“Where is it?” said John. “Has anybody seen it? And I haven’t found my compass.”
Nobody had seen the compass. Nobody had seen the telescope.
“Titty usually has it,” said Bridget.
John and Susan looked round the place where the camp had been, at the pale places where the tents had stood, at the fireplace, where Susan’s breakfast fire was smouldering out, at the big blackened ash-covered patch on which had blazed the ceremonial bonfire of the Eels. Nothing was left but the painted totem with a necklace of shells and Nancy’s watch hung round the eel at the top of it and the meal-dial, the shadow of which had already left the breakfast stick behind. Everything else was packed in the boats of the savages ready to be ferried off. But what was the good of that with the explorers’ boats missing and four explorers missing with them?
John was just going to pull up the long stick the shadow of which showed how time moved from meal to meal.
“Oh don’t do that,” said Daisy. “Do leave it for a relic.”
“What about the totem?” said John.
“It’s yours,” said the Mastodon. “Isn’t it, Daisy?”
“Of course,” said Daisy. “Take it with you, and then, when you come again, you put it up and all the Eels of all the world will come wriggling to help.”
John looked at Nancy’s watch.
“Close on nine,” he said. “Where can those idiots be?”
“Tide’s slack already,” said the Mastodon.
They went along the dyke to look out again.
Yes. There was the Goblin, the relief ship, sailing on to the Secret Water. Already she had left the open sea.
“Westerly wind,” said John. “She’ll have to tack. That may take a little longer.”
“But where are they?” said Susan.
Bridget was the first to see them. “Look. Look,” she pointed.
“What are they doing in there?” said the Mastodon.
Almost opposite the place where they were standing, far up the wide creek that ran inland from the northern shore of the Secret Water a brown sail and a white were sailing together.
“Wave to them. Signal to them,” said Susan.
John semaphored. B … U … C … K…… U … P … “I’m against the skyline all right,” he said, “but they probably aren’t looking.”
“They’re coming this way,” said the Mastodon.
“Both of them,” said Daisy.
“Starboard tack both of them,” said Dee.
“They’ve simply gone off to have a last race,” said Susan furiously.
“They’ll never get back before the Goblin arrives,” said John.
The relief ship was coming steadily nearer, beating to and fro across the Secret Water, now towards the north shore, now towards the island from which she was being watched by the explorers and the savages. The two small boats, sailing south down the creek had the wind on their beam, had no need to tack, and were coming at a great pace.
“They’ll do it,” said Daisy.
“They never will,” said John, but in his heart began to hope they would.
“Which of them’s ahead?” said the Mastodon. “White sail, I think.”
“Brown,” said Daisy.
“Jolly hard to see when they’re coming straight at us,” said Dum.
“Brown sail’s to windward,” said Dee.
“Go it, Titty,” said Bridget.
“Go it, Nancy,” said Daisy and then … “Sorry … Titty’s all right but Nancy’s more of an Eel.”
“They’re both jolly well all wrong,” said John. “Going off racing on the last morning when they know they ought to be here. But, I say, I do believe they are going to do it.”
“Go it. Go it everybody,” shouted Bridget.
“What’s Daddy doing?” said Susan.
Everybody looked from the two small boats racing towards them down the creek on the further side to the relief ship steadily beating her way up the Secret Water. Someone, Daddy, was by the mast.
“He’s sending up a flag,” said John.
A small bundle climbed to the crosstrees and suddenly blew out and fluttered in the wind, a dark blue flag with a white square in the middle of it.
“Gosh!” said John.
“What does it mean?” said the Mastodon.
“Blue Peter,” said John. “Everybody repair on board. About to sail. He’s in a frightful hurry. He’s hoisted it before he’s even got his anchor down.”
“They’re going to do it,” said Daisy. “They’ll be out of the creek in a moment, and we’ll see who’s ahead.”
“If only they get here before the Goblin” said John.
“Pretty good race,” said the Mastodon. “Look at that.”
“Go it. Go it,” shouted the Eels, as the two boats left the creek, bore slightly to starboard, and came racing side by side across the Secret Water. Almost it seemed that both boats were a little uncertain in their steering for a moment, as, coming out into the open, their helmsmen saw for the first time the red sail of the relief ship which up till then had been hidden from them by the land.
CHAPTER XXX
NORTH WEST PASSAGE
TITTY PUT HERSELF firmly to sleep, but, at the same time, did her best to turn herself into an alarm clock. Sleep she must, but oversleep she must not. Roger, she knew, would sleep until she woke him. Whatever happened she must not fail to wake herself as soon as it was light. She slept for two hours and woke suddenly in the dark. How long had she been asleep? An hour, half an hour, four hours? She did not know. Too early anyhow. She tried to sleep again, but could not. Everything depended on her waking at the right moment. She lay there, fingering the string tied round her thumb, and seeing in her mind’s eye that blank space at the top left-hand corner of the map where John had drawn a question mark. What was it like through that gap? Perhaps it was only a creek leading nowhere. Well, the only way to find out was to go and see, and tomorrow morning early (or was it already today?) was the only chance to put things right and make up for the mistakes of yesterday. She began in her mind to dot in the lines of a channel. … The dots were like sheep. She counted them as she put them in, lost count and, as the map was only in her mind, had to begin again at the beginning. … Dot … dot … dot. … She woke again, and found the tent a little lighter. Almost she could see the shape of it. Well, this time it was not worth while to go to sleep. She would just lie there watching the light grow, and at the right moment pull the string for Roger. She heard gulls on the saltings … far away.
