Читать книгу Great Northern? - Arthur Ransome - Страница 12

FROM ABOVE the little bay the land party looked down just for a moment on the Sea Bear and the scrubbers working at her in water up to their knees. Then they plunged forward over springy peat among rocks and short heather.

“Now!” said Titty.

“Now what?” said Dorothea.

“They’re out of sight,” said Titty.

“Yes,” said Dorothea. “Anything may happen any minute.”

“What’s the time?” asked Roger.

“Dick,” said Dorothea. “What’s the time?”

Dick was looking westward over wild, broken moorland, hoping to see the lochs marked on the chart, but they were still hidden by a lump of rising ground.

“Dick,” said Dorothea again. “Time?”

He started, pulled himself together, and looked at his watch.

“Seven … seven and a half minutes to twelve. We’ve wasted a lot of time already.”

“We’ve got six hours at least,” said Roger. “That’s six times sixty minutes for things to happen in. Three hundred and sixty different things.”

“One’ll be enough,” said Titty. “If it’s the right sort of thing, and it’s bound to be in a place like this.”

“Those tarns must be about due west,” said Dick.

“We’ll see them when we get higher up,” said Dorothea.

“Let’s get to the top of this one,” said Titty, pointing up the hill to the north of them. “Up there we’ll be able to see all ways at once.”

“If we work north-west,” said Dick.

“No,” said Roger. “Much better go straight up, and be able to look all round.”

“This is the best day of the whole cruise,” said Titty, and climbed on.

“I know why,” said Dorothea. “It’s because it wasn’t planned.”

That was it. For the four able seamen, as well as for Nancy and John, the cruise had been too successful. The Sea Bear, sailing from port to port, from one famous anchorage to another, had been as regular as a liner. Everything had gone according to programme, and that programme had not allowed for such days as this, with four able seamen exploring by themselves and their elders thoroughly busy and out of the way.

“Indian trail,” exclaimed Dorothea a minute or two later, and stopped short, looking at a trodden path between clumps of heather. The others joined her.

“No footprints,” said Titty.

“Sheep-track,” said Roger.

“Deer,” said Dick. “Look at that mark. The hoof’s much bigger than a sheep’s.”

“John said he thought he saw a stag early this morning when the fog cleared.”

“We’ll see them drinking their fill at eve,” said Titty.

“At those tarns perhaps,” said Dick, “unless the chart was wrong and there aren’t any.”

“If they’re marked on the chart they’ll be there,” said Titty. “We’ll see them as soon as we get a bit higher.”

They climbed on, with the world about them growing wider as they climbed. Looking southward they could see how the coast curved out towards the distant Head. White crests of foam flecked the blue sea.

“You’d never think it was blowing like this when you’re down in our creek,” said Titty, leaning against a gust of wind that blew her hair past her cheeks. “Dot’s jolly lucky to have pigtails.”

“I’m luckier,” said Roger, “and so’s Dick, except for his goggles.” In the harder gusts, Dick was putting a hand to his spectacles which shook in the wind so that he found it hard to see through them. “Come on, Dick. Don’t let’s stop before we get to the top.”

“Coming,” said Dick who, besides having trouble with his spectacles, was finding it hard to steady his telescope while he searched as much of the valley as he could see for a sign of the two lochs. “I can see deer,” he said suddenly.

“Where?” said Dorothea.

“A whole lot of them, grazing like cows.”

“We’ll see them better from higher up,” said Roger. “Race you to the top.”

He raced alone. The others plodded after him. Dorothea had picked a small purple flower and was showing it to Dick.

“It’s a butterwort, I think,” said Dick. “But I don’t know for certain.”

“Sticky leaves,” said Dorothea.

“Fly-catcher,” said Dick, stooping over a small patch of flowers.

“Roger,” called Titty. “Wait a minute. We ought to keep together,” she said to the others. “We’re in unknown country and anything may happen.”

“Something has,” said Dorothea. “Look at him.”

Roger had reached the top of the hill. He was urgently beckoning to them, pointing at something close beside him and beckoning again. He was not shouting. That in itself was enough to tell them that he was not simply trying to hurry them.

“He may have seen enemies,” said Titty.

“What is he doing?” said Dorothea.

Roger, after one more bout of beckoning, had dropped to the ground. A moment later he had disappeared. It was not as if he had crawled on over the top of the hill. He had not seemed to be moving. One moment they had seen him crouching on the ground with his back towards them. The next moment he had gone. He simply was not there.

