IN THE PITCH darkness under the cliffs something had changed. Titty, Roger, Peggy and Susan, lying there, flat on the poop-deck, knew that the Shining Moon no longer had a blind steersman. Miss Lee could see. That awful feeling of helplessness had left them all. They did not ask why Miss Lee was there. It was enough for them to hear her asking quietly for Captain Flint’s weight on the tiller when she needed it. ‘Pull, please,’ she would say, or ‘Please, push.’ The swerves of the Shining Moon were not so sudden or so soon one after another. Moving faster and faster towards the narrowest part of the passage, she seemed to be picking her way for herself and no longer to be swirling downstream like a bit of wreckage.
Roger turned over on his back. ‘Have we passed the bridge yet?’ he whispered. ‘There it is . . . against the stars . . . look! Right overhead . . . We’ve passed the bridge,’ he shouted aloud.
‘That’s the narrowest bit, isn’t it?’ they heard Captain Flint say and could hear the relief in his voice. ‘Sorry,’ they heard him add. ‘Mustn’t talk to the man at the wheel.’
On and on swept the little junk. Splashes of water leapt and dropped into the waist of her. Cool spray flung from the cliffs fell on the high poop.
Suddenly they heard Miss Lee talking.
‘Better tell John and Nansee to lie down,’ she was saying. ‘We are coming to the whirlpool . . . Will you please shout?’
And Captain Flint roared above the noise of the water that was echoed to and fro between the cliffs overhead, ‘Nancy. John. Lie down and hold fast. Do you hear?’
Two shouts from forrard, ‘Aye, aye, sir,’ sounded like the twittering of mice.
‘I keep on the edge of the whirlpool . . . if I can,’ said Miss Lee. ‘You will pull hard when I say . . .’
‘Aye, aye, sir,’ said Captain Flint.
‘Whirlpool!’ said Roger.
‘It’ll be all right,’ said Susan.
‘I wish Nancy was here,’ said Peggy.
The next moment they were in it. They could see nothing, but could hear the enormous swirling of the water. They heard Miss Lee, ‘Pull . . . Pull now . . . Pull . . .’ There was a crash that shook the ship as the mainsail flung across . . . A gybe . . . Another crash as the mainsail flung back again . . . Tremendous flapping. For the first time the feel of wind in their faces . . . The Shining Moon had been turned right round and was heading upstream . . . There was a thunderous flap as the sail filled again . . . Another gybe . . . Another . . . And then, with the wind aft, the Shining Moon was picking her way downstream below the whirlpool.
‘Thumping good mast,’ they heard Captain Flint mutter to himself.
And then, quite suddenly, they knew that the darkness was not what it had been. The cliffs on either side were further away and not so high. They could see the mainsail no longer as a curtain of solid black against the stars but dark and ribbed. Looking past it and under it they could see the door into the fo’c’sle, square windows, the high foredeck and up in the bows the two look-outs on their feet again now and peering forward. The water was smoother. The Shining Moon was moving more and more slowly down the widening channel, the wind behind her no longer gathered together by the funnel of the gorge. It was growing lighter every minute. A cock crowed somewhere on land. And now that they were clear of the echoing cliffs they could hear other noises, the beating of the alarm bell and the piercing shrill notes of a signaller far away in Dragon Town.
‘Open water now,’ said Miss Lee and gave up the tiller to Captain Flint.
The look-outs on the foredeck turned round.
‘We’ve done it,’ shouted Nancy cheerfully. ‘Good for you, Uncle Jim!’ and then, in an altogether different tone, ‘Miss Lee!’
And with that call of Nancy’s the hearts of Titty, Roger, Susan and Peggy turned suddenly to lead. They were prisoners still. They had never thought of that. They had thought of Miss Lee only as being there in the very nick of time to save their lives and to save the ship. They scrambled unhappily to their feet. John and Nancy climbed up to the poop and joined them.
‘Well,’ said Nancy. ‘I don’t care what you say, I think it’s pretty beastly.’
