“There’ll be more on the lake,” said Nancy, as the Amazon, broadside on, almost without steerage way, drifted down with the stream.
Even on the lake there was very little wind, not enough to let the Jolly Roger do credit to its owners. There was hardly wind to fill the sail and the little flag hung limp, but Roger was not aboard, so nobody was in a hurry to suggest that it would be better to use the oars. What wind there was came from the south or south-west, and down the lake the water in the lee of the islands was like a looking-glass in which every tree and rock was reflected. The little white-sailed Amazon crept slowly out from the mouth of the river, so slowly that it was hard to tell that she was moving. She left no wash, and not the smallest ripple stirred under her bows.
“Let’s broach the fudge,” said Captain Nancy. “Easy there with the apple-pie, Peggy. You nearly rammed it with your starboard elbow.”
“Hang on to the pie, somebody, while I dig for the fudge,” said Peggy. She screwed herself round and pulled the apple-pie out of the way and handed it to Susan, licking her fingers because the juice from the pie had spilled over the edge of the pie-dish. Then, digging down again among the knapsacks and bundles, she pulled up a big tin that had once held coffee, but now held something better. The tart was wedged firmly back in its place and the tin was opened with the help of the marlinspike on the ship’s knife (the very same knife that had been picked up by Roger and given back to its owners after the parley on Wild Cat Island a year ago). Inside the tin was the fudge, and on the top of the fudge was a bit of paper on which was written, “Love from Cook.”
“Good old cook,” said Nancy. “Let’s have that bit of paper.” She pinched a tiny scrap from it and dropped it overboard. Very slowly, inch by inch, it drifted astern.
“We’re moving all right,” she said, “and there’s sure to be more wind presently.”
The other three munched fudge and watched the scrap of paper. Nancy did not look at it again for a long time. She was trying to do the best she could with what wind there was, and there was so very little that she could not be sure where it was coming from. But the Amazon seemed to be moving slowly across the lake, though the scrap of paper, small as it was, was still in sight when they had another bit of fudge all round.
After all, there was really no hurry. Nancy and Peggy felt today, now that the great-aunt had gone, what the others had felt on the day when, for the first time this year, they sailed out from the Holly Howe Bay. Holidays had at last begun. And John and Susan had been looking forward all the year to sharing new adventures with the Amazons, and now the Amazons were free, and in another day or two they would once more have Swallow and be able to voyage to the Arctic, the Antarctic, or anywhere else. To-day, for the first time, the Amazons were not bothered by having to get home in time for some wretched meal. Everybody was well content to be afloat and, if not truly sailing, at least ready for a wind.
A long time passed and a lot of fudge was eaten before the wind came, in a steady, gentle breath that carried them across to the eastern shore of the lake, where they went about and stood out again, now on the port tack. They had almost reached the middle of the lake when the sun seemed to stop being so hot, and Peggy said it was very cold, and John and Susan sniffed the air, wondering what was this faint smell they seemed to know.
“I know,” said John. “It’s like fog in the Channel.”
“So it is,” said Susan. “It’s like that day outside Falmouth with daddy.”
“When we had such a job to find St Mawes.”
“And the lighthouse was lowing like a cow.”
“It isn’t fog in the Channel,” said Nancy. “It’s fog here. Look at it drifting up over the islands.”
“The hills are gone already,” said Peggy.
“I can’t see the islands,” said Nancy.
“Or the shore,” said John. “Not properly. It’s going. There it is again. Now I can’t see it at all.”
A minute or two later the fog was so thick about them that they could hardly see the length of the boat. It was as if instead of air there was nothing but thick, damp cotton-wool and instead of water, a dull steaming plate under the wool.
“Well, this is a go,” said Nancy. “Sing out as soon as you see anything, anybody.”
“I wonder whether those two will be all right up on the top there,” said Susan.
“It’s taken us ages just to drift across and back again,” said Peggy. “And they had a long start anyhow. And Titty was in a hurry to get back and give the parrot some sunshine to make up for yesterday. They’re probably back by now.”
