CHAPTER I

THE PEAK IN DARIEN

“Or like stout Cortez, when with eagle eyes,
He stared at the Pacific—and all his men
Looked at each other with a wild surmise—
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.”

Roger, aged seven, and no longer the youngest of the family, ran in wide
zigzags, to and fro, across the steep field that sloped up from the lake
to Holly Howe, the farm where they were staying for part of the summer
holidays. He ran until he nearly reached the hedge by the footpath, then
turned and ran until he nearly reached the hedge on the other side of
the field. Then he turned and crossed the field again. Each crossing of
the field brought him nearer to the farm. The wind was against him, and
he was tacking up against it to the farm, where at the gate his patient
mother was awaiting him. He could not run straight against the wind
because he was a sailing vessel, a tea-clipper, the _Cutty Sark_. His
elder brother John had said only that morning that steamships were just
engines in tin boxes. Sail was the thing, and so, though it took rather
longer, Roger made his way up the field in broad tacks.

When he came near his mother, he saw that she had in her hand a red
envelope and a small piece of white paper, a telegram. He knew at once
what it was. For a moment he was tempted to run straight to her. He knew
that telegrams came only from his father, and that this one must be the
answer to a letter from his mother, and letters from John, Susan, Titty,
and himself, all asking the same thing, but asking it in different ways.
His own letter had been very short. “Please, daddy, may I, too? With
love. Roger.” Titty’s had been much longer, longer even than John’s.
Susan, though she was older than Titty, had not written a letter of her
own. She had put her name with John’s at the end of his, so that these
two had sent one letter between them. Mother’s letter had been the
longest of all, but Roger did not know what she had said in it. All the
letters had gone together, a very long way, to his father, whose ship
was at Malta but under orders for Hong-Kong. And there, in his mother’s
hand, was the red envelope that had brought the answer. For a moment
Roger wanted to run straight to her. But sail was the thing, not steam,
so he tacked on, heading, perhaps, a little closer to the wind. At last
he headed straight into the wind, moved slower and slower, came to a
stop at his mother’s side, began to move backwards, and presently
brought up with a little jerk, anchored, and in harbour.

“Is it the answer?” he panted, out of breath after all that beating up
against the wind. “Does he say Yes?”

Mother smiled, and read the telegram aloud:

BETTER DROWNED THAN DUFFERS IF NOT DUFFERS WONT DROWN.

“Does that mean Yes?” asked Roger.

“I think so.”

“Does it mean me, too?”

“Yes, if John and Susan will take you, and if you promise to do whatever
they tell you.”

“Hurrah,” shouted Roger, and capered about, forgetting for a moment that
he was a ship, and anchored in a quiet harbour.

“Where are the others?” asked mother.

“In Darien,” said Roger.

“Where?”

“On the peak, you know. Titty called it that. We can see the island from
there.”

Below the farm at Holly Howe the field sloped steeply to a little bay
where there was a boathouse and a jetty. But there was little of the
lake to be seen, because on each side of the bay there were high
promontories. A path ran down the field from the farm to the boathouse.
Half-way down the field there was a gate, and from that gate another
path ran into the pinewoods that covered the southern and higher
promontory. The path soon faded away into nothing, but on the very
evening of their first coming, a fortnight before, the children had
found their way through the trees to the far end of the promontory,
where it dropped, like a cliff, into the lake. From the top of it they
had looked out over the broad sheet of water winding away among the low
hills to the south and winding away into the hills high to the north,
where they could not see so much of it. And it was then, when they first
stood on the cliff and looked out over mile upon mile of water, that
Titty had given the place its name. She had heard the sonnet read aloud
at school, and forgotten everything in it except the picture of the
explorers looking at the Pacific Ocean for the first time. She had
called the promontory Darien. On the highest point of it they had made
their camping place, and there Roger had left them when he had come
through the trees to the field and, seeing his mother at the gate, had
begun his voyage home.

“Would you like to take them the answer?”

“And tell them it’s Yes for me too?”

“Yes. You must give the telegram to John. It’s he who has to see that
you are not duffers.”

Mother put the telegram in its red envelope, and gave it to Roger. She
kissed him, anchored as he was, and said, “Supper at half-past seven,
and not a minute later, and mind you don’t wake Vicky when you come in.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” said Roger, pulling in his anchor hand over hand. He
turned round, and began tacking back down the field, thinking of how he
should bring the news.

Mother laughed.

“Ship ahoy!” she said.

Roger stopped, and looked back.

“You had the wind against you coming up the field,” she said. “It’s a
fair wind now. You needn’t tack both ways.”

“So it is,” said Roger, “it’s dead aft. I’m a schooner. I can sail
goosewinged, with a sail on each side.” He spread out his arms for
sails, and ran straight down the field to the gate into the pinewood.

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. He climbed up through the trees to
the top of the promontory. At last he came out of the trees on a small
open space of bare rock and heather. This was the Peak of Darien. There
were trees all round it, but through them could be seen the bright
glimmer of the lake. In a hollow of rock a small fire was burning. John
was stoking the fire. Susan was spreading bread and marmalade. Titty,
with her chin on her hunched-up knees, was sitting between two trees on
the edge of the cliff above the lake, keeping watch and looking at the
island.

John looked up and saw the telegram. He jumped up from the fire.

“Despatches?” he said.

“It’s the answer,” said Roger. “It’s Yes, and it’s Yes for me too, if I
obey orders, and you and Susan take me. And if it’s Yes for me it must
be Yes for Titty.”

John took the telegram. Titty scrambled up and came, running. Susan held
the knife with the marmalade on it over the bread so as not to lose any,
but stopped spreading. John opened the envelope, and took out the white
paper.

