Читать книгу Pigeon Post - Arthur Ransome - Страница 15

“HERE we are,” said Nancy. “That’s Tyson’s.”

A narrow lane turned to the right out of the road, crossed the almost dry bed of the river by a small hump-backed stone bridge, and ended in the cobbled yard of a whitewashed farmhouse. On one side of the yard was the house itself, with low windows and a porch with clematis climbing over it, a big cow-house with a barn above it, and an old pump with a shallow drinking-trough. On the other side was a wall of loose stones with a gate in it shutting in an orchard. Behind orchard and buildings a wood of oaks and birches and hazels, with here and there a pine, rose steeply up into the sky. Somewhere above the wood was High Topps, the workings of the old miners of long ago, and the precious metal they had come to find.

The handcart rattled over the bridge and across the hard cobbles of the yard. The dromedaries followed more quietly, though Roger felt it was only right that the journey should end on the run, and that the leading donkey should announce the arrival of the caravan with a loud triumphant bray.

Mrs Tyson came out of the porch just as Nancy was leaning her dromedary up against the orchard wall. Her arms were white to the elbows with flour, for she was busy baking, and she did not seem too pleased to find the farmyard full of prospectors with their handcart and their laden dromedaries.

“And here you are,” she said. “And where’s Mrs Blackett? Goodness there’s a lot of you. There was only three yesterday. I don’t know where we’re going to put you all.”

“Mother’s coming along.”

“You’ll have told her what I said about fires,” said Mrs Tyson. “And about there being no water up in the wood, with the beck run dry.”

“We told her everything,” said Nancy. “It’s all right. It’s no good lighting fires where there isn’t any water. And we’re not going to unpack tents or anything till mother’s been. Oh, hullo, Robin …” A young man came out from behind the barn with a long pole and a bundle of brushwood at the top of it. He set it to lean against the wall of the barn with half a dozen others.

“That’s Robin Tyson, Mrs Tyson’s son,” Peggy explained to Dorothea.

“More fire-brooms,” said Roger.

“We’ll likely need ’em,” said Robin.

“Have you joined Colonel Jolys’ volunteers?” asked Nancy.

“No good to us,” said Mrs Tyson. “However can we let them know if there’s a fire? If owt catches here, we mun fight it ourselves. Before we’d get the word to the Colonel at head of the lake there’d be nowt left of our valley but ash and smoke.”

“If there’s a fire we’ll all help,” said Nancy.

“So long as you don’t light it I’ll be well pleased,” said Mrs Tyson.

“We won’t do that,” said Roger indignantly.

“If I could be sure,” said Mrs Tyson. She looked up at the blue sky over the high wood behind the farm. “Never a sign of rain,” she said. “And it’s weeks now the ground is cracking for it. Oh well,” she said, “I’ve my baking to do whatever … and Mrs Blackett coming.”

“She won’t be here just yet,” said Nancy. “At least I shouldn’t think so … not until the painters and paperers have gone. May we just leave our things here while we go up the wood to have a look at the Topps?”

“There’s no carts stirring today,” said Mrs Tyson. “Your things’ll be out of the road again yon barn wall.”

“You’ll want the pigeons out of the sun,” said Robin Tyson. “Best wheel them into the barn.”

“Thank you very much,” said Titty, who had been trying to make a shady place for the pigeons by draping a bit of a ground-sheet over their cage.

“Dump everything,” cried Nancy. “Travel light. It’s a bit of a pull to the top.”

The handcart was run into the barn, with the pigeons’ cage upon it. Dromedaries leaned against the orchard wall. Knapsacks were slung off and piled in a heap.

“No need to carry anything,” said Peggy. “Just a dash up the wood to have a squint at the goldfields.”

“Compass,” said John, digging one out of the outer pocket of his knapsack.

“And we’d better have the telescope,” said Titty.

“We might jolly well want it,” said Nancy. Already she was leaving the farmyard, and opening the gate into the wood.

The others crowded through.

“Shut the gate, some one,” said Nancy.

“Aye, aye, Sir,” said Roger.

It was pleasant to come into the shade of the woods after the long trek in blazing sunshine along the valley road. There seemed to be less dust in the air, and there was a clean smell of resin from the scattered pines, with their tall rough-scaled trunks, that towered among the short bushy hazels, the rowans, and the little oaks. A track wound upwards through the trees. Anybody could have told that it was very little used. Here and there were stony patches in it, where dried moss covered the stones. Here and there were little drifts of last year’s leaves. Here and there under and near the big pine trees the path was soft and brown with fallen pine needles. The track was not wide enough for a cart, and probably it had been used only by sleds bringing bracken from the fells above.

“Is it wide enough for the handcart?” Peggy asked Susan. “There won’t be much room to spare.”

“We won’t be taking it up there,” said Susan.

“Unless it rains and the beck fills,” said Nancy over her shoulder.

