Secret Water

  “Shut up,” said John again.

  The Mastodon waited a moment, with his oars out of the water, looking far away to the west along the Secret Water, and then away to the east once more.

  “They must come this way,” he said. “Not enough water yet to come through behind the island.”

  “Lost them?” called Nancy. “Eels are a bit slippery.”

  Both John and Susan looked at her rather doubtfully. They knew very well that the Mastodon was wishing he had never told them anything about the Eels.

  “My fault,” said the Mastodon. “I ought to have gone first thing in the morning, but I thought they’d be coming to Speedy.”

  “Poor beast, he’d awfully like to be friendly,” said Nancy under her breath. “We haven’t seen them. Not today,” she called aloud. “And we’ve been on the look-out.”

  “May as well let him know we’ve got our eyes open,” she added quietly.

  “I’ve been to their camp and there’s nobody in it,” called the Mastodon, “Lapwing’s there. And they’ve put up their tents. Perhaps I ought to have asked the missionaries. I’d better go back. They must have been sent to the town for something.”

  He spun his boat round and pulled away, back once more towards the mouth of the Secret Water.

  The explorers watched him out of sight. Suddenly Peggy said, “Supposing he’s wrong and they didn’t go to the town. …”

  “Not the whole way,” said Peggy. “But suppose they got across and landed early, before the tide went down too far.”

  “Barbecued billygoats,” said Nancy, who seemed to have shaken off the effects of the Eel’s blood. “They may be on the island now.”

  “But they aren’t,” said John. “They couldn’t have kept hidden all the time. Titty and Bridget would have seen them and signalled.”

  “You’ve got to remember they’re Eels,” said Nancy.

  “They aren’t invisible,” said John. “Look here, the water’s coming up well. We ought to be able to take a boat and find out if there is a way round behind all this. I’m pretty sure there must be. It ought to be all right if we go full tilt. They’ll be a long time if they’ve gone to the town.”

  But Peggy’s idea was bothering Susan now.

  “It’s no good taking the boats away,” she said. “What if Titty signals and we want to get back? If you go up the creek you may be right out of reach. And look here John, we ought to be on our own island long before high tide.”

  “She’s right,” said Nancy. “No good our being here keeping a look out on the Secret Water when they can bring their whole fleet sailing up the Red Sea.”

  “They can’t yet,” said John.

  “They’ll be able to soon,” said Nancy.

  “I’m going back,” said Susan.

  *

  It was almost a calm, and it was not worth while to hoist the sails. They rowed grimly home. Today’s surveying had amounted to next to nothing compared with the big areas explored on other days.

  For a moment the flags at the camp were hidden from them as they rowed across, but they saw them again as they came to the mouth of Goblin Creek.

  “That’s all right,” said Susan. “Just for one awful moment I thought they’d gone.”

  “John,” said Nancy. “I’ve been thinking. I was wrong about the totem. What about yanking it up and taking it across and leaving it on Speedy. If they don’t want us, we don’t want them or their beastly totems. Let them find it there.”

  “Perhaps we’d better,” said John. “He probably wishes he’d never given it to us.”

  “Of course we could burn it,” said Nancy.

  “Better just take it back,” said John.

  “I’d like to fry the lot of them,” said Nancy.

  “And eat them,” said Roger.

  *

  No one met them at the landing place.

  “Rotten sentries,” said Roger.

  “Don’t pull our boat up, Peggy,” said Nancy. “We’ll want it in a minute to take that totem back.”

  She led the way up the track to the camp.

  “Hullo,” she said. “Titty’s thought of it too. She’s taken the totem down.”

  Titty, hard at work, did not hear them coming.

  “What have you done with the totem?” asked Nancy.

  Titty, pen in hand, started violently.

  “Gosh!” she said. “Lucky I didn’t blot. I’ve nearly done.”

  “Where’s the totem?” said Nancy. “We’re going to hurl it back.”

  Titty stretched her cramped arms and rolled over.

