Swallows and Amazons quotes

When he came out of the field into the wood he stopped being a sailing vessel.

No one can sail through a pinewood.

He became an explorer, left behind by the main body, following their trail through the forest, and keeping a sharp look out lest he should be shot by a savage with a poisoned arrow from behind a tree.

In the boathouse below the farm there was the Swallow, a sailing boat, a very little one, and there was also a big, heavy rowing boat.

But no one wants to row who has ever sailed.

If there had been no island, no sailing boat, and if the lake had not been so large, the children, no doubt, would have been happy enough to paddle about with oars in the bay by the boathouse.

And on the lake they had seen the island. All four of them had been filled at once with the same idea.

It was not just an island. It was the island, waiting for them.

It was their island. With an island like that within sight, who could be content to live on the mainland and sleep in a bed at night?

And on the lake they had seen the island. All four of them had been filled at once with the same idea. It was not just an island. It was the island, waiting for them. It was their island.

With an island like that within sight, who could be content to live on the mainland and sleep in a bed at night?

They had gone back and told their mother of their discovery, and begged that the whole family should leave the farmhouse the next day, and camp on the island forever.

The news was so good that it made them solemn. They ate their bread and marmalade in silence.

The prospect before them was too vast for chatter.

John was thinking of the sailing, wondering whether he really remembered all that he had learnt last year. Susan was thinking of the stores and the cooking. Titty was thinking of the island itself, of coral, treasure and footprints in the sand.

But with each day after the sending of the letters it had somehow seemed less and less likely that there would ever be an answer.

The island had come to seem one of those places seen from the train that belong to a life in which we shall never take part.

And now, suddenly, it was real. It was to be their island after all. They were to be allowed to use the sailing boat by themselves.

They were to be allowed to land on the island, and to live there until it was time to pack up again and go home to town and school and lessons.

The news was so good that it made them solemn.

They ate their bread and marmalade in silence. The prospect before them was too vast for chatter. John was thinking of the sailing, wondering whether he really remembered all that he had learnt last year. Susan was thinking of the stores and the cooking.

“Better take this one to make sure you make yours the same size,” said Queen Elizabeth.

John and Susan had done plenty of sailing, but there is always something to learn about a boat that you have not sailed before.

They stepped the mast the wrong way round, but that was set right in a moment.

The bay was hidden behind Darien. Above them was the Peak from which they had first seen the island. The Peak itself seemed lower than it had.

Everything had grown smaller except the lake, and that had never seemed so large before.

“Are we all right about jibing?” asked Mate Susan, remembering a sad day the year before when, running before the wind in another small boat, the boom had jibed over with sudden decision, and given her a bump that had lasted for a long time.

Before they could see any more the next little cape hid the houseboat from them.

This was perhaps lucky, because even Captain John wanted to see the parrot, and good steering is impossible when you are looking two ways at once.

“Steamship coming up astern,” said Mate Susan.

Close by the fireplace there was a neat pile of dry sticks all broken to about the same length.

Someone had had a fire here, and someone was meaning to have a fire again.

“Perhaps they are still here,” said Roger.

“I’m not sleepy,” said Roger. “I wasn’t looking.

You can be wide awake, and not see a thing when you aren’t looking.

”

“Mrs. Jackson has been good enough to let you have your pillows here,” said the female native. “

You can sleep without them, I know, but a pillow makes such a lot of difference that I’m sure Christopher Columbus himself always took his own pillow with him.

”

Susan had put her lantern on one of the two biscuit tins. She and Titty were making their beds comfortable.

The two tents looked like big paper lanterns glowing under the trees.

Shadows moved about inside them. It always takes some time to get comfortable on a haybag the first night. There were voices.

The two tents looked like big paper lanterns glowing under the trees. Shadows moved about inside them.

It always takes some time to get comfortable on a haybag the first night.

There were voices.

The two lanterns were blown out and the white tents were part of the darkness. There was no light now but the glow of the embers on the campfire. “Good night! Good night! Good night!”

There was no noise now but the lapping of the lake on the rocks.

In a few moments the captain, the mate, the able-seaman, and the boy were fast asleep.

The next day was a busy one. It began early.

Sunshine in a tent is even more waking than sunshine in a room.

