Swallows and Amazons

by Arthur Ransome

  “’Um,” said Captain John.

  “Hop into Amazon, and I’ll take her out and show you.”

  John stepped into Amazon. Nancy Blackett shoved off and took her right outside the rocks, so that they were in the open sea. Then, sculling with an oar over the stern, she brought her round so that she was headed towards the island.

  “Now,” she said, “do you see the stump with the cross on it?”

  “Yes,” said John. “I can see the cross all right. The stump is hard to see against the beach. It’s the same colour.”

  “That’s why we had to paint the cross,” said Nancy. “Now, look above it to the right and you’ll see the fork of a tree with a big patch of bark off it just below the fork. Got it?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s the other mark. As it is now there are rocks between us and the harbour. But, if I bring her up a bit, you’ll see that fork of a tree come nearer to the marked stump until it’s exactly over it. Then we can go straight in. Sing out as soon as the two are in a straight line.”

  “They’re in a straight line now,” said Captain John.

  “Right,” said Captain Nancy. “Now, I’m not going to look at anything again. I’ll simply scull and keep my eyes looking at the bottom of the boat. You watch those two marks and tell me the moment they are not one above another.”

  She began sculling fast over the stern, and the Amazon moved in towards the rocks.

  “The fork is to the right of the stump,” sang out John.

  Nancy sculled away, slightly altering her direction. “How is it now?” she said.

  “In line.”

  She went on sculling.

  “Fork showing on the left … in line again … showing on the left … in line … fork showing on the right … in line.”

  Nancy never looked up, but altered the direction of the boat a little every time John said that the marks were out of line. The Amazon moved on between the rocks and came at last into the harbour.

  “We’re through,” said John. “That was jolly good work.”

  “It’s quite simple,” said Captain Nancy. “Captain Flint taught us, last year when he was Uncle Jim, before he went bad. That’s the way all harbours are marked, with two marks, showing how to steer into them. Really, of course, they ought to have lanterns on them, for coming in at night. With lanterns on the marks you could come in through the rocks even if it was perfectly dark.”

  “Is that what the pilot books mean by leading lights?” asked John.

  “What are pilot books?” asked Nancy, and John was pleased to find that there were things that even Captain Nancy did not know.

  They pulled up the Amazon and went back to the camp to take part in the feast. It was a very good feast. The sandwiches and sardines went well with the pemmican and the lemonade. By the time that was done the big kettle was boiling like anything, and it seemed a pity not to have tea with the cake.

  Time went fast as the six mariners sat round the fire planning voyages. At last Captain Nancy looked up at the sun.

  “We’d better be sailing,” she said, “or there’ll be more trouble with the natives. We’ve been late for supper twice this week already. This wind always goes and drops about sunset, and it’s a tremendous way to row. Stir your stumps, Peggy.”

  “One of them’s asleep,” said Peggy.

  “It’ll wake up if you stir them both,” said Captain Nancy. “Come on, lend a hand with that puncheon.”

  The empty barrel was easy to carry, but, to do the thing properly, they slung it on the oar as before. Titty carried the pirate flag for them. Roger carried the basket. The whole crew of the Swallow went down to the harbour to see the Amazons off.

  The Amazons worked out of harbour, set their sail and, with the fair wind that was still blowing, were soon slipping past the northern end of the island. The Swallows had run back to the look-out place to wave to them.

  “War beginning tomorrow,” shouted Captain Nancy.

  “All right,” shouted Captain John.

  CHAPTER XII

  LEADING LIGHTS

  THAT NIGHT THE Swallows were very late to bed. Soon after the Amazon’s little white sail had vanished beyond the Peak of Darien, Captain John took the hammer and a few nails and the two candle-lanterns and went to the harbour, with Mate Susan to help him, while the able-seaman and the boy washed and wiped after the feast.

  “You know what they said about the harbour being marked?” said John, showing Susan the stump with the white cross on it. “Well this is one of the marks, and the other is that tree with a fork in it and a bit of bark gone just below the fork. Those Amazons can come into the harbour without bothering about the rocks by keeping those two in line. Captain Nancy did it to show me. It’s quite simple when you know how. But in a real harbour there are lights on marks like that, so that ships can find their way in in the dark. I’m going to make the marks into leading lights, so that we can make a night attack on the Amazon and then find our way back, however dark it is.”

  He drove a nail into the middle of the white cross on the stump and hung one of the lanterns on it. Then he and Susan went to the foot of the forked tree. The fork was high above their reach.

  “Are you going to climb up and put the lantern in the fork?” asked Susan.

  “No, Mister Mate. It’s no good doing that, for then only you and I would be able to climb up and light it. We must have it somewhere where we can all light it.…”

  “Except Roger,” said the mate. “He isn’t allowed to use matches.”

  “That’s true,” said Captain John. “We needn’t make it lower than the highest Titty can reach. But if we make it too low it will be no good. We must be able to see it above the bushes. You go down the harbour and stand behind the stump and as near to the water as you can.”

