Читать книгу Swallows & Amazons - Boxed Set - Arthur Ransome - Страница 65

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They found the mate in a very native mood, due to the cleaning and cooking of the four trout. Fried trout ought to be eaten the moment they are cooked. You can’t go on hotting them up for people. If you keep them frying too long they dry up and you might as well throw them away. It was enough to turn anybody native to have cleaned them and salted them and got the fire just right and the butter melted in the frying-pan and the four little trout sizzling noisily as if in a hurry to be eaten, and then not a sign of the crew in spite of all the trouble taken. Susan had made the frying spread out as long as she possibly could, and really it was a little too much when the others came up into Swallowdale at least twenty minutes after the trout were at their best, and Roger sniffing the good smell of them said, very happily, “Just in time.”

“You aren’t,” said Susan. “You ought to have been here half an hour ago. I told you to come back straight away. Another time you’d better cook your own fish and I’ll be the one to play round and to come back ‘just in time.’ ”

Roger was going to say that perhaps there wouldn’t be any fish left if she did that, when he caught John’s eye, and saw that the captain thought it would be just as well to take no risks with the mate.

“I’ve seen the Amazons,” said John.

“They’re not coming to supper are they?” said the mate. “We’ve only got the four fish.”

“I didn’t see them to talk to,” said John. “They were in the launch. Nancy shot an arrow at the point by the Pike Rock. An arrow with a message on it.”

“It’s all right about the great-aunt,” said Titty. “John saw her.”

“Let’s get supper done,” said the mate.

“We’ve got the arrow,” said Roger. “Here it is.”

“That’s your bit of bread and butter,” said the mate.

“These are jolly good fish,” said John. “They couldn’t be better cooked. They’re better even than the ones we had the day we went fishing with Captain Flint.”

After that for some time nobody talked of anything but the trout and the supper. Titty and Roger told how the trout had been caught, one in the bathing-pool and the other three in the small pools between the top of Swallowdale and Trout Tarn. Roger told of the bigger ones there would have been if only they had not dropped off. Everybody said how good they were to eat. When the bones of the last trout had been emptied into the camp-fire, Susan showed them just how lucky they were to have so good a cook as mate to the expedition. She had baked four apples to go with the rice pudding, burying them in a biscuit tin under the hot ashes. They liked their supper so much that when it was over Susan herself brought the talk back to the arrow. She had no sooner mentioned it than Roger handed it across to her and everybody began to talk at once of the launch and of the shooting of the arrow which John alone had seen.

“It had a message fastened to it,” said John, “but it doesn’t seem to mean much. . . . ‘Show the parrot his feathers.’ . . . Look at it.” He gave the mate the little curled slip of paper.

She unrolled it and looked at it.

“It doesn’t look as if it meant anything at all,” she said.

“But when Nancy shot the arrow, she hid behind the cabin and looked as if it was something that mattered very much.”

“It isn’t like the arrows they had last year,” said Roger. “It isn’t shiny.”

This was true. The arrow they were looking at in the camp was very rough, as if it had been made in a hurry. It was blunt at the end and the wood had never been varnished.

“I suppose those are the parrot’s feathers,” said Susan.

“Yes,” said Titty. “This one is the first that came out after we went home last year. I’d been saving it ever since the winter. I know it because it got snipped in the scissors by mistake. The other one came out just before we came here. They were both in the lot I gave Nancy when they came to the island the day Roger and I discovered Swallowdale.”

“So it must be a new arrow.”

“It looks as if they’d only just made it,” said John, “with nobody to help.”

“Let’s do just what the message says,” said Titty.

“What?”

“Show the feathers to Polly. He’s awfully clever.”

“He isn’t as clever as all that,” said John. “If we don’t know what it all means, he won’t.”

“Anyhow, let’s do what Nancy said. She’ll probably ask whether we did it or not.”

Titty took the arrow with the green feathers and walked across with it to the ship’s parrot, who was on his perch making the most of the evening sunshine.

“HI! HI! STOP HIM!”

Instantly the parrot screamed aloud and seized the arrow with its beak and one of its claws.

“Take care,” said John. “Stop him. He’ll pull the feathers out. There’s only a narrow splice at each end to hold the thing together. He’ll smash it up and then what’ll Nancy say?”

But he was too late.

There was a noise of splitting wood, and in a moment the ship’s parrot had not only torn his own old feathers out of the arrow but had broken the arrow itself at the splice just below the place where the feathers had been fastened in.

“Hi! Hi! Stop him! Look at that!” shouted John, jumping up.

“No, Polly, no,” said Titty. “Give it me. You don’t want it.”