Titty woke first and lay awake looking at patches of sunlight and shadow playing on the white walls of the tent as the sun came through the waving tops of the trees.

He glanced back over his shoulder to see if there was another cannon on the port side. That would have settled the question. There was not.

But still, a cannon is a cannon and ships with no secrets do not usually carry even one.

Roger was ready to go on talking about the cannon. Captain John was not. You cannot talk about anything when you are sailing a little boat against a hard wind and you cannot listen to anyone who talks to you.

Roger was ready to go on talking about the cannon. Captain John was not.

You cannot talk about anything when you are sailing a little boat against a hard wind and you cannot listen to anyone who talks to you.

You are watching the dark patches on the water that show you a harder puff is coming and you have to be ready at any moment to slacken the sheet or to luff up into the wind. So Roger presently stopped trying to talk.

He was a real boy from a real ship, come ashore on business with his captain. Since yesterday the field path and the gate into the wood on the way to Darien and the farm at Holly Howe had all turned into foreign country.

They were quite different places now that you came to them by water from an island of your own.

They were not at all what they had been when you lived there and saw the island far away over the water. Coming back to them was almost the same thing as exploration.

They were not at all what they had been when you lived there and saw the island far away over the water. Coming back to them was almost the same thing as exploration.

It was like exploring a place that you have seen in a dream, where everything is just where you expect it and yet everything is a surprise.

It seemed queer to walk straight in at the door of Holly Howe Farm. John had very nearly stopped and knocked at it. Inside, everything was as it used to be. Mother was sitting at the table writing to father.

A moment later they had passed the promontory on the southern side of the bay, and the houseboat had disappeared behind it.

Soon they were nearing their island, and just as Holly Howe had seemed strange, so now the island seemed home.

It was delightful to see it coming nearer, and to think of the tents and the camp, and to see smoke blowing away over the trees and to know that it came from the mate’s fire.

Until it grew too dark, they could just see the cormorants on the tree on Cormorant Island. But they would not have known what they were if they had not seen them from close to.

They lay there, making plans as if they were going to be on the island all their lives.

“Properly,” said Captain John, “we ought to shoot wild goats for our food.”

John and Susan swam races, first one way, and then the other.

Titty, privately, was being a cormorant.

This was not the sort of thing that she could very well talk of to John or Susan until she was sure that it was a success. So she said nothing about it.

Able-seaman Titty swam about on the bottom with her eyes open, looking for the whitest stones.

They were all rather big for pearls, but no one really minds a pearl being big, and soon the pearl-divers had a pile of wet and shining jewels by the waterside.

The worst of it was that as soon as the stones were dry—and they dried quickly in the sun—they stopped shining, and could not be counted as pearls any more.

Then there were the places that could be seen from the island. There was Darien, Houseboat Bay, Dixon’s Bay (this name was given up, and it was called Shark Bay instead, after Roger’s great fish), and Cormorant Island.

Far away to the south there was the Antarctic. Far away to the north beyond Rio was the Arctic.

As for their own island, they could not agree on a name for it.

“We’ll tell her when she isn’t a native any more,” said Titty. “

It’s not the sort of thing you tell to natives.

”

The two parties sat on the ground by the fireplace where the fire was still smouldering. Susan was right.

It is much more difficult to be fierce sitting down than standing up.

“First of all,” said Nancy Blackett. “When did you come to these seas?”

Nancy said, “Let’s broach a puncheon of Jamaica rum. We’ve got a beauty in the Amazon. Let’s go to the harbour and get it. It’s really good stuff.

Sometimes our cook is quite friendly, for a native. She calls it lemonade.

”

“Now swig,” said Captain Nancy.

It was certainly the finest lemonade that pirate or explorer ever swigged.

“I never tasted better rum,” said Able-seaman Titty.

“It is good,” said Captain Nancy. “And so are your molasses.”

Toffee does not help talking, and for a little time no one said anything.

At last Titty asked, “Where did Captain Flint get his parrot?”

“We could discover new continents,” said Titty. “

America can’t fill everything. There must be lots that haven’t been found yet.

”

It was a very good feast. The sandwiches and sardines went well with the pemmican and the lemonade. By the time that was done the big kettle was boiling like anything, and it seemed a pity not to have tea with the cake.

