Missee Lee: The Swallows and Amazons in the China Seas

by Arthur Ransome

  “That was why Miss Lee kept on not drinking her tea,” said Titty.

  “What’s that?” said Captain Flint through the bars of his new home.

  They told him what had happened. “Good for Miss Lee,” he said. “Titty’s quite right. The Taicoon could not go till his hostess scoffed her drink. Same all over China. The bird fancier would sooner have stood on his head than have cleared out before she gave him the signal. Lucky for me, I gather. If he’d got away and met me on his own island, he’d have sent her back her money and said, ‘Solly. Plisoner him bloke. Come to pieces in me hands.’ Bit awkward for me being bought all the same. However.”

  “But why have they shut you up again?” said Roger.

  “Don’t you worry about that, my lad. I can tell you I feel a lot more firmly stuck together than I was.”

  Nancy had run off after seeing Captain Flint being locked up once more. She came back.

  “I asked if you couldn’t be let out, and she said no, but you’re coming to Cambridge breakfast with us tomorrow.”

  “She gave us a jolly good breakfast,” said Roger. “Oxford marmalade. You know. Brown and really juicy.”

  “Glad it’s not all Cambridge,” said Captain Flint. “And don’t you worry about my being locked up. If any of Chang’s lads are hanging about, I expect I’m a good deal better off behind bars.”

  “Gibber’s close to,” said Roger.

  “That’s comforting,” said Captain Flint. “Now, how on earth did you manage to persuade her to take a hand.”

  Between them they told him the story of the Latin lessons and the ultimatum.

  “Latin?” said Captain Flint. “That’s what she talked at me. This is the rummest go I ever struck. When’s she going to let us go.”

  “She isn’t,” said Titty.

  “We’ll have to make her change her mind,” said Captain Flint. “Hang it all, I wonder what she had to pay for me.”

  The amah came to call them in for supper, and a man brought a big bowl of rice for Captain Flint.

  They left him, eating in his cage.

  “Well, we’ve saved him,” said Nancy. “For the moment.”

  CHAPTER XVI

  CAPTAIN FLINT JOINS THE DUNCES

  THEY were out in the courtyard talking to Captain Flint and Gibber through the bars of their cages when they heard the bell ring for Cambridge breakfast. They came to Miss Lee’s room to find that an extra place had been laid at the foot of the table.

  “We told him he was coming to breakfast,” said Roger.

  “He’s rather bothered about shaving,” said Susan.

  Miss Lee gave a key to the amah who went out of the room. They were all sitting down to breakfast when the amah came back bringing Captain Flint, rubbing a hairy chin and looking a little sheepish.

  “He’s forgotten what it’s like being lugged about by a nurse,” said Roger.

  “Good morning,” said Miss Lee.

  “Good morning, ma’am,” said Captain Flint. “I hardly like to come in. Mr. Chang had a barber. …”

  “No matter,” said Miss Lee. “You shall be shaved after bleakfast.” She pointed to his place. “I hope you slept well.”

  “As comfortable a prison as ever I slept in,” said Captain Flint.

  “You have been much in gaol?” said Miss Lee coldly.

  “Only police court,” said Captain Flint. “Boat-race night. High spirits. A fancy for policemen’s helmets.”

  “Ah,” said Miss Lee. “I know. Camblidge won and evellybody happy.”

  “Not that year, ma’am. We were the happy ones that year.”

  “Not often since, I think,” said Miss Lee.

  The others, eating their porridge, listened anxiously. This was not the sort of talk they had expected to hear. How soon would Captain Flint come to serious business. He had said, “We’ll have to make her change her mind.” How soon would he begin to try? But Captain Flint, enjoying his breakfast, sitting on a chair instead of on a perch in a cage, seemed to be in no hurry.

  “You are interested in rowing, ma’am?” he asked politely.

  “I coxed Newnham’s second boat,” said Miss Lee. “Did you low for Oxford?”

  “I did not,” said Captain Flint. “I chucked Oxford before Oxford made up its mind to chuck me. I went off to see the world instead.”

  “Pelhaps that is why you know no Latin,” said Miss Lee.

