Missee Lee: The Swallows and Amazons in the China Seas

  “How shall we get there?” said Roger. “Over that bridge?”

  “We shall sail there,” said Miss Lee.

  “Jibbooms and bobstays!” exclaimed Nancy.

  “And then we will come back over Turtle Island and see Taicoon Wu. We will come back over the blidge. My father built it. A velly fine blidge.”

  “We’ve seen it,” said Roger, and just in time remembered not to say anything about being stopped when they tried to cross it.

  “How soon can you be leady?” said Miss Lee.

  “Now,” said John and Nancy at the same moment.

  “Velly well,” said Miss Lee. “Dismiss. I will send my amah for you in ten minutes.”

  *

  “Sailing,” said Titty.

  “I wonder what in,” said Nancy. “One of the big junks I bet you anything.”

  “I say, John,” said Captain Flint. “You did say you had my sextant there all right.”

  “It was there when we went across and got grabbed,” said John.

  “She says nobody ever goes there without her orders,” said Susan.

  “You never know,” said Captain Flint, “but we want that sextant if we’re going to get away.”

  “She’ll never let us go,” said Susan.

  “A chance’ll come,” said Captain Flint, “if we’re ready to take it.”

  “But it’s to come quick,” said Susan. “Mother’ll be worrying already.”

  “Not yet,” said Captain Flint. “There are all those Dutch islands we might have gone to. There’s Formosa. They know we’re not a liner and don’t work to a time-table.”

  “We’ve been here a long time,” said Susan.

  They heard the footsteps of the amah.

  “Model students on holiday,” said Captain Flint. “On holiday, but bursting to get back to work. That’s what we are.”

  The amah, grim and unsmiling, was beckoning at the door.

  “She doesn’t think Miss Lee ought to take us,” said Titty.

  “Who cares?” said Nancy. “We’re going.”

  CHAPTER XIX

  HOLIDAY VOYAGE

  THERE was no sounding of gongs when Miss Lee, with her amah and her students, left the yamen, perhaps because she did not go through the courtyard and the great gateway but down the garden and out through the door in the wall.

  In the lane outside a chair and bearers were waiting for her and half a dozen tough-looking guards with rifles slung across their backs. Miss Lee sat herself in the chair, the bearers lifted the carrying poles, and the holiday party was on its way, the amah and the students following Miss Lee, with the guards close behind them.

  “We’re not going to the ferry,” said Roger, as the little procession turned right along the garden wall.

  “We’re going to the creek,” said Titty.

  “We’ll see our boats,” said John.

  They left the houses and went on by the now well-known path that led through the trees to the creek. Today there was no need to stop at the edge of the trees and look at the boats through the telescope. Miss Lee, in her chair, was going straight on. Out in the creek, the little brightly painted junk was riding to a single anchor. Men were busy with her ropes. Sails were ready for hoisting. Sampans, each with a couple of men, were waiting to take the passengers aboard.

  “Gosh!” said Roger, “we’re sailing in the little junk.”

  “I thought we must be,” said Titty.

  John and Nancy, as soon as they saw that they were free to do it, made a dash for their own boats. No one stopped them. They fingered the badly stowed sails, looked over the ropes and anchors, and searched anxiously for damage to the planking.

  “She’s all right,” said Nancy. “I was bothered about the centreboard.”

  “Swallow’s all right too,” said John.

  They looked round to see that Miss Lee had left her chair and was standing beside them.

  “Sail well?” she asked, looking at Amazon.

  “I should think she does,” said Nancy, and then, suddenly daring, stopped being a model student and became a captain once more. “Lend a hand here, Peggy. Stir your stumps. You heave at the bows, John. Miss Lee, we’ll have her afloat in a minute and we’ll show you.”

  Miss Lee shook her head, glanced at the amah and the waiting sampans and said, “No”.

  “Another time,” said Nancy.

  “They’re in a hurry to start,” said John.

  “Oh well,” said Nancy, “we’d have got pretty muddy getting her off.”

