painted some time ago, and had faded, and neither John nor Titty had noticed it. They had been thinking of rocks more than of trees.
“I didn’t put it there,” said John. “It must have been there already.”
“Natives again,” said Titty sadly. “That means that somebody else knows even about the harbour.”
“I expect it’s the same people who made the fireplace,” said Susan.
At this moment Mate Susan remembered that she was also cook.
“The kettle will be boiling,” she cried. “It’ll be putting the fire out. And I had the eggs just ready when you whistled.”
She ran off back to the camp.
The others pushed off Swallow till she floated. Captain John fastened one end of a length of spare rope to a cleat in the stern, and Able-seaman Titty climbed out on the rock with the other end of it. Roger held the painter. Then John came ashore. Titty pulled in on the stern rope and made it fast round a little rowan bush that was growing on the rock. Roger and John made the painter fast round the stump with the white cross on it, and the Swallow lay in the middle of the little harbour in two or three feet of water, moored fore and aft, and sheltered on every side.
Captain John looked at his ship with pride.
“I don’t believe there is a better harbour in the world,” he said.
“If only somebody else didn’t know about it,” said Titty.
Then they hurried back to the camp.
The camp now began to look really like a camp. There were the two tents slung between the two pairs of trees. The mate and the able-seaman were