

To keep within sound didn’t lie in their power,

For hounds chased the fox eighty mile in five hour.”

“He’s always like that,” said Peggy. “And Mrs. Swainson is always making quilts. She must have made hundreds and hundreds.”

“Did you see the copper kettle?” said Titty.

“I’d have liked to hear him blow the horn, the long one,” said Roger. “May I carry the milk? I didn’t have a chance of carrying it this morning.”

“Properly,” said Titty, after walking silently for some way along the cart-track down through the trees—“properly, we couldn’t get milk at a farmhouse. We were cast ashore. There weren’t any houses along that desolate coast. But, of course, we could have caught some of the wild goats and milked them. That’s what we must have done.”

“Yes,” said Roger, “and didn’t they butt? It took two of us to hold a goat while the other one milked.”

That explained the milk well enough. Then the road had to be dealt with. There it was, between the wood along the shore of the lake and the wood that climbed the side of the hill, a broad road with motor cars on it, and motor bicycles and even butchers’ vans. It was a nuisance to have a road like that in newly discovered country. Columbus was never bothered with anything like that when he discovered America.

“What do you do about the road?” Titty asked after they had crossed it and were finding their way to the stream from the cart-track on the other side.

“How?” said Peggy.

“Its being so noisy and native. And not the right kind of native.”

“We just don’t count it,” said Peggy, “not when we come to Horseshoe Cove. It’s the edge of our country. We never bother about it at all. It’s a good long way from the lake.”

“Yesterday,” said Titty, “it was a road of the Aztecs. They were trumpeting to each other along it—the guards, I mean.”

“That was a fine idea,” said Peggy. “I don’t believe even Nancy would have thought of that. But you had to cross it, if you went up on the moor. I suppose you watched for a chance and made a dash for it when they weren’t looking.”

“We didn’t,” said Roger, and was just going to tell how they had found a way under the road instead of across it when they heard Nancy’s voice, loud and clear, though some distance away, through the trees.

“A sail! A sail!”

All three of them started forward at a gallop, but Roger pulled up quickly, as the milk was slopping from the can. The others stopped, and Peggy took the can from him.

“Hurry up,” she said. “I’ll take the milk. It doesn’t spill if you run without bobbing.” And, indeed, though she ran nearly as fast as the others, even in scrambling through the bushes, she spilt very little.

She left the milk-can at the mouth of the stores tent. Titty and Roger raced on out of the trees to the beach, where the parrot in his cage was alone looking after the fire. At the very end of the northern of the two headlands that made the narrow entrance to the cove, a large towel was waving on the top of an oar fixed in the rocks. Under it stood Nancy and Susan, taking turns with the telescope. The others joined them.

“It isn’t exactly a sail,” said Roger.

It was, in fact, a rowing boat. And even eyes without telescopes could see that Captain Flint and Captain John were rowing and that mother and Bridget were sitting in the stern.

“You got the milk all right?” asked Susan, as the others clambered out over the rocks. “Good. Everything’s all ready for them. But only just . . .”

Table of Contents

At the bottom of their hearts, even Susan and Titty and Roger, all of whom knew mother very well, had been a little afraid that when she came it would be to tell them that they must come back to Holly Howe. Nancy and Peggy had been sure, secretly, that this was what would happen, and had wondered how it was that in spite of this the shipwrecked explorers had been looking forward to her coming. But the explorers, after all, had a great deal they wanted to tell her, and, too, they had a sort of a half-feeling that when she saw the camp they had made, she would find it hard to believe that anything had gone very seriously wrong. They knew before ever the rowing boat grounded on the beach, before ever it was within hailing distance, that there was a very good chance indeed that the worst was not to happen and that their exploring was not to be brought to an end.

“It’s all right, Susan,” cried Titty, the moment she saw the rowing boat. “It’s all right. Bridgie’s come too. Everything’s going to be all right.”

Peggy stared at her, but Nancy and Susan knew at once what Titty meant. It certainly was very unlikely that Bridget would have been allowed to come if the day was to end with a sad packing up of everything and a return of the explorers to ordinary native life. None of these thoughts came into the head of Roger, who was in a tremendous hurry to tell mother about swimming ashore. Roger never looked very far ahead, but for the others, the sight of Bridget in the boat meant a lot.

The meeting on the beach in the cove, when the boat had turned in between the heads, and the explorers and their allies had scrambled back over the rocks, was much more joyful than it might have been. It was very noisy, because everybody was trying to talk at once, though at first nobody mentioned the question that was in everybody’s mind. Mother was counting the shipwrecked and feeling their clothes and wanting to know exactly how it had all happened. The shipwrecked were telling all about it and at the same time wanting to hear from John and Captain Flint what had been said in Rio about poor Swallow. But no one asked whether they were to be allowed to go on being explorers. Mother said nothing about their having to come home. John seemed much happier. Bridget seemed to have no idea that anything might have gone wrong. And Captain Flint pleased Susan by saying that she had made a first-rate camp.

The talk on the beach was all of shipwreck, but no one who could not hear what was being said would have guessed that only a few hours before Horseshoe Cove had been a desert place. No one looking at that cheerful scene would have guessed that a ship had that very morning been wrecked on a rock at the mouth of this peaceful little bay, or that the camp there, so trim and tidy, had been set up in a hurry that afternoon by mariners who, only a few hours earlier, had had to swim for their lives.

There were the four sleeping-tents, two on each side of the stream, facing towards it, with running water for drinking and washing flowing conveniently past their doors. Behind them, partly hidden among the trees, could be seen the old tent that was now to be used for stores. The huge fire had been allowed to die down, and a kettle was simmering on the neat stone fireplace on the beach where this morning there had been the sort of tremendous blaze on which savages might roast long pig. Hanging out to dry were not the wet clothes of the shipwrecked but a row of bathing things and towels. It was true that the big towel flying from an oar out on the point had showed clearly enough that here were seamen in distress, but now that the best of all natives had arrived, it was taken down for fear that it might seem to be inviting help from other people. Of course, to anyone who knew them it would have seemed odd to see Amazon and Captain Flint’s rowing boat and yet not a sign of Swallow, though her whole ship’s company, from the captain to the parrot, were on the beach.