  Susan went back and stood behind the stump, which was about ten yards from the water’s edge. She stood on the edge of the water.

  “Can you see the fork of the tree?” John called out to her.

  “Yes,” said Susan.

  He put his hand on the trunk of the forked tree, as high up as he could reach.

  “Can you see my hand?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can you still see it?” He moved his hand slowly down the trunk of the tree.

  “Now I can’t,” said Susan.

  He raised it a few inches.

  “I can see it now,” said Susan.

  “Blow your whistle for Titty,” said Captain John, and Mate Susan blew her whistle. Titty and Roger came running. John held his hand where it was until they came. Then he asked Titty to try if she could reach it. She just could.

  “Good,” said Captain John.

  “What for?” said Titty.

  Captain John did not answer. He drove in a nail just above the place where his hand had been. Then he hung the second lantern on it.

  “Now see if you can open the lantern.”

  Able-seaman Titty stood on tiptoe and opened the lantern.

  “But what’s it for?” she asked.

  “You’ll see as soon as it’s dark,” said Captain John.

  “I can’t reach it,” said Roger, after trying.

  “You won’t have to,” said Captain John.

  “Not until you are allowed to use matches,” said the mate, “and by then you’ll be tall enough.”

  As soon as it began to grow dark the whole crew of Swallow were at the harbour again. John gave the able-seaman the matches and she lit both lanterns, while the boy watched. Then all four of them embarked.

  “Roger ought to be in bed,” said the mate.

  “It won’t take long,” said Captain John, “and we can’t leave him alone.”

  “Anyway, I’m not sleepy,” said Roger.

  They rowed away down the lake. The dark came fast overhead. Stars shone out. Owls were calling. The edges of the lake disappeared under the hills. They could see the outlines of the hills, great black masses, pressing up into the starry sky. Then c
louds came up over the stars and they could not even see where the hills ended and the sky began.

  Suddenly high in the darkness they saw a flicker of bright flame. There was another and then another, and then a pale blaze lighting a cloud of smoke. They all looked up towards it as if they were looking at a little window, high up in a black wall. As they watched, the figure of a man jumped into the middle of the smoke, a black, active figure, beating at the flames. The flames died down, and it was as if a dark blind were drawn over the little window. Then a new flame leapt up and again the man was there, and then that flame died like the others and there was nothing but the dark.

  “It’s savages,” said Titty. “I was sure there must be some somewhere in those woods.”

  LEADING LIGHTS

  “It’s the charcoal-burners,” said John. “The natives at the farm were asking if we’d seen them. We’d have seen them before if we’d been sailing this way.”

  “They look like savages,” said Titty. “Let’s go and see them.”

  “We can’t now, anyhow,” said Mate Susan.

  “How are we going to get home?” said Roger. “I can’t see anything at all.”

  Captain John was also wondering the same thing. He could not be sure where they were. He could not see the lanterns on the marks behind the harbour, but that was natural enough, because they would be hidden by the high rocks unless the Swallow was opposite the entry. And, of course, he could not be quite sure that he could get in even if he could see the lights. He knew he ought to be able to. But, after all, he had never tried. It is one thing to row in using marks in daylight, when if anything goes wrong you can look about and see where you are, but quite another thing when you are wrapped up in darkness and have nothing to count on but the lights. Anyhow, the first thing to do was to find them. The sight of the charcoal-burners up on the hillside had shown him more or less where he was and which way the boat was pointing, but there were no stars to help him, and he was glad he had brought the compass.

  He took a match and lit it and looked at the little compass, moving it round until the line marked at one side of it was opposite the dark end of the needle. That showed him where the north was. Happily, it was just where he had expected it to be. He pulled Swallow round and lit another match and had another look at the compass to make sure. Then he began rowing again, taking Swallow northwards up the lake.

  “This isn’t proper compass steering,” he said. “We ought to have the compass fixed and a light shining on it all the time. What we really need is an electric torch. I wish I’d thought of getting one for a birthday present. Anyhow, all hands keep a look-out and sing out, anybody, as soon as our lanterns show.”

  A minute or two later Titty saw them, flickering among the trees and then disappearing again as they were hidden by the big rocks south of the island.

  John paddled slowly on.

  “There they are again,” said Susan.

  “Close together,” said Titty.

  John turned round from his rowing and had a good look at the two small stars twinkling over the water.

  “Right,” he said, and then, remembering Captain Nancy, “Now, I’m going to do nothing but row if you’ll keep your eyes on the lights.”

  “We can’t see anything else, anyhow,” said Titty.

  “Are they still close together?” asked John.

  “Fairly close,” said Susan.

  “Which light is which side of which?” said John.

  “What?” said Susan.

  “Where is the top light?” asked Captain John.

  “A bit to the left of the low one,” said Susan.

  John pulled a stroke or two, pulling a little harder with his right. “Sing out as soon as it is just above it.”

  “It’s above it now. Now it’s a bit to the right of it.”