She woke next time in a panic. Daylight was in the tent. She could see everything, even the little pile of things she had made ready the night before. She pulled the string, and heard a startled grunt from the next tent. Then there was silence. It would never do if Roger were to start up with a yell and wake the camp. She pulled again gently. Nothing happened. She pulled again, a long steady pull. There was a sudden answering jerk that nearly tore her thumb off. Then another. She pulled back, three short pulls. Then the string came loose. Roger had freed his toe. She hauled it in, crawled to the mouth of her tent, and put her head out into the cool morning air. Roger’s tousled mop was poking from his tent door.
“Are you really going?” he said.
Titty put her finger on her lips.
“Of course,” she whispered. “Don’t make a row.” She crawled out of her tent and shivered. Close to Roger, she whispered in his ear. “Put on your woolly. Bring an oilskin to sit on. It’ll be warmer when the sun comes up. And don’t make a single sound. Pretend you’re one of the Eels.”
“Boots?” whispered Roger.
“Wet inside,” hissed Titty. “Better without. Come on. Look out for treading on a stick by the fire. … ’Sh.”
For one awful moment she thought she heard a sound in one of the other tents. Whatever it had been she did not hear it again. Silent as the very best of Eels, they crept out of the camp, down the dyke, and through the wet grass of the saltings. There was no fog,
but a thin morning mist was rising. Silently Roger hauled in the Wizard. Silently Titty lowered into it the knapsack with the things she had thought necessary. All but silently Roger coiled the rope and put the anchor in the bows. The anchor just tapped the gunwale as he put it in, and, ankle deep in mud, the explorers looked at each other, and then back at the tops of the tents, just showing in the mist.
“Hop in,” whispered Titty. “We’ll clean the mud afterwards. Don’t do any splashing now.”
“Shall I row?”
“Not yet.”
With Roger in the stern, Titty pushed Wizard afloat and sat down, gingerly getting the oars out, one at a time. A rowlock squeaked as she took the first stroke. She unshipped her oar, took out the rowlock, dipped it in the water and put it back. She tried another stroke. The leather of an oar, working in the rowlock, complained. She put the oar overboard, wetted the leather, and tried again. That was all right. With quiet strokes, dipping her oars without a splash, she rowed away, keeping near the bank, so that, even if anyone had been looking from the camp, there would have been nothing to see.
Slowly, for the tide was coming in, she rowed down the creek and out into the Secret Water. She turned west and stopped rowing. The banks slipped by. The tide, pouring up the Secret Water, was with them now and carried them along. The expedition was safely on its way.
“Roger,” said Titty. “You’d better have breakfast.”
“I think so, too,” said Roger.
“Chocolate and bananas,” said Titty, digging in her knapsack.
“It’ll be warmer when the sun comes up,” said Roger.
“It’s warmer already,” said Titty.
A low bank of cloud hid the horizon. Its upper edge was tinged with rose. Already the sun was climbing behind it. Ripples were crossing the water to meet them. A light wind was blowing from the west. For a minute or two they drifted with the tide. Titty got out the compass and put it at her feet. She laid the telescope, ready for use, on the thwart beside her. She unfolded a copy of the map, had a good look at it, and then looked up the Secret Water. She took a good big mouthful of chocolate and settled to her oars.
*
She stopped rowing only when they were close to the mouth of the gap that John had wanted to explore. There she shipped her oars and began desperate work with the compass.
“The point this side of Goblin Creek bears east by south,” she said firmly. “Very near that anyhow. And the herons’ trees on Mastodon Island are all in a row. Bearing south. We’ve got them marked all right. That fixes the gap.” She put a cross to show where they then were, and lines with the compass bearings on them, one leading to the distant point, and one to the old heronry.
“Can’t we sail now?” said Roger. “There’s enough wind and we won’t have to tack.”
“We’d better,” said Titty. “Then you can steer and I can have the map on the middle thwart. … We’ve done jolly well so far. It would have taken much longer if we’d tried to sail before.”
She hoisted the brown sail. Wizard began to move through the water.
“Keep in the middle as well as you can, and let the sheet go if we touch. Whatever happens we mustn’t sail hard on the mud and have to waste time getting off.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
“Don’t let her go too fast. Keep the sail flapping.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
“Course is north-west,” said Titty, looking at the compass and scribbling on her map.
“North-west it is,” said Roger.
“You mustn’t try to steer by compass though,” said Titty. “Just try to keep in the middle, and I’ll watch the compass and note down how she heads.”
“Gosh,” said Roger. “We’re in for it now.”
The banks on either side were closing in. They had left the Secret Water and were sailing with the tide up a narrow inlet. There was mud to right of them, mud to the left. Beyond the mud were low straight-topped dykes like the ones on which their camp was pitched. Ahead of them, the dykes seemed to draw together and meet.