“Where is the beck?” said Titty, remembering the pleasant little stream up which she and Roger had explored together last summer when they had discovered Swallowdale and the cave they had called after Peter Duck. But in this wood there was no tinkling of falling water.

“Just crossing it,” said John, and a moment later a strip of shingle across the path and a deep furrow beside it showed where the beck had been.

“Stepping stones,” said Roger, and walked gaily across, stepping on the big stones that had been left there so that when the beck was flowing people crossing it could keep their feet dry.

“And no water,” said Dorothea.

The track climbed steeply upwards through the trees, sometimes leaving the stream, sometimes close to it, and then swinging away to one side and back again, in wide zigzags, to make the climbing easier. But this August of the drought it was not a stream but the dry bed where a stream had been. The expedition had been climbing for a long time before coming on a drop of water, and then, below what had once been a waterfall, they saw a tiny pool.

“Water! Water!” shouted Roger.

“Couldn’t we camp here?” said Peggy.

“No good,” said John. “It’s only a birdbath.”

“It’s stagnant,” said Susan, “or very nearly, and there isn’t enough for any washing or cooking.”

A chattering jay blundered noisily away through the trees, when Titty pushed through the hazels to have a closer look.

They climbed on.

“How much further?” said Roger, who had been growing less and less talkative as they climbed.

“Probably another hundred miles or so,” said Titty.

“Stick to it, Roger,” said Peggy. “We’re getting near the top.”

John and Nancy were hurrying ahead. Even Susan was walking faster than she had been. Dick, his eyes on the ground, and his hammer in his hand, was climbing doggedly away behind her.

“Do tell us what the Topps are really like,” said Dorothea.

“You’ll see them in a minute or two,” said Peggy. “It’s years since I’ve been there.”

“Titty,” said Dorothea privately, “about Squashy Hat. Is he really prospecting too, or is Nancy just thinking so, to make it more exciting?”

“If he knows about the gold,” panted Titty, “he’s sure to be prospecting. Anybody would be …”

“But if he doesn’t know … ?” said Dorothea.

“Hurry up!”

“We jolly well are,” said Roger grimly.

Suddenly the track divided into two. One path turned sharply left through the bushes. The other went on. The trees were thinning. Close before them was a thicket of brambles at the foot of a wide steep face of rock with heather clinging to it here and there. A grassy gully, clear of brambles, led to the top of the rock. Nancy, John, and Susan were up there already. Dick, hammer in hand, was close below them.

“Come on,” said Peggy, and the rest of the prospectors ran, panting, after her, hearts pounding in their chests after the long climb. They dodged round the bramble thicket, raced up the green gully, and, a moment later, from the top of the rock, were looking out over the wild, broken moorland of the Topps.

“Well, what do you think of it?” said Nancy, waving her arm as if she had somehow conjured the whole of High Topps into existence.

Titty at first could hardly speak. That last run to the rock after the long climb from the valley had left her altogether out of breath. Spots swam before her eyes, but in spite of them she knew she was looking at a Klondyke, an Alaska, better than anything she had dreamed when they were talking of the goldfields in the camp at Beckfoot. Over there rose the great mass of Kanchenjunga. A huge arm stretched down from him towards the valley they had left, hiding all the Beckfoot country and the hills towards the head of the lake. A range of hills swept away to the south from the peak they had climbed the year before. Half circled by the hills there lay a wide plateau, broken with gullies, scarred with ridges of rock that rose out of a sea of heather and bracken, and close-cropped sun-dried grass. Away to the left the plateau sloped down and was crossed by a ribbon of white road. Behind the prospectors were Tyson’s wood, and the deep valley of the Amazon out of which they had climbed.

“What’s that native road?” Titty asked, when she had got her breath again.

“It goes over into Dundale,” said Nancy over her shoulder. “It’s the same road we trekked on coming to Tyson’s.”

Roger was looking back down the smooth steep face of rock at the edge of the Topps.

“What a place for a knickerbockerbreaker,” he said.

“Landing in the brambles,” said Titty.

“I could stop myself,” said Roger.

“Don’t try,” said Susan hurriedly. “Who’s going to darn you? Mrs Tyson isn’t like Mary Swainson.”

“Well, if I mayn’t slide down,” said Roger, “isn’t it my turn for the telescope?”

“Let him have the telescope,” said Susan.

“Here you are,” said John. “Two minutes a turn. Everybody wants to have a look.”

“Where are the old workings?” asked Dick.

“All over the place,” said Nancy. “You see Ling Scar? The big lump coming down from Kanchenjunga. That’s the one we were inside when we went to see Slater Bob. The tunnel we were in is supposed to come out this side, but it isn’t safe any longer. There are lots more along the ridge at the bottom, where the Topps begin. And there’s a working in almost every bit of valley or rise all over High Topps. You know, just a hole, and a heap of scratchings outside it. You can see one from here. Over there. That black spot under those rocks …”