Peter Duck: A Treasure Hunt in the Caribbees

  “What are you doing out there?” called Captain Flint, when he came on deck just before midnight, and strolled up forward, and saw Bill riding the bowsprit away out there under the foot of the jib. “Your watch below!”

  Bill wriggled back inboard and shot down the forehatch like a startled rabbit down its burrow.

  “Out on the bowsprit end, was he?” said old Peter Duck, when Captain Flint told him about it. “Many’s the night I’ve done that when I was a lad. It’s a grand place to see the stars from and to feel the driving of the ship.”

  CHAPTER XVIII

  LAND HO!

  AN HOUR BEFORE the usual time, the crew and the deck of the Wild Cat were dripping with good salt water. Captain Flint and Nancy had turned in at four o’clock, when Peter Duck and John took over to watch for the last time the dark sails pale as the sky lightened, and for the last time to see the fiery ocean sunrise over the stern of the ship. But Captain Flint was up again at seven bells, and so were all the others. John, at the wheel, could hear drawers being pulled out and banged in again inside the deckhouse, and then Captain Flint came out with a hand lead for sounding and a big coil of line, with the depths marked on it with tags of bunting and bits of leather and string tied with knots. That certainly looked as if they were nearing land, although, for all that could be seen, the Wild Cat might have been no nearer land than she had been a week before. All round her, the sea stretched to the horizon. But there was the skipper bringing out the lead and hanging the lead line over a belaying-pin all ready for use. The dripping crew looked at the horizon in a new way, as if they expected to see something on the other side of it.

  At breakfast everybody was bothering Peter Duck to tell them again just what the island would look like.

  “It’ll be full forty years since I see it,” said Peter Duck, “and then it was a seaman point it out to me when we was passing far out. Two hills there are, and they open out as you goes to nor’ard of ’em. The biggest of ’em’s in the middle of the island. The other big one’s nor’-west from it, and then there’s a smaller you’d hardly notice away to south-east. That seaman as was telling me, he’d been there for water. I dare say I’ll remember the place when I see it, but it’s no use my telling you what I don’t know rightly myself.”

  “You’ll be staying on deck to catch first sight of it?” said Titty, when Peter Duck was going off into the deckhouse.

  “We shan’t sight it no sooner for my staying on deck,” said the old sailor. “I’m bringing to in my bunk till it’s my spell at the wheel. I’ll trust it to the rest of you to keep a look out for that island.”

  Indeed not one of them could think of anything else. Even Gibber and the parrot, both of whom were brought on deck, were very restless. This may have been because they knew in some way of their own that land was near, or just because they felt the disturbance in the minds of all the crew. Nobody could settle down to anything, and Susan complained that that morning’s breakfast plates were the worst wiped of any plates on the whole voyage.

  At midday Mr Duck came on deck again and Captain Flint took observations of the sun and worked out the ship’s position. Everybody, except Mr Duck, crowded into the deckhouse to see the little cross marked in pencil and then inked in in red ink. It showed how very near the island they really were.

  “Any time now,” said Captain Flint, “but if it’s all the same to you,” he added, grabbing Peggy, who was just going to bolt forward to get a good place to look out from, “the cooks will let us have our dinners just the same.”

  Dinner was quickly over, and for once even Susan thought it might be as well not to wash up right away. “We’ll wash up better after we’ve sighted it,” said Peggy, and Susan agreed. Everybody was on the look out. Bill had been the first to go aloft. He had climbed right up the foremast and was standing on the cross-trees. John had climbed up the ratlines and was waiting up there in the shrouds, close below Bill. Nancy had gone up the mainmast shrouds. Peggy, Susan, Roger, Titty, Gibber, and the parrot were all up on the foredeck. Captain Flint had let them have the glasses. John had the little telescope. Peter Duck was at the wheel. Captain Flint was walking up and down the starboard side of the deck, from the deckhouse to the capstan and back again, now and then sweeping the horizon with the big telescope.

