“Why?” asked Susan.
“Because the Amazons discovered them too. They discovered our island. There’s nothing left for us to discover for ourselves.”
“Well, we did discover them,” said Susan, “and they showed us their adder.”
Titty was cheered by this. “Perhaps they never let the Amazons into their tribal secrets. Perhaps the Amazons have never seen their serpent. Perhaps it’s all right and we really are the proper discoverers. Just seeing a person is nothing.”
“Let’s galumph,” said Roger.
“Come on,” said Titty.
Galumphing, which is partly jumping and partly galloping, is a quick way of going downhill.
It was such a quick way that Able-seaman Titty and the Boy Roger passed the patteran and the bent and tied hazel branches without seeing them. Captain John passed them too. He was wondering what he ought to do about warning the retired pirate about putting a padlock on his houseboat. What would the Amazons say about it? If Captain Nancy wanted to seize the houseboat by a surprise attack when the pirate was somewhere ashore, she would certainly rather it were not locked up. Captain John galumphed half-heartedly. Ought he to have told the two Billies that they were talking not to friends but to enemies of the houseboat man, who, for the present at least, was not the Blackett lasses’ Uncle Jim, but Captain Flint, against whom Amazons and Swallows had concluded a solemn alliance. He galumphed half-heartedly. But even though he was not galumphing with heart and soul, when it is easy to get so giddy that you can see nothing at all and to go so fast downhill that you can hardly stop yourself, he never noticed his own patteran. Susan, however, saw it. She had begun looking out for it as soon as she was in the path through the trees, and on that account her galumphing could hardly be called galumphing at all.
She came last down the track and found that the galumphing feet of the others had kicked the patteran aside. She would not have been sure of it herself if she had not seen the two hazel branches bent into hoops and then Titty’s blaze in the side of the hazel tree.
“John!” she called.
There was no answer but the sound of galumphing feet far away down the winding path.
She took out her whistle and blew it as loud as she could.
The noise of galumphing stopped. She blew it again.
She heard John shout, “Hi! Titty! Roger!”
She blew it again three times.
John came slowly back up the path and after him the able-seaman and the boy, all three of them out of breath.
“You passed your own patteran,” said Susan. “It’s here.”
“So I did,” said Captain John. “I was thinking of something else. It’s a good thing you saw it.”
“That path might have taken us anywhere,” said Titty.
“Where is the patteran?” said Roger. “Somebody has kicked it away. Perhaps it was me. Let’s put it right again.”
“No, of course not,” said Captain John. “We put it there for ourselves to find our own way back. If we were to leave it now it would show the savages the way we had gone. We must unfasten these boughs too.” He cut the strings and the boughs sprang up again. “Now there’s nothing but the blaze, and it’s a very little one. No one will know where we left the path.”
“If they were good trackers,” said Titty, “they could follow our footprints.”
“It’s a good thing really that we went further than the patteran,” said Susan. “Our footprints will throw them off the scent. They’ll go on and on down the path.”
“On and on,” said Roger.
“To the end of the world,” said Titty.
“We mustn’t make any marks when we turn off the path,” said Susan, “that might show them.”
“The proper way is to jump,” said John. He took a flying leap off the path and into the wood. “Now, you three, all jump off the path at different places.”
They all jumped and, having thus thrown off the pursuit of all possible enemies, they came together and began climbing down through the steep wood. They slipped and stumbled and saved themselves from falling by holding to the stems of the trees.
Roger spoke privately to Titty.
“But were the charcoal-burners enemies?” he said.
“No. Not just then,” said Titty, “but, of course, they might be.”
“I liked them,” said Roger.
“So did I,” said Titty, “especially the serpent. But they were savages all the same. The serpent showed it. Besides, they’re no good if they aren’t savages.”
“But they don’t really eat people,” said Roger.
“They may have eaten hundreds of thousands,” said Titty.
They came to the road and crossed it.
“I see water,” said John.
“The sea,” shouted Titty.
A moment later they came out of the trees on the shore of the great lake. They looked round for Swallow and saw her where they had left her, about a hundred yards away.
“Properly,” said Captain John, “we ought to have made marks all the way up, so that we could have come out exactly at the same place. But we’ve done it near enough.”
“Hullo,” said Susan, “there’s one of the native boats close to our island.”
John pulled out the telescope and looked through it.
“It’s all right,” he said, “it’s going the other way. Probably a fisherman. When it’s calm like this they just row along the shore and tow a spinner to catch pike.”
“Sharks,” said Roger.
“The first thing to do,” said Mate Susan, “is to make a fire on the shore and have our grub. Then we can gather firewood and stow it in Swallow.”
“Right, Mister Mate,” said Captain John. “All hands to gather firewood. We can get enough for the fire and then go on gathering firewood while the mate is boiling the kettle.”
