that Roger and Nancy had shot off the back seat and Titty had nearly bumped her nose on the windscreen. “The roads are crowded with dangerous drivers … It’s hardly safe to be on them at all. All very well, Nancy. You can laugh as much as you like. People are most careless. Now then, I ought to have sounded my horn, if only I hadn’t been listening to you …”
“Did you see who it was?” said Nancy. “It was Colonel Jolys. He took off his hat … No, don’t try to turn round. He knows you didn’t see him, and I gave him a grin anyway.”
“What’s he got a trumpet for?” asked Roger.
“It’s a hunting-horn,” said Titty.
“It isn’t,” said Nancy. “It’s one of the old coach horns. He’s been having a review of his fire-fighters. Didn’t you see those brooms on long handles sticking up out of the back of his car?”
“It’s the drought,” Mrs Blackett explained. “We’ve had no rain for weeks, and if the fells should catch fire it would be a dreadful thing for everybody, and old Colonel Jolys has been organising so that the moment there’s a fire all the young men know where to go to be rushed off in motor-cars to help to beat it out.”
“They sound coach horns,” said Nancy, “and then see how soon they can start. Everybody who’s got a motor-car is in it, and all the men … Oh do look out, mother.”
Mrs Blackett, who had somehow got to the wrong side of the road, swerved back and straightened again. They were coming down the last steep drop into the little village that the Walkers and Blacketts called Rio. They turned the corner at the bottom. There was the sparkling water of the bay, with its landing-stages and its anchored yachts. Roger and Titty had seen it last in winter, frozen and covered with skaters. Mrs Blackett, with a screech of the brakes, pulled up. Nancy was out as the car stopped.
“Come on, you two,” she said, and Titty and Roger got out and followed her, wondering, along a wooden boat pier that seemed strangely high out of the water.
“What’s happened to the lake?” said Roger. “It used to be nearly up to the road.”
“No rain,” said Nancy, looking eagerly out beyond the islands. “Half a minute. Yes, it’s all right. Sophocles has got home. You stick here and wait for them …”
Already she was running back along the pier.
“I say,” cried Roger, staring after her. “Mrs Blackett’s turned round. Nancy’s getting in. They’re off. Hi! I say, Titty! They’ve taken all our luggage!”
But Titty hardly heard him. Far away over the water, glittering in the evening sun, she had seen the white speck that had sent Nancy hurrying to the car. Two years had slipped back in a moment, and once again she was seeing for the first time the little white sail of the Amazon pirates.
Roger shook her by the arm.
“Titty,” he said, “They’ve gone …”
Titty pointed to the little boat.
“It’s all right,” she said. “John and Susan and Peggy must be coming to fetch us across.”
CHAPTER II
THE PLAN
TITTY AND ROGER stood on the end of the boat pier, looking up the lake and across to the big hills and the proud peak of Kanchenjunga that they had climbed the year before. Over there was the Beckfoot promontory, hiding the Blacketts’ house, and between the promontory and the islands was the little white sail of the Amazon. And then, as they watched, they began to doubt. Who was sailing her? The little white sail flapped in the wind. If that had happened once they would have thought nothing of it. But it happened again and yet again, and not only when the little boat was going about at the end of a tack.
“Can’t be John,” said Roger. “Or even Susan. They’d never let her shake like that. And Peggy’s just as good as John.”
The wind was blowing up the lake and the little boat was beating down against it. A big lake steamer hid her for a moment. Then she was gone behind an island. She turned again and was slipping across towards the mouth of the bay. And every now and then a long-drawn-out quivering of her sail shocked the two experts watching from the pier.
“There’s a red cap,” said Titty. “That must be Peggy. But it can’t be her steering. I say, Roger, it’s the D’s. Peg’s on the middle thwart. Dorothea’s hanging on to the main-sheet. Dick’s at the tiller. I saw the sunshine on his spectacles. Three cheers. Mrs Blackett must be having them too.”
“But they didn’t know anything about sailing.”
“They were learning on the Broads. Don’t you remember? Dot sent a postcard.”
“Let’s wave,” said Titty. “They can see us now.”
Peggy Blackett waved back to them. Dick and Dorothea were far too busy.
“They’re not doing half badly,” said Roger. “For beginners.”
The little boat came quickly nearer.
They could see Dorothea holding the main-sheet in both hands, watching Peggy for orders. They could see Dick’s earnest face. They saw Peggy give him a sign. The little boat swung round, headed into the wind, and stopped at their feet. Roger knelt on the pier and grabbed her.
“Jolly well done,” he said. “Hullo. You’ve got another pigeon.”
“Hop aboard,” said Peggy. “And hang on to the pier. We’ve got to send her off with a message. What’s the time?”
“My watch is bust,” said Roger. “It always is.”
“Fourteen minutes past seven,” said Dick.
Peggy was scribbling on a bit of paper. She rolled it up tight, opened another wicker basket like the one that had been sent to meet them, and brought out a pigeon. “Come on,” she said. “You slip the despatch under the ring … the rubber one.”
The pigeon had a metal ring on one leg and a rubber one on the other. Titty, with trembling fingers, trembling for fear of doing it wrong and making the pigeon uncomfortable, slipped in the tiny roll of paper.
“Off you go,” said Peggy, and the pigeon was circling above their heads, above the yachts in the bay, and was suddenly flying straight as an arrow for the distant promontory.
“Cast off,” cried Peggy, and in another moment they had left the pier and, with a fair wind to help them, were sailing up the lake after the pigeon.
“We didn’t start to meet you till we got your message,” said Dorothea.
“What message?” said Roger.
“Sophocles,” said Dorothea.
“Which one is this?” said Titty.
“Sappho,” said Peggy. “You watch the flagstaff on our promontory. They’ll send the flag up as soon as Sappho’s in.”
They were hardly clear of Rio Bay before Roger
