Susan read her letter. “Mother says I must give you plenty of lettuces and peas and things, or else you’ll all get scurvy. What is scurvy?”
“Sailors die from it like flies,” said Titty.
“We’ll have peas for supper,” said Susan. “You and Roger had better start shelling them.”
They shelled half a saucepan full of peas while the mate washed up after dinner.
The wind had fallen light again, and John went down to the Swallow , and let out the reef in the sail. Then they pushed off, and sailed away beyond the island to the south, where the lake widened and then narrowed again. Far away in the distance, they could see the smoke of a steamer at the foot of the lake. “There must be a harbour there too, like the harbour at Rio,” said Titty, “and savages on the mainland all round it.”
“It’ll be years and years before we have been everywhere,” said Roger.
“We’ll make a chart of our own,” said John, “and every year we’ll put in the part we have explored until we know it all.”
They took turns in steering the Swallow . Susan, of course, was nearly as good a steersman as Captain John. Able-seaman Titty was learning fast, and before they came home even the Boy Roger was allowed to take the tiller, though John sat by him ready to take charge if anything should go wrong.
It was while they were beating home again that they discovered another island. There were plenty of islands in the lake, but this was one they had