Great Northern?

  “If the Sea Bear’s owner knew,” said Titty, “he wouldn’t want her to miss a thing like that.”

  “We’re going back,” said Nancy.

  “Don’t deafen me,” said Captain Flint. “There’s no argument about it. Either the man is mad or he was pulling your leg. There isn’t a bird’s egg in the world worth five pounds to anybody. If you’d just grabbed his money and skedaddled he’d be after you now to try and get it back. Don’t let’s hear any more about it. Come on, John, and buck up. Here’s the mail packet. We’ll take the letters across, fill up our cans and get a wire off to Mac….”

  “Look! Look!” whispered Titty. “The Pterodactyl’s putting a boat over.”

  The little steamer from the mainland was coming into the harbour. Ordinarily everybody would have been watching to see her tie up alongside the quay. Today, nobody took the slightest notice of her.

  A boat in davits was being swung over the side of the white motor yacht. Two men were at the falls, lowering the boat to the water. For a moment the mutineers were silent. A man slipped down into the boat, cast off the tackles, and brought the boat to the ladder, where the owner of the Pterodactyl was waiting.

  “If he’s coming to ask, don’t tell him where I saw the birds,” said Dick.

  “I won’t,” said Captain Flint. “But you flatter yourselves. He isn’t interested. He’s had his little joke with you and now he’s going ashore.”

  But the sailor had pushed off and, with the owner of the Pterodactyl sitting in the stern, was rowing straight across the harbour towards the Sea Bear.

  “He’s coming here,” said Dick.

  “Why shouldn’t he?” said Captain Flint. “Pure politeness. Returning your call. But I hope he’ll be quick about it. I want to get those letters off.”

  “Don’t tell him anything,” said Dick urgently.

  “Get away forrard, all of you,” said Captain Flint. “Or down below. And keep your mouths shut. Whatever he wants, there’s no need to let him think we’re nothing but a howling mob.”

  CHAPTER XI

  THE EGG-COLLECTOR COOKS HIS OWN GOOSE

  NOBODY WENT BELOW. There was a seething quiet on the foredeck where the mutineers waited, watching the dinghy from the Pterodactyl bringing Dick’s enemy across the harbour.

  “Plus fours at sea!” whispered Peggy.

  There was certainly a contrast between the smartly dressed egg-collector, sitting in the stern of his dinghy, rowed by one of his men, and the stout figure of Captain Flint, in a shirt and a baggy pair of old flannel trousers, leaning against the boom and busy with the lighting of his pipe.

  The egg-collector thought so too, and made his first mistake.

  “Will you please inform your owner that I wish to see him?” he said.

  Peggy turned round to hide her face and nearly squeaked as Nancy gave her a ferocious pinch.

  “He’s going to put his foot in it,” whispered Nancy with sparkling eyes. “Keep quiet. Listen!”

  “Owner not aboard, Sir,” said Captain Flint politely.

  “Are you in charge?”

  “Skipper for the time being,” said Captain Flint.

  “Hear that?” said Nancy. “For the time being … We’ll depose him if he doesn’t agree to come back. Do be quiet. What’s he saying now?”

  MR JEMMERLING COMES ABOARD

  “Everybody is quiet except you,” whispered Peggy.

  “Don’t be a thundering galoot. Listen!”

  They had missed a few words, but they heard the next plainly … “Proposition to make which may be much to your advantage.…”

  The egg-collector had his hands on the Sea Bear’s ladder and was coming aboard.

  “He never asked if he might,” said Titty.

  Captain Flint was standing up. The egg-collector stepped on deck. His man was holding the dinghy steady against the ladder.

  “That your owner’s family?”

  There was a general grin on the faces of the mutineers. It widened as Captain Flint replied:

  “No.”

  “That boy, in spectacles?”

  “I am sorry if he was a nuisance to you coming aboard.”

  “Uncle Jim’s getting mad,” said Nancy.

  Dick was wiping his spectacles.

  “It’s all right,” whispered Dorothea. “He knows you weren’t.”

