Peter Duck. Arthur Ransome

believe that this was the same Nancy who was always so free with her “Hearties” and “Shiver my timbers!” and so ready to call other people tame galoots and to teach them all there was to be known about the sea.

      “Come and look, Nancy,” called Peggy’s voice from inside the galley in the forward part of the deckhouse. Nancy pulled herself together, and clinging to the bulwarks worked herself along to the galley door. It opened.

      “Come in, but shut the door quick. It’s too blowy from that side,” said Peggy. “Just look at the Primus, swinging in rings, like the compass, so that the kettle keeps steady whatever the ship’s doing.”

      Nancy let go the bulwarks and fell against the deckhouse. She pulled the galley door open again and put her head in, but quickly drew it back. In the tiny galley there were Peggy, Susan and Captain Flint. Captain Flint had been showing them how to deal with the Primus, and he had used rather too little methylated spirit, besides pumping a little too soon, so that the Primus had smoked a bit. It was burning all right now, and the kettle was boiling and the galley was full of steam and the smell of paraffin. And there were Peggy and Susan in the middle of that smelly fog, cheerfully cracking eggs into a bowl and making coffee in an enormous coffee-pot.

      Nancy shut the door quickly and dragged herself back to the bulwarks, throwing her head up to get all the wind on it she could. This was terrible. Everybody seemed to be all right except her. Right forward she could see Roger eagerly asking questions and Peter Duck as steady on the slanting deck as if he had grown there and had roots, explaining something about getting the anchor inboard. Was the sea always like this? She could hardly bear the thought of going below, and yet she desperately wanted something hot to drink. When at last she saw Peggy and Susan, shouting with laughter, dodge out of the galley door and round to the companion taking damp towels to lay on the saloon table, Nancy began to wish she was back at home.

      The damp towels, of course, were spread on the saloon table to keep plates and things from slipping about, and a minute or two later the two cooks were carrying down a great mess of scrambled eggs and the coffee-pot and a big can of milk. Damp towels, however, were not enough, and Captain Flint went below to fit the fiddles to the table. Fiddles for tables aboard ship are wooden frameworks that divide up the table into small partitions so that if things slide they cannot slide far. “Feeding-boxes,” said Roger, “and one for each of us.” Then, when everything was ready, Peggy came up on deck to bang mercilessly on a big bell. Peter Duck came aft and took the wheel from John. John hurried down the companion to join the others. Roger had come down by way of the forehatch. Captain Flint was sitting in the arm-chair at the port end of the table. Nancy, feeling as if someone had hit her on the head with a club, somehow found her way to her place at his right hand. Breakfast began.

      “Hullo, where’s Titty?” said Captain Flint.

      Titty had been looking over the stem towards Lowestoft, watching to see if the Viper came out. It had been a hard job to hold the telescope steady. At last she had given up trying and had put the telescope back in its place in the deckhouse. That had been enough to make her quite sure she did not want to leave the deck again, even for breakfast. All she wanted was to stay still and breathe as much air as possible. Even the sunshine seemed to her to have turned a queer unpleasant colour.

      “What’s become of Titty?” said Captain Flint, between mouthfuls, down in the saloon.

      “I’ll go and tell her,” said Nancy.

      “I’ll go,” said John.

      “I want to go,” said Nancy fiercely, and she staggered up off the bench and somehow got out of the saloon and up the companion. Captain Flint looked gravely after her but said nothing.

      Nancy came out on deck and found Titty in the stern, still watching the sailing vessels come out of Lowestoft.

      “Come down to breakfast, Titty,” said Nancy bravely, and then suddenly gave up. Titty, looking round, saw Captain Nancy struggle forward round the lee side of the deckhouse, grip the bulwarks and hang her head over the rail.

      In a moment Titty joined her. If Nancy, the Captain of the Amazons, that notable timber shiverer, could be seasick, then anybody could be without shame, and for some minutes a captain and an able-seaman, sharing their misery, hung over the side together.

      Peter Duck, his grey beard blowing in the wind round his weatherbeaten old face, an old stocking cap crammed down over his ears, gripped the spokes of the wheel, moved them this way and that, and, with his eyes looking far ahead, seemed to see nothing and to hear nothing that did not concern the steering of the ship. The whole crew of captains and mates and everybody else could have been seasick over the side without disturbing him in the least. But he did, now and then, look back at a group of sailing vessels leaving Lowestoft, that was already far astern.

      Presently Captain Flint came up the companion with a mug of hot coffee in each hand. He found the sufferers and told them that some of the most famous of sailors were always sick at the beginning of a voyage in spite of spending most of their lives at sea. Nancy cheered up a little. Titty said she didn’t believe it would have been so bad if she hadn’t been looking the wrong way trying to see if the Viper was coming after them or not.

      “And what about the Viper, Mr. Duck?” asked Captain Flint, going aft to take the wheel and send Mr. Duck down to breakfast.

      “There’s several vessels come out,” said Mr. Duck. “All in a bunch. It’d be hard to say if one of them’s the Viper. But if she isn’t out yet, she’ll be coming. You may lay to that, sir. Black Jake wouldn’t come in after us yesterday and not come out after us today. He ain’t going to lose sight of us, not if he can help it.”

      “Oh, come, Mr. Duck, these things don’t happen nowadays.”

      “Black Jake’s his own law,” said Peter Duck. “He knows I’m aboard here, and if he’s got it in his head that I’m taking you to that place I told you of, he’d sail round the world after us.”

      “Well,” said Captain Flint, “if one of those vessels is the Viper, and she’s after us, she’d have turned south by this time.”

      NANCY AND TITTY SHARING THEIR MISERY

      “Look you there,” said Peter Duck, and Captain Flint snatched up the telescope from the rack inside the door.

      One vessel had left the little group of sailing craft heading eastwards from Lowestoft. This vessel was now alone and heading south.

      “Schooner,” said Captain Flint. “All lower sail set. Main topsail just going up. It’s our old neighbour.”

      “I’d be surprised,” said Peter Duck, “if you was to say it wasn’t so.”

CHAPTER VIII

      FIRST NIGHT AT SEA

      ALL THAT DAY they sailed on with the north-east wind driving them southwards, past Walberswick, with its church tower and windmill, past Aldeburgh and Orfordness, and then from one lightship to another across the wide mouth of the Thames estuary. They passed the Shipwash lightship, with its ball at the mast-head, and the Long Sand, with its diamond, and then changed course a little so that they passed close by the Kentish Knock, which had a small ball on the top of a large one. They passed so near the Kentish Knock that they waved their hands to a man on the deck of the light-vessel and he waved his hand to them. Then they changed course again, steering a little west of south, for the Elbow buoy off the North Foreland. It was not a very clear day and for a long time they had been out of sight of land, and when they saw the North Foreland, with its steep chalk cliffs and the white lighthouse above them, they felt already like ancient mariners making a landfall after a long voyage.

      They had had a fairly rough passage, too, but as the day wore on, Nancy and Titty had begun to feel better. The others