“Come on,” said Titty, and raced up the steep slope of the hill. “He must have found a cave. Come on.”

“The top of the hill’s a queer shape,” said Dick.

“It’s like … Dick … I know what it is,” panted Dorothea.

They could all see it now, a green, turf-covered mound on the very top of the hill, and, as Titty came breathlessly up to it, Roger came scrambling out.

“What about this?” he said.

“It’s a Pict-house,” said Dorothea. “A real one. Prehistoric, like that one they showed us on Skye.”

“Well, nobody showed us this one,” said Roger. “I found it myself.” That day on Skye had been a wasted one. Well-meaning natives had shown them things and they had felt more like trippers than explorers.

“What’s it like inside?” said Titty, stooping to look into the hole out of which Roger had crawled.

“The hole doesn’t go very far,” said Roger. “It’s a square sort of tunnel. Stone walls. Beastly dark.”

“I say,” said Dorothea. “How would it be if I made my robber chief prehistoric? He’d wear skins and live up here and see the Danish longships coming into our bay.”

Dick had just glanced at the tunnel, and then climbed the steep side of the mound.

“I thought so,” he said. “The roof’s fallen in. It’s just like that one in Skye. A room in the middle and a tunnel for getting in and out …” He stopped suddenly. “There are the lochs!” he said, and, thinking of his Divers, was for setting off straight across country.

“Father’ll want to know about it,” said Dorothea.

Dick, after one more glance at the lochs in the valley, pulled out his pocket-book.

A PAGE FROM DICK’S NOTEBOOK SHOWING THE SHAPE OF THE “PICTHOUSE”

Dorothea, Titty and Roger had all climbed up beside him. The middle of the mound was like a shallow saucer where it had fallen in, perhaps centuries before. Standing in the dip they looked round over the edge.

“It’s like being on the top of the whole world,” said Titty.

On one side they looked out over the sea to Scotland, southward to the Head, northward to another great cape jutting out. Far out to sea were the black specks of two fishing boats, each with a long wisp of black smoke blowing from it. Looking down to the cove where they had left the Sea Bear, they could see the top of her mast. The rest of her was hidden close under the steep shore. They could see both inlets with the rocky spit between them, and then rolling moorland stretching towards big grey hills. Here and there were lochs. They could see part of one of the lochs, that had raised hopes in Dick, and the whole of the other. Looking up the valley they could see that there was a ridge to the south of it and another to the north rising slowly towards the mountains. Along the slopes of the northern ridge they caught glimpses of a cart track that seemed to come from the head of the valley and, not far away, turned sharply into a gap on the skyline.

“Crouch down,” said Titty. “When you’re on the bottom you can’t see anything but sky. Not even the hills. If we were hiding in it, nobody could see us, unless they came here and climbed up to look in over the edge.”

The others crouched beside her. It was true. There was nothing to be seen but the great circle of blue sky overhead, from which the last white scraps of cloud had blown away.

“Buzzard,” said Dick, as a black speck swung across high over their heads.

“It’s like being in a bird’s nest,” said Titty.

“The hero could lie here laughing,” said Dorothea, “while the villains were searching the whole countryside.”

“It’s a bit like the igloo,” said Roger. “We ought to fetch Nancy and Peggy. We’ll tell them about it when we get back. They wouldn’t come anyhow,” he added. “Not when they’re in the middle of their scraping and scrubbing. I say, it’s an awful pity we haven’t got that chart to mark exactly where it is.”

“But I have got it,” said Titty. She pulled the little chart out of her knapsack, unrolled it and spread it out flat.

“Pict-house Hill,” said Roger. “Put it in with a pencil. You can ink it afterwards.”

“It’s a good name anyhow,” said Dorothea. She stood up and looked round. “That long ridge can be the Northern Rockies. Then there’s Low Ridge on the other side of the valley. It gets lower and lower till it turns into those rocks we didn’t want to hit in the fog.”

“What about Dick’s tarns?” said Titty.

“Upper and Lower,” said Dorothea, “but they’re lochs, not tarns.”

“And the lump that wouldn’t let us see them till we got up here and still doesn’t let us see the stream …”

“Burn,” said Dorothea, “not stream.”

“It would be a beck if we were at Holly Howe,” said Roger.

“That lump’s not big enough for a hill,” said Titty.