Captain Flint spoke. ‘If Miss Lee hadn’t taken the tiller in time we’d never have got through at all. We’re lucky to be alive and we’re a lot better off as her prisoners than if we’d been caught by Bo’sun Wu or Mr Chang.’
Nancy turned her back on him. Suddenly she flung round again.
‘Rot,’ she said. ‘No guards now. We’re not her prisoners. She’s ours. Shut her up in the cabin.’
In the dim light of early morning a little smile showed on Miss Lee’s face. ‘Nansee,’ she said. ‘You are a blave but foolish child. I am coming with you. Going back to Camblidge.’
‘Three thousand million cheers,’ exclaimed Nancy, not even minding being called a foolish child. ‘Barbecued billygoats, I thought Captain Flint was right. Cat and mouse, you know.’
Miss Lee looked at Captain Flint, who looked away and attended to his steering.
‘Giminy,’ said Nancy. ‘Miss Lee, I’m jolly glad you’re coming. And you’ll come to Beckfoot for the holidays . . .’
‘Long vacation,’ said Miss Lee. ‘We will have a leading party . . .’
‘Oh, Gosh!’ murmured Roger. ‘Not lessons in the summer holidays! I say, Gibber isn’t up the mast. Gibber . . . Gibber!’
‘In the cabin, your monkey,’ said Miss Lee, who, though thinking of other things and listening for other noises, had heard the fear in Roger’s voice. ‘He came in long ago.’
‘And you let him stay,’ said Roger, remembering how Miss Lee had forbidden the monkey the house. ‘Thank you very much.’
‘I thought it better,’ said Miss Lee.
Roger slipped down from the poop to open the cabin door and set Gibber free. Titty went down to fetch the parrot from the safe corner between poop and bulwarks where she had wedged his cage to be out of the way when first they came aboard.
‘He’s pretty wet,’ she said, ‘but he’s all right.’
‘I say,’ said Roger, ‘it was a good thing she was here when we were coming through that gorge. Even Captain Flint . . .’
‘I know,’ said Titty.
Titty passed the parrot-cage up to John on the poop and climbed up herself. Roger followed her.
‘That is a new signal,’ Miss Lee was saying. ‘You heard the first signals?’
‘We heard them all right,’ said Captain Flint, ‘but we did not know what they meant, except that after that bull-roaring horn we saw that they were closing the boom.’
‘The first signals said that you were in Shining Moon and that Miss Lee wanted you blought back alive or door-nail dead. Dead or alive. Miss Lee wanted the pallot and the monkey alive and the foleign devils alive or door-nail dead.’
‘That must be Chang,’ said Titty. ‘He always rather liked old Polly.’
‘Sounds like the bird-fancier,’ said Captain Flint.
‘The new signal is different,’ said Miss Lee. ‘It tells the junks to take no plisoners and to sink the Shining Moon.’
‘But why?’
‘Whoever sent that signal,’ said Miss Lee, ‘knew that I was aboard and did not want me back.’
‘Who knew you were coming with us?’ asked Captain Flint.
‘Nobody. Not even my amah. I did not know myself. Only, when I thought of my students gone . . .’ Miss Lee was silent for a moment. ‘I did not mean you to know till we were out at sea. But when they closed the boom and you turned into the gorge . . .’
‘We heard the cabin door,’ said Peggy.
‘Who knew we were taking Shining Moon?’
‘My amah . . . And my signaller, perhaps. He helped to take your things aboard.’
‘They were awfully quick in spotting we’d gone,’ said Nancy.
‘Chang is a clever man,’ said Miss Lee.
‘Well, we’ve done them, anyway,’ said Nancy. ‘With their junks bottled up inside the river, looking for us when we’re not there. They’ll never guess we got through the gorge. We’re out now, and they’ll never catch us.’
‘Light for us is light for them,’ said Miss Lee. ‘There was a signal from the junks just now to say you were not in the river.’
‘It’ll take them some time to get out. And longer to get the junks under weigh on this side,’ said Captain Flint, glancing towards the little green pagoda on the southern point of Dragon Island and at the mouth of the Dead Water beyond it.
There was the billowing roar of a horn from close at hand.
