The moment they had sailed past the entrance there was nothing to be seen but grey rocks. No one who did not know would have guessed that a snug harbour was hidden among them. For its size the harbour on Wild Cat Island was certainly one of the finest harbours in the world.
John put up the helm, hauled in his mainsheet, jibed the boom carefully over, met his vessel with the helm, and let the mainsheet out again steadily and not all in a rush. Swallow, with a following wind, was running up the channel between the island and the mainland.
“There’s the landing-place,” shouted Roger, as soon as he could see it. “But Amazon isn’t there either.”
John sailed on and then hauled in the sheet for a moment while he headed Swallow for the little strip of smooth beach.
“She’ll do it now,” he said to himself, and let the sheet out again until the sail flapped idly in the wind while the Swallow slid more and more slowly into smoother and smoother water. She was moving at last so slowly that the crew hardly felt her as she stopped with her nose on the beach. The ship’s boy, painter in hand, jumped ashore.
“Lower away now, Mister Mate,” said the captain.
Susan had already scrambled forward over the cargo. She loosed the halyard and paid it out hand over hand. Down came the yard and was unhooked by the able-seaman, while the captain gathered boom and sail into the boat.
The parrot was the next man ashore, handed out in his cage to the ship’s boy. The able-seaman followed the parrot. Then came the mate and the captain. They waited just long enough to pull Swallow well up before hurrying to the old camping-place on the open ground among the trees. Roger, Titty and the parrot got there first.
There was no one waiting for them. But, not far from the fireplace, left from last year, there was a large stack of driftwood all ready for burning, and on the top of it was a big white envelope, pegged in its place by an arrow with a green feather.
“The Amazons,” shouted Roger. “It’s one of their arrows.”
“One of your old feathers, Polly,” said Titty, putting down the cage, and the parrot, seeing his green feather in the arrow, twanged his beak on the bars and let out a long angry scream.
Susan pulled out the arrow.
On the envelope was written in blue pencil: “TO THE SWALLOWS.”
“Open it,” said Captain John.
Inside it was a sheet of paper on which was written in red pencil:
“TO THE SWALLOWS FROM THE AMAZON PIRATES. WELCOME TO WILD CAT ISLAND. WE’LL COME AS SOON AS EVER WE CAN. NATIVE TROUBLE. CAPTAIN FLINT IS STUCK TOO. HAS TITTY REMEMBERED THE GREEN FEATHERS? THESE ARE OUR LAST. SWALLOWS AND AMAZONS FOR EVER!
NANCY BLACKETT, THE TERROR OF THE SEAS,
CAPTAIN OF THE AMAZON.
PEGGY BLACKETT, MATE.
P.S. – WE’LL BE WATCHING FOR YOUR SMOKE.”
Opposite the two signatures, a skull and crossbones had been drawn in pencil and then blacked in heavily with ink.
“Have you got the feathers for them, Titty?” said John.
“Of course I have,” said the able-seaman. “They’re in an envelope rolled up in my sleeping-bag. I haven’t lost a single one.”
CHAPTER II
WILD CAT ISLAND
“I WONDER what they mean by ‘native trouble,’” said Able-seaman Titty, when she had read the letter carefully through to herself.
“That’s just Nancy,” said Mate Susan. “She always thinks there’s no fun without trouble, so she’d put it in anyhow.”
“But it’s very queer about Captain Flint,” said John.
“They’ll probably be here before we get the camp ready,” said Susan. “And mother and Bridget are coming to tea. Let’s get to work.”
“We’d better start the fire first, if they’re watching for it,” said John.
“We’ll rouse them with the red glare like the burghers of Carlisle,” said Titty. “But, of course, it’s the smoke that matters. They could see that if they’ve gone up the hill behind their house.”
