Swallowdale. Arthur Ransome
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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 too 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 anyone 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 tent pole at the head of his tent, so that he could unhook them and look at them in the night without having to get up.
“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 some 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.
THE ISLAND CAMP
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