Something beside the feathers had been torn from the split and now broken arrow. Titty rescued it just in time.

“Well done, Polly,” she said. “Of course Nancy knew you’d do it, because she’s seen you do it before.”

The ship’s parrot took no notice. It did not want the scrap of closely folded paper that Titty had in her hand.

“Pretty Polly, Pretty Polly,” it said contentedly, tearing shreds of wood off the arrow and dropping them round its perch.

Nobody bothered about the arrow now. Titty with trembling fingers unfolded the paper. She saw the skull and crossbones at the top of it and a lot of writing in red pencil underneath, and she gave the paper to Captain John.

“Read it aloud,” she said.

“It’s meant for all of us,” said John, and began to read.

“TO THE CAPTAIN AND CREW OF THE SHIP ‘SWALLOW.’ GREETING. FROM FELLOW MARINERS IN SORE DISTRESS. WE ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO GO ANYWHERE OUT OF SIGHT OF THE NATIVES. THE GREAT-AUNT LIKES TO SEE US ALL THE TIME. WE WERE LATE THAT DAY WE KNEW WE WOULD BE AND WE ARE LIVING IT DOWN. BUT CLOUDS HAVE SILVER LININGS (THIS IS A QUOTATION) AND EVEN LESSONBOOKS HAVE LAST PAGES. IT’S NEARLY OVER NOW. IMPORTANT. START EARLY TO-MORROW BY THE WAY WE CAME. KEEP ON THE TOP OF THE MOOR HEADING DUE NORTH UNTIL YOU SEE FOUR FIRS IN WHAT USED TO BE A WOOD. FOLLOW THE WAY THEY POINT AND KEEP TO THE STONE WALL TILL YOU COME TO THE ROAD. THE RIVER IS TWO FIELDS AWAY ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE ROAD. LOOK FOR A STONE BARN. ABOUT A CABLE’S LENGTH ABOVE THE BARN IS AN OAK TREE CLOSE TO THE RIVER. HERE YOU WILL FIND A NATIVE WAR CANOE. BECKFOOT IS THE NAME ON ITS TRANSOM. . . .”

“It can’t really be a canoe,” said John, interrupting his reading. “It’s a rowing boat. Canoes haven’t got transoms. They’re pointed at each end.”

“Their natives may have their own kind of canoes,” said Titty. “Not all natives have the same.”

John went on reading.

“EMBARK WITHOUT FEAR AND DROP DOWN THE RIVER TO THE LAGOON. YOU KNOW IT. THE ONE WHERE ROGER THOUGHT THERE WERE OCTOPUSES.”

“I knew they were flowers afterwards,” said Roger. “Water-lilies.”

“Don’t interrupt the captain,” said Titty. “Do go on.”

John read on.

“CROSS THE LAGOON, RUN THE WAR CANOE INTO THE RUSHES ON THE RIGHT BANK OF THE RIVER. LAND ONE SCOUT IN THE WOOD. LET HIM CREEP THROUGH THE WOOD, GIVE THE OWL CALL AND WAIT. TRAVEL LIGHT BUT WITH TWO DAYS’ FOOD AND BAGS FOR SLEEPING AT NIGHT. KANCHENJUNGA BECKONS. WE’VE GOT A ROPE. WE’RE HIDING THE WAR CANOE FOR YOU TO-NIGHT. BY THE OAK. YOU CAN’T MISS IT. DON’T BE SEEN BY THE NATIVES. PRETTY GOOD THE PARROT. HE ALWAYS CHEWS UP ARROWS IF THEY HAVE HIS FEATHERS IN THEM. DO NOT FAIL US.

CAPTAIN NANCY BLACKETT

MATE PEGGY BLACKETT

PRISONERS OF WAR. BUT NOT FOR LONG.

SWALLOWS AND AMAZONS FOR EVER!”

“Is that the end?” said Roger.

“That’s all,” said John.

The explorers looked at each other.

“Do you think it’s all right?” said Susan at last.

“Well, what could be wrong?” said John. “It’s all on dry land. There won’t be any night sailing. It doesn’t make any difference where we sleep so long as the able-seaman and the boy get to bed in proper time.” He knew at once what were the sort of questions that were bothering Susan.

The able-seaman and the boy listened breathlessly.

“Then there’s the milk,” said Susan. “It’s no good carrying two days’ milk with us, especially if it’s as hot as it’s been to-day.”

“There must be lots of farms in the valley of the Amazon,” said John, “and Nancy and Peggy are sure to know them. We can get milk anywhere, only we may have to take our own can.”

“But what about leaving the camp for a whole night.”

