Swallows and Amazons Read online

  Able-seaman Titty had an idea. “Couldn’t we get a native to bring them in a native rowing boat?” she said.

  John looked back into the boathouse at the big rowing boat belonging to the farm. He knew, because it had been privately arranged, that Mother was to pay them a visit before night to see that all was well. He knew, too, that it had been arranged that Mr. Jackson, the farmer, should row her. Mr. Jackson was as good a native as anyone could wish.

  Mother and Nurse, carrying Vicky, were coming down the field.

  John went to meet them. It was agreed that the natives would bring the haybags in a rowing boat.

  “Are you sure you haven’t forgotten anything?” Mother asked, looking down from the jetty into the loaded Swallow. “It’s very seldom people go on a long voyage without forgetting something.”

  “We’ve got everything that was on my list,” said Mate Susan.

  “Everything?” said Mother.

  “Mother, what are you holding behind your back?” asked Titty, and Mother held out a packet of a dozen boxes of matches.

  “One might almost say ‘By Gum’,” said John. “We could never have lit the fire without them.”

  They said their farewells on the jetty.

  “If you are ready, you’d better start,” said Mother.

  THE START OF THE VOYAGE

  “Now, Mister Mate,” said Captain John.

  “All aboard,” cried Mate Susan.

  Roger took his place in the bows. Titty sat on the middle thwart. John hooked the yard to the traveller on the mast, and hauled up the little brown sail and made the halyard fast. Titty’s flag, with the dark blue swallow on a white ground, was already at the masthead. Titty had hoisted it herself as soon as they had stepped the mast after breakfast. John went aft to the tiller. Susan pulled down the boom until the sail was setting properly, when she too made fast.

  There was a very light north-westerly wind, brought, no doubt, by the urgent whistling of the crew. Mother held the end of the painter, and then, when the little sail filled, she threw it to Roger who coiled it down, and stuffed it away under his feet. Very slowly the Swallow slid away from the jetty.

  “Goodbye, Mother. Goodbye, Vicky. Goodbye, Nurse.”

  “Goodbye, goodbye,” came from the jetty.

  Mother waved her handkerchief. Nurse waved hers, and Vicky waved a fat hand.

  The crew of the Swallow waved back.

  “Three cheers for the stay-at-homes,” called Captain John.

  They cheered.

  “We ought to sing ‘Spanish Ladies’,” said Titty. So they sang:

  “Farewell and adieu to you, fair Spanish ladies,

  Adieu and farewell to you, ladies of Spain,

  For we’re under orders for to sail to old England,

  And we may never see you fair ladies again.

  “So we’ll rant and we’ll roar, like true British sailors,

  We’ll range and we’ll roam over all the salt seas,

  Until we strike soundings in the channel of old England,

  From Ushant to Scilly ’tis thirty-five leagues.”

  “Of course, really, we’re going the other way,” said Susan, “but it doesn’t matter.”

  The Swallow slipped slowly out towards the mouth of the bay. She made at first no noise and hardly any wake. Then, as she came clear of the northerly side of the bay, she found a little more wind, and the cheerful lapping noise began under her forefoot, while her wake lengthened out and bubbled astern of her.

  Darien, the promontory on the southern side of the Holly Howe bay, was longer than the promontory on the northern side. Also Captain John was taking no risks. At the end of Darien there might be rocks. He held on straight out of the bay until he could see into the bay on the other side of the point. Far away down the lake the island showed. It seemed further than it had from the top of Darien. At last John let out the mainsheet, and put the helm up. The boom swung out, the Swallow swung round and, with the wind aft, John steered straight for the island.

  Mother and Nurse, with Vicky, were still on the jetty. They gave a last wave. The whole crew of the Swallow waved back, and then in a moment they could see into the bay no longer. The bay was hidden behind Darien. Above them was the Peak from which they had first seen the island. The Peak itself seemed lower than it had. Everything had grown smaller except the lake, and that had never seemed so large before.