  “There’s more water in the creek than there was the other day,” said John. “Swallow’s stern wasn’t in the water when we looked at her last.”

  They ran after Miss Lee.

  “Is it a tide?” John asked. “There’s more water than there was.”

  “Ah, you see that,” said Miss Lee. “No. Not tide. It is lain.”

  “But there hasn’t been any,” said Nancy.

  “Lain in the hills,” said Miss Lee. “Lain a thousand miles away.”

  Already the others were crowding into the waiting sampans, reaching them one by one by walking over the mud on a narrow bamboo landing-stage. They were ferried out to the little gaily painted junk. A long black pennant with a golden dragon on it was fluttering to the masthead.

  Miss Lee gave an order the moment she was aboard and ran up the steps to the high poop.

  “Hi … ya … hee … yo!” chanted the Chinese sailors as naked to the waist they worked the windlass, got the anchor up and hoisted the big mainsail with its bamboo battens creaking up the mast.

  “Let’s help,” said Roger.

  “Better keep out of their way,” said Captain Flint, looking round him like a schoolboy on holiday.

  “She’s moving,” said Roger, looking over the side.

  “Giminy,” said Nancy. “Miss Lee’s got the tiller herself.”

  “She’ll never get her round in this creek,” murmured Captain Flint.

  But Miss Lee, up there on the high poop, knew her ship. The little junk reached over to the further shore so near that they were waiting to feel the scrunch of her keel on the ground, or to see her foremast caught among the trees. She swung right round into the wind, came about without a hitch and, with gathering speed, was heading for the open river.

  “What about that?” said Nancy.

  “She’s a sailor all right, our Miss Lee,” said Captain Flint.

  The mizen had been hoisted. Up went another little lugsail on the foremast, and the sailors squatted on the decks, smiling, their eyes on Miss Lee, ready at any moment to ease the sheets or haul them in. The guards, in the waist of the ship with the prisoners, were sitting with their backs against the bulwarks, their rifles across their knees. The amah had disappeared into a cabin under the poop, and Roger, peeping in, reported that she was looking into a couple of big bamboo baskets, no doubt with the provisions. The others, with the eyes of experienced seamen, were looking at everything they could see, the way the Chinese belayed their halyards, the queer arrangement of the sheets, the shifting stays. Nancy, because of having sailed in a pirate junk already, pointed out one thing after another. “She’s small, of course,” she said, “and the one we were in had guns.” Titty was lifting on her toes the better to feel that she had a moving deck under her feet once more.

  A Chinese sailor touched Captain Flint’s arm. “Missee Lee,” he whispered and pointed towards the poop. Miss Lee was beckoning. They hurried up the steps to join her.

  It was hard to believe that this Miss Lee, her little gold shoes set wide apart, her face upturned to the wind, balancing easily with her hand on the tiller of her ship, was the same Miss Lee who day by day had been pumping Latin grammar into them. She looked as if she had never heard of Cambridge or Latin verbs in all her life.

  “Good ship?” she said.

  “She’s a beauty,” said John.

  “What’s her name?” asked Titty.

  Miss Lee said a name in Chinese and put it into Engli
sh for her. “Shining Moon.”

  “She’s pretty good to windward,” said Captain Flint, watching the shore as the little junk worked close-hauled across the river against the wind coming in from the sea.

  “Stlong cullent helping her,” said Miss Lee.

  “She’d be pretty good if there was no current at all,” said Captain Flint. “Where was she built?”

  “My men build her for me,” said Miss Lee. “They are building another now.”

  “We saw her,” said John.

  “Only they wouldn’t let us come near,” said Roger, though the last words faded into silence as he remembered that they were to say nothing more about being prisoners.

  “There’s the cormorant man,” said Titty.

  Close under the shore was the long narrow punt of the fisherman with the row of black cormorants perched along the gunwale. The Shining Moon swept nearer and nearer to him. Suddenly, just as she went about, he caught sight of Miss Lee on the poop. He stood up, put his hands together and made a low bow.

  “Gosh, he was frightened when he saw us on your island,” said Roger.