Mate Susan built a small fireplace of stones on the beach close by Swallow. The others gathered dry sticks that had been left all along the high-water mark. Susan took a few handfuls of dry leaves and moss. She put them in the middle of her fireplace and built a little wigwam over them with bits of dried reeds from last year. It was like a little copy of the charcoal-burners’ hut. Then she lit the moss and the reeds blazed up, while she built another wigwam over the reeds, this time of small sticks, all meeting at the middle over the blaze. When they caught fire and began to crackle she piled bigger sticks against the small ones. In a few minutes she had a strong fire. At one side of the fireplace she had put two big stones, and on these she balanced the kettle so that most of it was over the flames. She stayed by the fire, putting more and more sticks on it and keeping the flames as much under the kettle as possible, while the others, scattering along the beach, gathered as much firewood as they could carry. It lay there, ready for picking up. There was no need to look for it, and soon the pile of firewood was growing much faster than Susan used it up for the boiling of her kettle.
It was very hot, and the smoke of the fire went straight up. Even so some of it got into her eyes, and the sharp smell of it got into her nose and mouth. But it was not such hot work boiling the kettle as it was gathering firewood, and presently Roger said, “It must be boiling now.” Titty threw a bundle of firewood on the growing pile. “It’s boiling now, isn’t it?” she said. “I’m too hot to gather any more.”
“It’ll change its tune in a minute,” said the mate.
“Like the cuckoo,” said Titty, “except that kettles change their tune as soon as they boil, and don’t wait till June.”
Just then the kettle did change its tune. Susan blew her whistle to let Captain John know that grub was ready. “Sit down, you fo’c’sle hands,” she said to the able-seaman and the boy. They sat down. Captain John came back, very hot, with a huge bundle of firewood on his back. He had doubled a long piece of string and brought it round the sticks to keep them together.
After dinner they went on gathering firewood. The captain and the able-seaman and the boy gathered it, and Susan sor
ted it and packed it in Swallow. It is always the mate’s business to see to the stowage of cargo. Presently, when they had gathered all the best firewood on that stretch of beach, they embarked, and rowed along the shore and brought her in again in a bay, the shores of which were brown with dry sticks. Swallow was soon so full of firewood that there was hardly room for her crew.
“She won’t hold much more,” said the mate.
“She’s down to her load line already,” said the captain.
“That’ll do, then,” said the mate, but just then came Titty, dragging after her the whole of a small dead tree that had been blown down in the great storm of the last winter. It was quite dry and fine for firewood, and nobody wanted to leave it behind.
“We’ll have to carry it as deck cargo,” said Captain John.
Swallow was already so laden that they could hardly push her off. The mate ordered Titty and Roger aboard, and sent them to the stern. Then he and the captain took their shoes and stockings off, and, one each side, pulled Swallow out until she floated. It was very unpleasant walking without shoes and stockings on the stones, but pleasant to feel the water.
“I want to take my shoes and stockings off,” said Roger.
“You can’t now,” said the mate.
“Wait till we get back to Wild Cat Island,” said the captain, splashing ashore to fetch Titty’s tree. “Then you can take your shoes and stockings off, and help to discharge cargo. And then we’ll all bathe before supper.”
Meanwhile, Titty and Roger were clambering over the cargo to settle themselves in the bows. John brought the tree, and with Susan’s help balanced it amidships, sticking out on either side. Then he and Susan came aboard. Rowing was impossible, because of the deck cargo. Captain John carefully pulled out one oar, and paddled with it over the stern.
“It’s a good thing it’s so calm,” said the mate, looking at the water, which was not very far below the gunwale.
LOADING FIREWOOD
Sculling over the stern is slower than rowing, but in the dead calm Swallow moved easily, heavily loaded though she was, and no water came aboard, though some nearly did when Roger suddenly changed his mind about the side of the boat that he liked best.
“We’ll take her to the old landing-place,” said Captain John. “That’s a good place for landing a cargo, and we want the wood handy for the camp.”
“It would be a dreadful business carrying it all the way from the harbour,” said the mate.
So Swallow was carefully sculled up the lake to the island, and beached at the old landing-place. Titty and Roger had pulled off their shoes and stockings before they arrived there, and two pairs of shoes and two pairs of rolled-up stockings went flying ashore as soon as the ship touched the ground. A moment later the whole ship’s company was in the water, pulling up the ship and discharging her cargo. The mate settled down to make a neat stack of the wood like the long piles they had seen by the wigwam of the charcoal-burners. Titty’s tree was laid aside to be broken up later. Then, when all the sizeable sticks had been taken out, Captain John went aboard the Swallow to pick up all the small bits and chips and broken twigs and dead leaves that were lying all over the bottom boards. It is surprising what a mess a ship is in after carrying a cargo of any kind, and small firewood is as untidy a cargo as you can have. It was a long time before Swallow looked as neat and trim as she had done when they had rowed away that morning. When at last there was not a dead leaf or a twig as big as a match to be seen in her, John pushed her off, and paddled her round to the harbour. He took the mast from where it had been hidden in the bushes, and stepped it again. He put the sails aboard, and tried the halyards to see that the traveller on the mast was working properly. It would never do for the wind to get up and the Swallow not to be ready to put to sea at a moment’s notice. Then he walked through the trees to join his crew at the other end of the island.
They had already stacked the wood, and close beside the fireplace Susan had heaped up a lot of pieces of turf.
