Missee Lee: The Swallows and Amazons in the China Seas

by Arthur Ransome

  Nancy went on with the story.

  “She burnt right out and went under,” said Nancy. “Then we were in our two boats … you’ve got them here. We saw them in the creek. … We tried to keep together but it blew a bit hard and their lantern went out and then a junk picked up Peggy and me and Captain Flint, and Captain Flint had a bit of a row because naturally he wanted the captain to stay where he was and look for the others, but the captain wouldn’t.”

  Miss Lee spoke to Chang who spoke to Nancy’s captain, who came across and pointed first to Nancy and then to Peggy. Miss Lee nodded.

  “And the others?” she asked.

  Nancy looked at John.

  “Our boat just drifted ashore,” said John. “The canvas of our sea-anchor was rotten.”

  Just then a new noise made itself heard above the chattering in the courtyard outside. It was Captain Flint, singing at the top of his voice. But the song was not one of the sea shanties they were accustomed to sing aboard the Wild Cat. It was something very different:

  “Columbia the gem of the Ocean,

  The land of the brave and the free,

  The shrine of each patriot’s devotion,

  The world offers homage to thee.”

  Most of them did not know what it was but John and Nancy knew very well, and knew too what Captain Flint was trying to say to them. Captain James Flint, Lord Mayor of San Francisco, was still being as American as ever he could.

  The song sounded as if he were going rapidly further away.

  Roger turned and bolted for the verandah. He was instantly grabbed by a guard and brought back.

  “But it’s Captain Flint,” he said.

  “They’re taking him away,” said Peggy.

  The song was growing fainter.

  “It’s all right, Roger,” said John. “He said we were to keep our heads. Don’t get excited. Nothing to be worried about.”

  “It’s all right, Roger,” said Titty. “We’ll be going back too. That’s why they didn’t let us bring Polly and Gibber.”

  Chang half rose from his chair, but Miss Lee stopped him by a single word.

  They heard the song no more.

  And now the old man at Miss Lee’s elbow seemed to be suggesting questions for her to ask.

  Miss Lee looked at John. “Were you coming here when you lost your ship?”

  “No,” said John.

  “We jolly well would have been if we’d known,” said Nancy.

  “Why?” asked Miss Lee.

  “Well, pirates,” said Nancy. “Who wouldn’t?”

  “Do you know where you are?” asked Miss Lee.

  “How can we know?” said Nancy. “We were shut up in the junk for a long time before we anchored, and we’ve never been in the China Seas before. We’d awfully like to know,” she added.

  Miss Lee looked closely at her, and then at John.

  “We don’t know either,” he said. “We were blown a long way in the night and were close to land when the sun came up again. And then we got ashore on the island. We were nearer to it than to anything else.”

  Miss Lee talked to the old man while Chang and the others listened carefully. The old man spoke again. Miss Lee asked in English:

  “Was your ship in sight of land when she was burnt?”

  “No,” said John.

  After that there was a lot more talk on the dais while the prisoners stood silent beside their guards.

  Suddenly Susan burst out. “Please, can’t we send a telegram to say we’re all right?”

  Miss Lee and the others glanced at her and then went on with their talk as if she had not spoken.

  “Not just now,” whispered John.

  Suddenly the prisoners saw that the council was over. The men were all bowing to Miss Lee. The old Chinese woman with the fly-whisk went out through a small door at the back of the room, through which they caught a glimpse of green trees and scarlet climbing flowers. Chang strode hurriedly through the room to the verandah followed by his captains. The old man with the wispy beard and the little man with the wrinkled face went slowly out talking together. The other captains followed them. Miss Lee signed to the guards and the six prisoners found themselves being stood in a row along one of the side walls.

  BOOM! The big gong from over the gateway thundered once more into the air. BOOM! … BOOM! … BOOM!

  “Twenty-two times,” whispered Roger. “Bet you anything.”

  At the twentieth booming of the gong Miss Lee stepped down from her chair and walked slowly through the council chamber. At the twenty-first she was close to the verandah. As the throbbing of the twenty-second gong-stroke died away they could see her tiny figure at the top of the steps looking down into the courtyard. There was a tremendous roar of cheering. Miss Lee came slowly back into the council chamber, smiling to herself. She said a word and the guards marched out. Miss Lee was alone with her prisoners.

