Peter Duck: A Treasure Hunt In the Caribbees by Arthur Ransome

Author:Arthur Ransome
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: David R. Godine, Publisher
Published: 2014-02-28T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER XIX

ISLAND MORNING

THERE ARE sometimes advantages in being small. If Titty had been bigger than Susan she would have been sleeping in the upper berth in their cabin, in which case it would have been difficult for her to get up without waking the mate on that first morning in the anchorage at Crab Island. As she had the lower berth, it was easy. She slipped into her bathing things, crept out of the cabin without hitting anything on the way, crossed the saloon on tiptoe, went quietly forward through the alleyway, and, before going on deck, stopped and listened for a moment below the open forehatch. She wanted to hear things before she saw them, so as to enjoy them twice over. She had been looking forward to a desert island ever since she could remember, and she wanted to make the most of it. She stopped at the foot of the ladder and hastened. She could hear wind in trees, and grasshoppers, and birds. And then, besides these land noises, there was a noise of land and sea together, the endless noise that you hear when you put one of those big twisted sea-shells to your ear, a noise of waves rolling up and breaking on the shore. She heard, too, a stir in the parrot’s cage, but dared not say “Hush!” for fear Polly should choose not to understand her and should answer with a yell. Gibber, she could see, was still curled up asleep in his bunk.

Titty took hold of the sides of the ladder, put her foot on its lowest rung, shut her eyes, and, keeping them shut, climbed up on deck. She wanted to come up on deck and then open her eyes suddenly upon the island scene. But before she was half through the hatch she heard the tapping of a pipe on the bulwarks and knew that, after all, someone had got up before her. She opened her eyes and saw Peter Duck away aft, by the deckhouse, leaning over the bulwarks as if he were looking down into the water. He had not heard her. So, just for a moment, she did not call out to him but pretended to herself that she had sailed alone across the ocean and brought to in this tropical bay.

It was really there, with colours even brighter than she had seen them in her mind, the burning sky, the bright green feathery plumes of the palm trees, the black rocks of the hill towering above them. The sun was climbing up behind those rocks. They were already in blazing sunlight while the green jungle beneath them was still dark. There was sunlight now on the deck of the Wild Cat, but there was shadow under the hill. And out of that dark forest parrots were flying up and sparkling suddenly as their bright wings left the shadow and caught the sunshine high above the trees. Yes, the island was really there, and the smell of

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