  “Are we all right about jibing?” asked Mate Susan, remembering a sad day the year before when, running before the wind in another small boat, the boom had jibed over with sudden decision, and given her a bump that had lasted for a long time.

  “Look at the flag,” said Captain John. “It’s blowing well over on the same side as the sail. There’s no fear of a jibe so long as it’s doing that.”

  The wind was steady, though light, and on the whole John was glad that there was no more of it on this first voyage to the island with the heavily laden Swallow. Reefing would have been a terrible nuisance, with the boat so full of tents and biscuit boxes and cooking things. Besides, there was so much to see that looked different now that it was seen from the water instead of from the Peak of Darien.

  The island was not in the middle of the lake, but much nearer to the eastern shore, on the same side of the lake as Holly Howe and Darien. Along that shore was one little promontory after another. Here and there was a field by the water’s edge, but mostly there were thick woods. Here and there among the trees were houses, but not many of them, and above the trees were the heather-covered slopes of the hills.

  As they passed the second cape beyond Darien, Roger, the look-out, reported a ship, and pointed towards the shore. The sail was on that side, so that Roger saw it before the others. In the bay beyond the cape lay a strange-looking dark blue vessel. She was a long narrow craft with a high raised cabin roof, and a row of glass windows along her side. Her bows were like the bows of an old-time clipper. Her stern was like that of a steamship. She had nothing that could properly be called a mast, though there was a little flagstaff, where a mast might have been, stepped just forward of the glass-windowed cabin. There was an awning over her after-deck, and under it a big fat man was sitting writing in a deck-chair. The vessel was moored to a large buoy.

  “It’s a houseboat,” said John.

  “What is a houseboat?” asked Titty.

  “It’s a boat used instead of a house. There was one at Falmouth, where people used to live all the year round.”

  “I wish we lived in a boat all the year round,” said Susan.

  “I shall some day,” said John, “and so will Roger. Father does.”

  “Yes, but that’s different. A destroyer isn’t a houseboat.”

  “You live in it just the same.”

  “Yes, but you don’t stay in one place. A houseboat sticks in one place like a boathouse. I remember the houseboat at Falmouth too,” said Susan. “There was a whole family living in it, and we used to see them rowing ashore for milk in the mornings. The butcher and the baker used to call there, just as if it was a house. They used to come to the shore and shout ‘Houseboat ahoy!’ and then the man or the woman used to row ashore to buy meat and bread from them. Look out what you’re doing, John!”

  Captain John, with his mind on the houseboat, had not been thinking about his steering, and the little white flag with the blue swallow on it was fluttering on the side of the mast away from the sail. The boom was just going to swing over when Susan called, but John, putting the helm down instantly, just saved a jibe. After that he looked at the houseboat only out of the corner of his eye. The wind was so light that a jibe would not have mattered much, except perhaps to bumped heads, but it would hardly have done for the captain of the ship to have set an example of such bad steering to his crew.

  Able-seaman Titty had wedged herself in the bottom of the boat between the tent bundles with a basket of small crockery in her arms for safety’s sake. She could just see over the gunwale.

  “I wonder,” s
he said, “if the man on the houseboat has his family with him.”

  “He’s all alone,” said Roger.

  “The others may be cooking in the cabin,” said Susan.

  “He’s probably a retired pirate,” said Titty.

  Just then a harsh squawk sounded over the water, and a large green bird which they had not noticed shook itself where it stood perched on the rail that ran round the stern of the houseboat.

  “He is a pirate,” said Roger. “There’s his parrot.”

  Before they could see any more the next little cape hid the houseboat from them. This was perhaps lucky, because even Captain John wanted to see the parrot, and good steering is impossible when you are looking two ways at once.

  “Steamship coming up astern,” said Mate Susan.

