One by one they went down the ladder and aboard the Wild Cat.
“Look out for Polly below there,” called Captain Flint, and Titty was just in time to take the big parrot-cage as it came swinging down on the end of a rope Captain Flint had borrowed from the porter. Roger and the monkey were down already. Roger had started first, pulling Gibber after him, but Gibber was quicker on a ladder than his master, and was pulling at him from below long before Roger reached the deck. John was waiting on the quay to settle with the porter for bringing the things from the station.
“That’s all right,” said Captain Flint. “It’s the ship’s affair, bringing the crew aboard.”
“Dinner’s all ready in the saloon, “ said Peggy, as John and Captain Flint joined the others on the schooner’s deck. “I didn’t cook it,” she added hurriedly, “It came from the inn. But we’ll cook the next one ourselves.”
“Come on,” said Captain Flint. “This way. Leave the kitbags on deck for now. Let’s get at dinner and talk things over. Look out. Mind your heads. Oh, I was forgetting that there’ll be plenty of room for most of you. I get a fresh bump or two every time I go below.”
They crowded down the companion-way and a moment later, but for the laughter that kept coming up through the open skylights, anybody might have thought the schooner was deserted. The Swallows and Amazons and Captain Flint were all below deck. Gibber the monkey had gone below with them. Only the parrot, in his cage, had been left on the roof of the deckhouse to enjoy the sunshine. He was preening his feathers after the journey, and talking to himself, saying sometimes, “Pretty Polly” and sometimes, “Pieces of eight.”
Up there, on the top of the quay, Peter Duck sat on his bollard alone. The porter had trundled his handcart back to the station, but Peter Duck was still sitting on his bollard, smoking his pipe, and thinking. After all, he was thinking, why not? He laughed to himself. He could just hear what his daughters would say to their old father. His mind was almost made up. And he began looking carefully at the masts of the schooner. There were one or two things up there that could do with some little attention.
Hungry as they were, for the first few minutes, they could not settle down at the saloon table. There was so much to admire below decks. Nobody had really thought that Captain Flint would keep the promise about taking them to sea in a real ship. And yet here they were, all together once more, and actually afloat, aboard a little schooner. She had been a Baltic trading schooner with a deckhouse with a couple of bunks in it, and a fo’c’sle with a couple more. But Captain Flint had decked over the hold and given it a long skylight. Where, once upon a time, had been cargoes of firewood and potatoes, he had made a saloon, with four cabins opening into it. There was a cabin for John and Roger, one for Susan and Titty, and one for Nancy and Peggy. The fourth cabin was to be a hospital, if necessary. “But, of course,” said Captain Flint, “if anybody is really ill, ill enough to be a nuisance, we’ll put him overboard.” Captain Flint himself was sleeping in the deckhouse, to be within easy reach of the wheel, and the charts. The fo’c’sle had been changed too. He had turned part of it into a big cage for Gibber, so that the monkey had his own bunk, like everybody else, but had it behind bars, so that he could be locked in there if he was getting too much in the way. On either side of the saloon, and in the fo’c’sle, and everywhere else where there was room for them, there were lockers and store cupboards crammed with every kind of tinned food.
Susan stared with surprise when Captain Flint and Peggy proudly flung open one cupboard after another.
“Pemmican,” said Peggy. “We’ve pemmican for a year at least and jam enough for ten.”
“But isn’t it rather waste?” said Susan.
“It’ll keep,” said Captain Flint. “And what do you think we’ve got under the floor?” he asked.
“Ballast,” said John.
“Water tanks,” said Captain Flint. “You can’t have better ballast than that, and you never know when you won’t be glad to be able to drink it.”
“It isn’t that he means to go very far,” said Nancy, “but he just likes to feel he could.”
“And now, thanks to Sam Bideford not coming we can’t start at all,” said Captain Flint. “But there’s nothing against having dinner. I don’t know about you people, but I’m ready for it.”
Every now and then shouts of laughter floated up through the skylights, but as time went on there were not so many, and when dinner was over and the whole ship’s company came crowding out on deck again, they were talking seriously enough.
“Couldn’t we manage by ourselves?” Nancy was saying.
“You could show us what to do,” said John.
“Look here,” said Captain Flint, “it’s no good talking about it. You and John are a couple of very good sailors, and no one could ask for better cooks than the two mates, and I’ve nothing whatever against the able-seaman and the boy, but the Wild Cat is a very different ship from the Swallow or the Amazon, and if we’re to do anything with her worth doing I must have another man aboard who can take watch and watch about with me . . .”
And at that moment Peter Duck tapped his pipe out on his bollard, got up, walked to the edge of the quay and said, “Cap’n!”
Captain Flint looked up at the wrinkled, brown old sailor.
“Cap’n,” said Peter Duck, “can I have a word with you?”
“Why, yes,” said Captain Flint. “There’s the ladder.”
Peter Duck climbed quickly down to the deck of the Wild Cat. The others stood there watching him, and wondering what it was he was going to say.
“It’s like this, Cap’n,” said the old sailor. “The last few days I’ve been thinking a deal of your little schooner, and the more I looks at her the more I likes her. Now I’d like well to be seeing blue water once again, and I’ve been turning it over, as you might say, and I’d like to ask you plain out if it’s in your mind to be shipping a crew?”
John and Nancy looked at each other with a flash of hope. But it seemed too good to be true. What would Captain Flint say?
“A crew?” said Captain Flint. “Why, we’ve got three captains counting myself, and two mates and an able-seaman and a ship’s boy and a ship’s parrot and a monkey.”
“I seen them,” said the old sailor. “Now me, I’d be glad to sign on as an A.B. It wouldn’t be a bad thing to have an able-seaman to each mate.”
Captain Flint laughed. “As a matter of fact,” he said, “we are one man short. But are you an able-seaman? I know nothing about you, you know. You haven’t yet told me your name.”
“Duck’s my name,” said the old man. “Peter Duck, and Duck’s my nature, and I’ve been afloat as you might say, ever since I were a duckling. I’ve been on inland waters these last years, but I’m a deep sea man properly.