  “Not at all. Not at all. But he came to me with a very remarkable story. Right up my particular street, as it happens. My name is Jemmerling. May mean nothing to you, but your owner would know it at once….”

  “No doubt,” said Captain Flint.

  The egg-collector glanced at the group on the foredeck, and lowered his voice. They heard only the last words of what he said: “… likely to be telling the truth?”

  “Why should you think not?” Captain Flint asked.

  Again they could not hear everything the egg-collector said. They heard only scraps that meant little except to Dick … “mistaken … description certainly accurate … inclined myself to think he saw what he described. If so, the matter is of some importance … Useless, of course, unless confirmed by competent witnesses … Prepared to confirm it myself … The boy could not be expected to understand … Unable to tell me the exact spot … Now …” Again he lowered his voice so that they could hear nothing until Captain Flint replied.

  “Never left the ship,” they heard him say. “I did not see the birds.”

  “Surely he would tell, if you advised him to.”

  “His secret, not mine.”

  “It is not a secret he should be allowed to keep. He came to the right place with it in bringing it to me. I told you my name. Jemmerling … of the Jemmerling Collection. Alters all previous ideas … Adds a new bird to the list of British residents.”

  “I know nothing about it,” said Captain Flint.

  “But, perhaps if you were to tell me where you were when he saw the birds.”

  “Look! Look!” whispered Titty. “He’s tearing up the letters.”

  Captain Flint, standing listening to the egg-collector, was slowly tearing into little bits the letters he had been so busily writing in the cabin.

  “It’s the letters home,” whispered Dorothea. “He’ll have to write them again.”

  “He’s changed his mind,” whispered Nancy. “Good. Oh, good! The Pterodactyl’s cooking his own goose.”

  The egg-collector had seen that his first view of Captain Flint had been mistaken. He spoke in a new manner.

  “Nice little ship,” he said. “Hired, I suppose. Now, I wonder what this holiday has cost you. It need have cost you nothing at all if you can persuade that boy … Prepared to write a cheque at once. Would fifty pounds cover it?”

  “Shiver my timbers!” whispered Nancy. “Now what? Look out for squalls.”

  The egg-collector had pulled a long narrow cheque-book from his pocket. With the cheque-book in one hand and a fountain pen in the other, he was smiling at Captain Flint.

  “Good day,” said Captain Flint, and moved a step towards him. The egg-collector moved a step back. He stopped smiling.

  “You understand,” he said. “The information would be worth nothing to the ordinary person. It may be worth nothing to me. I will take that risk … Did I say fifty pounds? … Let me write you a cheque for a hundred….”

  “Good day, Sir,” said Captain Flint.

  The egg-collector could not take another step back without going overboard.

  “You are making a great mistake….”

  “You will forgive me,” said Captain Flint politely, though his face was very red. “I am about to go ashore. Good day to you.”

  The egg-collector went down into his dinghy. The sailor from the Pterodactyl rowed him away. Captain Flint stood above the ladder. He tore his letters into still smaller bits, dropped them overboard in pinches of half-a-dozen scraps at a time, and watched the tide carry them away.

  The mutineers on the foredeck came aft.

  Captain Flint turne
d suddenly.

  “Spit in the water,” said Nancy. “You’ll feel better.”

  Captain Flint looked curiously at Dick, almost as if he were seeing him for the first time. “Sorry, Dick, old chap,” he said. “I ought to have known that the Ship’s Naturalist knew more about birds than I do. Well, what do we do about it?”

  “Go back there, of course,” said Nancy. “And we’re all jolly glad you’ve made up your mind. It would have been a pity to have to make you walk the plank in view of the whole harbour.”

  “How do you know I have made up my mind?”

  Nancy pointed to a tiny scrap of one of the torn-up letters which had missed going overboard and was lying at Captain Flint’s feet.

  “I was wrong,” he said. “He’s not mad but bad. Rotten bad. It isn’t only eggs he wants. He thinks Dick really has got hold of something and he wants to take the credit of it for himself. You’re quite right. It’s up to us, it’s up to the ship, to see he doesn’t. Mac’ll understand. I’ll leave it to you to explain to the parents.”

