the green parrot, brought her mind back to Captain Flint, for she remembered the message that the old men had sent to the Amazons. She remembered the message, that the old men thought that someone was going to break into the houseboat and that Captain Flint ought to put a lock on it. Then she remembered that John had tried to give the message and that Captain Flint had been too cross to listen to it, besides calling John a liar. And now there was mother wanting to send a message to Captain Flint by writing to the mother of the Amazons. And there was John gone to the Amazon River, not to see the Amazons, but to capture their ship. So the message would not be given to the Amazons until tomorrow.
“Bother Captain Flint,” she said out loud, and put the book away and went up to the lookout place with the telescope to keep watch. There were plenty of boats on the lake and, looking through the telescope, she could see the cormorants on the bare tree on Cormorant Island. Time went very slowly in spite of them. Even making tea and boiling two eggs and eating them and a lot of bun loaf and marmalade did not seem to take as long as it does when there is something else that you are in a hurry to do next. It seemed that she was only in the camp and cooking and eating and washing-up for a minute or two before she was back at the lookout, wondering what was happening to the Swallows. She knew they would not be back for a long time because of waiting for dusk to go into the Amazon River. Dusk seemed a long time coming, even longer for Able-seaman Titty on her island than for the captain, the boy, and the mate far away by Rio.
At last the sun went down. The last steamer, Roger’s bedtime steamer, went down the lake. The last of the native fishermen rowed away into the twilight and disappeared. Titty became the keeper of a lighthouse on a lonely reef.
She lit the big lantern and hauled it up the tree and made fast. It gave a splendid light up there, high overhead, and she thought of swimming off