  “Look! Look!” said Roger suddenly. “Do look at Gibber.”

  Gibber was solemnly trotting along after Captain Flint. He had a belaying-pin in one hand, and when Captain Flint used the telescope, Gibber put the belaying-pin to his eye, and copied the skipper exactly.

  Everybody shouted with laughter, and laughed the more when Captain Flint wondered what they were looking at, turned sharp round and caught Gibber at it, sweeping the horizon with the belaying-pin in a most professional manner.

  FIRST SIGHT OF CRAB ISLAND

  And just at that moment, when not a single one of them down on deck was thinking of the island, there was a shout, almost a yelp, from the top of the foremast, far over their heads.

  “Land ho!”

  Bill had been in a tremendous hurry to get those two words out.

  “Where? Where?” Shouts floated up from the deck and across from the mainmast where Nancy was eagerly straining her eyes to see something more than that unending rim of sea.

  “Starboard bow!” shouted Bill. “Let’s have that telescope, Cap’n John.”

  “I see it, too,” said John. “Nearly dead ahead. Well done you for spotting it.”

  “Well done, Bill!” Shouts came from all over the ship.

  Gibber, seeing everybody looking up at Bill, dropped his belaying-pin, raced up past him, and clung to the truck at the very top of the foremast.

  Captain Flint ran up the foremast shrouds.

  “I want Mr Duck to see this,” he said. “Look here, John, will you run down and take the wheel a minute?”

  Peter Duck, alone of all the ship’s company, had not said a word on hearing Bill’s shout. He had hardly glanced up. At the moment he was at the wheel. His job was to steer the ship and keep her on a compass course, no matter what other people might be shouting, hanging about in the shrouds up there, or perched on the cross-trees.

  But he gave John the wheel on getting the message from the skipper, and a moment later he was going up the foremast shrouds.

  “It’s land all right,” said Captain Flint, handing him the glasses, which he had got from Susan in exchange for the big telescope before going aloft.

  “Crab Island,” said Peter Duck. “There’ll be two hills there, but we’ve got ’em in line on this bearing, so’s they look like one. Maybe we’d better alter course a little to bring it on the port bow. With this wind we’ll be better going round the north end to look for an anchorage. There’s no place this side, only for wrecks. Well, I tell you, sir, I never thought to be seeing that place again.”

  Everybody could see the land now, the faint, pale hump rising out of the sea, because everybody knew exactly where to look for it. Yet it was a long way distant when it had first been sighted. Very, very slowly the Wild Cat seemed to bring the island nearer. It was difficult to believe that she was sailing just as fast as she had been the day before. It was not until quite late in the day that they could see the long line of white surf that marked the shore. All through the afternoon, they were taking turns with glasses and telescopes, watching that pale sketch of a hill turn into something solid and dark, with green forest spreading over its slopes. In the end Captain Flint could bear it no longer, gave up looking at the island, and went into the deckhouse to play Miss Milligan’s patience, one game after another.

  Towards evening they could see that there were indeed two hills, or rather three, one low one to the south, a large one in the middle with a black, rocky peak lifting above the trees, and another large one, though tree-covered, that had at first been hidden behind the shoulder of the other. And all along the western shore of the island here seemed to be a continuous line of breakers crashing in white surf upon the beach.
r />   “And where was it your ship was wrecked?” asked Titty.

  “It was black dark,” said Peter Duck, “so I couldn’t rightly say. But it’s my belief she’d be driven on the shallows on this side, and then, with the swell lifting her up and letting her drop, pounding her on the bottom, she’d break up in no time at all. And there’s not a boat could have lived that night, driving ashore with a big sea running. It’s a miracle I come ashore alive. There’d have been a lot of trouble saved, to Black Jake for one, and maybe to our skipper for another, if I hadn’t. There’s only one place along that shore where there’s a bit of quiet water. A foot or two, one way or the other, and I’d not be looking at the island now. The crabs or the fish would have had me long ago.”