  “He knew nobody had a light to be there,” said Miss Lee. “He told Wu, and Wu sent men to kill you.”

  “Lucky we’d cleared out in time,” said John.

  “And then,” said Miss Lee, smiling, “I saw what Loger had litten in my book.”

  Roger said nothing but looked at Susan to make sure that she had heard.

  To and fro went the little junk between the rising cliffs of Dragon Island and the low bank on the further side where, they could see, there was a sort of towpath. They asked Miss Lee about that, and she told them when there was no sea breeze to help them the junks were hauled up against the current by teams of men walking along on land. To and fro went the little junk, sometimes going close inshore before turning, sometimes turning long before they expected because of rocks off shore they could not see.

  “She steers much easier than the Wild Cat,” said Roger, watching Miss Lee’s gentle use of the tiller, and then, feeling disloyal to the old schooner, he added, “Not Wild Cat’s fault. Only she steered with a wheel. A tiller’s more fun.”

  “Shining Moon pulls too hard in a stlong wind,” said Miss Lee.

  “Giminy,” said Nancy, nudging Captain Flint. “She hasn’t got a binnacle.”

  Miss Lee heard her. “No need,” she said. And then she told them about the south-pointing compass invented by the Chinese, and of how, in the past, Chinese junks had made long voyages. “India often,” she said. “Aflica. … Alabia. … But Shining Moon never goes far flom home.”

  “I remember,” said Captain Flint, “there was a junk sailed from Shanghai to England a year or so ago.”

  Miss Lee stopped smiling and eyed him narrowly.

  Captain Flint tried to put things right. He laughed. “You’re not afraid we’d try to seize the ship?” he said. “Is that why you have the guards?” He pointed into the waist.

  “No,” said Miss Lee.

  “You are safe enough with us, ma’am,” said Captain Flint.

  “Safe with evellybody,” said Miss Lee, quietly, her fingers tapping lightly on her pistol-holster.

  The Shining Moon was heading across towards the steep cliffs.

  “Look, look,” cried Titty. “There’s that gorge.”

  “Gosh, what a height,” said Roger.

  They were looking now from the level of the water into the narrow gorge they had seen from the cliff top. It was as if a giant had cut the great mass of rock in two with an enormous hatchet to make the two islands, Dragon and Turtle. Until they had come almost opposite the gap it had looked as if the two were one.

  “Must not go too near,” said Miss Lee. She pointed to a black rock sticking up out of the water as if it had fallen from the cliff. “If we go past that lock the cullent take us thlough … many locks … not deep water. …”

  “I say, couldn’t we sail through?” asked Nancy.

  “Only when the water is velly high,” said Miss Lee. “Many locks, a whirlpool. … Velly dangelous. You will see when we closs the blidge.”

  “What’s it called?” asked Titty.

  “Loaring Gorge,” said Miss Lee.

  “Why roaring?”

  “Because the noise of the water there echoes between the cliffs.”

  “And what’s the river called?”

  Miss Lee said a Chinese name and translated it. “Silver Liver.”

  “And the one on the other side?”

  “Dead Water.”

  “Why dead?” asked Roger.

  “Because it is not a liver any longer. Old liver ran there. Closed at the top. No cullent thlough it. That is why when this liver rises the water pours thlough into the old liver and makes the noise in the gorge.”

  “Has anybody ever sailed through?” asked Nancy.

  “When water velly high, yes,” said Miss Lee.

  “Have you?” asked Roger.

  “Long ago,” said Miss Lee. “And my father was velly angly. He said that one junk captain more or less was no matter but for me it was lisking too much.” Miss Lee laughed, and, close to the black rock, sang out a single word in Chinese and put the tiller over. The Shining Moon swung round, the Chinese sailors trimmed the sheets, and a few moments later, looking back, they could see the mouth of the gorge no longer.

  With a few more tacks they were nearing the mouth of the river and looking at the two small forts, one on either side. Close along the bank above each fort was what looked like a long raft moored to the shore, or perhaps a lot of logs floated down from some forest further up.

