Titty lifted the blue cloth cover and a loud cheerful voice, rather like the voice of Nancy Blackett, came from beneath it.
“Pieces of eight,” said the green parrot, “pieces of eight!”
“It’s never said it before,” said Nancy. “And now it’ll say it all the time.”
“Am I really to have it?” said Titty.
“Of course you are,” said Captain Flint. “You’ve earned it about ten thousand times.”
“Mother will really believe we’re back from the Pacific,” said Titty. “Thank you very, very much indeed.” She jumped up and put out her hand. Captain Flint shook it.
“It’s me that ought to do the thanking,” he said.
“My monkey will come next year,” said Roger.
“If you can get your mother to say you may have it,” said Captain Flint, “I’ll see about it at once. There are monkeys nearer than Africa and I’m taking my book up to London now that I’ve got it again. I’ll go and look at monkeys by way of a change from publishers. You shall have your monkey next week.”
“With a tail?” asked Roger.
“A long one,” said Captain Flint.
“Your steak’s rather dry,” said Mate Susan, “but it’s still quite hot.”
Captain Flint ate it in his fingers and said it was the best shark steak he had ever tasted.
After that they talked again of plans for next year, of climbing the ranges, of sailing to the Azores, or, better still, the Baltic, or of making a canoe voyage down to the sea.
“If we go up country,” said Nancy, “do you think we could get a hill pony?”
“We could easily get a couple,” said Captain Flint.
Everybody liked the idea of the shaggy hill ponies to carry the explorers’ packs. But then, everybody liked the idea of sailing to the Baltic. So nothing was really decided.
“Whatever it is,” said Captain Flint, “I’ll be free next summer, and if you’ll sign me on, I’ll be glad to come. If we sail to the Baltic you’ll want someone to haul up the anchor, and if we go prospecting it would be hard on a hill pony if he had to carry the gold as well as the tents.”
“The monkey can come too,” said Roger. “He can look out from the very top of the mast, or else he can ride on a hill pony.”
At last Captain Flint said, “I must be getting back. Your camp fire is very jolly, but isn’t it about time some of you people went to bed?”
“Won’t you be lonely without the parrot?” said Titty.
“I must think of him too,” said Captain Flint. “He’s a young parrot and I’m a dull companion for him. He’s in better hands now.”
He got up to go down to his boat.
“By the way,” he said, “are all your tents pretty strong? It looks to me as if we’re in for bad weather before morning.”
“Mother says ours are all right except in a high wind,” said Captain John.
“H’m! It looks as if it’s going to blow. Well, I don’t suppose you’ll come to much harm, even if it does.”
He rowed away.
Not long afterwards, the Swallows and Amazons turned in. It was very hot and there were no stars.
“Pouf,” said Nancy, “I can hardly breathe.”
“Barometer’s gone down another tenth,” called Captain John. “That’s three-tenths since this morning.”
“Is that a lot?” asked Peggy.
“Rather a lot,” said John. “Are you ready, Roger? I’m going to blow the candle out.”
Titty had the parrot-cage close beside her in the mate’s tent.
She took the blue cover off. “He won’t want it now,” she said. “He’ll be in the same dark as us. Good night, Polly!”
“Pieces of eight,” rapped out the parrot, excited by the candlelight in the white tent. “Pieces of eight, pieces of eight, pieces of eight.” It went on saying “Pieces of eight” as fast as if it were counting treasure.
Nancy Blackett’s laugh sounded from the tent at the other side of the camp.
Then Mate Susan blew out the candle-lantern. There was darkness in the tent and, in the sudden silence that came with the darkness, it was as if she had blown out the parrot.
“Good night,” “Good night,” the Swallows and Amazons called to each other. Their last night on the island had begun.
CHAPTER XXX
THE STORM
ALL THIS TIME the skies had smiled on the Swallows and the Amazons. There had been a few hours’ drizzling rain, a few hours of fog and that dark night of sordid burglary and high adventure. But day after day had been dry and clear and, even when there had been clouds, there had also been sunshine and wind to drive their shadows, chasing each other, over the bright heather and bracken of the hills. Now that it was time for the Swallows to go, there came a sudden change of weather to remind them that the summer too was near its end. All that last day there had been the heaviness of thunder in the air. There had been a stormy sunset and, though there had been but little wind, dark, angry clouds had lifted in the south until at night they shut out all the stars.
*
The storm broke with a crash of thunder that woke the whole camp. With it came a flickering light as bright as day. There was the wild shriek of a parrot as if it were one of a flock screaming through the palm trees in a tropical hurricane. Then darkness and quiet. Then heavy drops of rain pattering down on the tents.
Titty woke, not comfortably, bit by bit, but with every bit of herself at once. She did not move, except to put out her hand and touch the parrot’s cage. “Susan,” she whispered.
“All right, Titty,” said Susan.
Roger in the captain’s tent sat up with a start and a shout. “He’s firing! He’s going to fire again!” He was back in the battle of Houseboat Bay and his voice died into a breathless “John!” as he woke to find himself in the dark.
“All right, Roger,” said John, “it’s only thunder.”