  “They’ll understand too,” said Dorothea.

  “Did you say a photograph would settle it?” he asked Dick.

  “Yes,” said Dick. “But it may be all a mistake. They were a long way off. But I’m pretty sure.”

  “How long will it take you to find out?”

  Dick thought. “I’d have to make a hide and let them get accustomed to it, and take the photograph the next day. But if it’s a mistake, I’ll know at once, as soon as I can get near the island in the folding boat.”

  “What was all that yarn you were spinning last night about savage Gaels?” said Captain Flint, but himself brushed that idea aside before anybody had time to answer. “I don’t suppose the shepherds would mind if you photographed every bird in the Hebrides. It’s that chap who’s the difficulty. He isn’t going to give up in a hurry. He’ll be watching us like a hawk. If we go back, he’ll follow. Come on, John. We’ve got to fill up with petrol anyhow, and I’ll have to send telegrams instead of these letters.”

  “Aye, aye, Sir,” said John, and hurried below for more cans. Roger had already brought two of them on deck.

  “Mutiny over,” said Nancy. “Lucky for you. For us too. If we’d had to depose you and make you walk the plank, we might have had a bit of a job to take the ship back by ourselves.”

  “Mutiny? Eh? What’s that?” Captain Flint’s mind was busy on other things. “Don’t bother to put the gaskets back on those sails. Leave everything just as it is. Look as lazy as a crew can be. Hi! What are you doing with that bucket?”

  Titty had just dipped a bucket over the side at the end of a rope. She hauled it up. “I was going to give the decks a wash down … Where he stood, anyway.”

  Captain Flint laughed. “Oh well, you can do that,” he said. “What a chap!”

  John hauled the dinghy alongside and went down into it. Roger passed the petrol cans down one after another.

  “I’ll row,” said Captain Flint. “I’d let you if you had a yachting cap and a blue jersey and the ship’s name in big red letters on it, and if you knew how to look the part.”

  They pushed off from the side, but had gone only a few yards when Captain Flint backwatered.

  “That chap may try to have another go at Dick when I’m out of the way. If he tries to come aboard again, don’t let him.”

  “We won’t,” said Roger.

  “Out marline spikes and repel boarders,” said Nancy. “I’d like to see him put a finger on our rail.”

  “We’ll be back as soon as we can,” said Captain Flint. “Don’t keep staring at his ship. Be lazy and look lazy. Let him think nobody’s interested.”

  The dinghy was halfway to the quay when Susan suddenly remembered. “The bread and the milk,” she said. “And I’ve never given them the milk-can.”

  “You can’t haul them back now,” said Nancy. “We can manage with tinned milk for one more day.”

  “Six loaves of bread,” called Susan, and they saw John turn and nod.

  “Keep that bucket away from here,” said Roger quietly. The others looked round to see that he was lying full length on the deck. He yawned. “I can’t be properly lazy if the decks are swimming with water.”

  Titty had waited till the petrol tins had been passed down into the dinghy before sloshing her bucket of water over the place where the owner of the Pterodactyl had stood talking. She did not dip another. The whole crew took up restful poses in the cockpit, on the deck or sitting on the skylight, being careful to look not at the Pterodactyl but at the distant quay … the whole crew except Dick who, in a sort of panic, had slipped down into the cabin and was reading and re-reading the short paragraph in his bird-book about the Great Northern Diver, and looking now at the picture and now at his own drawing. He came on deck again with the book in his hand.

  “There simply can’t be a mistake,” he said. “That man knew it was a Great Northern as soon as he looked at my diagram. He showed me a skin of one of the ones he’s killed. It was exactly the same. And I know I saw two birds, and except for a minute or two there was always one on the island and it was always sitting in the same place.”

  “Of course there isn’t a mistake,” said Nancy. “And you’ll get a photograph and prove it … Prove what, by the way?”

  “That Great Northern Divers do nest in the British Isles,” said Dick. “All the books are wrong, because no one’s ever found them nesting before.”

  “Even Captain Flint sees how much it matters now,” said Dorothea.

  “The Pterodactyl taught him,” said Nancy. “I say, what sort of birds are they anyhow? Big?”