  “Do you send timber out from here?” asked Captain Flint, quite forgetting Miss Lee’s proper business.

  “No,” said Miss Lee with a laugh when she saw what he was looking at. “When an enemy tlies to come in we can pull logs light acloss the liver.”

  “Has anybody ever tried?” asked Nancy.

  “Long time ago,” said Miss Lee. “But the boom is always leady.”

  “What happened?” asked Roger.

  “The enemy junks did not see the boom in the dark,” said Miss Lee, quietly putting the ship about as she spoke. “Two junks lammed the boom and sank. Thlee junks were sunk with guns. One junk went aglound. Not one junk went home. They left Thlee Island men alone after that.”

  “And were you there?” asked Nancy eagerly.

  “Velly little girl,” said Miss Lee, showing with her hand that at that time she stood only about two feet high.

  She sailed close up to one fort and then to the other. From each fort half a dozen men ran out and cheered. Another tack and they were at the mouth of the river. “Here’s where our junk anchored,” Nancy was saying. “There’s our island. … I mean Miss Lee’s,” Roger was saying a moment later. “There’s where Wu’s men were coming down the cliff,” said John, pointing up to the long scratches that marked the road slanting to and fro across the face of the rock. The voyage was all but over.

  There was no more tacking now. The Shining Moon was reaching easily along under the cliff, nearer and nearer to the little island where the Swallows had landed after that night of wind. She was sailing into the narrow passage between the island and the cliff. Already the Chinese sailors were making ready warps on poop and foredeck.

  “There’s the landing-place,” said Roger, “and the one on the other side.”

  “There’s the green roof of the temple,” said Titty.

  Miss Lee called an order and gently, gently, moved the tiller. The Shining Moon was turning in towards the island landing-place. The Chinese sailors were slackening the sheets. The little junk turned more and more slowly, and came to rest alongside the jetty so gently that if she had had eggshells hanging out for fenders instead of bamboo bundles, she would not have cracked a single shell.

  “Lovely work,” said Nancy. “Well done, Miss Lee.”

  Miss Lee, smiling happily, led the way ashore.

  CHAPTER XX

  CAPTAIN FLIN
T GETS BACK HIS SEXTANT

  THE amah and the model students followed Miss Lee up from the jetty to the little temple with the carved scarlet dragons at every corner of its green roof. Nancy, Peggy and Captain Flint were seeing it for the first time. Roger was pointing out the trickle of fresh water among the rocks, and telling about the way they had startled the cormorant fisher.

  “I do hope we didn’t leave things in an awful mess,” said Susan.

  “We wouldn’t have gone in if we’d known it was a temple,” said Titty.

  “It’s that sextant I’m thinking about,” murmured Captain Flint.

  “It’s sure to be there,” said John.

  *

  On the threshold, Miss Lee stopped for a moment, frowned, and then, remembering the goodness of her students, went on into the inner room. There certainly was rather a mess. When John and Susan had been called across the island to row after the Amazons, they had had to leave things just as they were. Seed husks from the parrot’s breakfast still lay on the floor. There were the sleeping-bags, spread out like beds. There was the tin box of the iron rations. The green-headed pin was still lying on the table where they had found Miss Lee’s books. The amah saw it at once.

  “I picked it up on the jetty,” said Roger.

  The amah said nothing but, unsmiling, took the pin and stuck it in her hair.

  “The sextant?” said Captain Flint and the next moment had seen it, a square, mahogany box, with a lock and a brass handle and two small brass hooks that held the lid down.

  “I do hope it’s all right,” said John.

  Captain Flint put the box on the table, flicked back both hooks and lifted the lid. He took out the little bit of chamois leather kept there for cleaning. He took out the sextant itself. He fingered one by one the little telescopes and eyepieces.

  “Nothing wrong there,” he said. “John, if ever we get back to England, you shall have a sextant for yourself.”

  “I’ve got the almanac too,” said John, taking it out of the box in which he kept his barometer and compass.