  “Isn’t it there?” she said.

  “No it isn’t,” said Nancy. “There’s the hole where it was and there’s my watch.”

  “Where’s Bridget?” said Susan.

  “Sentry-go on the dyke,” said Titty.

  “Oh look here, Titty, you must have pulled it up. It was here when we left.”

  “But I haven’t touched it,” said Titty. “Perhaps Bridget …”

  “Bridget!” called Susan. “Run along the dyke and fetch her, Roger.”

  “She was here not long ago,” said Titty. “Then she went off with Sinbad.”

  “She’d never have taken the totem,” said Nancy.

  “Well, I haven’t touched it,” said Titty.

  “Gosh,” said John. “You’ve made a lovely job of the map.”

  “Bridget! Ship’s brat! Bridget!” They heard Roger calling along the dyke.

  Susan, packing away the knapsack and the empty bottles, heard a sudden doubt in his voice. She started up. Roger was coming back along the dyke, calling now and again, and looking far away over the meadows.

  “I can’t see her anywhere,” he said, as he came back into the camp. “She’s been at the corner by the little island. I found her hair ribbon on the path.”

  “Blow your whistle for her,” said John.

  Susan blew the mate’s whistle that was usually enough to bring Bridget on the run. There was no answer.

  “All shout together,” said Roger.

  “Bridget! BRIDGET!” Six explorers shouted at the top of their voices, standing on the dyke by the tents and looking in all directions over the island.

  There was no answer.

  “She can’t have gone far,” said Titty. “She had Sinbad with her. She was just walking up and down on the dyke.”

  “She’s gone down to the water and tumbled in,” said Susan.

  “Oh no … no … no …” said Titty.

  “It’s nothing like that,” said Nancy, and they turned to see a surprising glitter in her eyes. “Can’t you see? The totem’s gone too.”

  They stared at her.

  “She’s a prisoner. She’s been taken by the Eels. They’ve grabbed Bridget and they’ve grabbed the totem too. Come on Roger. Where did you find that ribbon?”

  “It’s my fault,” said Titty, “trying to get the map done. I ought never to have let her go out of sight.”

  Nancy, with Roger trying to keep up with her, was already racing along the top of the dyke.

  CHAPTER XVIII

  EAGER PRISONER

  IT HAD BEEN a dull morning for Bridget after the others had sailed away leaving her and Titty to look after the camp. Titty was so far behind with the map-making that she could think of nothing else. There were the separate maps and charts of the channel to Witch’s Quay to compare and to transfer in pencil to Daddy’s map, together with the work done on Mastodon Island, and Nancy’s map of the channel to the town, besides the map of Flint Island, and the marshes between Magellan Straits and Cape Horn. And the pencilled outline was only the beginning. All had to be done in ink. The marshes had to be shown by dozens of tiny tufts of reeds, a boat or two or a fish had to be put in to distinguish the water from the land, and if there was room without making things too much of a muddle, she meant to mark with dotted lines the actual journeys of the explorers. Titty had been much too busy to talk. Bridget had begun by being an active sentinel marching
up and down the dyke. She had seen the Mastodon row away. Then, needing company, she had helped for a time by keeping the separate maps from blowing away, but stones made better paperweights than Bridget’s fingers. For a time she had held the little bottle of Indian ink, but from the point of view of the person who had to dip a pen in it the bottle was really much better on the ground where it was not so likely to move about. Then, as sentinel again, she had walked to and fro, looking far away at the explorers on the other side of the Secret Water and watching for signs of the savages. She had seen the shadow of the meal-dial creep slowly round, shortening as it crept, until at last it had darkened the paper label marked “Dinner”. She had waited to disturb Titty till the shadow touched the paper. Then she had brought out the sandwiches, the oranges, the two bottles of ginger beer that Susan had left for their dinner. Titty was still drawing, lying on her stomach with her nose in the map. “Dinner’s ready,” said Bridget. “All but Sinbad’s.”