No one was so good at starting a fire as Mate Susan. In a moment she had a flame licking up her handful of dry leaves, and setting light to the little wigwam of dead reeds and twigs she had built over it. A moment later the fire was taking hold of the larger sticks she had built round it, with every stick pointing in towards the middle. There was a pleasant crackling of burning wood, and a stream of clean blue smoke from the dry fuel poured away through the green trees. Wild Cat Island was once more inhabited.
“Now for the cargo,” said Mate Susan, standing up again and blinking the smart out of her eyes. “Where’s that boy?” She took out her whistle and blew it. This brought Roger running back from the look-out post under the tall tree at the northern end of the island, always his favourite place.
“No exploring till the camp’s pitched.”
“Turn to, my hearties,” said the able-seaman. “That’s what Captain Nancy would be saying.”
“Turn to, then,” said the mate.
“All hands to discharge cargo,” said Captain John and the whole crew set to work getting the things out of the boat, and carrying them up through the trees to the clear space where they meant to camp.
As soon as the Swallow was clear of cargo, Captain John rowed her down to the foot of the island, and then, sculling with one oar over the stern, brought her into harbour, steering her in through the rocks awash and under water by keeping the two marks on shore (the stump with a white cross on it and the forked tree) exactly one behind the other. Then he rolled up the sail, coiled the ropes, and moored Swallow with the painter over her bows to the stump with the white cross on it and a warp over her stern to a stout bush on one of the rocks, so that his little ship lay afloat and as snug as any ship’s captain could wish. He looked her all over. Everything was as it should be, and he hurried back to the camp by the old path from the harbour. It had grown over again a good deal since Titty had trimmed it last year.
In the camp the fire was already roaring in the stone fireplace under the big black kettle brought from Holly Howe. Each of the four new sleeping-tents lay where it was to be put up and the mate was only waiting for the captain to help her to sling the stores tent on a rope between two trees. This did not take long, and as soon as the tent was hanging from its rope, the able-seaman and the boy were kept hard at it filling the pockets along the bottom of the tent walls with little stones to keep them in place. Then one of the old ground-sheets was spread inside, and in about two minutes the mate had bundled in everything that was not going to be wanted at once. The sleeping-tents needed no trees, but it was a hard job to find places where the stony ground would take the tent-pegs. There were stones almost everywhere close under the mossy turf, but by shifting a stone here and a stone there, and making holes ready for the pegs before trying to drive them in, the explorers managed very well, and soon all four tents were standing, arranged so that anybody lying in any one of them could see the fireplace through the doorway. Then the guy-ropes were tightened up, the ground-sheets were spread, the sleeping-bags unrolled and a little candle-lantern fixed in a safe place at the head of each tent, well clear of the walls.
Almost everything was to be kept in the stores tent, but Roger had got a new fishing-rod and would not let it be stacked with the others, but wanted it with him in his own tent. “It doesn’t take any room longwise,” he said, “and I might want to fish with it any time.” Titty would not be parted from her box of writing things. And, of course, John kept in his own tent the tin box with the ship’s papers, and had his watch and the little barometer he had won as a prize at school hanging from hooks on the bamboo tentpole at the head of his tent, so that he could unhook them and look at them in the night without having to get up.
THE ISLAND CAMP
“It’s a far better camp than last year,” said Titty, looking at the four sleeping-tents and the stores tent that once had been hers and Susan’s. “And it’ll be better still when the Amazons have put their tent up in the old place. Let’s put som
e damp stuff on the fire to make a smoke they can’t help seeing.”
“It doesn’t matter how soon anybody comes now,” said the mate.
Titty and John pulled handfuls of damp green grass and threw them on the fire until a thick column of bitter grey smoke poured up and nearly choked them.
“Is the boy up at the Look Out Point?” said the mate.
Roger crawled hurriedly out of his tent where just for a minute he had been practising being asleep, ready for the night.
“Can we explore now?” he said. “And can I take the telescope?”
“It’s in the captain’s tent,” said the mate.
“No. I’ve got it,” said the captain, and handed it over to the ship’s boy, who dashed off with it at once to Look Out Point, to lie there hidden behind a clump of heather with the telescope poking through it so that without being seen he could look far up the lake, as far as the islands off Rio.
