A Mouse On Board Arthur Ransome's Racunda
Book Extract
The cruise has ended or is on the point of death. I am alone in Racundra, or rather not quite a lone. I am alone with a mouse which has sent the whole six foot three of the Cook, undaunted hitherto by anything but calms, in headlong flight to Riga. The discovery was made this morning. I woke up at five and heard what I thought was unmistakable mouse, but, believing it rather good luck, besides being a miracle, I said nothing about it, did not wake the cook and went fishing. When I came back I mentioned it and got into rather a row for even pretending such a thing. I went fishing again and in about an hour heard the foghorn going from Racundra, so hurried back. The Cook keeps things foe darning under her mattress. A pair of half darned stockings of mine had been found there, gnawed all to pieces, a mass of heather mixture fluff, most perfect, for any mouse particular about its bedding. The Cook was convinced and was for starting for Riga at once. This determination was presently petrified an and steel bound when she found a crowd of its footprints, little three-toed paddy marks in the stuff sour cream. We started just as we wee, the dinghy full of fishing rods and tackle. I started the engine, and so came out of the entrance to the Babit and round the shallow bend above Scholk where the wind was against us, and thereafter sailed, tidying up as we went along. There was little wind and, as the Cook absolutely refused to sleep on board again, I started the engine again and badly burnt two of my fingers, which makes writing difficult.
At half past six we were just coming near Dubbeln where for a hundred yards or s the railway skirts the river. l shouted to a man to know when the next train went for Riga. We had twenty minutes. The Cook dressed for Riga in teen. In fifteen we were close up to the station, which is on the very bank of the river. I rounded up, dropped the anchor to hold temporarily, rowed like the boatrace for the embankment. The Cook hared up it and crossed the line just in front I the engine and was gone and I paddled back to Racundra, got my anchor again, chose a decentish birth, anchored again for the night, stowed the sails, ate two three-quarter pound perch of my own catching and a large bar of chocolate, opened a bottle of beer, which stands beside me, and settled down, still a little breathless, to recount these alarums and excursions.
Tomorrow at dawn, the wind being southwest and favourable as I am pretty well convinced it will be, I shall hoist our sails and proceed. The whole thing is a puzzle. How on earth the mouse got on board is a question my answers to which only uncreased the desperation of the Cook. We have never touched shore with Racundra since we kept Riga, never tied up to a pier. Perhaps a hawk dropped it, flying over and startled by our flag. Perhaps, swimming cross the river. Pursued by a pike, it scrambled to safety up am anchor chain. What is the good of looking for ordinary explanations pf extraordinary things? Mice do not hatch out from eggs, or it might have been smuggled on board in some minute and inconspicuous form. Why have we never noticed it before? We surely should have done if it had been a passenger with us from the start, as the Cook was inclined to suggest until I pointed out that if so we had got along very well with it so far and why not continue in peace and amity. Two boys of the marshes startled Cook yesterday by coming alongside in a dugout canoe. Perhaps they threw it into the open forehatch. But what should they be doing with a mouse, and why should they give it to us? I am inclined myself to think that it was brought us as a present by the stork who flew over us every evening on his way home, in a sort of delicate allusion to the stories about himself, as of to make a tiny joke at his own expense.
However that may be, the cruise is all but over. The Cook has gone, and I am left a hero to face the raging lion in a mouse’s skin.
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Racundra’s Third Cruise is written by Arthur Ransome. Arthur Ransome, world famous for the hit series Swallows & Amazons, had, as a young man in 1917, gone to Russia as a foreign correspondent and journalist. He fell in love with Evgenia, Trotsky’s secretary, whom he later married. Together they owned two small yachts before commissioning the building of Racundra in 1922 at Riga in Latvia.