CHAPTER 7 MORE ISLAND LIFE

Next morning the whole of wallow's ship's company bathed before breakfast. The landing-place, with its little beach, on the eastern side of the island was a good place for bathing. There was sand there, and though there were stones, they were not so sharp as elsewhere. Also the water did not go deep there very suddenly, and after Susan had walked out a good long way, she said that Roger might bathe too.

Roger, who had been waiting on the beach, pranced splashing into the water.

“You're to swim as well as splash,” said Mate Susan.

“Aye, aye, sir,” said Roger. He crouched in the water with only his head out. That, at least, felt very like swimming.

John and Susan swam races, first one way, and then the other.

Titty, privately, was being a cormorant.

This was not the sort of thing that she could very well talk of to John or Susan until she was sure that it was a success. So she said nothing about it. But she had seen that there were lots of minnows in the shallow water close to the shore. Perhaps there would be bigger ones further out, like the fish the cormorants had been catching yesterday. Titty had watched them carefully. The way they did it was to swim quietly and then suddenly to dive under water, humping their backs, keeping their wings close together, and going under head first. She tried, but she found that unless she used her arms, she did not get under water at all. Even when she used her arms she could not get right under without a long, splashing struggle on the surface.

“Why do you wave your legs in the air, Titty?” Roger asked after one of these dives. It was too true. Titty herself knew that long after she had put her head under and was swimming downwards as hard as she could her legs were kicking out of the water altogether.

She went further out, to be nearer the fish, and further from Roger. At last she found the trick of turning her hands so that her arm strokes pulled her down. She found that she could open her eyes easily enough, but that it was like trying to see in a bright green fog. There were no fish to be seen in it. With a great effort she got right down to the bottom. Still there were no fish. She came up puffing, then dived again and again. It was no good. She picked a stone off the bottom to make sure that she had really been there, and came to the top again in a hurry, spluttering and out of breath. There was no doubt about it. The fish could see her coming, and could swim faster than she could. There was nothing for it but fishing rods. She swam in towards the beach holding her stone.

“What have you got?” said Roger.

“A stone,” said Titty. “I got it off the bottom.”

“What sort of a stone?”

“Probably a pearl. Let's be pearl-divers.”

Cormorants were forgotten, and the able-seaman and the boy were pearl-divers in a moment.

“Don't let Roger go far out,” called the mate. “I'm off to look after the fire.”

John, too, had left the water, and presently rowed past the pearl-divers on his way to fetch the milk.

“What are you doing?” he shouted to them.

“Diving for pearls.”

“Don't stay in too long. No breakfast for anybody who isn't dry and dressed by the time I'm back with the milk.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” said Titty.

Roger tried to say “Aye, aye, sir,” with his mouth under water. He failed.

He could not open his eyes under water either with any ease, and, splashing about in two or three feet of water, he picked up his pearls by feeling for them. Able-seaman Titty swam about on the bottom with her eyes open, looking for the whitest stones. They were all rather big for pearls, but no one really minds a pearl being big, and soon the pearl-divers had a pile of wet and shining jewels by the water-side. The worst of it was that as soon as the stones were dry - and they dried quickly in the sun - they stopped shining, and could not be counted as pearls any more.

Pearl-diving came to an end as soon as the divers saw Captain John coming laden down the field from Dixon's Farm. There was a sudden splashing rush for the shore, and towels, and long before Captain John came rowing in in Swallow, his crew,dry and dressed, were waiting for him on the beach. There was plenty for them to carry, two loaves of bread, a couple of big lettuces, a basket of eggs as well as the milk-can full of milk, and a small tobacco tin.

“What is there in that?” said Roger.

“Worms,” said Captain John.

“Are we going fishing?” asked Roger.

“Yes,” said Captain John. “Mr. Dixon gave me the worms. He says there are lots of perch between here and his landing-place. He says we'll do better with minnows than with worms, and he says we'll find the perch anywhere where there are weeds in the water.”

Breakfast was soon over, and while Mate Susan was tidying up, the others took the saucepan for a bait-can, and half filled it with water. Then they fished for minnows in the shallows, and caught a good lot of them.Then they unstepped Swallow's mast,and left it ashore with the boom and gaff and sail, so that there would be more room in the boat. Susan joined them, and got her rod ready too. Then they rowed across from the island into the bay below Dixon's Farm. The Boy Roger was in the bows, keeping a look-out for weeds.

“Weeds,” he shouted, soon after they came into the bay. “Lots of them.”On either side of Swallow they could see the long green streamers of weeds under water.

“We ought to be just off the edge of them, and where it's not too deep. Are you ready to anchor?”

Mate Susan told the boy: “Have the anchor over the bows, and drop it the moment I say, ‘Let go!'”

John was rowing a stroke at a time, and then looking down into the water, then rowing another stroke. “Can you see the bottom, anybody?”

“I can, now,” said Roger.

“All right. So can I. There's grass on it. That means sand. And it's close to the weeds. We couldn't have a better place.”

“Let go!” sang out the mate.

Roger let go. Swallow swung slowly round.A moment later four red-topped floats were in the water, two on each side of the boat.

“How deep are you fishing, Susan?” said Titty.

“Very nearly as deep as my rod will let me,” said Susan.

“Mine's only about three feet down. I can see the minnow easily.”

“That's no good,” said John. “It ought to be about a foot from the bottom. Bring it in, and I'll push your float up.”