“Where are you going, Nancy?” said Peggy. At hearing the first drops of rain, Nancy was up and lighting their lantern.
“To bring some firewood in, of course,” said Nancy. “Don’t you remember the last time it rained and all the wood got wet and we couldn’t get our fire to light?”
She was back in a moment with a bundle of sticks from the pile.
“It’s not raining much yet,” she said, “but it’s going to.”
She wriggled back into her sleeping-bag.
There was another flash of lightning that lit the tents and threw leaping shadows on their white walls from the branches of the trees overhead.
“Never mind, Polly,” said Titty, “it’ll soon be over.”
“Pretty Polly,” said the parrot, now thoroughly awake.
One flash followed another and then there were three tremendous crashes of thunder and a lot of little ones as if the sky were breaking into solid bits and rattling down a steep iron roof.
“There’s a broadside for you,” called Nancy Blackett from her tent.
“Pieces of eight,” said the parrot, and then, perhaps thinking of palm trees again, gave a long, wild shriek.
“Would you like me to put your cloth over you?” said Titty.
“What time is it, John?” called Susan.
“Four bells of the middle watch,” said Captain John, who had looked at the chronometer with his pocket torch and had just put it into ship’s time for himself.
“What is it in real time?” asked Peggy.
“Two o’clock in the morning,” said Captain John. After all, there were some things these Amazons did not know.
There was a gust of wind and then a heavier pattering of rain on the tents and after that it was as if the rain were coming down in solid lumps of water that splashed and broke on the thin canvas.
“It’s coming through,” said Roger. “I can feel it.”
“Don’t touch the wall of the tent,” said John.
“I’m not, but it’s coming through all the same.”
“It’s coming throug
h our tent too,” said Susan “Titty, you’d better cover up the parrot.”
“I have, but I don’t believe he likes it.”
There was more lightning and more thunder. The rain stopped for a moment and then poured down again.
“John,” called Susan.
“Yes.”
“Better get into our clothes and then we can keep them dry under the blankets. Have you got your oilies?”
“Yes. Have you?”
“I’ll get them in a minute. I’m lighting our lantern. Spread your oilies over your blankets. Roger too.”
Susan bustled Titty into her clothes and got into her own. Roger and John pulled on their knickerbockers. There was the sound of a squabble in the tent of the Amazons.
“Don’t put your head under, Peggy. Get dressed like the others.”
There was a glare of lightning and a crash of thunder all in one, and after that for a long time the thunder and lightning came so close one after the other that no one knew which flash belonged to which clap of thunder. The camp was full of light and the rolling, crashing thunder overhead made things seem hurried, as if there was something that ought to be done but no time in which to do it. The lanterns were lit but, though they were bright in the short moments of darkness, they seemed to give no light at all in the glare of the lightning flashes.
It was dark again and suddenly quiet. It was as if the storm were holding its breath. Then there was a deep, rushing noise, far away, louder and louder every moment.
“What’s that?” said Titty.
“Wind,” said Susan.
“I say,” said Titty, “this is a storm.”
As she said it the wind reached them.
There was a crash as a heavy branch fell somewhere at the low end of the island. There was a swishing noise as the trees swayed in the wind. Nor was the noise all. The tents of the Swallows were hung on ropes between trees and held down by stones in pockets along the bottom edges of the tent walls. The trees were blown this way and that and the rope now slackened, now tightened up again so hard that in the captain’s tent the stones shifted and rattled in the pockets.
“Hullo, Susan,” called John. “Have you got enough stones to hold your tent down? Our tent’s getting smaller.”
“Ours is all right,” shouted Susan, “the stones haven’t moved yet.”
“What?” shouted John. “I can’t hear.”
“Our stones are all right,” shouted Susan. But she spoke too soon. There was a loud crack. The stones had been heavy enough, but a furious jerk of the trees had snapped the wet taut rope on which her tent was hung. The whole tent flopped down, a mass of wet canvas, burying Susan and Titty and the parrot in its folds, knocking over their candle-lantern and putting it out.
From the other tents, they heard the crack, an angry scream from the parrot as its cage fell over, and then muffled shrieks of “Help! Help!”
John and Nancy were out of their tents in a moment. John had his torch, but there was no need to use it, for a long, flickering glare of lightning showed them the grey wet mass of the mate’s tent on the ground with something struggling under it. They lifted the end of the tent where the door had been. Mate Susan and Able-seaman Titty crawled out on all fours, the able-seaman dragging the parrot’s cage, which had lost its blue cloth.
“Come into our tent, quick,” Nancy shouted in the roaring of the wind.
“What about our things?” shouted Susan.
“And Polly’s blue cloak?” shouted Titty.
“Wet anyway. Leave them,” shouted Nancy, and indeed it was the only thing to do.
Shielding the parrot from the wind and rain as best she could, Titty ran into the Amazons’ tent, where she found Peggy, who was very glad to see her. Susan followed.
“We ought to have got our lantern out,” she said. “You’ve only got a stump of a candle left.”
“Do you think the trees are coming down?” said Peggy.
“They’d be down before now if they were coming,” said Susan.
“Poor Polly,” said Titty, but the parrot corrected her. He was smoothing down the feathers that had been fluffed out in the wind.