‘Ah,’ said Miss Lee. ‘They have seen us from the pagoda. I was wondeling if they were all asleep.’
‘Watchtower?’ asked Nancy.
‘Yes,’ said Miss Lee. ‘Evellybody knows where we are now.’
‘No matter,’ said Captain Flint. ‘We’re out now and we’ve got a good start.’
‘This wind will dlop at dawn,’ said Miss Lee.
Dawn was coming fast, as the Shining Moon sailed out past the green pagoda on the point and into the open sea. Watching Miss Lee, they saw her start as her eye fell on the ropes about the mizen-mast. They saw her glance forward.
‘All the halyards are in an awful mess,’ said Nancy.
‘We did it in the dark, you know,’ said John.
‘Come on,’ said Captain Flint. ‘We want to get the most out of those sails. Here you are, Titty. Easy steering. We’ve got to tidy up.’ And with John, Susan, Nancy and Peggy, he set out to put things right. That night, in hoisting sail aboard a strange ship, they had had to feel for ropes and feel for cleats. Halyards had been twisted and belayed across each other. Yards had not been hoisted as far as they would go. Now, in the half light before the dawn, working like ants, they went from mast to mast, from rope to rope, Miss Lee going with them and showing them how things should be. Then the two dinghies that had been towing astern were hauled alongside, emptied of gear and baled by happy captains who had thought that the little boats must have been smashed to pieces in the gorge. ‘Hurry up,’ called Captain Flint. ‘We’ll have them aboard and she may move a little faster.’ There was no need now to heave to while the Swallow and the Amazon were hoisted in. The wind was dropping already.
Minute by minute the sky was growing lighter.
‘Hullo,’ shouted Roger. ‘Sampans coming down to those junks at anchor.’
Looking back up the Dead Water they could see black dots moving towards the junks.
‘Lucky they didn’t think of that at first,’ said Captain Flint.
‘They never thought of our coming out this way,’ said Titty.
‘We’ll do them yet,’ said Captain Flint. ‘It’ll take them some time to get going. We’ll do them yet, if only the wind would buck up.’
But the wind was slackening more and more as the glow in the sky grew brighter. The Shining Moon was hardly more than clear of the islands, when, in the East, the rising sun split the horizon like an explosion. A path of fire ran from it towards them over the sea. The bulwarks cast a shadow. Sunlight lit all faces, and the crew of the Shining Moon looked at each other as if meeting for the first time. Far away to port, under the black cliff, the sunlight lit the trees of Temple Island like an emerald. The parrot, in his cage on the poop, began to preen his feathers. The monkey perched to sun himself on the anchor burton in the bows, high over shimmering water.
‘Sun lise,’ said Miss Lee. ‘The Dlagon Feast is over.’
Suddenly the great mainsail of the Shining Moon flapped, flapped again and hung limp. Titty’s eyes grew bothered. She moved the tiller this way and that. ‘I can’t steer,’ she said suddenly. ‘She isn’t moving . . . She hasn’t got steerage way . . . She’s stopped.’
‘Never mind, Titty,’ said Captain Flint. ‘Nothing to be done. I’ll lash the tiller. Fine weather. Land breeze by night, sea breeze by day. Calm at sunset and sunrise. We’ll be getting wind again as soon as the sun’s a bit higher.’
‘There’s a sail going up on one of the junks in Dead Water,’ said Roger.
‘We’ll get the wind before they do,’ said Captain Flint.
‘Telescope, Titty,’ said Roger. ‘Quick . . . One of the sampans hasn’t stopped by the junks. It’s coming after us.’
‘We can deal with sampans all right,’ said Captain Flint, ‘and all the better if they come one at a time. It’s the junks in the other river I’m worried about. Miss Lee, ma’am, how long does it take them to open that boom once they’ve closed it?’
Miss Lee, who had been standing on the poop, looking at the bright green of the trees on the little island that held her father’s grave, turned. ‘Longer to open. Velly easy to close. Because of the cullent,’ she said.
‘Well, they’ve done it,’ said John.