Susan's float bobbed first. She struck at once, and brought up her hook with nothing on it.

“He's gone off with my minnow,” she said.

“You struck too soon,” said John.

“I wish the boat didn't swing about so,” said Titty. “Look out, Roger, your float's nearly touching mine. Now you're lifting my float as well as yours. They're both tangled.”

John disentangled them, but when he had done it, he found the boat had swung the other way, and his own tackle was tangled in the same way with Susan's.

“This is no good,” he said. “We must have an anchor at each end so that the boat won't swing. All rods in! Haul up the anchor, Roger. We'll get a big stone on the shore. There's plenty of anchor rope to spare.”

So they rowed ashore, and fastened a big stone to the other end of the anchor rope. Then they rowed back to another place not far away. Roger let go the anchor, and Susan lowered the stone over the stern of the boat.This time Swallow rested broadside on to the wind, and did not swing at all. But they found it was no good fishing on the windward side, because the wind, even though there was so little of it, brought the floats in under the boat. So they all four fished on the same side. As the boat was not swinging, this did not matter, and everybody tried to watch all four floats at once.

“Whose float will go first?” said Roger.

“Mine,” said Titty. “It's bobbing already.”

“Look out, John,” said Susan. “Your float isn't there.”

John looked round. His float was gone. He pulled. The top of his rod bent and jerked, and up came a fat little perch with bright red fins and dark green bars on his sides.

“That's one, anyhow,” said John, as he put on another minnow.

After that the perch came fast, one after another. Sometimes three floats bobbed together. There was soon a pile of perch in the bottom of the boat.

Roger was counting them, “Twelve, thirteen, fourteen...”

“Where's your float, Roger?” said the mate.

“And look at your rod,” said Titty.

Roger jumped up and caught hold of his jerking rod, which he had put down while he was counting the catch. He felt a fish at the end of his line. Just as he was bringing it to the top there was a great swirl in the water, and his rod was suddenly pulled down again. Roger hung on as hard as he could, and his rod was bent almost into a circle.

“It's a shark! It's a shark!” he shouted.

Something huge was moving about in the water, deep down, pulling the rod this way and that.

“Let him have line off the reel,” said John, but Roger held on.

Suddenly a mottled green fish, a yard long, with a dark back and white underneath, came to the top. It lifted an enormous head right out of the water, and opened a great white mouth, and shook itself. A little perch flew high into the air. Roger's rod straightened. For a moment the great fish lay close to the top of the water,looking wickedly at the crew of the Swallow as they looked at it. Then, with a twist of its tail that made a great twirling splash in the water, it was gone. Roger brought in the little perch. It was dead, and its sides were marked with deep gashes from the great teeth of the pike.

“I say,” said Roger, “do you think it's really safe to bathe in this place?”

After that nobody caught any more perch. The pike had frightened them away. And when the perch were not biting, nobody but John wanted to go on fishing. At last Susan said that they had enough perch anyway, and if they were going to eat them they would all have to be cleaned. So they hauled up the stone and the anchor, and rowed back to the island.

The cleaning was a dreadful business. The mate did it, slitting up the perch with a sharp knife, and taking out their insides. The insides were burnt in the fire, and Roger took the perch down one by one to the landing-place to wash them in the lake. The mate tried to scrape the scales off the first of them, but soon gave it up. She fried them in butter in their scales, first putting a lot of salt in them. When they were cooked the skin with the scales came off quite easily, and there was the perch ready to be eaten. The mate said it was rather waste of good butter, but the captain and the crew said it was worth it.

In the afternoon they careened Swallow. They took the ballast out of her, and pulled her high on the beach, and laid her over first on one side and then on the other while they scrubbed her bottom, though she did not need it. But you never know. She might have been covered with barnacles, or draped with long green weed.Anyhow,ships ought to be careened.So Swallow was. Then they launched her, and put the ballast in her again, and stepped the mast and took her round to the harbour.

After that the mate called for more firewood, and the whole ship's company set to work and brought all the really good driftwood from the island shores, and piled it in the camp, close by the other pile that had been left there. After that they were tired, and went up to the look-out place to watch the shipping on the lake, and to agree about the names for all the places on the island. There was Look-Out Point, of course, under the tall tree.Then there were the Landing-Place, the Harbour, the Western Shore, and the Camp. Then there were the places that could be seen from the island. There was Darien, Houseboat Bay, Dixon's Bay (this name was given up, and it was called Shark Bay instead, after Roger's great fish), and Cormorant Island. Far away to the south there was the Antarctic. Far away to the north beyond Rio was the Arctic. As for their own island, they could not agree on a name for it. They thought of Swallow Island, Walker Island, Big Tree Island, but were bothered by the thought of the fireplace which they had found there, and were using, and the neat pile of wood which, somehow, they did not like to use. Perhaps the island had a splendid name already. That did not matter for places like Darien or Rio, but for the island itself, they felt that it did.

Meanwhile they took turns with the telescope to watch the shipping on the lake. There were the big steamers going up and down. A steamer would pass, and they would watch the spreading waves of her wash and listen for them to break along the shores. Then there were the motor launches. Then there were people fishing in rowing boats. There were also sailing yachts, but not many. But all of these vessels, steamers, launches, yachts, and even rowing boats,were much bigger than Swallow, and were put down as native craft. It was not until the third day of their life on the island that they saw another vessel of their own size, tacking out from beyond Darien, and disappearing into Houseboat Bay.