Missee Lee: The Swallows and Amazons in the China Seas

  “Gibber, you little beast,” cried Susan. “He’s got my scissors.”

  “Come here, Gibber,” said Roger. “No, don’t touch him, Susan. He’ll go and spike his eye.”

  “Belay there! What are you shouting about?” They looked up at Nancy, high on the foremast.

  “Gibber’s using Susan’s scissors for a sextant,” called Roger. “It’s all right now. He’s dropped them. Good! Well done, Peggy! Peggy’s got them.”

  Peggy had come quietly out of the galley door and had snatched the scissors from the deck. The monkey chattered at her, jumped on the rail, ran along it and up into the mainmast rigging. Here he stopped, looked down on deck and chattered again and then, catching sight of Nancy who was again looking through the telescope, forgot about sextants and began to mimic her, peering out through his fingers.

  From inside the deckhouse came the murmur of the navigators, words like zenith, meridian, versine, logarithm, words that Susan, Titty, Roger and Peggy did not even pretend to understand. Nancy knew what some of them meant but could never remember which word meant what. But the whole crew of the Wild Cat knew that somehow or other out of that murmur of strange words, and out of a lot of sums worked out again and again by Captain Flint and John until they both got the same result twice running, came, by a sort of miracle, the knowledge of where the Wild Cat was. It always seemed a miracle when they had seen nothing but water for a long time, and, after marking their position on the chart, Captain Flint would send John or Nancy up aloft and tell them to look out for three palm trees, or a high rock, or a lighthouse that could not be seen from the deck. Whatever the thing was that he expected them to see, it was always there. But now even from the masthead there was no land in sight. For four days they had seen none. They had seen nothing at all but a burning sun by day and blazing stars by night, and water stretching to the horizon. And for the last twenty-four hours there had been no wind.

  THE NAVIGATORS

  “They’ve done,” said Roger, as the voices in the deckhouse stopped, and he heard the noise of books being put back in a shelf and the click of the lid as Captain Flint put his sextant away in its case.

  “No change,” said Captain Flint through the deckhouse window.

  “Can we have a look?” said Roger.

  “Practically where we were yesterday,” said Captain Flint as they crowded into the little deckhouse to look at the chart on the table. The new mark showing their position was almost on the top of the mark made at noon the day before.

  “Day’s run … Nil,” said Captain Flint.

  “We’ve just drifted a bit,” said John, “and drifted back again.”

  “Good thing we’re still out of sight of land,” said Captain Flint.

  “Why?” asked Titty.

  “Nobody likely to come along in the dark to have a look-see. Our friend the harbourmaster’s quite right. You never know what sort of people you may meet along the China coast. No, don’t you worry, Susan. We’re all right out here. And anyway they’ve got no engines in their junks. We can always start up the little donkey. …”

  “No, we can’t,” said Roger. “You never filled up the working tank after running it dry on the first night out.”

  “No more I did,” said Captain Flint. “But the main tanks are full. We’ll shift some later when it isn’t quite so hot. Now then, out of here, everybody. Who’s cook today?”

  “Peggy,” said Roger.

  “What’s become of her?”

  “Gone back to the galley.”

  “Good girl,” said her uncle.

  “Curried eggs,” said Roger. “I saw her getting the shells off. And then oranges to cool our burnt tongues.”

  “Trust you to know,” said Captain Flint coming out from the stuffy deckhouse into the scorching sunshine. “Ahoy there, Nancy, you’ll get sunstroke if you stay up there. Come on down and lend a hand. We’ll swing the gaff off and make it fast to the rigging and use the sail for an awning.”

  Nancy came slowly down the ratlines and joined the others.

  “Somebody might have shouted to say what we’ve done. How far have we moved since yesterday?”

  “No far,” said Roger. “We haven’t moved at all. But we’re going to fill up the tank and get the engine going.”

  “We don’t want the engine,” said Titty. “It’s much better here than in harbour.”

  “It’ll be very hot below with the engine running,” said Susan.

  “Hot, anyway,” said Peggy through the galley door. “Look here! Grub’s ready. Where are we going to have it?”