“Well, I hope they’ll have the sense to get something to eat for themselves without waiting for us,” said Susan. “I did tell them to get the fire lit.”
“Roger’ll see that he gets something to eat,” said Nancy. “You needn’t worry about that.”
They drifted slowly on in the white fog. Away to the south somewhere by Rio they heard a steamer hooting steadily. Then the hooting stopped.
“Tied up or anchored,” said Nancy. “They won’t run the steamers while it’s as thick as this. Hullo, what’s that chap?”
There was the noise of a motor boat coming nearer very fast.
“I wish we had a foghorn.”
But before anybody could even think of shouting, the noise roared past them in the fog and then grew fainter and fainter as the motor boat rushed up the lake.
“That’s the way,” said Nancy bitterly. “In a hurry to get home. Idiots. They never think of anybody but themselves.”
Then they heard voices.
“Better get ashore and boil.”
“Aye. There’ll be nothing doing with this fog on the water.”
There was a squeaking of oars on pin rowlocks.
“Fishermen,” said Peggy. “Going ashore to make their tea.”
“That motor boat’s left such a wave that I can’t see if we’re moving,” said Nancy. “Anyhow, stand by to go about. Mind your heads.”
The others bobbed their heads down, but the boom was a very long time in coming over. Indeed they presently lifted their heads again and found that the boom was idly jerking as the Amazon rolled in the wash left by the motor boat. Captain Nancy impatiently brought her ship’s nose round by waggling the rudder.
“It’s only that there’s so little wind,” she said. “Amazon’s a beauty at coming about, really, but of course even she can’t do it in a dead calm.”
With the help of the rudder, Amazon was put on the starboard tack, and then, thanks, perhaps, to the will-power of two captains and two mates, she began to move again, very, very slowly back towards the Rio shore. It must have been will-power that moved her, because there was now no wind that anybody could feel on the back of a hand even if licked first. But move she did, because another scrap of the paper on which cook had sent her love, dropped overboard by Peggy amidships, drifted slowly astern and after some time was to be seen close to the rudder.
“If only there were a lot of wind instead of a calm,” said John, “and if only the fog was black instead of white, this would be like the sail we had in the dark last year when Rio lights went out and everything went pitch black and I tried to steer by compass but couldn’t really because the compass wouldn’t keep still.”
“It’d keep still enough now,” said Peggy.
“Shiver my timbers for a tame galoot,” said Captain Nancy, “what’s the good of having a compass and not using it? We’ve got one. It isn’t a good one like yours, but it’s better than nothing. It’s in the pocket of my knapsack. Dig it out, Peggy, and hand it over.”
“We’re going backwards now, aren’t we?” said Susan, looking at that last scrap of paper which had drifted back and was now close under the bows.
“Howk up the centre-board,” said Captain Nancy, as soon as Peggy had given her the little pocket compass.
“Up it is,” said John.
“Make fast with the peg so that it doesn’t slip back. You show him, Peggy. L
ower away the sail. It’s no good waiting about like this. We’ll row, and get down to Horseshoe Cove by compass.”
“I’ll row,” said Peggy, as she unhooked the yard and laid it down in the boat.
“We’ll take turns,” said Nancy. “There’ll be rowing enough by the time we get down there, if the wind doesn’t come first.”
Rowing was not very easy. The boom was a little in the way, for one thing. Then the space on each side of the centre-board case was stuffed with sleeping-bags and knapsacks and the long roll of the Amazon’s tent, to say nothing of smaller things like the pie. The rower could not get a proper pull on the oars, but, as Captain Nancy said, that did not matter, because it wasn’t as if they were wanting to behave like a motor boat and try to sink an island.
Susan went forward to balance the boat, and sat on the cargo aft of the mast. Peggy did her best with the oars. Nancy held the compass, a small scout compass, and, watching the needle, pointed in the direction in which the boat ought to be going. John took the tiller and steered, keeping his eyes on Nancy’s hand.