  “Palm trees,” said Titty suddenly, her mind taken from the thought of that old wreck by the new sights before her, “Look at them against the sky, up on that hill.”

  “Can you see any of the crabs?” asked Roger, tugging at Captain Flint, who had put away his cards by now, and was looking at the island through the telescope.

  “Not from this distance,” said Captain Flint. “Now, tell me, Mr Duck, it was somewhere by this shore that you saw the stuff buried.”

  “It was under my tree I see them two putting a bag in a hole. And that was right on the edge of the woods, where the palm trees grow down to the beach. Yes, it was down this side they come, and I followed ’em back over the shoulder of the big hill, and down t’other side to where they’d a boat ashore in a bay there is there. They likely knowed the island well, them two, bringing their boat ashore with a stream of water handy.”

  “We’ll use their anchorage tonight,” said Captain Flint. “Mate Susan will be pleased enough to have her tanks full again.”

  “Fresh-water washing for everybody tomorrow,” said Susan.

  “Bathing,” said Titty.

  “Nancy’s going to wash her hair,” said Peggy.

  “Well, aren’t you going to wash yours?” said Nancy.

  “The parrot’ll enjoy having a good splash, too,” said Titty. “He’s never really seemed to think much of salt water when I’ve offered him a bath.”

  “Pretty good hills, they are,” said John. “There ought to be splendid climbing on those rocks.”

  “We’ll do some exploring once we’ve got the treasure aboard,” said Captain Flint. “Bill’s Landing, it’s going to be. That’s one good name. What about Mount Gibber for the big hill? We’ll get no end of fun out of this place.”

  “It’s when the anchor goes down that troubles begin,” said Peter Duck, who cared nothing at all for islands and wanted only to be sailing once more.

  Bill watched the island but did not say a word. He knew the North Sea as well as most people know the place where they were born, and going to sea, for him, had usually meant fishing on the Dogger Bank. This was something different. Madeira, seen at dusk, with Black Jake close in pursuit, and the Viper coming up astern, had meant little more to him than a lucky bit of cover to allow the Wild Cat to throw the enemy off her track. But to come to this green island, with its beaches of bright sand, its black, cliff-like peaks, rising out of feathery palms swaying and blowing in the trade wind, this was indeed going foreign, and Bill would not trust himself to speak lest, for once, he should let the others see he was surprised. It was better to see all he could and to say nothing. These children would say everything that wanted saying.

  And then another thought troubled his mind. These children seemed to find it easy to forget Black Jake, but Bill knew him. Peter Duck had been mighty sure that Black Jake would think they had run down to the Canaries when he found that they were not in Funchal harbour, but what if he hadn’t? What if somehow or ether he had reached the island already? The Viper was a fast vessel and carried more sail than the Wild Cat. Bill looked eagerly enough at feathery palms and shining beach, but he looked for something else. Was anyone moving on those shores? Was anyone digging under those waving trees?

  The sun was already dropping low towards the sea when the Wild Cat came sweeping round the northern headland. The wind was slackening. Bill, unable to hold in his fears, with all those others chattering about this and that they saw on the island shores, had gone aloft once more to the foremast crosstrees. If there were a vessel at anchor behind the island … at least he would know the worst and get it over.

  Round the headland came the little green schooner. The sails were jibed over, and she slipped along in smoother water, sheltered by the high ground, though Captain Flint was keeping her pretty far out for fear of shoals and sunken rocks. Captain Flint had taken the wheel himself. Peter Duck was carefully searching the shore with the big telescope. He had been thinking of going up to the foremast-head to get a better view of rocks and shallows, but he had seen that Bill was up there already and had shouted to him to sing out if he saw a shoal patch. John and Nancy were on the foredeck ranging a dozen fathom of chain clear. During the afternoon they had been helping Mr Duck to get the big anchor shackled to the chain, and all ready to let go. Titty and Roger, Gibber and the parrot were with Captain Flint at the wheel. The monkey was running backwards and forwards on the roof of the deckhouse, running on all fours, as he often did when he was excited about anything. The parrot was in his cage.