  Captain Flint was already turning the lowered mainsail into a sort of tent. “Take that rope to the shrouds, John. Haul in and make fast. Here you are, Nancy. Make this one fast aft. That’ll give us a few square feet of shade.”

  “If we had the engine going we’d be moving and there’d be a bit of a draught,” said Roger.

  “Bother the engine,” said John.

  “I didn’t say I was going to use it,” said Captain Flint.

  “Beastly, sitting still,” said Roger.

  “We’ll shift petrol, anyway,” said Captain Flint, “but not till evening. What about those curried eggs?” He glanced in through the deckhouse window to see the clock. “One o’clock.”

  John said nothing but struck the ship’s bell, one … two …

  Titty looked up as the clear tone of the bell rang in the still air.

  “It sounds quite happy,” she said.

  Captain Flint laughed. “Got more sense than we have,” he said. “What’s the use of us all getting edgy just because we aren’t reeling off the knots. This isn’t the first calm we’ve had to put up with.”

  “It’s the hottest,” said Nancy. “Barbecued billygoats are nothing to it. Look out, Peggy, you can’t sit there. The pitch is bubbling up out of the decks.”

  “If those eggs are hot enough we’ll feel cooler,” said Captain Flint. “Nothing like a good Malay curry when salamanders are fainting from the heat.

  *

  In the shadow of the sail stretched between gaff and boom above their heads they ate their hot curry and sucked their oranges. They felt better. They had a long afternoon sleep, one after another of them waking for a moment and, with half-closed eyes, looking round the horizon for the first sign of a ripple. The parrot watched with one eye. The monkey began by copying Roger and ended by falling asleep in good earnest. Hour after hour went by and still the little green schooner lay motionless like a toy ship on a looking-glass.

  It was already late in the afternoon (and night comes early in the tropics) when the smell of tobacco smoke woke Titty. She opened her eyes to see that Captain Flint was smoking one of the cigars he had bought in Papeete instead of his usual pipe.

  “Hullo,” she said.

  “Hullo, yourself,” said Captain Flint.

  “No wind yet?” said Titty.

  “Not enough to stir a feather,” said Captain Flint. “And whatever you say, I don’t like it. Roger’s right. We’ll wear a hole in the chart if we keep on marking noon positions all in the same place. As soon as the engineer’s awake, we’ll shift some petrol from the main tanks and let the little donkey push her along.”

  “I’m awake,” said Roger. “Do let’s get her moving.”

  “Come on, then,” said Captain Flint, taking a puff at his cigar. “Anybody else like to lend a hand?”

  “Look at Gibber,” said Roger.

  Everybody was awake by now, and laughed to see the little monkey, so thin, so narrow-waisted, so unlike Captain Flint, copying his every motion, the pull at the cigar, the slow, happy blowing out of the smoke, the little flourish of the cigar when Captain Flint had said “Come on, then. … Anybody else like to lend a hand?”

  “Gibber would love to,” said Roger.

  “If it’s got to be done,” said Nancy, stretching.

  “Much better,” said Captain Flint. “We’ll make Swatow tomorrow and then Hey for Hongkong and Singapore. Come on everybody
. We want eight two-gallon tins filling from the main tank … sixteen gallons. … Bother. I wish I hadn’t lit that cigar.” He stood up and was going to throw it overboard.

  “Don’t waste it,” said Titty.

  “It’s a good cigar,” said Captain Flint, and reached into the deckhouse and put the cigar on an ashtray on the chart-table. “It’ll be all right there, till we’ve done.”

  Two minutes later he was passing full petrol tins up through the forehatch.

  “Eight,” he said, as he came up with the last. “What are you doing, Roger?”

  “Only sniffing it,” said Roger. “Gosh! Sorry! I haven’t spilt much.”

  “Only about a gallon,” said John.

  “Less than a quarter of a pint,” said Roger. “And I wouldn’t have spilt any if people hadn’t asked questions just when I had the thing unscrewed to sniff.”

  “No need to sniff now,” said Nancy. “It fairly reeks.”

  “Oh, never mind,” said Captain Flint. “It won’t be there long. Drying up already.”