“Let’s call it the Hump,” said Roger. “It’s very camelious.”

Just putting in those few names on the chart made the valley seem almost their own.

“I wish we weren’t sailing tomorrow,” said Dorothea.

“I’m going in again,” said Roger, “to see how far I can get.”

“Look out,” said Titty. “Remember the tunnel in Kanchenjunga. More of it may cave in on the top of you.”

“All right,” said Roger, and slid down the steep side of the mound. Dick was down there, too, making a sketch of the entrance to show his father. Eager as he was to get away to the lochs, he was Professor Callum’s son and, for the moment, had to turn from birds to ancient monuments.

Titty and Dorothea were alone in the shallow saucer where the ancient roof had fallen in, and long, long ago been grown over with green turf.

“It is a most gorgeous place,” said Titty. “And wasted. Think of no one knowing about it but us.”

“Perhaps no one’s ever been here since the last of the ancient Picts died fighting to defend it as the strangers from the sea came roaring up from their boats.”

Roger, a good deal dirtier than before, came climbing over the edge. “Someone’s using it,” he said, looking round over the wild moorland as if he expected to see that someone close at hand. He held out a biscuit box. “I’ve been as far as I can, and I found this when I was feeling round where the tunnel comes to an end. It’s somebody’s provisions.”

He shook the box and they could hear something sliding about inside it. There was, alas, no doubt that the box had not been left by an ancient Pict. Much of its paper covering was still sticking to it and they could see the trademark and the name of a famous firm of Glasgow biscuit-makers.

“Oh well,” said Titty, “it can’t be helped … and it doesn’t really matter. It isn’t as if we were ever going to be here again.”

“I’m going to open it and see what’s inside,” said Roger.

“But it isn’t ours.”

“It’s treasure trove,” said Dorothea. “Roger found it. He can’t do any harm by looking at it.”

She wanted to know what was in it, and so, in spite of her scruples, did Titty.

“Of course there may be a message in it, like the one we left in the cairn.”

“Urgent, perhaps,” said Dorothea. “Think if people didn’t open bottles cast up on the shore just because the bottles weren’t theirs.”

“I’m going to open it anyhow,” said Roger.

He put the box on the ground and took the lid off. They saw at once that the thing that had been sliding about was a paper parcel.

“Provisions,” said Roger. “I thought so. Bread … no … cake of a sort …” He had opened the paper and found a heavy hunk of cake, very dark, like Christmas pudding.

“It’s not old,” said Dorothea, poking it with a careful finger. “Soft and still sticky. What’s that underneath it? I say, perhaps it’s someone writing a story.” From the bottom of the box she pulled out an ordinary school exercise book.

“French verbs more likely,” said Titty. “I had to fill a whole book of them the summer we found Swallowdale.”

“Do you think I’d better taste the cake?” asked Roger.

“Of course not,” said Titty. “Wrap it up again and put it away.”

“All right,” said Roger. “You never know. There may be poison in it.”

Dorothea had opened the exercise book. “It’s all in a foreign language,” she said.

“Let me look,” said Titty. “If it’s French … but it isn’t. And it isn’t Latin either. Perhaps it’s a secret code.”

“It looks like a diary,” said Dorothea. “Those numbers must be dates.” She and Titty pored over the book together. Yes. It looked as if the figures at one side of the page might be dates, but they could make nothing of the words: “Da fiadh dheug … damh a fireach …” On and on it went, short entries and each with its figure at the side. “Damh is eildean.” Here and there was a short word like “is” and a shorter like “a” but all the other words belonged to no language that they knew, and if it was written in code, perhaps even “is” and “a” did not mean what they usually meant.

“I know what it is,” said Titty suddenly. “It’s Gaelic. It belongs to one of the natives. A savage Gael. Look here, Roger. You put it back where you found it.”

All three of them looked at the ridge before them, and up the long wild valley and down again at the cove far away below them where the mast of the Sea Bear spoke to them of friends and allies. There were no Gaels to be seen. Up here, on that hill above the sea, on the top of the old dwelling place of Picts who had been dead a thousand years, they might have been the only people in the world. But there was the biscuit box and its contents to show that someone counted the old Pict-house so much his own that he could safely leave his things in it.

“Dick,” said Dorothea, “do look, before Roger puts it back.”