  A long steamship had come into sight beside the promontory of Darien, far astern, one of the steamships that ran from end to end of the lake two or three times a day, calling on the way at the little town a mile higher up the lake than Holly Howe, and at one or two landing stages. The little town is known in guide-books by another name, but the crew of the Swallow had long ago given it the name of Rio Grande. After calling at Rio, the steamers ran directly to the foot of the lake, stopping only sometimes to put a passenger ashore at a jetty or to pick one up if he was signalling that he wanted to come aboard. The steamer track ran close by the island, but at this point was nearer the further shore. The steamship quickly overhauled them and passed them. Her wake, spreading across the lake, rocked the little Swallow so that kettle and saucepan and frying-pan rattled on the bottom boards and Able-seaman Titty had to hold tight to the crockery basket. Soon the steamer was no more than a blob with a feather of white smoke far away beyond the island.

  Then there was a roar in the distance, getting rapidly louder. A splash of white showed beyond the island near the steamer. The splash seemed to slide over the water nearer and nearer. It was a fast motor boat, much faster than the steamship and hundreds of times as loud. It roared up the lake, passed the Swallow a hundred yards away, and had soon disappeared astern of her beyond Darien. Here and there, close to the shore, there were rowing boats with fishermen. But after all there was no need to notice any of these things if one did not want to, and the Swallow and her crew moved steadily southward over a desolate ocean sailed for the first time by white seamen.

  They were getting near the island.

  “Keep a look-out for a good landing-place,” said Captain John.

  “And keep a look-out for savages,” said Titty. “We don’t know yet that it is uninhabited, and you can’t be too careful.”

  “I’ll sail between the island and this shore and then beat up again on the other side, so that we can choose the best place,” said Captain John.

  The island was covered with trees and among them there was one tall pine which stood out high above the oaks, hazels, beeches, and rowans. They had often looked at it through the telescope from Darien. The tall pine was near the north end of the island. Below it was a little cliff, dropping to the water. Rocks showed a few yards out from the shore. There was no place to land there.

  “Now, Mister Mate,” said Captain John, “we must keep a good look-out.”

  “Sing out like anything if you see any rocks under water, Roger,” said the mate.

  John steered to pass between the island and the mainland, not too near the island so as not to lose the wind. In a moment or two Swallow was slipping through smooth water, though there was still enough wind to keep her slowly moving. A little more than a third of the way along the eastern shore of the island there was a bay, a very small one, with a pebbly beach. Behind it there seemed to be a clearer space among the trees.

  “What a place for a camp,” said Susan.

  “Good landing too,” said John, “but no good if the wind came from this side. We’ll sail right round the island first to see if there is anything better.”

  “Rocks ahead,” sang out Roger, pointing to some that were just showing above water. John steered a little further from the shore.

  The sides of the island were steep and rocky. That little bay seemed to be the only place where it would be possible to land a boat. There were rocky cliffs, like the Peak in Darien, only much smaller, with heather on them and little struggling trees. At the south end of the island the rocks grew smaller and then suddenly rose again into a promontory of almost bare stone. At this southern end the island seemed to have been broken up into a lot of little islands. John sailed on till he was well beyond the last of them and then began hauling in the sheet, putting the helm down and bringing Swallow round below the island.

  “That first place is the only good one on that side,” said Susan.

  “We’ll sail up this side in short tacks, to have a good look at it,” said Captain John. He hauled the sheet closer in and brought Swallow nearer to the wind. He sailed her so till she was about forty yards from the island, standing out on the starboard tack. Then:

  “Ready about.”

  Susan ducked her head. Titty, sitting on the bottom boards, was low enough already, but she ducked too. Roger was well out of the way, before the mast.

  John put the helm down. Swallow shot up into the wind. The boom and the brown sail swung over and filled again on the other tack and Swallow, with the water rustling under her bows, sailed in towards the island’s western shore. Here there were no outlying rocks, but the island itself dropped steeply, like a wall, into the water.

  “Sing out when you see the bottom, Roger,” called Mate Susan.

  “Aye, aye, sir,” said Roger, looking as hard as he could into the green depths.

  “We ought to have brought a lead for sounding,” said Susan.

  “It wouldn’t have been much good here,” said John.

  They sailed on and on till they were within five yards of the shore and the water was still dark beneath them. John dared go no nearer.

  “Ready about,” he called.

