“Anyhow,” said Captain Flint, “you didn’t lose a man, and you salved nearly all your cargo, and you raised your ship and are bringing her into port under sail. Things might have been a lot worse. Don’t you worry about it overmuch. When a thing’s done, it’s done, and if it’s not done right, do it differently next time. Worrying never made a sailor.”
“It isn’t worrying,” said John. “It’s just that I hate myself for being such a duffer.”
“Um,” said Captain Flint, “I wouldn’t mind betting you’ve been just as much of a duffer lots of times before when nothing’s happened. We’re all duffers sometimes, but it’s only now and then that we get found out.”
John remembered sailing in the dark last summer, and the noise of the water on that rock as the Swallow rushed past it just before she found shelter in the lee of an island. Much worse things might have happened then. He had been at least as big a duffer then as he had been this morning, only then nothing had happened, and to-day poor Swallow had had her bows stove in and had gone to the bottom of the lake. For some time he said nothing. Things might have been worse even now. After all, Swallow was no longer at the bottom of the lake. What if she had been run down by a steamer and gone down in deep water? What if Roger and Titty had gone down with her?
“I wish I knew what mother will think about it,” he said.
“I shouldn’t be surprised if she wasn’t quite pleased to have the lot of you on dry land for a few days, even if you are at the other side of the lake.”
That was very much what John was afraid of, that mother should think they were duffers and disagree with daddy, who thought duffers better drowned. What if she forbade sailing altogether for the rest of the holidays?
He looked away to the right. Already the Peak of Darien was abeam and they were opening up Holly Howe Bay. They were too far out for him to be sure if that was mother herself, sitting outside the farm. John wished he was farther out still. He did not like to think of mother seeing trim, neat little Swallow limping in to Rio after shipwreck. He was very glad when they had passed the point on the other side of the bay.
Holly Howe was hidden now, and Swallow and her convoy were moving in between Long Island and the shore towards the little town of Rio, with its cloud of blue smoke drifting from it in the sunlight. All along this nearer side of Rio Bay were the building yards, where rowing boats were built, and little ships like Swallow, and racing yachts, besides motor boats for the people who did not know how to manage sails. There were boathouses and little docks. There were sheds a few yards back from the water, with railway lines running down into the lake, and wheeled carriages resting on the railway lines to carry boats down into the water and to bring them up out of it. On one of these carriages was a racing yacht, with its mast high above the roofs of the sheds, and its sails neatly furled under its sail-covers, its varnishing and painting bright in the sun, ready at any moment to go sliding down into the water and become a thing alive as all ships are when they are afloat.
The boathouses and sheds cut off a good deal of what wind there was in the bay, and Captain Flint rowed on ahead of Swallow, looking in between the little wooden jetties, to most of which motor boats or yachts were tied up. He was looking for the best place to bring a wounded ship ashore. He found what he wanted and called out as Swallow came nearer, “Bring her in here, Skipper.”
John unfastened the halyard from the middle thwart to which it had been made fast, and hurried forward to free the yard from the traveller and to lay it in the boat with the sail. As he brought his weight forward the bows of Swallow came down, bringing the patch under water. The water spouted in round the edges of it. A good deal had somehow found its way in on the voyage. He scrambled back again to the stern where the water was now well over the ballast.
“Lucky I put my sand-shoes on the thwart to go on drying,” he said. “They’d be wet enough now if I had them on.”
He paddled Swallow in with an oar and beached her between two of the wooden jetties below a big green shed. The rowing boat grounded beside her, and Captain Flint stepped out.
“So far so good,” he said, “and very good. I’ll be back in a minute.” Leaving Captain John in charge of both boats he went up a narrow alleyway between two of the sheds.