  “And now,” she said, “you will come with me and we will have a nice cup of tea.”

  She led the way towards the small door at the back through which the old Chinese woman had disappeared. Her prisoners, too astonished to speak, followed her without a word.

  CHAPTER XIII

  MISS LEE EXPLAINS

  THEY followed her through that small door at the back of the council chamber and found themselves in a garden. Miss Lee turned right along a paved path and led them up some steps into a room something like Chang’s except that no pictures of birds hung among the weapons on the walls. A single spray of a flowering shrub stood by itself in a tall blue-green vase on a black pedestal. Miss Lee did not stop here but went on through a passage, and into another room. They went in after her and stood gaping.

  Walking into that room was like walking into Europe out of Asia. There were a couple of deep easy-chairs. There were cushions everywhere. There was a table with a reading-desk and a reading-lamp. There were bookshelves all round the walls. There was an English fireplace, with a coal-scuttle and fire-irons beside it, its mantelpiece covered with photographs. There was a coloured picture of some green lawns, big trees, and ancient buildings with water flowing past them. There was a varnished oak plaque over the mantelpiece with a shield painted on it with a lion flourishing a fore-paw in each of the four quarters. On the mantelpiece, among photographs of young women with large sprawly signatures, there were ornaments, matchstands, vases and such, mostly in white china and all decorated with that same coat of arms. On a little table in one corner there was a signed photograph, much larger than the others, in a black and gold frame, of a middle-aged woman with a firm mouth, clever, wise eyes, and white hair brushed back from her forehead. In another corner of the room was a hockey-stick. Beside the reading-desk, on the table, was an ash-tray on which were resting three little bamboo pipes, the only Chinese things in the room except for Miss Lee herself, who stood there in her black silk coat and trousers and her gold shoes, smiling quietly, enjoying the astonishment of her visitors. She unbuckled her cartridge belt and her pistol holster and hung them on a clothes hook behind the door as if she had been out for a walk and was hanging up a mackintosh.

  “Now,” said Miss Lee. “Dulce domum. Please make yourselves at home.”

  Roger was staring at a large photograph of a school hockey team. There was a back row of girls standing. “Pretty beefy,” Roger murmured to himself. There was a front row of girls sitting down holding their hockey-sticks. Roger looked at Miss Lee and turned again to the picture. Third from the right. He looked at Miss Lee again, jogged Titty’s elbow, and pointed to one of the seated figures.

  “Yes,” said Miss Lee. “Half-back.”

  “They look a jolly tough team,” said Nancy. “Were you at school in England?”

  “Gleat Marlow,” said Miss Lee.

  The door opened and the little old woman who had stood behind Miss Lee’s chair in the council chamber came in, followed by a man with a tea-pot and a steaming kettle on a tray and another man with a trayful of cups and a dish of little cakes.
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  “My amah,” said Miss Lee. “My nurse. My father sent her to England with me and she speaks English.”

  “How do you do?” said the little old woman. “Velly fine weather.”

  “How do you do?” said five of the visitors. Roger was the sixth. He said nothing. He hardly heard what was being said by other people. He had moved out of the way of the men bringing in their trays, and, in doing so, had seen the book that was lying closed on Miss Lee’s slanting desk. It was a Latin-English Dictionary.

  Miss Lee nodded, and the amah and the two men went out.

  “We will have English tea,” said Miss Lee. “Stlong … with milk. … And plenty of sugar. You are surplised?”

  “Well, yes, rather,” said John. “We didn’t expect …”

  “I will explain,” said Miss Lee, sitting down at her table, pushing the reading-desk a little further to one side, and beginning to pour out tea. “Sit down. Take cushions. Sit how you like. On the floor. Like a Camblidge sing-song. Solly no more chairs. Tomollow. And now, tell me your names again.” As each one took a cup of tea Miss Lee asked, “Your name, please,” and when, with cups of tea and cakes they were sitting down, Peggy in one of the armchairs, with Nancy and Susan one on each arm, and John on the floor beside Roger who had gone down gladly because standing up or in a chair he would not have been able to keep his eyes from wandering back to the dictionary, Miss Lee pointed to each in turn. “John. … Su San. … Peg gee. … Nansee. … Tittee. … Loger. …” Not a word about that dictionary. Perhaps, thought Roger, she had not opened it. Well, he would have to tell her later.