“What’s that for?”
“That’s to keep the fire in, like the charcoal-burners do,” said Susan. “I’m going to try it tonight.”
John walked on to his tent.
He stopped suddenly.
“Someone’s been here.”
In the middle of the doorway of his tent a stick had been stuck into the ground, and in a cleft at the top of the stick there was a small folded piece of white paper.
The others came running. John opened the piece of paper. On it was written in big plain letters:
“Called to tell you that you had jolly well better leave my houseboat alone. Once is quite enough. No joking.
James Turner.”
“But we’ve never touched his houseboat,” said Susan.
“Of course we haven’t,” said John.
“He’s a beast,” said Roger.
“That must have been his boat we saw,” said John, “the one I thought was a fisherman. First he goes and tells the natives we’ve been bothering him. And now he creeps into our camp when we’re not there.…”
“We ought to have gone with the Amazons and sunk him at once,” said Titty. “It’s the proper thing to do. You take the treasure out and sink the galleon or burn it to the water’s edge. We could have saved the parrot.”
“What are we to do about it?” asked Susan.
“We must hold a council with the Amazon pirates,” said Captain John. “They know him. He’s their enemy as well as ours.”
“Let’s go and row round him and shout, ‘Death to Captain Flint,’” said Titty. “That’ll show him what we think of him.”
“We were doing nothing to him at all,” said John. “We were even bringing a message for him from the charcoal-burners … the one they gave us for the Amazons. I wish there was a wind. We can’t go to them and they can’t come to us. I don’t know what we ought to do.”
He read the letter again. Then Susan and Titty read it.
“He doesn’t even sign his real name,” said Titty. “That shows he’s up to no good.” She ran into the other tent and came out with a pencil. “Let’s put his proper name on it,” she said. Susan gave her the letter and Titty wrote after the words “James Turner” “Captain Flint” in even larger letters.
“We can’t do anything about it now,” said Captain John gloomily. “Let’s bathe.”
In two minutes all Swallow’s ship’s company were splashing about by the landing-place. Captain Flint’s letter was forgotten in the water, but Captain John remembered it long before he was dry. He hardly listened at supper while the others were talking of the snake and the charcoal-burners. Last thing at night he went up to the look-out station. The sun set in a clear sky behind the sharp edges of the western hills. The stars as they came out were reflected in still water. There was not a sign of wind. He went down to the camp, undressed and wriggled into the blankets on his haybag. Roger in the blankets on the other haybag was already asleep. John heard Susan say, “Half a minute before lights out. I want to damp the earth over my fire.” He heard the hiss of water on hot ashes. He heard Susan come back into her tent. “Ready now,” she called. “Right. Good night. Lights out,” he replied, and blew out his lantern. For a long time he could not sleep, and when at last he did disturbing thoughts of Captain Flint bothered him even in his dreams.
CHAPTER XV
CAPTAIN JOHN VISITS CAPTAIN FLINT
THE FIRST THING John did when he woke in the morning was to listen. He could hear Roger’s breathing somewhere in the blankets on the other haybag. He could hear a wren quarrelling with some other bird on the island. But he could not hear any rustling of leaves. He could not hear any noise of water on the shores. It was another day of absolute calm. He rolled over and looked at the barometer. It had hardly moved. No, it was another calm day, and the Swallows and Amazons were held apart by long miles of windless, useless water. What was he to do about Captain Flint? But just then he heard one noise that puzzled him, a little noise, surprising, unc
ertain. It was the crackle of fire. He sniffed. He could smell the fire, too, the same sharp, pleasant smell that had hung about the charcoal-burners’ camp. He crawled out of his blankets, and walked out of the tent, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. The mound of earth that was the mate’s fire was smoking. Some of the clods on it had fallen in. Some were blackened. But in the middle of them the fire was still alight, and making little noises like a waking bird.
“Hullo, Mister Mate,” called Captain John. “Your fire’s still burning.”
“What?” came sleepily from Susan’s tent.
“Rouse up, and come and look at your fire. It’s burned all night.”
“Has it? Good,” said Susan. “I was afraid I’d damped the earth too much.”
“Come out and look at it.”
“In a minute,” said the mate. “What about filling the kettle? I used all the water last night to damp the fire.”
John picked up the kettle, and went down to the landing-place. He dipped the spout of the kettle under, so that water came into the kettle through the spout instead of through the hole at the top where the lid is. If he had simply dipped the whole kettle, the water would have poured in, bringing with it any scum that might be floating about. By dipping the spout, he drew his water from below the surface. By the time he came back with the full kettle, Susan was already busy at her fire, pulling aside what was left of the earth clods, and putting new sticks on the red fire that was underneath.
Titty was looking out of her tent.
“Let’s keep it alight for ever and ever,” she said. “We will keep it burning, all our lives, and then our children, and then their children. It’ll be like the fire in a savage temple that never goes out at all.”
“Probably in temples they have oil lamps,” said Susan. “They have them in some churches. This is a real fire.”
“Well, it hasn’t gone out either,” said Titty, half asleep.
The fire blazed up well, and Susan hung the kettle over it.