The parrot, who had been quiet for some time, suddenly called out, “Pieces of eight! Pieces of eight!”
Titty opened the door of his cage.
“Come on, Polly. You can come out and enjoy yourself like everybody else.”
The parrot scrambled out at once, but took no notice of Titty who offered him her hand to perch on. The parrot had its cold eye on the arrow with the green feather that Roger had stuck in the ground by the wood pile, and the moment his cage was opened, he made straight for it. Titty saw what he was after and quickly pulled up the arrow and put it out of the parrot’s sight, on the top of the wood pile.
“No, no!” she said. “You know you’ll only chew them and rumple them till they’re no good for anything. It isn’t as if you moulted such a lot of them. There aren’t any to spare. Susan, may I give him a lump of sugar?”
But the parrot was not to be comforted with sugar. What he wanted was his own green feathers from the Amazons’ arrow, and as he could not have them, he went back into his cage to sulk.
They left the parrot to forget his bad temper, and hid the arrow behind some of the boxes in the stores tent because, as John said, the Amazons were sure to want it, and as Titty said, Polly didn’t seem to like seeing his feathers being useful after he’d thrown them away himself. The captain, the mate and the able-seaman went together along the path by the western shore of the island down to the harbour to see Swallow lying there in her old snug berth. It was no use waiting for Roger. After all there would be the boat from Holly Howe, bringing the best of all natives and the ship’s baby. And then there might be Captain Flint in his big rowing boat, and at any minute the little white sail of the Amazon might come into sight from among the Rio Islands. There was really some sense in being a look-out, and nothing would stir Roger from his post.
On the beach in the harbour there were the marks of several boats. One, of course, showed where John had landed in the Swallow. The others, they thought, must have been left by the Amazon.
“They probably beached her here while they were putting the new paint on the leading mark,” said John.
“And piling up all that wood,” said Susan.
“They’ve painted it very well,” said Titty, looking at the white cross painted on the tree stump that served, with the forked tree behind it, to show the way to mariners who wished to bring their ships in safely through the rocks outside. “And the nails are still there where we had the lanterns last year.”
“Mother says, ‘No more night sailing,’” said John, “and I’ve promised, so we shan’t want the leading lights.”
“We can easily plan things that don’t need night sailing,” said Titty. “There’s lots of the Antarctic unexplored and all the Arctic at the other end of the lake.”
“It’s no good talking about that till the Amazons come,” said John.
“And Captain Flint,” said Titty.
There was a great deal to look at. There was the rock where Titty had lain flat on her stomach and seen the dipper bob at her and fly under water. There was the rock she had hidden behind when Nancy and Peggy had come ashore with a lantern in the dark and she had been alone on the island. John, looking at the little waves lapping on the rocks outside, was remembering how Nancy had first shown him how to use the marks. Susan, looking down the lake, was trying to find the place where she had made a fire on the shore after their visit to the charcoal-burners up in the high woods. This year there was no trickle of smoke up there among the trees, and, indeed, Mrs Jackson, the farmer’s wife at Holly Howe, had told them already that the charcoal-burners were not working on this side of the lake but up beyond the moor on the other side, in the next valley.
All three, even Susan, who, as mate, felt herself in charge of the others, for John, though captain, was a boy and not to be counted on in some things, walked on their toes, springily, and talked very quietly. To be back on Wild Cat Island was almost too good to be true. Titty dipped her hands in the cool water of the harbour, just to show herself that she was really there. They went slowly back, pushing their way through the bushes above the western shore, looking out through the leaves at the bright glint of evening sunshine on the lake below them. They had been all over the island and were just thinking of bathing, when they heard a shrill yell from the Look Out Point.
“There they are!”
All three of them ran up through the camp and under the tall tree. Roger was lying on his stomach at the edge of the cliff that dropped down there into the lake.
