1
Return to the lake
Roger sat on a bench at the railway station and opened his book for the third time that morning, turning to the page that held a color plate of nautical signal flags in red, white, blue, yellow, and black. The book opened directly to that page because he had marked it with a folded paper, which he now unfolded and spread flat.
The paper was a letter from Nancy Blackett, Captain of the sailing vessel Amazon and the leader of the expedition that Roger and his sister Titty were joining that very day. Most people would not have known that the paper was a letter at all and would have thought that it was a colorful drawing of a ship at anchor in front of what was obviously an island with a large pine tree at one end. Roger, however, knew that the drawing held a secret message, one that could only be read using the picture of the signal flags in his book.
The ship in Nancy's drawing, a three-masted schooner, had been "dressed," which is a nautical term meaning that someone had strung a line of signal flags that ran from the tip of her bowsprit at the left side of the picture, to the tops of each mast, and to a staff at her stern, at the right. Each of the flags had a meaning, and if you read the flags from bow to stern, they appeared to be just a random jumble of letters and numbers. Only someone who belonged to the expedition would know that if you read the flags from right to left, they spelled out the secret message Nancy had intended to send: "Wild Cat Island," and that day's date. The adventure began today.
Roger and Titty had arrived on the first train of the afternoon, coming into the station above the little town on the lake that he and everyone in the expedition called Rio. They were waiting for the next train, which carried their older brother John and older sister, Susan. When all of the Walkers had come, they would join Nancy and her sister Peggy, the Amazon Pirates, and Dick and Dorothea Callum, the Ds, and the summer holiday would officially begin.
"What if John and Susan aren't on the next train?" he said. "What if they've already come and gone ahead?"
"Don't be silly," Titty said, not looking up. "Why should they have done that? We're all sailing together with Dick and Dot in their new boat."
"We don't know if they've gotten their new boat," said Roger. "I got a postcard from Dick, the day he left school to meet Dot, and he said it wasn't ready."
"It's been two weeks. That's enough time for the boat-builders to have finished. But anything might have happened since Dick wrote," Titty said. "Captured by savages, imprisoned by enemies. Dot said in her letter that they'd been in hiding already."
"I'm going to have a look round," said Roger.
He closed his book and set it next to Titty as she looked up at the station's big clock. "Don't go too far away. I expect the train will be here any moment," she said.
He was back in a few minutes and Titty noticed for the first time that they were no longer alone on the platform. In fact, a large crowd had formed, none of them dressed for travel, and most of them looking down the tracks where the train would appear.
"Where did all these people come from?" she asked, as Roger plumped himself down beside her on the bench.
"I don't know, but you should see the road outside. It's positively jammed."
Both of them heard the train's whistle, and at that exact instant, saw two red caps making their way through the crowd that now filled the platform.
"It's Nancy and Peggy!" said Roger. "And they've got the Ds with them."
A moment later, the Amazon Pirates had pressed through the crush of people and surrounded the first of the Swallows to arrive.
"You've come at last," said Nancy, shaking hands with both of them. "Just in time to miss the worst part of the holidays and catch the best part."
"We heard about the worst part," said Titty. "Was the Great Aunt truly horrid?"
"It started out pretty awful," said Peggy. "But it ended better than we could have hoped, and she's gone now, so we're ready to do everything we planned."
Those plans had been the subject of a blizzard of postcards and letters that flew back and forth between the Swallows, Amazons, and Ds at their schools during the year. Part of the plan had been for Dick and Dorothea, who arrived at the lake two weeks before the Swallows were scheduled to come, to stay at Nancy and Peggy's home at Beckfoot until they could all go to camp on Wild Cat Island together.
"The G. A. scuttled that one," said Nancy, who had written the Swallows about her Great Aunt Maria's unexpected arrival at Beckfoot when she learned that Mrs. Blackett and her brother had gone on a Baltic cruise for health reasons, leaving Nancy and Peggy alone at home.
"But Mother and Uncle Jim – Captain Flint – are back and the Great Aunt's gone, so it's all right again," said Peggy.