  “Um,” said Captain Flint, and a moment or two later, “Beautiful ham and eggs, ma’am. I haven’t tasted such a ham since I left England. And I see you have Oxford marmalade.”

  “Yes,” said Miss Lee. “At Oxford the scholarship is poor, but the marmalade velly good.”

  “Oh come, ma’am,” said Captain Flint.

  “Oxford student and knows no Latin,” said Miss Lee severely.

  “I have forgotten it,” said Captain Flint.

  Miss Lee was looking round the table. “Now Loger,” she said, “is velly good, John not so good. Titty is tlying hard. Su-san, Peggee and Nansee know no Latin at all. They begin at the beginning.”

  “Poor kids,” said Captain Flint.

  “Not at all,” said Miss Lee. “They will learn quick and catch up with Loger. We shall lead Virgil … Aeneid … Next year Georgics, pelhaps. … Later on Holace. …”

  Captain Flint saw his chance.

  “We can hardly stay so long, ma’am,” he said. “I have to take my crew back to their families, and I was going to ask you. …”

  Miss Lee’s eyes had narrowed. Her mouth was a straight line.

  “You will stay,” she said quietly.

  “But isn’t it rather awkward for you, ma’am?” urged Captain Flint. “Nancy tells me something about a law of your father’s, a law about not keeping English prisoners.”

  “Listen,” said Miss Lee. “My father’s law was to take no English plisoners. The Taicoon Chang bloke that law because he thought you were Amelican. Now he knows that you are English. We are here three Taicoons, Chang, Wu and I. And also there is my father’s counsellor. All, except me, want to keep my father’s law. … They want no English plisoners.”

  “Then why not let us go and make everybody happy?” urged Captain Flint.

  “That would not make anybody happy,” said Miss Lee. “Not my counsellor, not Wu, not Chang. Not you. They want no English plisoners. They want to cut off heads to save tlouble. They are thlee. I am one. But I make my own judgement and I know my father is happy for me to have my class of students.”

  “But …” began Captain Flint.

  “It is settled,” said Miss Lee. “Hoc volo. Sic jubeo. Dixi.”

  Captain Flint was silent. The others stared at each other. Roger was grinning.

  “Loger,” said Miss Lee. “Tell him what it means.”

  “She means she’s jolly well going to do what she wants,” said Roger.

  For some time no one said anything. Then Captain Flint tried again.

  “But, ma’am,” he said, “you will not want me hanging about eating my head off doing nothing. Now if I could be getting a telegram home to tell their mothers not to worry.”

  “You will stay here and learn Latin,” said Miss Lee.

  Captain Flint gasped.

  “But … But …”

  “I will teach you Latin,” said Miss Lee. “But alithmetic, tligonometly, you will teach. … I will also have a class in histoly. …”

  “I know all the dates of the kings and queens,” said Roger.

  “Loman histoly,” said Miss Lee. “We lead Virgil. It is ploper to lead some Loman Histoly. Annus urbis conditae?” She looked round the table, and then at Captain Flint.

  Roger looked at Captain Flint, his eyes sparkling.

  “Um,” said Captain Flint.

  “Loger?” said Miss Lee.

  “Date of the founding of Rome,” said Roger. “Seven-fifty-three B.C.”

  “Velly good, Loger,” said Miss Lee.

  “Swot,” said Nancy under her breath.

&nb
sp; “What?” said Miss Lee. “I did not hear.”

  Nancy blushed. “I meant he’s wasted. … I mean he’s spent a lot of time on lessons.”

  “Velly good student,” said Miss Lee.

  This time Roger blushed. He knew very well what the others were thinking about him, wished he had forgotten the date of the founding of Rome, choked over a scrap of marmalade and did not say another word till breakfast was over.

  Then, when they were walking through the garden to go to their own house, he spoke to Nancy. “Sorry,” he said.

  “That’s all right,” said Nancy.

  “Beastly cheeky,” said John.

  Captain Flint, who had been told that he might go with them to see their lodgings, overheard them. “Rot,” he said. “You speak up all you can, Roger. Save the rest of us. It’s a good thing one of us knows something. And anyway, I’ll get my own back out of Roger when it comes to arithmetic.”

