Swallowdale. Arthur Ransome

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      “Gae fetch a web o’ the silken claith,

      Anither o’ the twine,

      And wap them into our ship’s side,

      And let nae the sea come in.”

      “The Ballad of Sir Patrick Spens”

      “HULLO,” said Captain Flint. “What’s happened? Lost a mast?”

      He had just seen the sail spread on the rocks at the point, and the broken mast beside it.

      “Much worse than that,” said Roger cheerfully. “We had to swim ashore.”

      This was not at all the way in which the Swallows had hoped to meet Captain Flint. They had not seen him since the Christmas holidays and the making up of the story in the cabin of the wherry. They had hoped to find him aboard his houseboat, flying the elephant flag at the masthead, ready once more to fire his cannon, fight for his life and walk the plank into a sea crowded with the largest kinds of sharks. He had not been there to welcome them with a salvo as they sailed by on their way to Wild Cat Island, though Roger had discussed the question beforehand with Titty and decided that if he did it would not be waste of gunpowder. He was not living in his houseboat at all, but, for the time, had sunk into a mere landsman. There was this queer native trouble about a kind of aunt. He had not even been with Nancy and Peggy yesterday and now, at last, here he was, only to find them with their ship wrecked and the future black as ink, except perhaps for Roger, who took things as they came and was content so long as things kept on coming.

      Captain Flint did not bother about asking them all how they were. As soon as he saw that something serious had happened, he rowed in to the shore, stepped out, pulled his rowing boat a little way up out of the water and joined the others by the wounded ship.

      “Lost a mast? Holed her too? Well, these things will happen.”

      As Nancy Blackett always said, one of the best things about her Uncle Jim was that he never asked you why you tumbled down.

      He looked carefully at the hole in Swallow’s planking, but asked no questions except about the parrot.

      “He’s quite all right,” said Titty. “He’s looking after the island. He doesn’t know yet about Swallow.”

      “And you’ve left old Peter Duck behind?”

      Titty looked at him and for a moment was not very pleased. But, after all, everybody there knew all about Peter Duck.

      “You know he’s only for a story,” she said.

      “I know,” said Captain Flint, bending down and working his hand through the hole to feel if the ribs had been damaged. “I know. But has he been up to much since he steered us home from the Caribbees when the waterspout came just in time and licked up the pirate ship?”

      “No,” said Titty. “Just staying at home in his boat and doing a little fishing.”

      Captain Flint stood up again.

      “It’s a boat-builder’s job,” he said. “I’ll row along there and tell them to send out a salvage party.”

      “Couldn’t we patch her up?” said John. “I wanted to take her to Rio to find out how much the mending would cost before going to tell mother about it. That’s why we got her up.”

      “Got her up?” said Captain Flint. “Where was she?”

      “I ran her on the Pike Rock and she sank right away.”

      “We all had to swim,” said Roger.

      “You got her up from out there?”

      “Yes.”

      “By yourselves? Well done. How did you manage about the ballast and the anchor?”

      “I had time to throw the anchor out before she sank. That helped when we were ready to pull her up.”

      “And the ballast?”

      “He dived again and again and we pulled it up one pig at a time,” said Nancy.

      “Good work,” said Captain Flint. “And don’t you worry about the boat-builders. It won’t cost much anyway, and I’ve just got another dollop of pocket-money from my publishers, and you know my book would never have been published at all if you people hadn’t saved it for me, so that you’ve got at least as much right as I have to the money it makes. You needn’t bother your mother about that.”

      Susan and John looked at each other. Roger was hardly listening. He was looking at a promising looking box in Captain Flint’s rowing boat. Titty said, “Not really?”

      “Of course,” said Captain Flint, “you went treasure-hunting and found my book. My book goes on turning into publisher’s cheques. They’re the next best thing to Spanish gold. It’s as if you’d found a barrel or two of doubloons on Cormorant Island. So don’t you worry about the money.”

      “I’ve got to go and tell mother anyway,” said John, “to find out what we can do next. We’ll probably have to go back to Holly Howe.”

      “No more sailing,” said Titty.

      “But we’ve only just begun,” said Roger, hearing something in Titty’s voice that told him things were serious.

      “Something’s got to be done,” said Nancy desperately. “Of course we could lend them Amazon.”

      “No, no, no.” Neither John, Susan nor Titty would hear of that. Roger would not have minded, though he did not think much of the look-out’s place in Amazon. There was not enough room before the mast.

      Captain Flint looked from face to face. Then he had another look at Swallow’s broken planking.

      “There’s only one sensible thing to do,” he said at last. “You are shipwrecked. Why not be shipwrecked? Stay where you are and make the best of it until your ship’s been mended and is ready to put to sea.”

      “Mother’ll never let us. It’s the wrong side of the lake for her,” said Susan.

      “Why not?” said Peggy. “It’s the right side for us.”

      “It’s not really much farther than the island,” said Captain Flint. “Look here. You’ve got to sleep somewhere. Pitch a camp here. Make it a good one. Nancy and Peggy’ll help to bring your things across. The skipper and I will see what can be done with Swallow, and when we go to Rio we’ll bring Mrs. Walker back with us and I bet she’ll let you stop if you’ve made a really good show of it. Settled. Get a move on, you pirates. Now then, Skipper, what are we going to stop this hole with? We don’t want her sinking in deep water on the way to Rio.”

      “In ‘Sir Patrick Spens,’” said Titty, “they wrapped it with silk and cloth. But the sea came in all the same.”

      “We must do better than that,” said Captain Flint. “A bit of tarpaulin’s СКАЧАТЬ