One after another, four war junks, with their big brown sails, came into sight beyond the cliff, slipping slowly out along the shores of Tiger Island.
‘How are they moving with no wind?’ exclaimed Titty.
‘Current out of the river,’ said Captain Flint. ‘When the wind does come, we shan’t have much of a start.’
‘We haven’t escaped after all,’ said Susan.
It was as if the flying hare had been frozen stiff, in full view of the pursuing hounds.
‘When you can do nothing,’ said Miss Lee, ‘it is better to be calm. Loger, you will please go to the cabin and bling me up my Holace. You will find it with the other books . . . And I have there a chart for Captain Flint.’
Roger came up from below with chart and Horace. Miss Lee took the Horace, but, for a moment or two watched John and Captain Flint, as they unrolled the chart and spread it on the deck. It was an old chart, of 1879. ‘My father’s,’ said Miss Lee. Captain Flint took a scrap of paper from his pocket, a bit of a page from the Nautical Almanac on which was a pencilled latitude. A moment later he marked a cross on the chart.
‘Let me see,’ said Miss Lee . . . ‘Yes . . . Velly nearly light. How did you know?’
‘I took an observation that day we were with you on Temple Island,’ confessed Captain Flint.
Miss Lee’s eyes narrowed. Then she took his pencil and made a mark herself. ‘We are here,’ she said.
‘Thank you, ma’am,’ said Captain Flint humbly, and looked in the left-hand bottom corner of the chart for the entrance to Singapore.
‘It’s not much good now, if they’re going to get us,’ said John.
‘She’s a nippy little boat,’ said Captain Flint.
‘All our things are in the cabin,’ said Roger. ‘But no food.’
Miss Lee looked up from her Horace with a smile. ‘Plenty of stores fo’ward,’ she said. ‘And plenty of water.’
‘Susan,’ said Captain Flint. ‘Could you do something about it? If we’re going to be sunk, we may as well not sink hungry.’
‘Come on, Peggy,’ said Susan, and the two mates went forward and into a door under the foredeck.
‘Those junks are towing,’ said John a little later. ‘They’ve each got sampans towing ahead.’
‘Look here,’ said Nancy, ‘I can’t stand this. Simply sitting here and waiting for them. Let’s tow too.’
‘No good,’ said Captain Flint. ‘And we’ll need all hands presently if that chap in the sampan thinks he’s going to board us.’
Miss Lee glanced at the small boat with a round matting roof over a little cabin that was coming fast towards the Shining Moon, swaying to one side and to the other as a man standing in the stern worked his long sweep.
‘Dlagon town sampan,’ she said. ‘Fisherman pelhaps . . . Thinking I shall pay him much money for catching you dead or alive . . .’
She closed her book suddenly and stood up listening. A pink spot showed on the gold of her cheeks. She tapped with one finger on the rail listening again to a shrill whistling far away.
‘It really is just like Morse,’ said Roger.
‘I wish we knew what it meant,’ said Titty.
‘So do I,’ said Miss Lee. ‘That was an order . . . my order . . . for a Taicoon Council in the yamen . . . my yamen . . .’
‘Never mind that,’ said Captain Flint. ‘If you’re going back with us to Cambridge, to be a don and a doctor and what not, you can’t be worrying all the time about what tunes are whistled at the other side of the world. Just forget about it. Somebody’ll be whistling when we’re all dead, and the tune won’t matter to us a twopenny . . . not twopence if you know what I mean . . . What we’ve got to do is to whistle for a wind and to hope the Shining Moon can show a clean pair of heels to all those junks. Hi! Nancy, John. Get those capstan bars off the fo’c’sle head. All hands on deck. This fellow’ll be aboard us in a minute.’ The sampan was hardly thirty yards away.
Peggy came running out of the fore-cabin. Susan followed with a steaming saucepan. Nancy and John were tossing capstan bars down into the waist. Susan wedged her saucepan in a coil of rope and took a bar. Peggy doubtfully picked up another. John and Nancy jumped down into the waist as the sampan came ranging up alongside.
