Arthur Ransome - Swallows and Amazons (Complete Series)

He had waked, thinking of taking Swallow over to the Dixon farm landing in Shark Bay to fetch the morning milk, and then, suddenly, he had remembered that there was no Swallow. There was no boat at all. There they were on the shore of the lake, as if on the shore of a great sea, but they were prisoners on land. The water was no good to them, except to bathe in. Seafaring, for the present, was at an end.

When he found that he could not go to sleep again and forget these melancholy truths, John wriggled out of his sleeping-bag. A minute later he was swimming in the cove. He swam the whole way to the entrance, and then out between the headlands. It was a still, windless morning, and there was hardly a ripple on the lake. Only, just where the Pike Rock lurked below the surface every now and then there was a little stir in the water, almost as if a trout were coming slowly to the top and quietly sucking down a fly without really breaking the surface with his nose. John swam on and was presently resting on the rock like a wet pink seal in the morning sunlight. He rested there, and looked across and up the lake to Wild Cat Island. He remembered how pleasant it had been to feel that they lived on an island with water all round them, and that there was a little ship snug in harbour, so that they could sail wherever they wished. He remembered the time they had spent on the Peak of Darien and at Holly Howe last year, waiting day by day for their father’s telegram to say they might take Swallow and sail to the island. This waiting was going to be much worse. They had had an island, they had had a ship, and now they had lost them both.

Presently, looking back towards the cove, John saw a wisp of blue smoke floating up against the background of the trees.

“Susan,” he called.

“Hullo!”

Almost at the same moment he heard a squeak. That must be Roger trying the cold water with his toe. The water was cold even in August, just there, where the beck ran out into the cove. Then there were two loud splashes. That must be the able-seaman and the boy flopping in one after the other. John, his mind made up, rolled, seal-like, off the rock, dived under without making a splash, came up again, had a last look towards Wild Cat Island and then swam in between the headlands.

He swam in towards the white tents at the head of the cove, where the stream from the hills ran down into the lake. Here there was a tremendous splashing going on. Roger was lying on his back with his hands on the bottom, beating the water with his legs. Titty, with one arm stretched out so as to cut the water, was whirling round and round, being a maelstrom.

“Titty,” called John, as soon as he came near enough to make himself heard through all that splashing.

The maelstrom calmed down.

“Hullo,” it said.

“Look here, Titty,” John went on, “how far do you really think it is from that valley of yours to the farm where we have to get milk?”

“It can’t be very far,” said Titty.

“Farther than from here?”

“Not much, anyhow. Perhaps not so far. We’d probably find a short cut through the woods on that side of the road. Are we going there? Do let’s.” The maelstrom had become an explorer for the rest of the day.

“Who’s going to fetch the milk for breakfast?” called Susan from beside the fire.

“We’ll all go,” said John. “But we won’t bring it back here. Why not have breakfast higher up? We’ll get the milk and then go on to look at their valley.”

“Hurrah!” said Roger.

“I’ve been thinking that perhaps we ought to move the camp a bit away from the shore. Floods for one thing. Swamp fever for another. You never know, between the jungle and the sea.”

“There might be alligators,” said Titty, splashing up out of the water, “or hippopotamuses. It would never do to have a hippopotamus coming blundering through our new tents.”

“It’ll be beastly being on the edge of the lake and having no boat,” said John.

“All right,” said Susan. “But after bathing, you must have something to eat. I’ll boil some eggs to take with us. It would be a pity to waste the fire now it’s lit.”

“Chocolate wouldn’t be bad for now,” said Roger, “and then we can have proper breakfast afterwards.”

“Do you think it’ll be all right to leave the tents?” said Susan.

“Nobody ever comes here but the Amazons, and they can’t be coming to-day. The great-aunt wanted them.”

It was settled. While the eggs were boiling, food for the day was divided up among the four knapsacks. There was bunloaf, pemmican, butter, a pot of marmalade, four apples and two tins of sardines. John took the compass, Titty the telescope and the borrowed egg-basket, Roger the empty milk-can, and Susan the kettle, though it was agreed, of course, that this was to be carried in turns.

“Lead away, Able-seaman,” said Captain John, when all was ready and they had eaten the bit of chocolate and the hunk of bunloaf that Susan handed out to each of them as a sort of bathing ration.

“Aye, aye, sir,” said Titty, who had just given the parrot a good supply of food and water and three lumps of sugar as his day’s pay. “Come on, Roger.”

Mate Susan looked carefully round the camp before they left, to see that all was as it should be. John was in a hurry to be on the way. He wanted as soon as possible to stop being reminded every other minute that he had not got a boat.

The able-seaman was in command of the expedition, but when she led them past the place where they had turned off to the cart-track in showing mother the way to Swainson’s farm, John could not help saying, “Oughtn’t we to turn off here?”

The able-seaman stopped short.

“You can get that way,” she said. “That’s the way if you’re going to cross the road. It’s all right for going to get milk. But Roger and I found a better way. We can get to the other side of the road so that even if savages were watching for us all along it they would never see us.”

“Oh, look here, Titty,” said Susan, “that’s a Peter Duck story.”

“It isn’t a story at all,” said Roger.

“Of course Peter Duck thought it was a good way,” said Titty.

“Is it much farther than crossing the road?” said John.

“Nearer. It’s close here.”

The able-seaman led them on round a bend in the little stream, and there before them, thickly covered with ivy and overhung with trees, was the low arch of the bridge.

“We go through that,” said the able-seaman, “and even if there were scouts from one end of the road to the other they wouldn’t know how we got past them.”

“It’s a jolly good way of getting across,” said John.

“Roger and I took our shoes off,” said Titty, “but we could almost have got through without.”

“Better not try,” said the mate. “There’s no point in getting shoes wet and having to dry them.”

“The next bit would be awfully tickly barefoot,” said Roger, remembering the larch needles that made a carpet to the wood at the other side of the road.

They took their shoes off and, stooping low, waded upstream under the bridge.

“You couldn’t get through if there was much more water,” said the mate.

“If there was a spate, you’d have to swim for it,” said John.

“You could float through, clinging to a log, with only your nose above water,” said Titty, “even if the enemy were watching the river itself.”

“If you were going downstream,” said John.

“You would be,” said Titty, “escaping to your boats.”

“But we haven’t got any boats,” said Roger.

There was a grim silence. Once more everybody had been reminded of the shipwreck.

But they forgot it again when they came out from under the bridge into the larch wood on the other side, and waded ashore to dry their feet and put their shoes on. Then it was decided that two were enough to fetch the milk. Susan and the boy, with the milk-can and the egg-basket, went off close along the wall at the bottom to get to the cart-track and so to Swainson’s farm. After getting the milk they were to join the rest of the party higher up the stream. Meanwhile the able-seaman and Captain John followed the stream up through the steep green larch wood, up and up past one little waterfall after another, until they were out of sight of the road. There is no undergrowth worth speaking of in a larch wood, nothing under the bright green trees but the copper-coloured carpet of last year’s fallen needles, so that it is much harder to hide in that sort of wood than in any other. As soon as they could no longer be seen from the road, John was ready to stop, but the able-seaman was all for pressing on. “It’s not much farther to the top of the larch wood,” she said. “Besides, we’re awfully near the road to begin whistling. Somebody else might hear us instead of Susan and Roger.”