hour before, had seen with their own eyes the black flag with the skull and crossbones upon it run to the masthead by a strange vessel which, so they thought, had actually been fired at by the retired pirate with the green parrot from the houseboat in Houseboat Bay.
For a moment or two no one said anything.
Then Susan said: “It’s no use trying to tell mother about the pirates, not until it’s all over, anyhow. But we must put it in the log and tell her afterwards.”
“We’ll tell her when she isn’t a native any more,” said Titty. “It’s not the sort of thing you tell to natives.”
The Swallow ran on. There were now more houses on the eastern shore of the lake. The further they went, the more houses there were. There were islands. One big one had houses on it. A long sandy spit ran out with boathouses on its further side. The houses, no longer scattered among trees, clustered on the side of the hill above the little town of Rio, inhabited entirely by natives who had no idea that this was its name. The