In this place John felt more like a ship’s boy than a captain. He tidied poor Swallow, hauled down her flag, rolled it round its stick and put it in the bows of the rowing boat. He pulled the rowing boat up another foot or two, when he saw that she was a little flustered by the wash of a passing steamer. When he had done all he could for his two charges, he began to use his eyes and nose and ears. There was something pleasant here for all of them. There was a smell of tarred rope, for one thing, one of the most heartening of all good smells. Then for his ears there was the sound of hammering, two quick taps and a good one to make sure, coming again and again from inside the green shed where a man and a boy hardly older than himself were busy putting in the copper fastenings in the planking of a little dinghy. Nor was hammering the only noise. There was the steady swish, swish of a plane taking long curling shavings off an oar that was being made. Further up the shed there was the noise of a saw cutting planks. In the next shed, into which John could see without moving more than a yard or two from the Swallow, there was a long wooden box with steam oozing out of it. It was not very deep or very wide, but it was more than half as long as the shed. That box, as John knew, was being used for steaming planks so that they could be bent to the right shape for the boats that were being built.
A long time in this place would have seemed short, but Captain Flint was gone only a few minutes. He came back with the chief boat-builder, a short square man with a cheerful ruddy face and a pleasant eye, who told John it was a grand day, which, considering what had happened, John thought most untrue. He looked at the patch on the outside of Swallow, prodded at the planking round the patch, felt the ribs inside, and lifted out the broken mast, as if he thought it much more natural for boats to be shipwrecked than otherwise. No one would have known, while he was looking at Swallow, that she was the most important ship on the lake and that the holidays of at least six people partly depended on getting her put right at once.
“Well, Mr Turner,” he said, “we’re very busy just now, and I don’t like taking men off other jobs …”
And then Captain Flint just took him by the arm and walked off up the alleyway and out of sight. When they came back a few minutes later, the boat-builder was smiling, and things suddenly seemed less hopeless than for those few minutes John had thought them.
“You did well to get her off the bottom at all without sending for us,” the boat-builder said to John. “That’s saved a day or two at least with us so busy here. We’ll have to take those planks out and put in fresh and see what else there is to be done, but I promise we won’t lose any time at all.”
“And will she really be all right again?” asked John.
“Better than a new ship,” said the boat-builder.
“Better than a new ship she’ll be, eh, Robert?” This last he said to another boat-builder who came out from the shed in his shirt-sleeves, dusting the sawdust from his trousers. This second boat-builder shook hands with Captain Flint, nodded to John, prodded the broken planking and peered inside and out, just as the first had done.
“Bit of a bump she’s had,” he said at last.
“She has that,” said the first, “but we’ll make her better than a new ship, eh?”
“And why not?” said the second.
“That’s all right then,” said Captain Flint. “And you won’t forget that we’re counting on you to put the job through as quick as you can.”
“That’s right,” said the chief boat-builder. “There’ll be no time lost.”
Captain Flint stepped into his rowing boat, John followed, and the boat-builder, with one push, sent her shooting out between the jetties without touching the motor boats moored on either side.
“We’ll row four oars,”
said Captain Flint, and then, while they were getting the oars out, he went on: “Um! Shipbuilders always say that, but I think old James means it for once. I told him that every day without Swallow is a day wasted. I think it sank in. Well, now for Holly Howe.”
John thought Holly Howe was likely to be much worse than Rio. He hardly knew what mother would say when she heard that all four of them had had to swim from a sinking ship, even if it had only been for a few yards. But Captain Flint laid to his oars and set so fast a stroke that John, who, whatever else he did, was not going to let himself get out of time, had enough to do without worrying about what was still to come.
“Easy with the right. Pull left,” sang out Captain Flint, as they turned sharply round the point into the bay and headed for the Holly Howe boathouse from which, only two days before, Swallow and her crew had sailed so happily away.
*
Presently Captain Flint slackened his stroke, and John was able to take a quick glance over his shoulder. They were nearing the jetty, and looking up the field to the old farm he saw someone in a blue frock sitting on a chair outside it. That must be mother, and the small lump of blue beside her must be Bridget playing about on the grass.
“Easy,” said Captain Flint.
A moment later, John was scrambling up on the jetty.