  It was not until they were already swinging round, close under the wall of rock, that Roger shouted, “I can see the bottom.” On this side, it was clear, the island rose sharply up out of deep water.

  Down went Susan’s head and down went Titty’s, though she had no need. Round swung the little Swallow and off again on the other tack out into the lake. John did not take her far before it was “Ready about” once more and she slipped in again towards the island. Backwards and forwards they went, each time a little further north along the island’s shore.

  All this western shore was the same, a steep, rocky wall, dropping into deep water, with no bay in which it would be possible to land.

  “That place on the other side is the only one,” said Susan.

  “It’s not much of a harbour,” said Captain John, “but if it’s the only one it’ll have to do. We can haul the ship well up.”

  With the next tack John took the Swallow further out into the lake and went about for the last time when he was well clear of the northern end of the island. He sailed past it and as soon as he was clear of all its rocks he called:

  “Jibe O!”

  Mate Susan hauled in the sheet as fast as she could. John put the helm up. Swallow turned south once more, the boom swung over their heads, Susan paying out the sheet as soon as it had passed over, and they were once more sailing down the inside, eastern shore. Just before they were opposite the little bay with the pebbly beach, John called out:

  “Stand by to take in sail. Lower away!”

  Mate Susan was all ready with the halyard in her hand. She slackened the halyard without letting go of it. Down came the sail.

  “Grab the yard, Roger!” and Roger grabbed it.

  Susan unhooked the traveller and she and Roger together brought down the sail and the yard. Titty with the crockery basket was well out of the way under the folds of the sail. All this happened much quicker than I can tell it, and when the sail was down Swallow still had enough way on her to slide in towards the beach.

  “Look out, R
oger,” said Mate Susan, and she too looked anxiously over the bows.

  “Rock on the starboard bow,” she shouted.

  John shifted the tiller a very little.

  The Swallow, in quite smooth water, slipped on and on.

  “Now,” said Susan, and scrambled to the stern again over the top of Titty, who had just pushed her head out from under the sail. Susan had gone to the stern to lighten the bows of the boat, and just as she got there, there was a gentle grumble and scrunch, and Swallow’s nose was on the pebbly beach. She had hardly touched before Roger had jumped ashore with the painter.

  CHAPTER IV

  THE HIDDEN HARBOUR

  SUSAN WAS ASHORE next. Then Titty with her basket of crockery. John stayed in the Swallow to hand out the stores. First went the loose cooking things that had been tucked in anywhere. Then went the two tents, each rolled in its groundsheet, then the biscuit tins, and then the heavy tin box with the books and barometer and the things that had to be kept dry. That lightened the ship, and Mate Susan and the able-seaman pulled her a little further up, which made it easier to bring ashore the big sacks full of rugs and blankets. Everything was piled together on the dry pebbly beach.

  “Now, Mister Mate,” said Captain John, “let’s go and explore.”

  “The first thing to do,” said Susan, “is to find the best place for our camp.”

  “Not too easily seen from anywhere,” said Titty.

  “We want a flat bit of ground with trees to hold the tents up,” said John.

  “And a good place for a fire,” said Susan.

  “Is it safe to leave the things here?” said Titty. “There might be a tidal wave, forty feet high, washing over everything.”

  “Not as big as that,” said John. “That would cover the island.”

  “Hullo, where’s that boy?” said the mate. The Boy Roger was exploring already. Just then he shouted from close to them, behind some bushes.

  “Someone’s had a fire here before.”

  The others ran up from the little beach. Between the landing-place and the high part of the island where the big pine tree was, there was a round, open space of mossy ground. There were trees round the edge of it, and in the middle of it there was a round place where the turf had been scraped away. Roger was there, looking at a neat ring of stones, making a fireplace with the ashes of an old fire in it. At opposite sides of the ring two stout forked sticks had been driven into the ground and built round with heavy stones, and another long stick was lying across the fireplace in the forks of the two upright sticks, so that a kettle could be hung on it over the fire. Close by the fireplace there was a neat pile of dry sticks all broken to about the same length. Someone had had a fire here, and someone was meaning to have a fire again.