“Don’t believe it goes anywhere,” said Roger.
“It must,” said Titty. “Look at the way the water’s moving along the edge of the mud.”
“It’s coming to an end. … Hadn’t we better drop the sail and go slower?”
“We’re all right so far. Gosh! What was that?”
There was a sudden soft bump. Titty dropped her pencil and hauled the centreboard more than halfway up. Roger let the sheet fly. Titty stabbed over the side with an oar.
“Deep enough now,” she said. “That must have been a shallow patch.”
They slipped slowly on, but even Titty began to think that they were sailing up a blind alley.
The banks were now very near to them. In front of them a grass covered mound seemed to close the head of the creek.
“There’s no way through,” said Roger. “Hadn’t we better turn before running aground?”
“If there isn’t, there isn’t,” said Titty. “Anyway all that mattered was to find out. … Hullo. … ” Her voice changed. “Look there. That lump doesn’t join the dykes. …”
“Which way? … Quick,” cried Roger. The channel, narrow as it was, divided into two.
“Right … Right,” said Titty. “Starboard, I mean.”
“The other looks bigger,” said Roger, but already that grassy lump was to the left of them, and, cut off from the wind, they were moving up a narrow ditch. Titty poked with an oar at the muddy bank. The ditch bent to the right, as if to end under the dyke, then bent to the left, and suddenly the wind came again, they had lost the shelter of the grassy lump, and saw water stretching before them, a channel winding its way over enormous mudflats.
A duck with red beak and wide chestnut waistcoat watched them from the mound.
“Shelduck,” said Roger, “or drake,” and then, “I say, that other channel was all right too. It’s an island. Better make sure.” Without another word he swung the little boat round, and, sailing slowly against the tide, drove back through a wider ditch than the one they had come through. The grassy mound was still on their left when they came back to the place where the creek had divided.
“Good,” said Titty. “Shelduck Island. … That’s one discovery anyway. Look out. She touched then…”
But she touched only for a moment as she turned, and then, with wind and tide to help her, flew back up that western channel and out into the inland sea of shining mud and rippled water.
“What do we do now?” said Roger.
“She’s heading north,” said Titty. “Keep on. Keep in the middle.”
“In the middle of what?” said Roger, and Titty had no answer for him. The water pouring in through those two ditches, one each side of Shelduck Island, was spreading over the mud. On the right was a built up dyke. Below the dyke was mud, then the channel in which they were sailing, and then, to the left a wider stretch of mud and beyond it, far away, another dyke, guarding no doubt the meadows of the mainland, for over there trees showed on the skyline.
Suddenly the dyke on their right ended. Mudflats stretched away as far as they could see. Their channel, now as broad as a very wide river, curved round over the mud.
“Heading east,” said Titty. “We’re behind the land. Look. Look. There’s a creek, and there’s another. But they don’t go through, or we’d have seen them on the other side.”
There was some quick work with compass and pencil.
“It’s as big as the Red Sea,” said Roger. “But where’s the way out?”
“There must be another way besides those two ditches,” said Titty.
She pulled out the inner tube of the telescope and searched the distant shores.
“Look here,” she said. “There’s nothing along this side, or John would have seen it that day when you were over here, and Bridget got herself captured.”
“There isn’t,” said Roger. “I blackberried all along.”
“It must be somewhere right ah
ead.”
“But the water’s coming to an end. There’s nothing but mud.”
“There’s water beyond it.”
“But the mud’s in between. I told you so. We’re stuck.”
Titty hauled up the centreboard. Wizard drove on a few feet and stuck again. Titty hurriedly lowered the sail, and Roger got a crack on the head from the yard while trying to keep it from going in the water.
“What now?” said Roger, rubbing his head.
For a moment Titty did not answer. She prodded with an oar into the soft mud. The oar stuck. Shaking it backwards and forwards she pulled it free. She was just going to prod again. Then she remembered that even if they could go no further they were not trapped. The tide would rise and float them again and they could get back the way they had come. No. There was no need for panic.
“What about more breakfast?” she said.
“I don’t mind,” said Roger.
“Two bananas left,” said Titty.
The sun had risen clear of the clouds, there was blue sky overhead, and the explorers ate their last rations and looked about them.
“There’s one thing,” said Roger. “It’s a jolly lot better to be stuck in good old Wizard than paddling about in the middle of the Red Sea. And if there isn’t a passage there isn’t.”
Titty looked at the low shores east and south, and then back towards Shelduck Island. “We must be half way across,” she said. “And there’s more water ahead.”
“Mud in between,” said Roger.
Titty stepped up on the bow thwart, and stood there with a foot each side of the mast, holding the mast in one hand, and the telescope in the other. It was true there was mud in front of them. It was as if they had run aground in a sort of bay. The mud stretched right and left to the low green line of the land. But straight ahead, on the other side of the mud, there was water again, another bay cutting into the mud on the opposite side. Titty watched it carefully.
“I say, Roger,” she said. “Could you go up the mast? The boat’s sitting firm. She won’t turn over. And I’ll sit in the bottom.”