“Where? Where?” asked John, looking everywhere for the little white sail of the Amazon. There were rowing boats, motor boats, a few big yachts and a steamship, but no little white sail was to be seen.
“Mother and Bridget,” said Roger.
“Let me have the telescope,” said the mate.
She took one look, then gave the telescope to Titty, and ran down again into the camp.
Titty looked. Already this side of Houseboat Bay she could see the native rowing boat from Holly Howe. Mother was rowing and Bridget was sitting in the stern in the middle of a lot of parcels.
Titty ran down into the camp to help Susan. Susan was right. There was no time to lose if a kettle was to be brought to the boil, and everything else made just as it should be. John and Roger waited together up on Look Out Point, watching the rowing boat grow larger until even without the telescope it was easy to see who was in it. At last the rowing boat was within hailing distance. Bridget waved and mother looked over her shoulder as the captain and the ship’s boy called to her over the water. Presently they were looking down into the rowing boat as mother rowed past, and then they ran down through the camp to join the mate and the able-seaman at the landing-place.
Mother brought her boat in just as they got there.
“Last year we rubbed noses,” said Titty, as mother stepped ashore. “Do you remember being a native?”
“I don’t see why we shouldn’t do it again,” said mother, and she did, and after that, of course, the ship’s baby went native and had to rub noses with everybody all round.
“Tea’s all ready,” said Susan, “but we came away without any bread.”
“That’s all right,” said mother. “It was on my list, not yours. Bread and bunloaf.”
“And you were going to bring us some milk.”
“I’ve brought you enough for to-night. But you’ll get the morning’s milk from Mrs Dixon’s. She’ll be expecting you. We sent word along from Holly Howe.”
Everybody helped to carry up the stores from the boat. Susan hurried on ahead with the loaves and the milk-can. Bridget ran after her with a big packet of candles for the lanterns. Mother stayed till the last of the stores had been taken out of the rowing boat. Then she helped John, Titty and Roger to carry them up into the camp.
“It’s a very good camp,” she said as she came into it and saw the four little tents and the stores tent among the trees. “And I must say you haven’t been long in getting a grand store of wood together.”
“The Amazons did that for us,” said Susan.
“What?” said mother. “Were Nancy and Peggy here to meet you? I half thought you might find them here. How jolly! And have you seen your friend, Captain Flint?”
“We haven’t seen them yet,” said Susan. “But they’d been here and left the wood for us.”
“And a letter fixed with one of their arrows. Green feathers, you know, Polly’s, from last year,” said Titty.
“Peace or war?” said mother.
“Oh, peace, of course,” said Titty.
“To start with, anyhow,” said John.
“But Captain Flint isn’t in his houseboat,” said Roger. “And he’s gone and covered up the cannon with a black sheet.”
“Really,” said mother. “He must be stopping with his sister at Beckfoot. I had a note from Mrs Blackett after you started. She’s coming over tomorrow afternoon to Holly Howe with her brother and Miss Turner. Mrs Jackson at Holly Howe wanted to start cleaning the whole farm up as soon as she heard Miss Turner was coming.”
“I didn’t know there was a Miss Turner,” said John.
“She’s Nancy’s and Peggy’s great-aunt,” said mother.
“Why a great-aunt?” asked Roger.
“Because she’s aunt to Mrs Blackett and to your Captain Flint. And so she’s great-aunt to your allies. What’s become of Bridget? Bridget! Bridget!”
There was no answer. But Titty pulled mother’s sleeve and pointed to one of the tents. Anybody could see that there was something crawling about in it.
“I’d forgotten that she was ship’s baby,” said mother. “Susan, Mister Mate, would you mind blowing your whistle to let the ship’s baby know it’s time for tea?”
Mate Susan blew her whistle and a moment later the tousled head of the ship’s baby showed at the door of the captain’s tent as she came crawling out.
“I shall soon have to be making a tent for Bridget,” said mother. “Next year she’ll be wanting to go to sea like the rest of you.”
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