  They had left one of the armchairs empty. Miss Lee brought her teacup from the table, bowed to them slightly, sat down and began to talk.

  “My father,” she said, “was a velly gleat man. I will tell you how. There are thlee islands here, Dlagon, Turtle and Tiger. This is Dlagon Island. Now the men of these thlee islands have lived by what you call pilacy since the world began. They used to take junks and cargoes and plisoners. The owners paid velly well to get the junks back, paid for the cargoes, paid for some of the plisoners. …”

  “What happened to the others?” asked Roger, cheerful again now that it was clear that the talk was not to turn on books.

  John gave him a look, but Miss Lee, just making a slight motion of her hand, as if it were a sword hitting the back of her neck, went on:

  “The old Taicoon, the chief of Dlagon Island, took my father out of a Foochow junk. That junk fought with guns and went down and the Taicoon picked my father out of the water. My father was a velly little boy but he hit the Taicoon with his fists. One of the men took my father to throw him overside but the Taicoon said, ‘No. That is a good boy. Keep him and see what comes.’ He thought someone would pay for him. But my father lost all his family when that junk went down. My father never knew who was his father but he lemembered that he was a mandalin, with peacock feather and gold button. The Taicoon had no sons and my father glew up in his house. He glew up velly good pilate. But in those days there was much trouble. Gunboats came to smash up pilacy. That was not so bad. Gunboats came but they went away again. But the worst tlouble was quallelling between the thlee islands. Tiger Island men fought Turtle Island men. Dlagon Island junks came back with plisoners and Turtle Island men fought to stop them coming into the liver. Velly, velly bad.

  “Bimeby, when the old Taicoon died, the Dlagon Island men made my father their Taicoon. My father sent to Tiger Island and to Turtle and asked their Taicoons to meet him. Each one said ‘Velly pleased,’ but each one wanted to have the meeting on his own island. Nobody tlusted anybody. My father said, ‘Better meet on a junk.’ They said, ‘All light, but whose junk?’ At last they agleed to meet on that little island where you landed in your small boat. They met there and my father told them his plan to make things better. The Taicoon of Turtle Island said ‘No.’ Then there was fighting. The men of Dlagon Island and Tiger Island fought the men of Turtle Island. They won. The Taicoons met again, and agleed that my father was to be chief of the thlee islands, and each island was to work for all thlee. So no more fighting. My father did more than that. He made a law, never to take English plisoners to the islands. And after that there was no more tlouble with gunboats.

  “All this was a long time ago when the old Empress was in Pekin. In those days many pilates all along the China Coast. Now my father was a velly gleat man. He said, ‘Tax collectors are licher than pilates. Pilates had better turn tax collectors. No more pilacy. Thlee Islands men will plotect tladers flom pilates.’ And my father built up a nice quiet business, good for evellybody. Evellybody velly pleased to pay a bit to Thlee Islands men for plotection. Nobody dare touch a tlader who paid Thlee Islands men. Thlee Islands men paid a bit to the mandalins to keep quiet and evellything went velly well. Of course they sank junks that had not paid and took plisoners, lich passengers, never poor ones, like your Lobin Hood. Good business, because lich men are in a hully to get back to their counting-houses, and pay quick. And afterwards they know better and pay Thlee Islands men for plotection. Some of my father’s best customers were old plisoners. And no Chinese asks for gunboats, because he knows that if gunboats were to smash up the Thlee Islands men there would be no plotection for anybody. English are diffelent, so my father made that law. He made much money, and Thlee Islands men were happy and contented. Then came the Levolution. Lepublic. Yuan Shih Kai. … No matter. Mandalins go. Other men come. We paid the same squeeze and evellything went on as before.