  Titty put down her pen, corked the ink bottle and rolled stiffly over, stretching her cramped arms.

  “Not half done,” she said. “All right, Ship’s baby. I’ll open Sinbad’s tin.”

  “He’s been squeaking for it like anything,” said Bridget.

  Even dinner had been rather melancholy after the first cheerful moments when Sinbad had been lapping up his milk and Titty and Bridget had been biting into their sandwiches, three explorers feeding together in their camp. They were at the orange stage when Bridget asked, “I say, Titty, tell me about human sacrifices. Have you ever been one?”

  “No,” said Titty, “but don’t you go thinking about that. It isn’t going to happen. They aren’t going to have anything to do with us and the Mastodon isn’t either any more.”

  “But what about all the blood?”

  “They don’t know about that,” said Titty, “but it wouldn’t make any difference if they did. They’ve made him wish he’d never even talked to us.”

  “I think it’s beastly,” said Bridget.

  “It jolly well is,” said Titty, “but the map’s the main thing. We’re going to get it done even without the Mastodon.”

  *

  After dinner when Titty settled down to work again, Bridget and Sinbad wandered off along the top of the dyke. Just at the corner where the dyke turned east was a good place for a sentinel. From that point you could see all along the dyke to the camp and beyond it. You could look the other way and see the patch of marsh at the corner that turned into a tiny island at high tide. You could see the creek curling towards the Red Sea. You could look out eastwards over the whole island to the distant prairie and its grazing buffaloes.

  Bridget sat down. Yes, this was a very good place for a sentinel. You could see without being seen, because of the tall grass on either side of the trodden path along the top of the dyke. She looked at the camp, the row of white tents, where Titty, hard at work again, was deaf and blind to everything except the following of pencilled lines with a careful pen. Bridget felt sleepy. She played with Sinbad for a minute or two, but Sinbad also had just had dinner and was inclined to sleep.

  The sentinel lay down and tickled Sinbad behind his ears.

  It was very hot.

  The sentinel rested her head on her arm and looked at Sinbad on Sinbad’s own level.

  The sentinel dozed.

  *

  Titty, Able-seaman and draughtsman to the expedition, scratched in tuft after tuft of reeds, three little upward strokes with a fine mapping pen for each tuft. The blank map, that might have been anything, was coming alive, inch by inch. The explored part was slowly spreading over it. Water, dykes, marshland, channels were beginning to look like what they were, very different from Daddy’s rough pencilled scrawls and the plain white spaces of the unknown. One, two, three strokes to a tuft, and each tuft the same distance from the next one, made marshland really look like marshland. That cow in the buffalo country really was not bad. Better perhaps if its horns were a wee bit longer. Anyhow anybody would know that was a ship marking the Secret Water. But never mind that. More tufts. She must get all this lot done before John and Nancy and the others came back with a new lot of explored country to put in. One, two, three. One, two, three. Ow, that tuft was a bit too near the one before. What was that noise by the tents? Bridget of course. Poor old Bridgie, not going to be a human sacrifice after all. One, two, three. One, two, three. Titty never turned her head.

  *

  From the further side of the dyke a savage watched her. He lay on the slope of the dyke between the row of the tents and the little pond. Between two tents he could see her. He looked along the dyke to the north. A black hand and arm waved in the grass. All clear. Inch by inch he crawled up over the edge of the dyke, and between two of those white tents. Yes. There it was, only half a dozen yards from that girl. What had those palefaces hung round its sacred neck? A watch? Eel-like he wriggled forward. Titty moved and he lay still. She dipped her pen and went on working. Flat to the ground he wriggled on. His hand was on the thing he had come to take when she moved again, but it was only to stretch her fingers cramped from holding the pen. She never turned. A moment later the watch lay on the ground where the totem had been and the savage, clutching his prize, was slipping back into hiding on the further side of the dyke.