“South-east’s our course,” said Nancy. “We must be more than half-way across the lake, and that’ll bring us to the eastern shore. Then we’ll know where we are for getting through the islands. It’ll be easy enough to strike across when we’re the other side of Rio. You’ll have to keep a look-out, Susan. I’ve got to watch the compass and John’s got to watch me.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” said Susan, as readily as if she had been the ship’s boy.
For a long time Peggy pulled away at the oars, while Nancy’s hand, moving a little to right or to left, signalled the course to the helmsman, and Susan stared into the thick white fog. The only noise was the tinkle of the water under Amazon’s bows, the faint splash of the oars in the water, the dripping of the lifted blades, and the squeak of the rowlocks.
“Trees. Trees on the port bow,” suddenly called out Susan and John together.
“Don’t look round, Peggy, you goat,” said Captain Nancy. “It’ll be your turn to keep a look-out when one of us is rowing. I was thinking we must be nearly across.”
A few yards away in the fog they could see a row of ghostly blue-grey trees.
“We’ll follow the shore for a bit,” said Nancy. “We’re bound to come to a tree or a boathouse that we know.” She stared at the shadowy trees as they slipped slowly by.
John steered so as to keep the trees in sight, which he could do by keeping the boat about ten or a dozen yards from the shore.
“This must be a pretty deep bay,” he said at last. “I’ve been giving her an awful lot of starboard helm.”
Nancy opened her hand and looked once more at the little compass.
“Easy!” she cried. “We’re heading nearly north. This must be one of the islands and we’ve been following the trees all round it.”
The two captains looked at each other with some shame.
“Somebody ought to have been looking at the compass,” said Peggy and, though this sounded almost like mutiny, even Captain Nancy had nothing to say.
“What’s the course?” said Captain John.
“South-east again,” said Captain Nancy.
It was rather like letting go of a rope, to turn away and lose sight of the trees and be alone once more in the white fog. But there was no point in rowing round and round an island, so Nancy once more kept her eyes on the compass, and John watched Nancy’s hand and steered, and Peggy rowed, and Susan tried to see through the whiteness that shut them in.
Suddenly they heard voices, close ahead of them.
“By gum, but it came on sharp.”
“It did that.”
“What’s yon?”
Ghostly in the fog they saw the figures of men on a low landing-stage.
“What’s yon? What boat’s that?”
“Amazon.”
“Pretty thick it’s come on. Better tie up.”
But already the Amazon was slipping along by the shore, and the men and the landing-stage had vanished.
“Couldn’t have hit a better place,” said Nancy, confident again. “There’s a field here. That’s why we can’t see any trees. When we see trees it’ll be the beginning of Rio Bay. Then we can follow the shore right round by the pier, or, yes, much better, we’ll steer due south right across the mouth of the bay. That’ll bring us to the boat-building shops,”
“Where they’re mending Swallow?”
“Yes. We’ll have to look out for the Hen and Chicken on the way across the bay, but we ought to see them easily enough with the lake being so low. And we’ll go slow anyhow.”
“Rocks?”
“Yes. The Hen is the big one where the gulls paddle, right out in the middle of the bay. The Chicken’s just a little one.”
“Here are the trees,” said Susan.
“Now then,” said Nancy, “don’t row too hard. Keep your eyes skinned, Susan. The rocks are only just above water.” She looked at the compass and pointed south.
The trees faded astern, and once more there was nothing to be seen all round the boat but thick, white, woolly fog and a ring of steaming, oily water.
“Rock on the port bow.”
“All right, Mister Mate, we can clear it,” said John to Peggy, who had lifted her oars, waiting for orders. She rowed again and the rock was swallowed up astern in the fog.
“That was the Hen all right,” said Nancy. “Now for the Chicken.”
But they never saw the Chicken. “Steamer buoy right ahead,” was the next thing called by the look-out.
