“Anyhow nothing more can happen till morning,” said Able-seaman Titty to herself. “John won’t try to land in the dark with one of the leading lights out. I’ve got Amazon , and Swallow will be flagship after all. Nothing more can happen now.”
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. She found a rug and wrapped herself up in it, for it was cold enough on the water now that she was not rowing. She also found a big hunk of chocolate. This she ate. “They always eat everything they find in a captured ship,” she had said to herself when in doubt whether to eat it or not. She settled herself in the bottom of the boat, just aft of the centreboard case, so as to keep warm and get some shelter from the wind. She had eaten all the chocolate, and had begun to wonder how many hours it would be till dawn, when she stiffened suddenly, like a rabbit that has seen a man in a field.
She heard a new noise.
It was the noise of rowing, hard, fast rowing, the noise of two pairs of oars in a native boat, pin oars, and the slap, slap of a boat’s bows into the short waves. She knew that noise well.
It came nearer and nearer. It passed close by her. Plunk, plunk. She could hear the splash of the oars so clearly that she almost thought she could see the boat in the dark.
Able-seaman Titty hardly breathed. These were not Swallows or Amazons, but natives. And what could they be doing in the middle of the night when everybody, except, of course, pirates and explorers, ought to be asleep?