  *

  Bridget woke slowly. It was as if a scarlet curtain hung before her eyes, the sun through her closed eyelids. She opened them and blinked, still more than half asleep. She had a queer feeling that she was not alone. She rolled over and saw Sinbad. Of course it was Sinbad. He had been there all the time. How long had she been asleep? He must have been very lonely to have started playing by himself. She saw the kitten crouching to the ground, his tail switching slowly from side to side. The kitten pounced. He had pounced on the tufted end of a weed that was lying on the path. Sleepily, Bridget watched him. He was crouching again, and that same weed seemed to be a little further from him. He pounced and as he pounced the flowery tuft slipped out of reach. The kitten waited, puzzled, close to Bridget’s head. The weed began to twist as if someone were twiddling the other end of it. Bridget’s eyes followed it into the grass. The grass parted and Bridget found herself looking straight into another pair of eyes, dark, sparkling, smiling at her through the stalks.

  A SAVAGE WATCHED HER

  “Sh!” said a voice, just as Bridget was going to jump up.

  The grasses opened wider, and Bridget saw that she was looking into the face of a girl who was lying on the sloping side of the dyke, just high enough to bring her head to the level of the footpath on the top.

  “Who are you?” said Bridget, whispering, though there was no one else to hear, and then, suddenly, she guessed.

  “Kara … kara … karabadangbaraka,” she stuttered.

  “Akarabgandabarak,” said the girl instantly.

  “Gnad,” said Bridget. “Gnad … You’re Daisy. He said you always said ‘Gand’ by mistake.”

  “He’s said lots too much,” said Daisy. “Who are you?”

  “I’m Bridget, and …”

  “Sh!” said Daisy. “Just a minute … All right. What?” She was talking to someone else, whom Bridget could not see.

  “Stuck in the middle of their camp,” said a boy’s voice. “Beastly cheek. They must have swiped it from Don. They’d even hung a watch on it. So Dee kept cave and I eeled it out. One of them was there too, but she didn’t spot me.”

  “Where’s Dee?”

  “Coming.”

  There was a stir in the grass on the island side of the dyke and someone shot over the dyke and into hiding again.

  “Good,” said the voice of Daisy.

  “Dum did a lovely bit of eeling,” said a third voice. “The paleface never stirred. How do you think they got it?”

  “They’ve got the password too.” That was Daisy’s voice.

  Her face showed again through the grasses.

  “Hi, you!” she said.

  “Yes,” said Bridget.

&n
bsp; “Don’t get up. … Wriggle down on this side.”

  Bridget did as she was told, and crawled through the grass down the steep side of the dyke.

  Two boys and a girl, crouching below the dyke where they could not be seen by anybody on the island, watched her arrive. For one moment even Bridget was a little startled. Except for their faces all three were shiny and black. All three were in bathing things, but it was hard to see where bathing things ended and mud began. The savages. There was no doubt about it. Bridget had her chance and knew it.

  “Karabadangbaraka,” she said.

  “I told you so,” said Daisy.

  “Akarabgnadabarak,” said the two boys together.

  “Has he asked you yet?” said Bridget.

  “Asked us what?” said Daisy.

  “He said he’d have to ask you. But I really am old enough. Even John and Susan said so. So it all depends on you.”

  “What does?”

  “Well, I’m quite old enough to be a human sacrifice, and not a bit skinny. …” She looked at Daisy whose mouth had fallen open. … “And he said I’d do very well, only he’d have to ask you first. …”

  “Tide’s high enough to get through to Speedy,” said one of the boys. “Better go and see what he’s been up to.”

  The girl seemed to think for a minute. “No,” she said at last. “Let him come and find us.” She whispered to the boys, and then turned to Bridget.

  “You’ll have to be captured first,” she said.

  “Then you will let me,” said Bridget.

  “Come along,” said Daisy.

  “Can I bring Sinbad?”

  “Who?”

  “Our kitten. They rescued him at sea. …”

  “Really at sea?” said the boy called Dee.

  “On the way to Holland,” said Bridget.