  The tins were carried aft. Captain Flint unscrewed the round brass bung in the deck to pour the petrol into the working tank. Roger held the funnel and Captain Flint tipped in the first can of petrol. Susan handed him the second and that went in too. John gave him the third. Titty gave him the fourth. Nancy was herself pouring in the fifth when she heard Captain Flint shout “Grab him!”

  “You’ve made me slosh,” said Nancy, and then saw what had made Captain Flint’s shout. “Grab him!” she shouted herself. “It’s still alight.”

  Gibber was in the deckhouse doorway and in his hand was Captain Flint’s half-smoked cigar. A thin wisp of smoke trailed from it.

  Captain Flint reached for the monkey and missed him. Gibber dodged round the deckhouse and was nearly caught by Roger who had slipped round to meet him. John all but got him as he swung himself up on the boom and ran chattering over the sail that had been serving for an awning. Captain Flint missed him again by a few inches as he hopped down by the mainmast.

  “Chase him up the rigging,” he shouted. “Then we’ll get him. Keep him forrard, anyway, and off the deck. Got you!”

  But again he was too late. Gibber, cornered in the bows, chattering with anger, dodged under Captain Flint’s reaching arm, shot between Roger and Susan, swung up the mainmast shrouds, down again by the halyards, raced along the boom and over the deckhouse roof, using his legs, his tail and one arm, but never for a moment letting go of the cigar. The whole ship’s company closed in towards the after-deck.

  “You take the port side, John,” said Captain Flint. “I’ll take the starboard. We’ll get him one way or other.”

  And then, as they charged round the deckhouse, the thing happened. Gibber, looking for a hiding place for his cigar, saw the round opening in the deck.

  There was a horrified gasp from the whole ship’s company.

  BANG!

  A sheet of flame shot upward. A screaming monkey was gone, over the deckhouse roof, and up to the top of the mainmast. Peggy, without a word, got the fire-extinguisher from behind the galley door and gave it to Captain Flint, who had already thrown the three full cans of petrol overboard and was trying, with John and Nancy, to put the flames out with the bucketfuls of sand that were kept under the bulwarks. Susan was rubbing out a smouldering bit of Titty’s skirt. “Where’s Roger?” she asked.

  Roger came up the companion way.

  “It’s no good,” he said. “I can’t get them. The engine-room’s full of flames.”

  “What?” cried Captain Flint throwing himself down the companion.

  “What were you trying to do?” asked John.

  “Get the fire-extinguishers, of course,” said Roger, who, as engineer, knew where they were kept in the engine-room.

  Captain Flint was gone only for a moment. He was back on deck.

  “Roger’s right,” he said. “There’s not a hope of putting this out. We’ve got about four minutes to save what we can from the cabins. You see to that, Susan. You’ll know what to take. Don’t take a single thing you can do without. Peggy, Roger and Titty, help Susan. The moment the flames come through the after bulkhead go forward and out by the forehatch. You’ve got only about a minute to deal with the after-cabins. Do them first. John and Nancy, come and help me. We have to get the boats out. The ship and everything in her’s as dry as tinder. …”

  There was time to save very little. They got their sleeping-bags, a few towels, Susan’s first-aid box, John’s box with his compass and barometer. Titty saved the parrot and a bag of parrot food and the pocket telescope. Roger saved nothing but Gibber’s lead before the flames, bursting through from the engine-room, drove them all hurriedly forrard. Within the first few seconds flames were pouring up the engine-room hatch into the deckhouse. Captain Flint, with people’s lives to think of, forgot all else, even the ship’s papers, and nothing would have been saved from the deckhouse at all if John had not dashed in, snatched the sextant and the nautical almanac (which seemed to him the things that mattered most in the ship) and got out again with a scorched arm and a burning sleeve. Luckily the two dinghies, Swallow and Amazon, had been treated as lifeboats throughout the voyage, so that they were all ready for their work, each with a small sea-anchor, a beaker of fresh water, a watertight box of iron rations and a hurricane lantern. Susan and Peggy were packing the other things in even while Captain Flint, Nancy and John were heaving on the davit tackles, swinging the boats out and lowering them over the side.

  Swallow was lowered first and lay there waiting, while Captain Flint fixed a rope ladder.