‘A capstan bar for everybody,’ cried Captain Flint, picking a bar and whirling it round like an Indian club, suppling his wrist. ‘Bring it down hard on any paw that touches our rail. Hold off there. What do you want?’
‘It is my signaller,’ said Miss Lee quietly from the poop above their heads. ‘Let him come alongside.’
They knew the signaller now and saw that he had his signalling flute slung on his back. The next moment his hands were on the rail. No capstan bar came down upon his knuckles. John gave him a rope and he made fast. Nancy hung a couple of bamboo fenders over the side. From under the matting shelter in the middle of the sampan came the old amah in her blue coat and trousers. Sitting just inside the shelter, combing his beard, they saw the aged counsellor.
‘Let them come aboard,’ said Miss Lee.
With the help of Captain Flint and the signaller, the amah was hoisted over the rail, followed by the counsellor. The old woman clambered up to the poop, knelt on the deck and threw her arms round Miss Lee’s feet, weeping and talking as if she would never stop. The old man went up to the poop, bowed to Miss Lee, sat himself down on a coil of rope and waited in silence, running his long nails slowly through the sparse hairs of his beard.
Miss Lee lifted her hand and the amah stopped talking. Miss Lee signed to the old man and he began. The crew of the Shining Moon waited and listened, while the signaller lay panting in the bottom of his sampan, and the big junks were coming slowly nearer.
At last the Chinese talk came to an end, and Miss Lee spoke in English. ‘They lan away,’ she said, and went on to tell what little she now knew of what had happened. Chang had asked for the little dragon the moment the big ones had come back to the yamen without it. He had asked for Miss Lee, and the amah had told him he could not see her. He had asked again, after the counsellor had given orders for sounding the alarm, and the amah, going into Miss Lee’s room had found her gone. She had seen gaps in the bookshelves and had guessed at once that Miss Lee had gone with her prisoners. She had told the counsellor. At that moment they had heard the great horn giving the signal for the closing of the boom, and knew that the Shining Moon was trapped in the river. It had been the old counsellor who had remembered the gorge and how Miss Lee had sailed through it long before. They had taken the signaller with them, slipped out through the garden, and taken a sampan from below the place where the new junk was being built, and had got away long before anyone in the town had thought of that way out for the Shining Moon.
‘And now?’ said Nancy. ‘They’ll have to come too . . . if we don’t get grabbed.’
‘They want me to go back,’ said Miss Lee, and, for the first time looked doubtful.
‘They heard the signal to sink the Shining Moon,’ said Miss Lee. ‘The signaller told them what it meant. The counsellor says that Chang must have found I was gone. He wants to sink me with the Shining Moon. He will take the Thlee Islands for himself.’
‘But they’ll never let him,’ said Titty.
‘And if they fight,’ said Miss Lee.
‘Those junks are getting pretty near,’ said Roger. ‘Hullo. What’s that?’
‘Wind coming,’ said John.
‘Not that,’ said Roger. ‘Listen! There it goes again. That’s the second.’
‘Boom.’ The sound of a gong came from far away. ‘Boom . . . Boom . . .’
‘The Taicoon Council,’ said Miss Lee. ‘Chang is taking my place . . . No Miss Lee . . . No counsellor . . . Chang . . . a ten gong Taicoon.’
‘Your men won’t like that, will they?’ said Nancy. ‘It was always twenty-two for you . . .’
‘Boom . . . Boom . . . Boom . . .’ The gong strokes sounded far away in Dragon Town where until that morning Miss Lee had ruled like her father before her.
‘Boom . . . Boom . . . Boom . . .’
‘Ten gong Taicoon,’ said Miss Lee scornfully.
And then there was another ‘Boom’ and then another, and another.
‘Thirteen,’ said Roger. ‘Fourteen . . . fifteen . . . sixteen . . .’
The old amah burst into tears again. Miss Lee listened as if she could not believe her own ears. The old counsellor watched her and combed his beard. Miss Lee stared far away inland, up the Dead Water, past the anchorage, over the low swamps to the place where the flagstaff showed above the trees. There, when the salute was ended, Miss Lee’s black flag with its golden dragon would climb into the sky.