Time went fast as the six mariners sat round the fire planning voyages.

At last Captain Nancy looked up at the sun.

They rowed away down the lake.

The dark came fast overhead. Stars shone out.

Owls were calling. The edges of the lake disappeared under the hills. They could see the outlines of the hills, great black masses, pressing up into the starry sky.

And, of course, he could not be quite sure that he could get in even if he could see the lights. He knew he ought to be able to. But, after all, he had never tried.

It is one thing to row in using marks in daylight, when if anything goes wrong you can look about and see where you are, but quite another thing when you are wrapped up in darkness and have nothing to count on but the lights.

Anyhow, the first thing to do was to find them.

“The lights are quite close to us,” said Roger, and as he said it there was a gentle scrunch as the Swallow’s nose touched the soft, pebbly beach of the little harbour.

Captain John had used his leading lights for the first time, and had made his harbour in pitch dark.

“That is going to win us the war with the Amazons,” he said with great delight. “It’s the one thing they think we can’t do, and we can. They think they are safe from us at night.”

“Look there,” said Young Billy. “Can’t leave him a minute but he’s out.

Like the adder is fire. Just a bit of a hole and out he comes.

” He picked up his spade and went to the mound, where a small tongue of flame was licking a hole from inside. He put a spadeful of earth on the hole and patted it down.

“We want ours to burn good and slow,” said Young Billy. “If he burns fast he leaves nowt but ash.

The slower the fire the better the charcoal.

”

“Got too good a hold,” said Young Billy. “

Once he’s got a good hold you can cover a fire up and the better you cover him the hotter he is and the slower he burns.

But if you let him have plenty of air there’s no holding him.”

The Swallows were back in real life, almost before they were out of sight of the charcoal-burners.

“They’re the finest savages we ever met,” said Titty. “I expect the serpent is for witchcraft. Medicine men, I should think they are. They’re so old. Medicine men from a wandering tribe from beyond the ranges.”

Titty was cheered by this. “Perhaps they never let the Amazons into their tribal secrets. Perhaps the Amazons have never seen their serpent. Perhaps it’s all right and we really are the proper discoverers.

Just seeing a person is nothing.

”

Titty was cheered by this. “Perhaps they never let the Amazons into their tribal secrets. Perhaps the Amazons have never seen their serpent. Perhaps it’s all right and we really are the proper discoverers. Just seeing a person is nothing.”

Galumphing, which is partly jumping and partly galloping, is a quick way of going downhill.

It was such a quick way that Able-seaman Titty and the boy Roger passed the patteran and the bent and tied hazel branches without seeing them. Captain John passed them too.

Then, when all the sizeable sticks had been taken out, Captain John went aboard the Swallow to pick up all the small bits and chips and broken twigs and dead leaves that were lying all over the bottom boards.

It is surprising what a mess a ship is in after carrying a cargo of any kind, and small firewood is as untidy a cargo as you can have.

It was a long time before Swallow looked as neat and trim as she had done when they had rowed away that morning.

But the big hills far up the lake helped to make him feel that the houseboat man did not matter.

The hills had been there before Captain Flint. They would be there forever.

That, somehow, was comforting. John cheered up, and decided that it was a good day for swimming round the island.

There was a general scramble.

Mother might be a native, but it was all right to kiss her none the less.

The female native counted the Swallows after she had kissed them. “One, two, three, four,” she said. “No one drowned yet. That’s a good thing, because it’s somebody’s birthday.”

Then there were more ordinary stores, a tin of golden syrup, two big pots of marmalade and a great tin of squashed-fly biscuits.

Squashed-fly biscuits are those flat biscuits with currants in them, just the thing for explorers.

Then there were three bunloaves and six bottles of ginger beer.

“He wouldn’t have called you that if he knew you,” said mother. “

It doesn’t matter what people think or say if they don’t know you. They may think anything.

What did you do?”

But there’s only another week before we must be going south. You can stay here until nearly the end of it, unless the weather breaks. If the weather breaks, I mean if the rainy season comes on, you’ll have to come away.

In the rainy season desert islands, even the best of them, are almost uninhabitable.

”

“Aye, aye, sir,” said Titty.