  “You four had better be in the boat you know. Nancy and Peggy in Amazon and I’ll be with them to even things out. No good overcrowding and there isn’t room for us all in one boat. What are you doing, Titty? Fishing?”

  “Lowering Polly,” said Titty. “He’s all right now.”

  “But what about Gibber?” said Roger. “I’ve got his collar and lead, but look where he is!” He pointed up at the top of the mainmast.

  “I’ll see what we can do,” said Captain Flint. “Now for Amazon. Lower away, John. Easy now. …”

  Amazon went down to the water.

  “Hurry up,” said Captain Flint. “Everybody aboard. The fire’ll be at the main tanks any minute.”

  “Peggy, you go down that ladder,” shouted Nancy. “Go on. Shiver my timbers. This is going to be a lark.”

  “Lark!” exclaimed Captain Flint, but said no more. Like Roger, he was looking up at the monkey perched on the top of the mainmast. Flames were already dancing along the bulwarks. Flames were already licking up from ratline to ratline, and the short lengths of thin tarred rope stretched between the shrouds flared, broke in the middle and dropped like fiery tassels. Already the heavy tarred lanyards at the foot of the shrouds were burning.

  “Get aboard,” said Captain Flint, “and get the boats clear of the ship. That mast’s going in a minute.”

  “But, Gibber!” wailed Roger.

  “It’s the best chance he’s got,” said Captain Flint. “He’ll be thrown clear whichever way it falls. Get aboard, everybody.” He took off his sun-helmet and sent it spinning down into Amazon. “Well caught, Peggy!”

  “Do what you’re told, Roger, and get aboard,” said John. “You can’t do anything to help. Look out. Here it comes.”

  There was an explosion in the bows of the ship. Deck planks were forced up. Flames poured through.

  “John,” called Susan from Swallow. “Don’t wait.”

  “Come on, Uncle Jim,” shouted Nancy from Amazon at the other.

  “Get the boats clear,” shouted Captain Flint.

  “Come along,” cried Nancy.

  “Pull clear,” shouted Captain Flint angrily.

  John was already in Swallow, hauling in what was left of the painter, burnt through on the rail. “Go on, Susan,” he cried. “Pull, Susan. Pull.”

  “But, Gibber!” wailed Roger. … “And Captain Flint!”

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nbsp; “Look out! It’s coming.”

  Deckhouse and galley were gone. The mainmast rose out of a mass of flames, its shrouds hanging loose, their lanyards burned through. There was a loud crack and then another. The mast swayed. …

  “Oh, Gibber!” cried Roger in despair.

  Slowly the mast began to fall. … Slowly … then faster. … It did not fall straight. The wire-stay that joined the mainmast head to the head of the foremast pulled it sideways. It swung in towards the ship. Something small was shot away from the masthead. No one saw the splash it made as it hit the water, but everyone in Swallow saw the much larger splash that was made by Captain Flint. A minute later and they saw him swimming towards them.

  “He’s got him,” shouted Roger. “Well done, Gibber!”

  “Well done, Captain Flint!” said Susan.

  “Thanks, most awfully,” said Roger as the dripping monkey scrambled aboard the moment Captain Flint had laid hold of Swallow’s transom.

  “Aren’t you coming too?” asked Titty.

  “You tow me round,” said Captain Flint, “and I’ll go aboard Amazon. They’ve got my sun-helmet.”

  “Gosh!” said Roger. “How did you know what was going to happen?”

  “I didn’t,” said Captain Flint, blowing cheerfully as they towed him along. “I only thought there was a chance of it, and I’d better stand by. I couldn’t be sure which way the thing would fall.”

  Amazon came into sight from behind the burning schooner.

  “Ahoy!”

  “Uncle Jim’s still aboard!” screamed Nancy.

  “No, he isn’t,” shouted Roger. “We’ve got him. Gibber too.”

  “Keep well away,” puffed Captain Flint. “That foremast’ll be coming any minute now.”

  “Aye-aye, sir,” said John, who had taken the oars from Susan. Captain Flint let go of the transom, swam across and was presently climbing in over the stern of the Amazon. Fifty or sixty yards from the blazing vessel the two dinghies floated side by side.