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. He was wondering what he ought to do about warning the retired pirate about putting a padlock on his houseboat. What would the Amazons say about it? If Captain Nancy wanted to seize the houseboat by a surprise attack when the pirate was somewhere ashore, she would certainly rather it were not locked up. Captain John galumphed half-heartedly. Ought he to have told the two Billies that they were talking not to friends but to enemies of the houseboat man, who, for the present at least, was not the Blackett lasses’ Uncle Jim, but Captain Flint, against whom Amazons and Swallows had concluded a solemn alliance. He galumphed half-heartedly. But even though he was not galumphing with heart and soul, when it is easy to get so giddy that you can see nothing at all and to go so fast down hill that you can hardly stop yourself, he never noticed his own patteran. Susan, however, saw it. She had begun looking out for it as soon as she was in the path through the trees, and on that account her galumphing could hardly be called galumphing at all.
She came last down the track and found that the galumphing feet of the others had kicked the patteran aside. She would not have been sure of it herself if she had not seen the two hazel branches bent into hoops and then Titty’s blaze in the side of the hazel tree.
“John!” she called.
There was no answer but the sound of galumphing feet far away down the winding path.
She took out her whistle and blew it as loud as she could.
The noise of galumphing stopped. She blew it again.
She heard John shout, “Hi! Titty! Roger!”