  “As big as geese,” said Dick.

  “Golly,” said Nancy.

  “They went into the Post Office,” said Titty about ten minutes later. She had been lying on the foredeck, watching the long quay through a telescope rested on the rail. “They’ve been in a long time … Four telegrams to write … There they are, coming out … Captain Flint’s talking to the harbourmaster … They must have got the petrol … There’s a man wheeling our cans on a handcart.”

  “Don’t look round too fast,” said Nancy. “The old Dactyl’s goggling at us through binoculars. I do wish he’d come and try to get aboard.”

  “Shall I get a spanner from the engine room in case?” said Roger.

  At last John and Captain Flint left the quay steps in the dinghy, but they did not row straight to the Sea Bear.

  “What on earth have they gone to look at that buoy for?” said Nancy.

  They very soon knew.

  “Engine, Roger,” said Captain Flint the moment he stepped aboard. “And let’s have the funnel for filling up the tank. She won’t start without a drop of petrol.”

  “Aye, aye, Sir,” and the gleeful Roger disappeared.

  Captain Flint opened the filling hole in the after deck, fitted the funnel and, with John to help, began pouring petrol into the tank.

  “You can start on the winch, Nancy,” he said over his shoulder. “Get the anchor a-trip.”

  “Are we starting right away?” asked Nancy, hurrying to the foredeck.

  “We are not,” said Captain Flint. “We don’t want to show him the way to Mac’s Cove. We’re shifting to that buoy. We’ll run a warp to it and lie there. We can let go then without making a shindy. If we have to get our anchor when we leave he’ll hear it and be off after us and stick to us like glue. We must get away without a sound when the time comes. We’ve got to give that fellow the slip.”

  CHAPTER XII

  WAITING FOR A CHANCE

  THEY HAD NOT long to wait before they knew that Captain Flint was right and that they could not make a move unnoticed. Roger had hardly set the engine ticking over; there had not been more than a dozen throbs, a dozen pale blue puffs of smoke and water from the exhaust pipe at the Sea Bear’s stern, before they saw that people were busy aboard the Pterodactyl. The egg-collector had come out of the deckhouse and was watching them through binoculars.
There was the quiet hum of big engines starting up. A man hurried forward and stood by the Pterodactyl’s windlass, looking aft for the egg-collector to give the word to weigh the anchor.

  “They’re starting too,” said Peggy.

  “Ready to start if we do,” said John. “It’s his only hope … to see where we go and come after us.”

  “Dinghy, John!”

  “Aye, aye, Sir.”

  “Take a hand with you and wait for us near the buoy … No … Not you, Nancy. We’ll want you here to let him have the end of the warp.”

  “Come on, Susan,” said John.

  John pushed off with Susan in the dinghy, rowed across to the buoy, and waited, paddling a stroke or two now and then, so as not to drift back on the tide. They saw Nancy and Captain Flint busy on the foredeck. They saw the anchor climb to the stemhead of the Sea Bear and hang there dripping. They saw Captain Flint go aft, to the tiller. They saw Nancy waiting with the end of a warp. They heard the throb of the little engine change, as the Sea Bear began slowly to forge ahead.

  She came nearer and nearer to the buoy.

  “Slow,” they heard Captain Flint’s voice, without a hint in it that anything unusual was happening.

  John brought the dinghy alongside the Sea Bear’s bows. She was just stemming the tide, no more.

  “Here you are,” said Nancy quietly, lowering the end of the warp to Susan. “Pass it once through the ring and make a bowline knot … a long one, two fathoms, at least, he says, so that we can let go from the deck when we’re ready.…”

  Two minutes later, it was done. The warp had been made fast, the engine had stopped, and Susan and John were climbing aboard again as Roger, hot and happy, came up through the companion and looked across the water to the Pterodactyl.

  “He’s stopped his engines too,” he said.

  “Shut off the moment he saw our dinghy near the buoy,” said Nancy.

  “Spotted what we were up to,” said Captain Flint. “Can’t help that. And much obliged to him for showing that if we leave he means to follow us.”