John put the tiller hard a-port and they passed close by the high floating framework of the steamer buoy.
“We’ve missed the Chicken then,” said Nancy. “The buoy marks the fairway south of both rocks. Listen!”
Over the water came the noise of hammerings, and the chug, chug of a small petrol engine, and the rattle of shafting, and every now and then the long “woosh” of a circular saw slicing through a plank.
“The boatyards,” said John, “where I was with Captain Flint. Let’s go and have a look at Swallow.”
“We simply mustn’t,” said Susan, “with those two waiting up at Swallowdale.”
Peggy rowed on.
The tall mast of a racing yacht at her moorings towered above them.
“The Polly Ann,” said Nancy. “She’s moored close by the Point. We ought to see it in a minute now. There it is. Done it. We’re across. It’s easy enough now. Come on, Peggy, swop places. I’m going to row.”
John took the compass now, while Peggy steered. They kept close along the shore by the Point, and then rowed across the mouth of the Holly Howe bay seeing nothing until the Peak of Darien loomed high and dark out of the fog.
“Now we’ll row across the lake. South-west’s the course.”
“Come on and take the compass, Captain Nancy,” said John. “She’s your ship. And I’d much rather row.”
Again there was a change of places, and again something known and certain was left behind as the Peak of Darien vanished astern of them while they moved out into the unknown where the only certain thing was the little needle in Nancy’s pocket compass, pointing always to the north. John rowed, stroke after stroke, as regular as an engine, while Nancy watched her compass, and Peggy, at the tiller, watched Nancy’s pointing hand. It was a long blind passage in the fog, south-west across the lake, but they made the farther shore at last, after which they had only to follow it until they should come to Horseshoe Cove. John rowed steadily on, and presently they were startled to find that they were already in the narrow channel between Cormorant Island and the mainland. They were close under the little rocky island before they saw it, for they were watching the shore on the other side of the boat. The cormorants were startled too. There they were on the dead tree, grey shadow birds in the fog. Neither Swallows nor Amazons had ever seen them quite so near before, but, as Peggy said, they were so dim in the fog that they might as well have been a hundred yards away.
And then
, when the shadow birds had vanished with the shadow tree on the shadow island, a ripple showed on the water under the fog, and suddenly they could see the island again, and trees well back from the shore, and the headlands of Horseshoe Cove, and Wild Cat Island at the other side of the lake, and the lower part of the woods, and the hills at the foot of the lake. The fog was lifting, and John stopped rowing for a moment, and they looked back to the islands by Rio as the fog rolled away before the wind. It was hard to believe that they had come all that way from the other side of these distant islands without being able to see more than two boats’-lengths out of their own little ship.
“Let’s sail the last bit,” said Nancy.
“It’s so very near now,” said Susan. “It’ll be quicker to row.”
“Your mate’s thinking of her crew,” said Nancy. “But never mind.”
John rowed on. He, too, was thinking now of the able-seaman and the boy, who must be wondering up there in Swallowdale how they had managed in the Amazon with the fog so thick on the lake. In a few more minutes he was pulling in between the headlands, and this strange voyage was done.
There was a lot of baggage, even for four, when Amazon had discharged her cargo on the beach. There was the big tent and its poles, and then there were Nancy’s and Peggy’s sleeping-bags, which were bigger and heavier than those which were stuffed into the knapsacks of the Swallows. There was the kettle and the milk-can, and the little barrel that had to be slung from an oar. Then there was that pie, too, a kind thought of cook’s, and very good to eat, but a dreadful thing to carry.
“It’s no good,” said Captain Nancy. “We’ll have to make two journeys. Just take what you can manage comfortably.”
“We’ll have tea and then we’ll run down and bring up the rest,” said John.
“It’s late for tea now,” said Susan. “We’ll have tea and supper both together, as soon as we get up to Swallowdale. Titty’s sure to have some water boiling.”
CHAPTER XXXIII
THE EMPTY CAMP