  John pulled his left.

  “Above it.”

  “Tell me the moment it is one side or the other.”

  He rowed on. Mate Susan, Able-seaman Titty, and the Boy Roger watched the lights and sang out the moment the top one showed a little to left or right of the lower one. With so many look-out men Captain John might have been content, but just once he looked round for himself and saw the two lights one above the other like the stop called a colon, which I am just going to make : there, like that. At last John just grazed a rock with his starboard oar.

  “We must be close in now,” he said. “I’m going to scull over the stern.”

  “The lights are exactly one above another,” said Susan.

  John had shipped his oars and was now sculling over the stern. Susan and Titty had wriggled out of the way. The boat moved on in the darkness.

  “The lights are quite close to us,” said Roger, and as he said it there was a gentle scrunch as the Swallow’s nose touched the soft, pebbly beach of the little harbour.

  Captain John had used his leading lights for the first time, and had made his harbour in pitch dark.

  “That is going to win us the war with the Amazons,” he said with great delight. “It’s the one thing they think we can’t do, and we can. They think they are safe from us at night.”

  They scrambled ashore and unhooked the lanterns from the nails, moored Swallow by lantern-light, and by lantern-light found their way through the brambles and bushes back to the camp. Ten minutes later the lanterns were blown out, one in each tent, and about half a minute after that the whole camp was asleep.

  CHAPTER XIII

  THE CHARCOAL-BURNERS

  NEXT DAY THERE was a dead calm, most unfit for war. Captain John turned over on his haybag and looked at the barometer, which was steady. He crawled out of his tent and looked at the sky. It was without a cloud. He went up to the look-out post and looked at the lake, which reflected the hills and the woods and the faraway farmhouses on the sides of the hills so closely that, as he found, if you looked at them through your own legs you could really hardly be sure which was real and which was reflection in the water. He went back to the camp and found the others getting up.

  “Buck up, Titty,” Roger was saying. “Remember the war’s begun and the Amazons may be here at any minute.”

  “There’s no wind,” said Captain John, “and it looks as if it’s going to be like this all day. They’ll never come if there’s no wind. And we can’t try to do anything ourselves. It’s too far to row. Today we needn’t bother about the war. No wind, no war. It’s an awful pity.”

  “May I row ashore for the milk with Titty?” asked Roger. “You said we might the first calm day.” If there was to be no war, at least there were plenty of other things to do.

  “All right,” said Captain John, “but be careful not to bump her on a stone when you are landing.”

  “Of course,” said the able-seaman.

  So the able-seaman and the boy paddled Swallow out of harbour and rowed ashore in her. They rowed with one oar each, sitting side by side on the middle thwart. Then Roger rowed with both oars while Titty steered. Then Titty rowed with both oars while Roger steered. Their course was not a very straight one, but at last Captain John, who was swimming at the bathing-place but a little nervous about his ship, saw them going up the field carrying the milk-can.

  When they came back the able-seaman rowed the whole way as hard as she could while the boy steered. Titty was in a hurry and had a good deal to say.

  “Those were charcoal-burners we saw last night,” she said. “I asked Mrs. Dixon if they were savages, and she said some people would say so. She says they live in huts they make themselves out of poles. She says they keep a serpent in a box. She says they would show it us if we went up the wood to see them. Do let’s go.”

  “Mrs. Dixon says they won’t be staying long in one place. They’ve nearly done where they are,” said Roger. “We’d better go today.”

  “I’m sure they’re better savages than any of our other natives,” said Titty.

  Susan looked up from her fire. “I don’t see why we shouldn’t go,” she said. “The Ama
zons won’t be coming. And we shall be taking Swallow with us, anyhow.”

  “Very good, Mister Mate,” said Captain John. “If there is any wind we must come back, but while it’s calm like this there’ll be no war to bother about, and we may as well be explorers.”

  Soon after breakfast they took the mast and sails out of Swallow and rowed away. Roger was at his chosen post in the bows keeping a look-out. Captain John rowed, and Susan and Titty sat in the stern-sheets. They had the kettle and a knapsack of provisions stowed in the bottom of the boat, because if the calm weather held they meant to stay away most of the day and to bring back a fresh store of firewood. Firewood was getting difficult to find on the island and there was plenty of it along the high-water mark on the shores of the lake, and in calm weather they could put in anywhere to pick it up.

  They rowed south from the island down the lake, where they had been last night in the dark. It looked very different in daylight. A great wood ran up the hillside on the eastern shore of the lake. Far up it they could see smoke curling slowly above the trees, a thin trickle of smoke climbing straight up. There, they knew, must be the savages they had seen in the night prancing in the smoke and beating down the flames. Today in the bright sunlight no flames were to be seen. There was the little trickle of smoke climbing into a tiny cloud above the trees. There was a faraway noise of wood-chopping. But that was all.

  They found a good place to beach the Swallow, ran her nose ashore, pulled her well up and made her painter fast to a young oak tree growing near the water’s edge.