Captain John spat on his hands, and rubbed them. This does not help much in climbing a rough-barked tree like a pine, but it seems to, so it is always worth doing.

Then he started. It was really not so difficult as it looked.

Susan was not there to be looking after both of them. John was not at the lookout place, or splicing ropes in Swallow at the other end of the island. Nothing was being done by anybody on the island.

Nothing would be done if she did not do it herself. It was like being the only person in the world.

Suddenly she heard the chug, chug, chug of a steamer on its way down the lake. On ordinary days nobody bothered much about steamers except Roger, but today, on hearing it, Able-seaman Titty jumped up and ran out of the tent into the sunlight.

They did not know that there was nobody on the island except one able-seaman who had been wrecked there five-and-twenty years before. Of course, that was because she had not waved a flag to show that she was there, and waiting to be rescued.

But who would wave a flag to be rescued if they had a desert island of their own?

That was the thing that spoilt Robinson Crusoe. In the end he came home. There never ought to be an end.

But who would wave a flag to be rescued if they had a desert island of their own? That was the thing that spoilt Robinson Crusoe.

In the end he came home. There never ought to be an end.

The steamer hurried on down the lake, and Titty followed it through the trees on the high western shore of the island. The path to the harbour was turning into a regular beaten track.

Then she ran along it both ways, to the camp and back to the harbour again. Now it really was a path. What a funny thing it was that no one had thought of clearing it sooner.

Somehow there was always more time to do things when you were alone.

At the harbour she reached up to the nail on the forked tree to make sure that she would be able to hang the lantern on it.

“It’s the cleverest bird I’ve ever seen, as well as the most polite. I wish it would do it again.” She lifted herself on her elbow to bow to the dipper when the dipper bowed to her.

It’s very hard not to bob to a dipper when a dipper bobs to you.

But the dipper did not seem to like it, and flew away out of sight behind the other rocks, fast and low over the water.

“Hullo, Robinson Crusoe,” said mother. That was the best of mother. She was different from other natives. You could always count on her to know things like that.

Robinson Crusoe and Man Friday then kissed each other as if they were pretending to be Titty and mother.

“You didn’t expect to see me so soon after yesterday,” said mother, “but I came to say something to John. I suppose he’s with the rest of the crew in that secret harbour of yours that poor natives are not allowed to see.”

They could not leave Titty behind and then go and turn the day into an ordinary picnic. Susan had agreed. Roger had suggested swimming instead.

The mutiny had thus been suppressed without bloodshed, as they say in the books.

The crew had been rewarded by getting permission from their captain to go ashore. They had landed on the island near which they were anchored.

The crew had been rewarded by getting permission from their captain to go ashore. They had landed on the island near which they were anchored.

They had bathed from it, and made a fire on the shore, not for cooking, because they had brought no kettle, but because landing on an island without making a fire is waste of an island.

They had drunk half their milk and eaten half their rations. Then while John stayed on the island he had sent the mate and the boy to sail in to Rio, to buy stores.

… afternoon and early evening had been long and tiring, and though there had been plenty to look at in the steamers and motor boats and rowing skiffs of the natives, they had seen no sails except those of large yachts far away up the lake.

For the first time in their lives all three of them had wished to hurry the sinking sun upon its way.

Now, at last, the sun had set. Twilight was coming on. There was no wind, for the wind had gone with the sun as it so often does, and they were beginning to be afraid that the dark would come too soon for them.

“As she is, sir,” said the mate.

In a calm things go anyway in a sailing ship, but a little wind sharpens them up at once.

John stepped the mast as quietly as he could. He hooked the gaff to the traveller and set the sail. There was a little west in the wind and the boom swung out on the starboard side.

She was wrong.

It is never safe to say that nothing more can happen.

Now that her prize was safely anchored, she did her best to make things shipshape, but she could not do much in the dark, even with her little torch to help her. But she rolled up the sail as well as she could.

“Rio lights,” said John. “We’re out. I’m going to hoist the sail. Hold the torch steady while I reef. Even daddy used to say, ‘

Never be ashamed to reef a small boat in the dark.

’ ”

The spirits of the Swallow’s crew had risen very much now that they were at sea once more and not fumbling in the dark with reed beds and water lilies.