Roger was still counting the booming of the gong. ‘Nineteen . . . twenty . . . twenty-one . . . twenty-two . . .’
Miss Lee gasped. As the gong sounded for the last time, Titty, watching through the telescope, saw a flag climbing up above the trees. It was not black and gold. There was green on it and orange. It was the tiger flag of the Taicoon Chang.
‘He has told them I am dead,’ said Miss Lee quietly.
There was a sudden distant sputter of rifle-shots. The old counsellor did not change the expression of his face, but his eyes looked for Miss Lee’s.
‘Fighting in Dlagon town,’ she murmured. She gripped her Horace as if the book were a pistol-holster and she were about to pull a pistol from it.
The old counsellor began talking, very quietly, looking far away, up the Dead Water, where, far away, they could see the tower over the gateway of the yamen, and, through the telescope, the tiger flag above the trees.
Miss Lee spoke, as quietly as the counsellor. ‘He thinks that is Wu and Chang fighting who shall be chief . . . or Dlagon men fighting both of them . . . He says that means the end of Thlee Islands . . . fighting with each other . . . evellything my father stopped . . . He says my father turns in his glave. He says that Chang and Wu cannot hold the islands together . . . only I, Miss Lee, my father’s daughter . . .’
The wind had reached the junks astern before it swelled the sails of the Shining Moon. They were coming up fast before the little junk had begun to leave a wake astern of her.
‘Bang!’
A puff of smoke covered the nearest junk and something crashed into the water near enough to send a shower of spray over the poop of the Shining Moon.
‘They’ll get us next time,’ said John. ‘We’ll have to take to the boats again.’
Miss Lee, moving like quicksilver, had left the poop. She came out of the cabin with a black bundle.
‘Let them fire on that,’ she said.
Nancy was at the flag halyards in a moment, and just as a second cannon ball lobbed overhead, Miss Lee’s dragon flag of black and gold blew out from the Shining Moon’s masthead.
‘Gosh, look at their steering!’ said Roger.
Two of the big junks, one gybing, the other turning into the wind, very nearly rammed each other. The steersmen of the other two had left their tillers. On all four people seemed to be running in all directions. Suddenly, on one of the junks, a man began beating a bell, then on another. Then on all four junks the bells were going. It was impossible to count the bell-strokes because they had not all begun at the same moment, but Nancy guessed what it was.
‘Twenty-two gong Taicoon,’ she said, turning to Miss Lee. ‘That’s for you.’ But Miss Lee had gone again. She came out of the cabin with her pistol-belt. She had a little difficulty with the buckle as she fastened on a bandolier of cartridges.
‘I am going back,’ she said. ‘He has told them I am dead. We will see . . .’
‘Oh, look here,’ said Captain Flint. ‘Are you going to be all right?’
‘Quite all light,’ said Miss Lee. ‘And Chang all long. Chang, a ten gong Taicoon, sitting in my father’s chair.’
‘But what about Cambridge?’ said Titty.
‘No more Camblidge,’ said Miss Lee.
‘Your books?’ said Captain Flint.
‘I shall not want them again,’ said Miss Lee. ‘You will go on with your Latin on the voyage home.’
The old amah was laughing and crying at the same time. The counsellor had come slowly down from the poop. Running his fingers through his beard, he was saying something that sounded like a charm.
‘What’s he saying?’ asked Roger.
Miss Lee hesitated a moment. ‘Vir pietate glavis,’ she said. ‘He quotes Confucius. He speaks of duty to a father. He is light. My place is here.’
The amah and the counsellor clambered down into the sampan.
‘Goodbye, San Flancisco,’ said Miss Lee with a smile. ‘Goodbye, Loger. Goodbye, Tittee. Goodbye, Su-san. Goodbye, Peggee. Goodbye, Captain John. Goodbye, Nansee.’ They all said ‘Goodbye’ and Miss Lee went down into the sampan.
‘Will you kill Chang?’ asked Roger.
‘No,’ said Miss Lee. ‘Chang is a useful man. Good ten gong Taicoon. But twenty-two gong Taicoon? No.’