  “You see what she’s like,” said Susan. “She’ll never let us go.”

  “Used to having her own way,” said Captain Flint. “There isn’t much give and take about Miss Lee. But don’t be in a hurry. Give me time. We’ll find a way out yet. … Eh! What’s that?”

  The amah, Miss Lee’s old nurse, was hurrying after them. She had a lot to say and seemed to want Captain Flint to come with her.

  “All right. All right,” said Captain Flint, when he understood. “Coming in a minute. …” He rubbed his chin tenderly. “Oh, well,” he said, “he can’t be a worse barber than Mr. Chang’s.”

  *

  Half an hour later, after they had watched Captain Flint in his cage being shaved by a bare-footed, straw-hatted Chinese, while Gibber in the cage next door pretended to put a lather on his own wrinkled face, they were all back in Miss Lee’s Cambridge study. The breakfast things had been cleared away, and Miss Lee was ready for her class. She set Roger and John to go on preparing their Virgil, left the others to their struggles with the first pages of the Latin Grammar, and tackled Captain Flint with a short examination in which he came off very badly. She tried him first with a few adjectives. “Latin for big?” she asked.

  “Magnus,” said Captain Flint with a pleased smile. That, at least, he knew.

  “Bigger?”

  Captain Flint hesitated. “There’s a catch here,” he said. “I ought to know it … Mag … mag … magnior.”

  Miss Lee laughed. “Oxford scholarship,” she said. “Biggest?”

  “Well, it isn’t magnissimus but it ought to be,” stammered Captain Flint. … “Magnanimous?”

  “Loger?” said Miss Lee.

  Roger, who had not been able to help listening, though he was getting on at a great rate with the beginning of Father Aeneas’s tale because he had been through it once at school, looked doubtfully at John and then at Nancy.

  “Go on,” said Captain Flint. “I’ve got to learn. Spit it out if you know it.”

  “You can always remember it because of the Great Bear,” said Roger. “Ursa Major …”

  “Of course,” said Captain Flint. “Bigger is Major and Biggest is Maximus. I knew it all the time. It’s just that being asked things unexpectedly puts everything out of my head.”

  He did not do any better when she tried him with irregular verbs. She went back to the nouns, but again his memory failed him. She tried him with “Artifex and opifex”, and he stuck fast at the second line.

  “Better begin at the beginning with the others,” said Miss Lee, and Captain Flint had to join the dunces, Nancy, Peggy and Susan, who were clustered over the Latin Grammar and still at the first page; while Titty, with her eyes shut, was trying to remember what she could of the second.

  They could all see that Miss Lee, who had started her class with great hopes, found their ignorance a little depressing. They could see that she cheered up a lot when Roger did a translation of the first ten lines of the Virgil. They saw her in gloom again when she had turned on John to construe the next ten. And then a worse thing happened.

  “It isn’t John’s fault,” broke in Titty from the other end of the table. “You see he doesn’t really need Latin. You just try him in mathematics.”

  “Not need Latin?” said Miss Lee. “And why not?”

  “I’m going into the Navy,” said John. “Like Father.”

  Miss Lee started. “Your father? In the Navy?”

  “He’s a captain,” said John. “He’ll be an admiral when he retires.”

  “Captain?” said Miss Lee. “Blitish Navy?”

  “Yes,” said Roger. “A real captain, not like Captain Flint. I expect you’ve seen his ship. He was stationed at Hong Kong.”

  “Gunboats!” exclaimed Miss Lee.

  There was a long minute of silence.

  “Did you tell that to Taicoon Chang?” asked Miss Lee.

  “No,” said John.

  “If he knew … If the counsellor knew … If Wu knew … If my father …” She stopped. “Better no one should know. You have told no one. … I, Miss Lee, keep you. You are safe, but if they knew …” Miss Lee made a slight movement with her right hand. Slight though it was, they knew what it meant. It was the same movement of chopping that they had seen made by the small boys in the courtyard of the Taicoon Chang.

  “Daddy isn’t there now,” said Titty. “Or we’d have been sailing straight to Hong Kong.”