There is nothing like sea-room to cheer a sailor’s heart.

“Are you cold, Roger?” asked the mate.

The islands clustered about Rio Bay became dark masses on a background no longer as dark as themselves. The colour of the water changed. It had been as black as the hills and the sky, and as these paled so did the lake.

The dark islands were dull green and grey, and the rippled water was the colour of a pewter teapot.

When John woke it was still long before sunrise, but it was quite light enough for sailing. He woke with a start, and some shame at having slept. He was glad he had been the first to wake.

Roger yawned, and pulled himself up by the gunwale to look over the side. He just had one look and then, without saying anything, settled down to sleep again.

Susan woke as one wakes who has breakfast to get for a family.

“I say,” she said, “we could have started ages ago. It’s quite light.”

Mother knew that the Dixons would let her know at once if no one had come up from the island with the milk-can.

Natives were like that, useful in a way, but sometimes a bother. They all held together, a huge network of gossip and scouting, through the meshes of which it was difficult for explorers and pirates to slip.

“I’d have run along myself, first thing,” said Mrs. Dixon, “if I hadn’t been that busy.”

“I’ll carry them,” said Roger.

They went down the field with the hearts of those who have had to cross some rather thin ice.

The captain carried the milk-can in one hand, and the basket in the other. Roger had a loaf in each arm.

They could see the smoke rising from the fire on the island and, by the time they had sailed across and beached Swallow at the landing-place, Susan had the kettle boiling, tea made, and was only waiting for the milk and the eggs.

Breakfast was a silent, hungry meal until it began to turn into dinner.

“We may as well go straight on,” Susan said, and the others agreed, though they had eaten their eggs and had got as far as bread and marmalade. John opened a pemmican tin.

The assegais and tomahawks and shark’s-tooth necklaces and boomerangs and green and scarlet painted gourds, that were relics of Captain Flint’s travels and had hung in honoured places on the cabin walls, had been torn down.

It was like trying to tidy up after a whirlwind.

Captain Flint trod on a little ebony elephant from Colombo. He picked it up, thinking of glue, but it had lost its tusks, its trunk and two of its legs, and he threw it desperately through the open cabin window.

“And then they go and take the one thing that could be of no possible use to them but mattered a great deal to me.

Never lock anything up, Polly, and you’ll never lose it.

Whoever the thief was, he took that box simply because it was heavy and he couldn’t open it. If it was that boy he must be a strong one. But perhaps he had others to help him.

They do play the game, and they’d never have wrecked my cabin for me. But that boy. I didn’t like his lying to me about his firework on my cabin roof.

Boys are capable of anything, Polly, even good ones.

I was a bad one myself, so they say, but at least I didn’t tell lies.”

There was a most unpleasant lump in Captain John’s throat.

He found that it was almost more upsetting to have things put right than it had been when they went wrong. Then at least he could be angry, and that was a help.

This was worse. He swallowed twice, and he bit the inside of his lip pretty hard. He held out his hand. Captain Flint took it, and shook it firmly. John felt suddenly better.

Considering that Captain Flint was having dinner with his enemies, it was a very friendly meal. Even Titty softened towards him before the end of it.

He never made the mistake of calling her anything but Able-seaman.

The tongue that the Amazons had found and brought away with them was very good. So was the seed cake of the Swallows. It was no good opening pemmican tins when there was nearly the whole of a tongue to be eaten.

“Come to think of it,” said Captain Flint, “perhaps it wasn’t. All the same, I’d like to get it back.

You’ve no idea what a job it is writing a book. Keeping a log is bad enough.

”

Really, in spite of bathing and fetching the milk and having breakfast and dinner, it seemed a very long time before the small hand of the chronometer crawled round past the II, and nearly as far as the III, on the chronometer face.

A watched pot never boils, and a watched watch seems to lag on purpose.

But at last Captain John looked at it for the last time, and gave the order. The Grand Fleet set sail.

At that moment Captain Flint, roaring, “Death or Glory!” charged up the companionway. He had gone down again through the fore-hatch and run through the cabin. He came up whirling two scarlet cushions round his head.

But in hand-to-hand fighting like this it is not weapons that count, but hands.