“Hang on to the painter,” said Captain Flint. “I’m just going up to talk to your mother. If you give her the news you’ll tell her about Swallow first and then she’ll think that half the crew are drowned. Better let me tell her, and then she’ll begin by knowing that she hasn’t had the luck to lose any of you.”
He had vaulted up on the jetty and was through the gate and striding up the field before John had time to answer.
John wondered. Would he have begun by telling mother he had wrecked Swallow? Why, of course he would. What else was there to say? How on earth would Captain Flint begin in any other way?
He looked up the long, steep field, up which Roger had tacked like a sailing ship that day, a year ago now, when daddy’s telegram had come to say they might sail in Swallow and camp on the island. He saw Captain Flint wave his hat, mop his bald head with his big red-and-green handkerchief, and shake hands, first with mother and then with little Bridget. Then he saw him sit down on the grass. Everything looked peaceful and happy, as if there could be no news of shipwrecks in the air. Suddenly mother jumped up out of her chair.
UNDER JURY RIG
“He’s told her,” said John to himself.
But she sat down again, not quite so comfortably this time, leaning forward as if she were asking questions. She threw her head back. “He’s made her laugh,” said John. The next thing was that Bridget went off through the gate into the farm, and Mr Jackson, the farmer, came round the corner from the barn, and Captain Flint went to talk to him and they shook hands. “He’s telling him about Swallow.” Then there was Bridget, running out again with a blue sunbonnet on and waving another in her hand. Then nurse came out to the little wicket gate of the garden. Then mother was putting on the blue sunbonnet Bridget gave her. “Bridgie’s tying the strings. She always does,” said John to himself. Then he saw that nurse was waving from the gate, and Bridget waving back. Then mother and Captain Flint came walking down the field towards the boathouse, and Bridget danced about beside them.
Mother was laughing. There was no doubt about it. She was laughing almost as if nothing was the matter. Everything was going to be all right.
*
“Hullo, Bridgie,” said John, as she trotted up to him for a hug. But his eyes were on mother and Captain Flint as they came round the corner of the boathouse to the jetty.
“It’s the least I can do for them,” Captain Flint was saying. “They salvaged Mixed Moss for me. The least I can do is to salvage Swallow for them. And they’d done a good deal of the salvaging already. It won’t be a big job to put her right. But it would make rather a mess of their holiday if they had to wait till it was done. You know it’s bad enough, anyway. We’d planned to do a lot of things that we can’t while my aunt’s staying with us.”
“How far is it to this Horseshoe Bay?”
“Not much further than the island.”
“But the other side of the lake.”
“Mary Swainson from the farm there rows to the town with milk every day, and I’d be delighted to carry mails and cargo for them. Passengers too,” he added.
“I don’t like to think of their being a nuisance,” said mother.
“They don’t know how to be that, ma’am,” said Captain Flint.
*
John looked at mother and mother looked at John. They kissed each other. Mother looked at him again with just the faintest smile in her eyes.
“Well,” she said, “so you’ve all turned into Robinson Crusoes. You’ve been very quick about it.”
“We didn’t get shipwrecked on purpose,” said John. “It was my fault. I thought I could just get into the cove without jibing, and then there was an extra gust and it all happened in a moment.”
“I thought just the same,” said mother, “when I capsized my cousin’s dinghy in Sydney Harbour. A few yards less to go and I’d have done it. But I always thought there was bad temper in the wind that day, and that even if I hadn’t tried to hang on too long, the wind would have hurried itself and capsized us just the same.”
John cheered up.
“Did it happen to you?” he said. “I wonder,” he added hopefully, “I wonder if it ever happened to daddy. I don’t suppose it ever did, though.”
“I shouldn’t be surprised,” said mother.
“It happens to most people sooner or later,” said Captain Flint, “unless they stick to wheelbarrows.”
“The main thing is,” said mother, “to see that nobody gets drowned. Are you sure none of you did get drowned?”
“Mother,” said John with reproach.