  “Now my father never forgot that his father wore the peacock feather and was a learned man. Himself, he had no time for learning. My mother died when I was a little girl. He had no sons. He was at the velly top of his plofession and he said his daughter must have an English education. He had a fliend in Hong Kong, an old customer, and he sent me to him to go to school there and I was velly happy there and learned as fast as I could. And when I came home for the first time, for holidays, my father said, “And what do you call yourself now?” And I said, ‘Miss Lee,’ and after that no one ever called me anything else. And even when I was a velly little girl, he used to make me sit beside him in the council when the gong sounded twenty-two times, and sometimes he would not give judgement himself but ask me. All the Thlee Islands men knew Missee Lee, my father’s daughter. And then he sent me away to England with my amah, and I went to school at Gleat Marlow. ‘Work hard,’ he said, ‘but never forget that you are my daughter and your place is here.’

  “England was so far away that I could not come back in the holidays, and in his letters my father said nothing about Thlee Islands business. He would say, ‘The junks are doing well’, or ‘Good harvest’, but that was all, and then he would say, ‘He who would order others must first learn’. But there was leally no need for that, because I loved my books and went quickly up the school. The mistless there was a velly learned woman and I wanted to be like her. She lead all languages and lote books herself and she said that I was a velly good pupil and ought to pass examinations and go to Camblidge. My father agleed. And I forgot about the islands and worked hard and passed examinations. … Higher Certificate with Honours … and she told me that I should go to Camblidge and be a learned woman, and I was velly happy. I thought I should go on passing examinations and perhaps spend all my life, like her, in learning and teaching. I went to Camblidge and listened to lectures and made fliends (there were many there who hoped to teach). And then in my velly first year, my father sent me a letter with only two words in it, ‘Come home’. So I came home, by big steamer to Hong Kong, leading my books in my cabin, to lose no time, thinking of my examinations. A junk from the Thlee Islands came to Hong Kong to fetch me. I came home to Dlagon Island and I saw that my father was a velly old man.

  “I could not leave him to go back to Camblidge. I stayed here, and he taught me all his business. He sent me out in the junks, so that the men should see I was my father’s daughter and not afraid. He was velly ill. He said there was no need for me to go back to Ca
mblidge. He said I had learned enough.”

  “Jibbooms and bobstays!” exclaimed Nancy. “No more schoolbooks and piracy instead. … I mean protection,” she added.

  Miss Lee looked at her sadly. “No more Camblidge,” she said. “And I should never be able to go on with any examinations and become a Bachelor of Arts.”

  She paused and then went on with her story. “At last my father called a Thlee Islands Council. He was too weak to walk to his chair when the gongs sounded. They callied him. The chairs were set above the courtyard so that the fighting men of all thlee islands could be there. And And I was there, and my father’s old fliend, the counsellor, whom you saw today. (Roger’s fingers strayed unconsciously to his chin.) There were new Taicoons now on Tiger and Turtle. You have seen them. My father spoke to them all and asked them what they would do when he died. The Dlagon Island men looked at my father. But the Tiger men looked at Chang, and the Turtle men looked at Wu, and my father saw that fighting might easily begin all over again. He laughed and he spoke to them all. He said that Chang was a velly good man and so was Wu. Then he told them the story I have told you, how the Thlee Islands came together and he said, better keep it so. He pointed to me, sitting beside him. He said he had taught me evellything he knew. He told them that I had gone to far countlies to learn more. He leminded them that they had heard me giving good judgements. And then he said that he could lead them no more. He made the men lift him and hold him up. He made me sit in his chair. And they sounded the twenty-two gongs for me, Miss Lee, with my heart in Camblidge. And when the last gong sounded, my father bowed towards me, and the old counsellor, and Wu and Chang, and they all swore that they would obey me, Miss Lee, as they had obeyed my father.

  “That night my father said that it was his whole life that he had put into my hands. He said that all would be well with the islands while they were one, but that if I were to fail them, there would be quallelling and all he had built would be undone. And in the morning he was dead. He had chosen the place for his glave, on the little island where he had had that meeting with the other Taicoons many many years ago. We buried him there. That little house you found on the island is the temple we built over his glave. I go there sometimes to honour his glave and to be alone with my books. So you know now why I shall never see Camblidge any more.”