Captain Flint’s were large, but he had only two of them. The Swallows’ were small, but they had eight.

charged up the companionway. He had gone down again through the fore-hatch and run through the cabin. He came up whirling two scarlet cushions round his head. But in hand-to-hand fighting like this it is not weapons that count, but hands.

Captain Flint’s were large, but he had only two of them. The Swallows’ were small, but they had eight.

One tremendous blow of a scarlet cushion caught Captain John on the side of the head, and sent him to the deck. But he was up again in a moment, and charged head down into Captain Flint.

On the starboard side of the deck there was a springboard, from which, on happier days, the owner of the houseboat was accustomed to take his morning dive.

It might have been designed for the use of prisoners on their way to feed the sharks.

At the sight of it Captain Flint shuddered so violently that he nearly upset the determined buccaneers who had captured him and his ship and were now holding him to prevent any attempt at escape.

“Belay that,” growled Captain Nancy.

Captain John was really commodore, but in some things Captain Nancy could not help taking the lead.

“Tie the prisoner to the mast,” she said, and it was done.

He sat down on the capstan and swung his arms about his chest. “Well, that’s that,” he said. “

Not even the Amazon pirates are ruthless enough to make a man walk the plank twice on one day.

Hullo, Roger, looking for the sharks?”

“

All the best sea fights end with a banquet

,” said Captain Flint. “And there’s one waiting in the cabin and nobody but the parrot on guard there. Just let me go below and start the Primus while I get into some dry things, and then there’s nothing to keep us from it.”

The Swallows and Amazons went aft to the companion to go down into the cabin. The captains and the mates went by the gangway outside, the able-seaman and the boy over the cabin roof.

The cabin was all that the cabin of a retired pirate should be.

Captain Flint had been hard at work, tidying up after the burglary, and the walls were hung once more with strange weapons and curiosities from all the seven seas. Everything that had not been broken and thrown overboard was back in its place.

“One,” said Nancy. “

Ours wasn’t a burglary. It was honest revenge.

”

The stamping on the deck could have been heard a mile away in the quiet evening. Faster and faster played Captain Flint.

Faster and faster danced the Swallows and Amazons, until the tune went so fast that it stopped being a tune at all, and they all flung themselves on the deck, tired out.

“And to think how I’ve wasted this summer,” said Captain Flint.

“The mate meant, don’t waste time.

We won’t waste time, but looking for treasure you never can tell to a year or two.

We must face our dangers. We must keep together. And you must do what you are told.”

“

It’s much better to find treasure than just to sit catching fish

,” said Titty.

It was heavily bound with big black angle irons. The able-seaman banged at them with the hammer. There were strange double clasps that met each other, and locked, and were as strong as the iron bindings.

Titty and Roger banged away at them, but they might as well have been two flies trying to break into a steel safe.

“

There’s treasure and treasure

,” said Captain Flint. “It takes all sorts to make a world. You know, Able-seaman, I can never say thank you enough to you.

“Prison!” said Nancy. “

They ought to be hanged in chains at Execution Dock, and rattle their bones in the wind.

”

I should have been sorry to lose the old box, because it’s been with me all over the world. And I should have lost the book I’ve been writing all summer in spite of the efforts of Nancy and Peggy to make any writing impossible.

Never any of you start writing books. It isn’t worth it.

This summer has been harder work for me than all the thirty years of knocking up and down that went before it. And if those scoundrels had got away with the box I could never have done it again.

And I should have lost the book I’ve been writing all summer in spite of the efforts of Nancy and Peggy to make any writing impossible. Never any of you start writing books. It isn’t worth it.

This summer has been harder work for me than all the thirty years of knocking up and down that went before it.

And if those scoundrels had got away with the box I could never have done it again. I owe a great deal to all of you, and most of all to the able-seaman.

“I’ll steer Swallow,” said Titty, really because she wanted to be alone.

She had had one idea firm in her head and had held to it when everyone thought she was wrong; and now, when everybody knew she had been right, just for a minute or two she did not want to do any talking.

Everybody else crowded into the big rowing boat. Captain Flint rowed in the bows, looking at his old cabin trunk with its ancient labels. Roger sat on the cabin trunk, looking at the big jaws of the pike.

“Pass your plates, then,” said Susan, and the shark steak supper began.