“I counted the lot, ma’am,” said Captain Flint. “Six. Four of yours and my own two nieces.”
“All the same,” said mother, “I think you’re right. If you really don’t mind dropping us on your way back, Bridget and I should be happier in our minds if we had counted them for ourselves.”
“I can count far more than six,” said Bridget.
“I dare say you can,” said mother, dropping down into the rowing boat and holding out her arms. “Count three now, and then jump. I’ll catch you.”
A minute or two later John and Captain Flint were again at the oars. They were rowing out of Holly Howe Bay under the Peak of Darien. But they were not rowing so fast as they had been. There was no hurry now. Rather the other way, for they wanted to give the others time to have everything shipshape. Besides, they had passengers, the best of all natives and the ship’s baby sitting side by side in the stern, and nobody can talk comfortably while they are rowing hard.
CHAPTER IX
SWAINSON’S FARM
IT was difficult to believe that the enormous pile of things on the beach at Horseshoe Cove could ever disappear into five tents and leave room for four explorers.
“We shall never get straight if we don’t set to at once,” said Susan.
“It’ll go like smoke with Peggy and me to help stow it,” said Nancy.
“We were jolly lucky to be able to save so much from the wreck,” said Roger.
“Why, that’s nothing,” said Titty. “Robinson Crusoe saved rafts and rafts full. He brought chests of drawers ashore. And barrels full of gunpowder.”
“But he lost some things,” said Roger, “and we’ve got everything we had.”
Mate Susan looked about her, to make up her mind where best to pitch the tents. There was not really much choice. The thick jungle of trees came right down to the narrow beach of the cove, leaving no open space for a camp except on the wide pebbly flat where the stream left the trees to run out into the lake.
“It’s a fine place to lurk in,” said Captain Nancy, “but it’s not much good for a camp. It’s not going to rain to-day,
but when it does the beck comes rushing down in a brown spate and all this dry bit is under water. But there’s nowhere else to put all four sleeping-tents. Of course, you could have them separately, here and there in the jungle.”
“We can’t do that,” said Susan, “because of the crew. We can’t have the able-seaman and the boy sleeping all alone.”
“Specially on the mainland,” said Titty. “There might be anything prowling around. On an island it’s different. Let’s not stop here at all. Let’s go on. Let’s go on to our valley, Roger’s and mine, the one we were going to show you if the shipwreck hadn’t stopped us.”
“Let’s go there at once,” said Roger.
“Rubbish,” said Susan. “We’ve got to get the camp made quickly. To show mother we really are all right. Captain Flint’s going to bring her. There’s no time to lose. This’ll have to do. We’ll find a better place to-morrow, if mother lets us stop. But when she comes it’s got to look as if we’d been here ages. And just look at it!”
There was no more discussion. It certainly did look hopeless, that great pile of bundles and tin boxes, with the parrot cage on the top of it and the green parrot inside chattering about pieces of eight and calling himself pretty. Susan threatened to put his cover over the parrot if he didn’t keep quiet, but she let Titty shut his noisy beak with a lump of sugar instead.
There was no doubt about it; the Amazons knew all about pitching tents. They had the stores tent slung between two trees in no time, and then, while Susan and Peggy stowed the things away in it, Nancy helped Titty with the little sleeping-tents, and Roger lent a hand now here now there, handing out the pegs one by one as Nancy and Titty needed them, or galloping from the beach to the store tent with a biscuit box or something else important. Horseshoe Cove began to look less like the scene of a shipwreck and more like an explorers’ camp. Pretty soon it was altogether like a camp, and all that had to be done was to turn it from an untidy camp to a tidy one. No one was better than Susan at doing that, but while Susan was tidying she did not like having too many people about. People had to be tidied away too, only the worst of tidying people away was that they wouldn’t keep still, and as soon as you had tidied them away from one place you found yourself falling over them somewhere else. So Susan gratefully remembered that they had not yet got any milk and that one of the Amazons would have to show them the way to the farm.