“Pretty Polly,” he said.
“I don’t believe he minds losing his blue cloak,” said Titty.
“Is your tent going too?” shouted Captain Nancy in the wind.
“I hope not,” said Captain John.
“What?”
“I hope not,” he shouted in her ear.
The wind was blowing across the island in great gusts that shook the little trees like grass. Overhead the tall pine that was the lighthouse creaked and groaned. For a moment or two it was pitch dark, and then the lightning lit up the sky so that everything was as clear as in daylight. With each gust, Captain John’s tent clapped like a loose jib on a ship going about in a squall and there was a rattle of stones.
Roger crawled out into the rain.
“It’s getting smaller and smaller,” he said. “It’s spilling the stones out of the pockets.”
Nancy and John could not hear him, but they could see the tent thrashing about.
Nancy grabbed him by the scruff of the neck as he crawled out and ran him to the Amazons’ tent and pushed him in. “You’ll be dry, anyhow,” she said. Then she went back to Captain John, who had struggled into his flapping tent and brought out the two things that mattered most, the chronometer and the barometer. In one of the lightning flashes he held up the barometer.
“It’s gone down four-tenths,” he shouted.
“Come along into our tent,” shouted Nancy. “Bring the big lantern if you can get it.”
Captain John gave her the barometer and put the chronometer in his pocket. He forced his way once more into the whirling jumble of canvas that had been his tent. He found the lantern and fought his way out again.
“There’s nothing more to be done,” shouted Nancy. “Come on.”
They went into the Amazons’ tent, where the candle-lantern was guttering out. John lit the big lantern and put it in the middle of the floor. Nancy hurried out again to slacken the ropes of her tent. Then she came in and closed the flaps of the door.
“Our tent has its back to the wind,” she said. “All the big winds come from the south. That’s why we chose this place for it. The poles at each end help it too. Our tent’ll stand anything.”
“Did you get very wet?” said Mate Susan.
“Rather,” said Captain John.
“I’m soaked,” said Nancy. “Lovely.”
There was not much room for the six of them and the parrot-cage in the Amazons’ tent. They sat three on each of the sleeping-bags. Between them right at the back of the tent was the bundle of dry firewood that Nancy had rescued for the morning. Then there was the parrot’s cage, and then the farm lantern in the middle of the floor. It was a tight pack on each side, because they had to take care not to touch the tent walls. The weather outside seemed to matter less now that they were all together. Even Peggy, who really could not help not liking thunder, was cheerful again, partly because it would never do to show Roger that she was afraid. With Nancy it was different. Nancy knew, so that with her it was no use pretending. Susan was a little worried about the things getting wet, but glad that no worse had happened. John was thinking how lucky it was that the storm had waited till their last night. Nancy was proud of her strong tent and enjoyed the wind buffeting against it. Titty, with sparkling eyes, was thinking of typhoons. The parrot was putting his feathers to rights and now and then whistling cheerfully at the bright lantern so near him on the floor.
For some time they sat there, listening to the storm raging over the island. Then, ashamed that he had not remembered them earlier, John thought of the boats. “I’m going to have a look at Swallow,” he said.
“Shiver my timbers,” said Captain Nancy. “There’s Amazon too. It’s a good thing we moored them properly last night.”
The two captains got on their feet. Nancy unfastened the tent flaps.
; “Better fasten them up again when we’re outside,” she said.
“I’m coming too,” said Titty. “The parrot’ll be all right now.”
“You’ll only get wet,” said Susan.
“I am wet,” said Titty. “I couldn’t be wetter. I want to see it. We may never have another storm as good as this one.”
“I’m going too,” said Roger.
WIND, RAIN AND LIGHTNING
“No, you are not,” said the mate, “you’re dry.”
“I’ll tell you what you can do, Roger,” said John. “You can lend Captain Nancy your torch. Her lantern’s no good and you’ll want the big one in the tent.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” said Roger. If he could not go, at least his torch could, and that was better than nothing.
Titty, John, and Nancy slipped out of the tent into the storm. Using the torches and bending low against the wind and rain, they forced their way along the path to the harbour. There was a lot of water in the boats and the lake had already risen a little, but the Swallow and the Amazon, moored as they were, were quite all right.
“I’m going to slacken away my bow warp,” said Captain John. “It’s got very taut with all this wet.”
“I’ll do the same with mine.”
They loosened the painters a little.
“It’s a grand harbour, you know,” shouted Nancy. “Just listen to it outside.”
In the sheltered harbour there were waves, but nothing to matter. The big rocks on either side broke the waves before they could get in. But they could hear the crashing of breakers on the outer shoals and along the steep western shore. Titty slipped away from the others and crawled to the edge of the low cliff that ran along that shore, and crouched there, facing into the wind. Spray from the waves breaking beneath her was blown into her face. Flashes of lightning lit up the whole lake and showed great waves stretching right across it with white curling tops. Then it was dark again. Then more lightning showed her the fields and woods and hills on the other side of the lake, beyond the raging water.
The others missed her and would have gone back to the tent without her if Nancy had not seen the gleam of a torch away to the left of the path.
Swallows and Amazons Page 29