“Read it aloud,” said Susan.

John read:

BETTER DROWNED THAN DUFFERS IF NOT DUFFERS WONT DROWN.

“Hurrah for daddy!” he shouted.

“What does it mean?” asked Susan.

“It means Yes,” said Titty.

“It means that daddy thinks we shall none of us get drowned and that if
any of us do get drowned it’s a good riddance,” said John.

“But what are duffers if not duffers?” asked Susan.

“It doesn’t say that,” said Titty. “It says that if we were duffers we
might as well be drowned. Then it stops and starts again, and says that
as we aren’t duffers . . .”

“If,” said John.

“If we aren’t duffers we shan’t be drowned.”

“Daddy put that in to comfort mother,” said Susan. She went on spreading
the marmalade.

“Let’s start at once,” said Roger, but at that moment the kettle changed
its tune. It had been bubbling for some time, but now it hissed quietly
and steadily, and a long jet of steam poured from its spout. The water
was boiling. Susan took the kettle from the fire, and emptied into it a
small packet of tea.

“We can’t start to-night anyhow,” she said. “Let’s have tea, and then
we’ll make a list of the things we shall want.”

“Let’s have tea where we can see the island,” said Titty.

They carried their mugs and the kettle and the tin plate piled with
thick slabs of brown bread and marmalade to the edge of the cliff. The
island lay about a mile away towards the lower, southern end of the
lake, its trees reflected in the glassy water. They had been looking at
it for ten days, but the telegram had made it much more real than ever
it had been before. Looking down from Titty’s Peak in the evening of the
day on which they had come to the farmhouse where their mother had taken
lodgings, they had seen the lake like an inland sea. 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 for ever. But there was little Vicky, a fat baby,
like the pictures of Queen Victoria in old age, full of all sorts of
needs. Mother could not take Vicky and the nurse to camp even on the
best of uninhabited islands. Nor, without leave from daddy, could she
let them go alone. And though John and Susan were both well able to
manage a sailing boat, Titty and Roger had only begun to learn how to
sail when their father had been home on leave a year before. 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. But with a lake as big as a small sea, a fourteen-foot
dinghy with a brown sail waiting in the boathouse, and the little wooded
island waiting for explorers, nothing but a sailing voyage of discovery
seemed worth thinking about.

So the letters had been written and posted, and day after day the
children had been camping on the Peak of Darien by day, and sleeping in
the farmhouse by night. They had been out in the rowing boat with their
mother, but they had always rowed the other way so as not to spoil the
voyage of discovery by going to the island first. 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 sail out from the little
sheltered bay, and round the point, and down the lake to the island.
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. Titty was thinking of the island itself, of coral, treasure
and footprints in the sand. Roger was thinking of the fact that he was
not to be left behind. He saw for the first time that it was a good
thing to be no longer the baby of the family. Vicky was youngest now.
Vicky would stay at home, and Roger, one of the crew of a ship, was to
sail away into the unknown world.

At last John took a sheet of paper and a pencil from his pocket.

“Let’s make the Ship’s Articles,” he said.

The bread and marmalade had all been eaten, so he turned the plate
upside down, and put the paper on the back of it, and lay on his stomach
on the rock. He wrote:

“Sailing Vessel _Swallow_. Port, Holly Howe. Owners . . .”

“Who are the owners?”

“She belongs to us for the rest of these holidays anyhow,” said Susan.

“I shall put ‘Walkers Limited’ to do for all of us.”

He wrote, “Owners, Walkers Limited.” Underneath that he wrote:

“Master: John Walker.
Mate: Susan Walker.
Able-seaman: Titty Walker.
Ship’s Boy: Roger.”

“Now,” he said, “you all have to sign opposite your names.”

They all signed.

“Well, Mister Mate,” said John.

“Sir,” replied Susan smartly.

“How soon do you think we shall be ready to put to sea?”

“With the first breath of wind.”

“What do you think of your crew?”

“The best I ever shipped.”

“Can they swim?”

“Able-seaman Titty can. The Boy Roger still keeps one foot on the
bottom.”

“He must learn.”

“I don’t keep a foot on the bottom all the time,” said Roger.

“You must learn as soon as possible not to keep it on the bottom at
all.”

“All right,” said Roger.

“That’s all wrong, Roger,” said Titty. “You ought to have said, ‘Aye,
aye, sir!’”

“I nearly always do,” said Roger. “I said it to mother.”

[Illustration: MAKING SHIP’S PAPERS]

“You must say it to the captain and to the mate. Perhaps you ought to
say it even to me, but as there are only two in the crew it won’t do for
them to be saying sir to each other.”

“Have you got any more paper?” said Susan.

“Only the back of the telegram,” said John.

“Mother won’t mind our using it,” said Susan. “You know we can’t really
sail with the first breath of wind, not until everything is ready. Let’s
make a list of the things.”

“Compass,” said John.

“Kettle,” said Susan.

“A flag,” said Titty. “I’ll make one with a swallow on it.”

“Tents,” said Roger.

“Telescope,” said John.

“Saucepan, mugs, knives, forks, tea, sugar, milk,” said Susan, writing
as hard as she could go.

“Spoons,” said Roger.

They kept remembering things and then getting stuck, and then
remembering some more until there was no more room on the back of the
telegram.

“I haven’t got another scrap of paper,” said John. “Even the Ship’s
Articles have got sums on the other side. Bother the list. Let’s go and
ask mother if we can have the key of the boathouse.”

But when they came to Holly Howe Farm, mother met them in the doorway
with her finger on her lips.

“Vicky’s asleep,” she said; “don’t make a noise coming in. Supper’s just
ready.”