With more than four weeks of the summer holidays remaining, all of the other plans were brought down from their shelves, dusted off, and stood up, ready to put into action. "The only thing left is for John and Susan to get here and we can be off," said Nancy. "This time tomorrow, we'll be on Wild Cat together."
"Are we sailing across to Beckfoot this afternoon?" asked Roger.
"Aren't we? Wait until you see the Ds' boat. Scarab's a real beauty. Every bit as nice as our Amazon, but the boat builders used her as a model, so how couldn't she be good?" said Peggy. "We'll all of us fit in two ships today, and tomorrow we'll have Swallow, too. A real fleet."
"It will be a battle fleet for the fight with Captain Flint," said Titty. "Three ships of the line against one."
"And we'll have some races, too," said Nancy.
"I say, Nancy, do you know what all of these people are here for?" Titty asked.
"It's Sir Richard Fraser," said Nancy. "Racing-boat pilot. He's come to the lake to try and get the water speed record back. He lost it to an American a few months ago."
"Not really," said Roger, who was far more interested than anyone else in engines generally and racing-boat ones in particular. He had heard of the captain of the fastest boat in England and read all about his boat. "Miss Britain's coming here?"
"Yes, really. She got here yesterday. She's already down at the boatyard, fitting out," said Nancy. "I saw her just now when we stopped in to see about Beckfoot's launch."
"What's wrong with the launch?" asked Titty, who was much less interested in racing-boats.
"Having a plank replaced. Should be done any day now. Captain Flint will be jolly pleased. Since he and mother came home from the Baltic he's had to use the rowing boat to get back and forth to the houseboat. He says once a day isn't too bad, but he's not hoping to make the rowing eight at university any longer and doesn't need the practice," said Peggy.
"I say, do you think we'll we be able to see him from the island?" asked Roger.
"Captain Flint?" said Nancy. "Of course we will. He's going to be working up on High Topps with Timothy in the mine, but he said he'd be cleared for action when we wanted to fight our sea battle."
But Roger was not thinking about Captain Flint at all, and when he said the name of the person he was thinking about, it was lost in the noise from the locomotive that huffed into the station, buried in a cloud of steam and the excited shouts of the crowd. A few people had come to meet other travelers, but most were there to see the pilot of Miss Britain, waving caps and papers as the train chugged to a stop, a slender, blond haired man, standing on the top step of the first carriage, lifting his hat to the people below.
Only two of the Swallows, Amazons, and Ds on the platform even noticed, watching instead for the last of their group, Captain John and Mate Susan, who climbed down from the second carriage as the Wild Cat Island Expedition gathered around them.
"Are all of these people here for Sir Richard?" asked John, after greeting the Amazons and the Ds.
"Yes," said Nancy. "We'll get your things and be down at Rio Bay while they're all still standing here, yarning about motor-boats."
"We've got cases in the baggage car," said Susan. "Two of them."
"Let's wait by the door and let the horde pass by," said Nancy.
"Did you see Sir Richard on the train?" Roger asked John. "Did you talk to him?"
"No. He was in another carriage. He's a naval officer, just like Daddy," said John. "Knighted when he got the world record the first time. I heard the reporters talking on the train."
Behind them, Miss Britain's pilot had climbed on a trunk to give everyone a better look and the chance to ask some questions. The reporters who had followed him from London, and those waiting at the lake all began shouting at once.
"Sir Richard! How long will it take you to get the record?"
"Sir Richard! What conditions do you need to get past 120?"
"Sir Richard!" said a third reporter. "As you know, Andrew Martin, the current record-holder says your design is unsafe. He says you've got your engines switched round. His view is that they should be in front of the cockpit, rather than behind."
Sir Richard laughed. "I've heard him say exactly that. As a matter of fact, Andy's been saying that since we raced in Miami two years ago. Told me he wants that 'wall of steel,' I think he called it, between him and whatever might happen out on the water. It's a fair point he's made, and I said so back there in Florida."
"So, why are you making the attempt with the current design?"