‘Put him in a cage like Captain Flint,’ said Nancy.
‘But let him have his canaries,’ said Titty.
‘All light,’ said Miss Lee. ‘Put him in a cage with cana’ies. Let him out by and by. Goodbye, my velly good students.’
The sampan was moving off towards the biggest of the junks. The Shining Moon’s mainsail flapped overhead as she swung slowly round into the wind.
‘Gosh!’ said Captain Flint, leaping for the poop. ‘Who’s at the tiller? We’re as bad as those chaps aboard the junks. Haul the foresail aback, John, and you Nancy, come and lend a hand in getting the main in. We’ll heave to and see what comes.’
‘What are we going to do now?’ asked Roger.
‘There’s a good wind,’ said Susan.
‘Stick where we are,’ said Captain Flint. ‘We can’t do much, but I don’t quite like going on till we see she’s all right. That Chang might put up a scrap, though I don’t think he will. His own folk won’t let him. You saw what his junks did when she showed her flag . . . Tell you what. We’ll just hang about till she gets home. We’ll keep within sight of that flagstaff . . .’
Up on the poop of the Shining Moon, hove to, rising and falling in the gentle swell, they watched Miss Lee, with the counsellor, the amah and the signaller, go aboard the largest of the junks. They saw the sails trimmed, heard orders shouted, and watched the junks turn all together and sail off towards the entrance to the Dead Water where more junks, now the wind had come, were beating out to the attack.
‘Why that way?’ said John.
‘No current once they get inside. Quickest way to put Miss Lee ashore. And she wants to stop the other fellows coming out.’
‘Poor Miss Lee,’ said Titty.
‘Don’t know about that,’ said Captain Flint. ‘She’s got a rum job, but she knows how to do it, and to have a job and know how to do it is one of the best things in this life. And if only she stops hankering after Cambridge . . .’
‘I say,’ said Roger. ‘Did you see Gibber? I knew he’d do it if he had a chance. Jolly lucky the counsellor didn’t see him. Look at him now.’ And they all laughed as they saw the monkey, sitting on a coil of rope, solemnly combing with his long fingers the beard he had not got.
They watched the junks sail in and drive slowly up between the swamps. They saw the junks that were coming out turn and go in with them. They saw the sails nearer and nearer to the town. Suddenly there was a sound of guns.
‘Fighting?’ said Nancy. ‘Gosh, I hope she wins.’
‘Doesn’t sound like fighting,’ said Captain Flint. ‘Too regular.’
‘It’s twenty-two guns they’re firing,’ said Roger.
‘Clever girl,’ said Captain Flint. ‘Chang won’t have a man to help him by the time she steps ashore. That’s it, Titty. You keep an eye on that flagstaff.’
Half an hour later Titty, holding the telescope in one hand, waved the other. The tiger flag was tumbling down into the trees. The black and gold dragon climbed in its place. And then, ‘Boom . . . Boom . . . Boom . . .’ They heard the faraway gong sounding in the yamen.
‘She’s done it,’ said Captain Flint. ‘Miss Lee, twenty-two gong Taicoon, is back in her own place. I wouldn’t much like to be Chang at this minute. That cage is none too comfortable. It’s that miserable perch instead of a seat . . . Well, well. Bring the foresail across, Captain Nancy. Ease out the main, Captain John, and let draw. We’ll be getting on our way . . .’
THE END
Well, not quite the end. With the ancient chart that had belonged to Miss Lee’s father, two pocket compasses, the sextant and the nautical almanac, they found their way to Singapore. Here they sent off a telegram, carefully worded so as not to stir up their mothers, just to say they were all well and had changed their ship for a new one. ‘We’ll tell them the rest when we see them,’ said Nancy with a glint in her eye. They fitted out with charts, navigation lights and a proper compass in a binnacle, and went on with their voyage. And you may, yourselves, have read in the newspapers how the people of St Mawes, in Cornwall, woke one morning to find a little Chinese junk, with a monkey at the masthead, anchored off their harbour mouth.