It was found, by experiment, that fingers were a good deal better than forks.

There are a lot of bones in freshwater sharks and, though this was such a big one that the bones were easy to find, fingers were better than forks at pulling them out.

There are a lot of bones in freshwater sharks and, though this was such a big one that the bones were easy to find, fingers were better than forks at pulling them out.

So the Swallows and Amazons sat by their fire with a lot of salt in the lid of a tin and dipped their steaks in the salt and ate them, more like savages than explorers.

“I wish we weren’t going tomorrow,” said Titty. “We haven’t had time for a furthest north expedition, or for a furthest south. There’s lots of unexplored at both ends of our chart.

“If you can get your mother to say you may have it,” said Captain Flint, “I’ll see about it at once. There are monkeys nearer than Africa and I’m taking my book up to London now that I’ve got it again.

I’ll go and look at monkeys by way of a change from publishers.

You shall have your monkey next week.”

Then Mate Susan blew out the candle lantern.

There was darkness in the tent and, in the sudden silence that came with the darkness, it was as if she had blown out the parrot.

“Good night,” “Good night,” the Swallows and Amazons called to each other. Their last night on the island had begun.

“Good night,” “Good night,” the Swallows and Amazons called to each other.

Their last night on the island had begun.

But day after day had been dry and clear and, even when there had been clouds, there had also been sunshine and wind to drive their shadows, chasing each other, over the bright heather and bracken of the hills.

Now that it was time for the Swallows to go, there came a sudden change of weather to remind them that the summer too was near its end.

All that last day there had been the heaviness of thunder in the air. There had been a stormy sunset and, though there had been but little wind, dark, angry clouds had lifted in the south until at night they shut out all the stars.

There was the wild shriek of a parrot, as if it were one of a flock screaming through the palm trees in a tropical hurricane. Then darkness and quiet. Then heavy drops of rain pattering down on the tents.

Titty woke, not comfortably, bit by bit, but with every bit of herself at once.

She did not move, except to put out her hand and touch the parrot’s cage. “Susan,” she whispered.

“Pretty Polly,” said the parrot, now thoroughly awake.

One flash followed another and then there were three tremendous crashes of thunder and a lot of little ones as if the sky were breaking into solid bits and rattling down a steep iron roof.

“There’s a broadside for you,” called Nancy Blackett from her tent.

“Two o’clock in the morning,” said Captain John.

After all, there were some things these Amazons did not know.

There was a gust of wind and then a heavier pattering of rain on the tents and after that it was as if the rain were coming down in solid lumps of water that splashed and broke on the thin canvas.

There was a glare of lightning and a crash of thunder all in one, and after that for a long time the thunder and lightning came so close one after the other that no one knew which flash belonged to which clap of thunder.

The camp was full of light and the rolling, crashing thunder overhead made things seem hurried, as if there was something that ought to be done but no time in which to do it.

The lanterns were lit but, though they were bright in the short moments of darkness, they seemed to give no light at all in the glare of the lightning flashes.

The lanterns were lit but, though they were bright in the short moments of darkness, they seemed to give no light at all in the glare of the lightning flashes.

It was dark again and suddenly quiet. It was as if the storm were holding its breath.

Then there was a deep, rushing noise, far away, louder and louder every moment.

Then there was the parrot’s cage, and then the farm lantern in the middle of the floor. It was a tight pack on each side, because they had to take care not to touch the tent walls.

The weather outside seemed to matter less now that they were all together.

Even Peggy, who really could not help not liking thunder, was cheerful again, partly because it would never do to show Roger that she was afraid. With Nancy it was different. Nancy knew, so that with her it was no use pretending.

John was thinking how lucky it was that the storm had waited till their last night. Nancy was proud of her strong tent and enjoyed the wind buffeting against it.

Titty, with sparkling eyes, was thinking of typhoons.

The parrot was putting his feathers to rights and now and then whistling cheerfully at the bright lantern so near him on the floor.

“I am wet,” said Titty. “I couldn’t be wetter. I want to see it.

We may never have another storm as good as this one.

”

“It’s nearly five,” said John.

Nobody could go to sleep. They became shipwrecked sailors.

“Both our masts went by the board,” said Captain Nancy.