"I'll tell you the same thing I told Andy. He's definitely got the right idea, but have you ever seen him when he's on the water? It's like sitting behind a blast furnace. He and his crew have got to put white grease on their faces to keep the heat of those engines off. They look like three ghosts."
The crowd laughed, and Sir Richard smiled. "But that's not the worst of it. Our good old Miss Britain's like a fine thoroughbred; when she's running hard and sees the finish line, she puts up her head and charges. You can't keep her down or hold her back, and that's just the way I want it. But I've got to be able to see what's ahead, and she makes it hard enough with the engines behind. As it is, something right in our path is jolly difficult to spot, especially when we'll be covering a mile every half minute."
"Not thirty-one seconds?" laughed a reporter.
"I didn't come here to go a single second slower than that lads, and you can tell that to all of your readers back home. I'm due in Portsmouth in a fortnight to report aboard the Hood, and I aim to go back to the Royal Navy with the record in my pocket. You can write that, too."
"How does Miss Britain compare to the Hood?" said another reporter, smiling. "A battle-cruiser and a racing boat."
Sir Richard smiled back, taking the straw hat off and scratching his blonde hair. "Well, no trouble seeing what's ahead of you from that ship, that's for certain," he said. "Let's see, Hood's got 47,000 tons and we've got all of five, so we have to mark that one for the Navy."
"Hood's better armed, too," shouted one of the newsmen.
All the reporters laughed, and Sir Richard put the hat back on, tipping it to the back of his head. "She could blow us out of the water, but first she'd have to catch us. The Navy gave her 144,000 horsepower, but we've got almost 4,000 in those two aero engines of Miss Britain. Old Hood's slowed down a bit, but she'll still do 30 knots in a calm sea; that's over 34 miles per hour. That's a jolly good show for a ship as big as that, with 15 years and a million miles under her keel. But my Miss Britain will, and I'll say it again, gentlemen; she will go 120 or we'll bust trying."
Sir Richard turned his brilliant smile on the other reporters, waved off any more questions, and climbed down off the trunk, his hat only just visible in the crush of people surrounding him.
"What an utter circus," said Nancy, turning away from the crowd. "It's a good thing he'll be at the opposite end of the lake. I remember the last time one of these boats was on the water, buzzing back and forth all day like some grown-up water beetle. The whole place was in complete chaos for two weeks."
"He's got two aeroplane engines. And 4000 horsepower. It must be really loud," said Roger.
"Ear-splitting," said Peggy. She watched Sir Richard as he shook hands in the crowd of reporters. "You have to put cotton wool in your ears even if you're watching from the shore. It must be a thousand times worse with the engines sitting right behind you."
"Did you and Nancy watch before, the last time they were here?" asked John.
"Everyone did. You can't help it. And they close the part of the lake where they've laid out the course, so there isn't anything you can do but watch," said Peggy. "We watched from Beckfoot last time. I hope we'll get the chance this year."
"I do, too. How did his boat get here?" asked Roger.
"She came in on a goods train yesterday morning. They hauled her down to the water on a big lorry, and she's sitting in a cradle next to the water, so they can work on the engines."
"Four thousand horsepower," said Roger. "I'll bet she goes like lightning."
Sir Richard joined a group of men that included Colonel Jolys and some official for the district, introducing his two crewmen and greeting members of the record committee.
"Just a circus, and nothing to do with us," Nancy said briskly. "He and all of those others will be up in the Arctic the whole time. It's the very best thing that could have happened, really. All the natives will flock up there with him. We'll have everything from Rio to the south completely to ourselves."
"The Pied Piper, leading all the children of Hamelin away from home, their parents all sorry they didn't pay for getting rid of the rats," said Dorothea.
"I wonder what he did with all of them, once they'd gone with him," Roger said. "They must have needed piles of food three times every day."
"He must be very brave, though, to try something like that," said Peggy. "And I thought he was quite handsome. I hope we get a chance to see him try for the record."
"Rubbish. We'll be on the island and that's the last we'll see of him," said Nancy, sounding very convinced that she was right about that.