“Can’t leave the cooking,” said Susan.
“Well, I must have one of the crew,” said John. “Can you spare the able-seaman?”
“Go along, Titty,” said the mate.
“Me too,” said Roger.
“Only one,” said John; “but if we get her in, we’ll whistle. Then you can come. Will you lend me your whistle, Mister Mate?”
Susan gave him her whistle, and John and Titty hurried off to the landing-place, and launched Swallow .
“I’ll row her round,” he said. “It’s no good putting the sail up just to take it down again.”
Titty sat in the stern while he rowed. Swallow was a hard boat to row, because of her keel and the ballast that made her so good a boat to sail. But very soon they had passed the end of the island. John rowed her round outside the furthest of the rocks.
“Now,” he said, “we’ll try to go in. I’ll paddle her in sculling over the stern, and you go forward with the other oar ready to fend off if there are rocks under water.”
“I’d better get in front of the mast, like Roger does,” said Titty.
“All right, if there’s room.”
In the stern of Swallow there was a half-circle cut out of the transom, like a bite out of the edge of a bit of bread and butter. There was just room for an oar to lie loosely in it, so that the boat could be moved along by one oar worked from side to side, and twisted this way and that so that it