  Susan had swept Peggy with her into the galley.

  “Don’t let’s spoil things by being late with supper,” she had said, and the two of them were hard at it, cooking an extra good one, and watching the island shores slip by, one strange, wild picture after another framing itself in the galley doorway.

  The sun went down in a blaze of fire just as Mr Duck turned quietly to Captain Flint and said: “I can see where the stream comes out. I mind it well enough now. The Mary Cahoun them fellows took me off in was laying just south of that bit of a head. There. Between that one and the next.”

  “Haul in sheets,” called Captain Flint.

  At the word Bill came hurrying down by the foresail halyards.

  “Black Jake ain’t here yet,” he said happily, as he joined Mr Duck in hauling in the mainsheet.

  “Who thought he would be?” said Mr Duck. “You stand by now and be ready to take the wheel if the skipper wants to leave it.”

  The Wild Cat headed in towards the shore in the swiftly falling dusk.

  “I won’t take her too close in,” said Captain Flint, “though most of these islands have deep water on the western side. Will you stand by to take a sounding, Mr Duck?”

  The others watched, breathless, while Mr Duck, after swinging the lead in long, easy swings, whirled it round and round and suddenly let it fly forward so that it dropped into the water well ahead of the ship.

  “By the mark ten,” called Peter Duck, hauling the line taut and looking at a little strip of leather with a hole in it fastened to the line. “Cap’n John, fetch me that tin of tallow I made ready just inside the deckhouse door.”

  John was back with it in a moment, and Peter Duck pushed some of the tallow into a hold in the bottom of the lead, using his thumb as if he were pushing down tobacco in his old pipe.

  The Wild Cat was slipping on. Again the lead whirled and flew forward and dropped with a splash.

  “By the deep, eight, and sand,” called Peter Duck, feeling between his fingers the stuff that had stuck to the tallow under the lead.

  “Eight,” called back Bill, standing beside Captain Flint.

  Again a splash forward. A silence while Mr Duck was hauling taut the line and feeling that it was touching the bottom.

  “By the mark five … And sand.”

  Captain Flint headed the Wild Cat into the wind.

  “Haul down jib and staysail!”

  The headsails fluttered down.

  Peter Duck went on steadily sounding.

  “Five.”

  Again.

  “And a half. Five.”

  Again.

  “Five.”

  “LET GO!”

  There was a heavy splash, and then the rattle o
f chain, as John and Nancy let go, and then began playing out fathom after fathom as the Wild Cat gathered sternway.

  “Fifteen fathom out, sir,” called John.

  “Give her another five,” called Captain Flint.

  The Wild Cat had made her ocean passage and was anchored in the New World.

  Dark was falling fast. There was busy work on deck, as Captain Flint and Peter Duck, John, Nancy, and Bill brought down the great sails that had brought them so far. Then the davits were rigged, and the dinghy was lowered over the side.

  “No, no,” said Captain Flint. “No one’s going ashore tonight, but Mr Duck’s going to lay out a kedge anchor while we’re stowing these sails. Bill, you can go with Mr Duck. John, have you got those tiers handy? Let’s get at it.”

  Ten minutes later, the Wild Cat was snug for the night. On either side of her were low headlands with tall palm trees dark against a darkening sky. There was a sudden screaming flight of parrots, that brought an answering scream from Polly, who was being given a last look round on deck before being taken below. Gibber was already in his bunk. Everybody was speaking in a whisper, so as to hear the noises of the land. Palm trees were creaking, and rustling their dry, feathery leaves. There was the whistling of tree frogs, and the sharp crac-crac of the grasshoppers. And then, suddenly, millions of lights showed along the edge of the forest, moving all the time. It was as if millions of small bright sparks were dancing there in the dusk.