  “Better I do not know,” said Miss Lee. “Better I fo’get. Better you never tell me. …” She flung out her hand as if she were throwing away what she had heard, took up the Virgil and began translating herself. But she could not keep her mind on it. She faltered, and put the book down. “All you four,” she said, “Loger, John, Su-san, Tittee, children of a Navy captain. If he knew you were with Miss Lee he would come with gunboats and spoil my father’s business. …”

  Then, suddenly, looking round the table at her seven students, she said, “I shall not tell even my counsellor. You must not tell even my amah. There is no danger to the Thlee Islands so long as you stay here. My father knows I have given up Camblidge. He is velly pleased for me to have my Camblidge here.”

  “Oxford,” murmured Captain Flint.

  Miss Lee heard him. “In five, ten years pelhaps, no one will guess you only went to Oxford.”

  “But. …” Susan began.

  Captain Flint reached out under the table with a foot and managed to give her a warning kick.

  “Well, ma’am,” he said. “I’m sure we’ll all do our best.”

  “Velly good,” said Miss Lee. “Let us begin.” She left John and Roger to their Virgil and for the next ten minutes had Captain Flint desperately floundering among the declensions of the nouns, while Roger, unable not to listen, could not suppress a gleeful grin.

  It was a long lesson and not an easy one. It was as if Miss Lee wanted to make herself forget what she had learnt about the father of four of her prisoners being a captain in the British Navy. No doubt, for her, that bit of news made even worse her breaking of her father’s rule that the men of the Three Islands should never take English prisoners. But a Latin class, of seven English students, was a prize she was not going to give up if she could help it.

  They all had their turns. Captain Flint made howler after howler. Under her questions he forgot all he had ever known. The others found it hard to think of Latin Grammar or of Aeneas when it had become clearer than ever that Miss Lee meant to keep them for years. Susan, John and Titty were in a stew about getting news home, which, they saw now, would be the very last thing to be allowed. Nancy and Peggy, while a little bothered about Mrs. Blackett at home, had their uncle with them and would rather have liked to stay with pirates, but not to spend their time in being taught what they did not want to know. And even Roger, though he enjoyed being head of a class, particularly when Nancy and Captain Flint were somewhere near the bottom of it, did not think it was quite right to be at a dame’s school at his age, even if the dame was a Chinese pirate, with a revolver hanging behind her door.

  They
were all heartily glad when the lesson came at last to an end and Miss Lee told them to take the Latin Grammar and the Virgil and the dictionary and marked what she wanted them to prepare for tomorrow. Their gladness turned to joyful surprise with her last words.

  “And now you are flee,” she said. “Flee till man fan. Flee till evening lice. Flee till supper. Go anywhere you like. Dismiss!”

  “Come on,” said Roger to himself as they went out into the garden. “Let’s jump. Fleas always do.”

  CHAPTER XVII

  FREE BUT PRISONERS

  ‘LET’S go and have a look at Swallow and Amazon first of all,” said John.

  “Got to make sure first they’ll let us out,” said Captain Flint.

  “She said ‘Go anywhere’,” said Titty.

  “Let’s get started,” said Roger. “I’ll just get Gibber.”

  “If we take Gibber,” said Captain Flint, “we’ll have all the brats of the town following us. We don’t want that. We’ve got a lot to find out. We’ll leave Gibber to his bananas and Polly to her parrot food, and see what we can do by ourselves.”

  Even Roger saw the sense of that, and the expedition set out.

  “Susan,” said Nancy urgently. “Don’t look as if you expected to be stopped.” She led the way jauntily towards the gateway at the low end of the courtyard.

  The guards at the gateway watched them coming, but stepped aside to let them pass. They walked straight out into the dusty town. No one shouted at them. No one ran after them.

  “She’s given her orders all right,” said Captain Flint.

  “Giminy,” said Nancy. “We really are free. Come on. Which way now?”

  “Let’s go and see if they’re still messing about with that dragon,” said Roger.

  “That’s by the gate we came in at,” said Titty. “We could go out there, to the ferry and get to Swallow by going along the bank.”

  “No, we couldn’t,” said Nancy. “You’ve forgotten that wall. It goes right down to the river. The creek’s on this side of the wall. It’s somewhere behind Miss Lee’s garden.”