“We won’t,” said Titty. “Peter Duck’ll look after it. We’ll stow everything in Peter Duck’s cave. It’ll be safe enough there.”

“What about the parrot?”

“He’ll keep Peter Duck company. I’ll leave him a tremendous lot of food and water and put him in the cave, too. He won’t mind having a little extra sleep, just for once. Or he’ll keep watch and watch about with Peter Duck. I expect he’s lived in lots of caves before, real pirate ones.”

“And you know we’ve never tried sleeping in the bags without any tents. What if it pours?”

“So long as it doesn’t rain, it’ll be all right. If it looks like rain, we won’t go.” John dived into his tent and came out again at once. “The barometer’s as steady as it can be. And there’s another thing. Captain Flint would never have finished the mast up and left a message for me to hurry with the polishing and oiling if Swallow wasn’t nearly ready. Painted, I should think. And in weather as hot as this she’ll dry fast. We may have her any day. And we can’t climb mountains and sail at the same time. If we’re going to climb Kanchenjunga at all it would be a good thing to do it while we’re up here.”

“Mother did say she didn’t see why we shouldn’t climb it if we wanted to,” said Susan, and the others knew that she was coming round.

Just before settling down for the night they went to the Watch Tower Rock, climbed its steepest side, just for practice, and stood on the top of it, all four of them, looking over the moorland towards the distant hills. The sun was dropping behind them. Already the peak of Kanchenjunga began to look as if it had been cut out of dark purple cardboard. To the right and to the left of it were other hills, and somewhere over the edge of the moor the explorers knew they would find the valley of the Amazon River. Farther round to the right they could see the edges of the forest, and far beyond them glimpses of the lake and the hills behind Rio.

“When the Amazons came over the moor, we saw them first over there, beyond that rock,” said Titty, pointing to a jagged rock about half a mile away in the heather.

“But not so near,” said Roger.

“That’s the way we’ll go,” said John. “It’s just about in a line between here and the northern side of Kanchenjunga.” He laid the compass on the rock and waited till the needle steadied. “North-north-west’s about it. We’ll go to the rock and then strike north.”

High overhead there was a creaking noise, like someone very quickly swinging a big door that needs oil in its hinges. They looked up.

“Swans,” said John at once.

There were five of them, great white birds with their long necks outstretched before them, flying fast with steady, powerful wing-flaps towards the setting sun.

“Where are they going?” said Roger.

“There’s another lake somewhere over there,” said John.

Over there to the west there were far dim hills beyond the rim of heather that shut them in like the horizon at sea. Beyond the heather was the unknown.

“Perhaps the swans can see the water,” said Titty, “flying as high as that.”

“I expect they can,” said John.

The swans seemed to fall into the distance, and when they could be seen no more, the explorers climbed down from the Watch Tower Rock and walked gravely back to the camp in Swallowdale, thinking of what was before them.

They sat talking round the fire much later than usual. As Susan said, it was always the way on the night before an early start. There was so much to think of that it would have been useless to try to sleep. The stars were clear in the sky before they went to bed.

Long after the lantern in each tent had been blown out, John sat up, took his knapsack and crawled out again into the open. He pulled his sleeping-bag after him. Rummaging under the clothes in his knapsack he found the thin waterproof covering of the sleeping-bag which, in the tent, he did not use. He put the sleeping-bag into it, so that he would not need a groundsheet. He got back into his sleeping-bag, wriggled about in it till he had found a comfortable place for his bones, and settled down once more. His knapsack, which was still pretty well stuffed, made his pillow.

“What are you doing?” This was Susan’s voice in the dark.

“Trying what it’s going to be like without tents.”

“Let’s all try,” said Roger.

“Why aren’t you asleep?” said Susan.

“Can you see the stars?” asked Titty.

“Yes,” said John.

“I wonder if the prisoners of war can see them from their cells.”

“They aren’t in cells at all,” said John.

“If they can’t get out when they want, I expect it feels as if they were.”

“Good night,” said John.

“Good night, good night, good night,” came from the three tents in which there were still explorers. The fourth tent was empty, and John, lying comfortably stretched in his sleeping-bag, with his head on his knapsack, was looking up at the stars and feeling less like sleep than ever. At least he thought he did not feel like sleep.

After a bit he wondered whether counting stars would work as well as counting sheep going through a gap in a hedge. That was what mother used to tell him to do when he was a little boy. He snuggled down in the sleeping-bag, so that only his nose was over the edge of it and began to count the stars in the Milky Way. But he had not time, really, to count the bigger stars in more than a few inches of it. It may have been the counting that closed his eyes for him, or it may have been the hard day’s work on the new mast with the sandpaper and the linseed oil.