But Dick took no more than a polite interest in the biscuit box, exercise book and hunk of cake. He was bursting to be gone and had almost done what he had to do. He had made a sketch of the mound from one side, giving a rough idea of its shape. Now he was making a drawing of it to show as well as he could the way in which it was built. There was a circle with a smaller circle for the dip made by the fallen roof and dotted lines to show how the tunnel lay.

“Bother whoever he is,” said Roger, slipping over the edge with the box to put it back in the tunnel.

“Father’ll want to know how big it is round,” Dorothea was saying, looking over Dick’s shoulder, as Roger came climbing back, wiping the earth from his hands. “It’s for Father,” she explained. “He always wants to know shapes and sizes when anybody finds antiquities.”

“Boats are what Daddy always measures,” said Roger.

Dick was pacing earnestly across the dip. “Five steps,” he said, “and it’s about thirty round. Very thick walls. And the dip isn’t quite in the middle. That means that the wall is thickest where the tunnel goes in.” He wrote the figures beside his diagrams.

“And now,” he said, “I’m off.”

“Much better come with us,” said Titty.

“I’ve got to go down to those lochs,” said Dick. “It’s the very last chance of seeing Divers.”

“Oh, let him go,” said Dorothea.

“We’ll explore along the slopes of the Northern Rockies,” said Titty, glancing up the valley and then at the chart. “We’ll come back past Upper and Lower Lochs. They’ll show us the way to the beck … burn. And we’ll follow the burn past the other side of the Hump until it comes to the waterfall and our cove. “

“Dick,” said Dorothea, “are you going to stay at those lochs all the time?”

“I expect so,” said Dick. “There’s sure to be some birds, even if there aren’t any Divers.”

“Good,” said Titty. “We’ll pick you up on our way back to the ship.”

“But don’t wait for us if they sound the foghorn. Go straight back to the Sea Bear,” said Dorothea. “Only do listen for it … if he’s watching birds, you know …” She looked at the others. They laughed. They both knew that if Dick was looking at anything, even if it was only a caterpillar, you could shout at him from close by without his hearing.

“I’ll hear all right,” said Dick, putting his notebook in his pocket. “Good-bye.”

“Look here,” said Roger. “Even if somebody else is using this place, we’ll never find a better one for eating our grub.”

“Eat yours with us, Dick, and get it over,” said Dorothea.

“I can eat it going along.”

“Susan’ll be very fierce if you forget it,” said Titty.

“Bother birds,” said Roger. “Adventures are much better.”

But Dick was already over the edge of the mound, and hurrying on his way to the lochs, thinking of the time that he had already had to waste.

Dorothea watched him. Now and again, as he dropped into a dip in the uneven ground, she lost sight of him, and then saw him again as he came up on the other side of it, moving quickly slantwise down the slopes of the long ridge that sheltered the valley from the north.

She turned to find that the other two explorers had emptied their knapsacks and were opening their packets of sandwiches.

“Roger’s quite right,” said Titty. “Going a long way, it’s easier to carry your grub inside.”

Dorothea wriggled out of the straps of her own knapsack and sat down beside them. In that hollow on the top of the old Pict-house, she thought, an escaping prisoner could hide from his pursuers. One moment, before sitting down, she could see for miles, out over the sea or up the valley to the mountains. The next, sitting on the ground, she could see nothing but sky and the short blades of grass stirring against the blue just above the level of her head. “Invisible to all but the eagle, the fugitive rested and was safe,” she murmured to herself.

“What?” said Roger, taking a bite from a sandwich.

Dorothea started. “Nothing,” she said. “I was only thinking how secret this place is.”

“Listen!” said Titty. “Listen!”

“Bagpipes!” said Roger.

Faintly, from far away, the skirl of bagpipes drifted down the wind.

They jumped up.

“People … quite near …” said Titty.

“I can’t see anyone,” said Dorothea.

“You can’t tell,” said Titty. “Somebody may be seeing you.”

“Come down,” said Roger. “Come down, and then you can’t be seen even if there’s somebody watching.”

They dropped and for a moment waited silently, listening for the pipes. They could still hear them.

“It’s the other side of the Northern Rockies,” said Titty. “A road goes over where that gap is.”

“There’s a robber castle just over the top of the range,” said Dorothea.

DICK GOES OFF TO THE LOCHS

“Conspicuous house,” said Titty, looking at the sketch on the little chart.

“Far enough away, anyhow,” said Roger, and took another bite.