Читать книгу Pigeon Post - Arthur Ransome - Страница 14

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In the morning they bathed in the river.

“It’ll be the last chance,” said John.

“Except for anybody who comes to bring back the pigeons,” said Nancy. “Somebody’ll have to come every fourth day.”

“Poor beast,” said Roger.

“All right on a dromedary,” said Nancy. “And we’ve got two.”

“Dromedaries?” said Roger.

“Bicycles,” said Nancy. “Come on. I’ll race you across the river and back.”

But, last chance though it was, nobody made the most of it. Nancy and John and Susan kept remembering things and reminding each other lest they should forget them later. Dick wanted a final look at the article on gold in the Encyclopædia. Peggy wanted to make sure that Timothy had not arrived during the night, and was going to telephone to the railway station. Dorothea was a little worried lest she and Dick should not be able to pack their tents as neatly as the more experienced explorers. Titty, looking up at the hills and thinking of the long march before them, was eager to be already on the way. Roger had just been promised that he might go over the dromedaries with an oil-can and see that their tyres were pumped up. It was impossible just to swim and float in the morning sunshine as if nobody had anything else of which to think.

Ten minutes after breakfast was over, the camp was a wreck. Tents were being rolled up, tent-pegs gathered into bags, tent-ropes made up into neat hanks for easy stowage. Susan was putting out the camp-fire in the bushes with kettlefuls of water brought from the river.

“Giminy,” said Nancy, looking at the lawn, all scarred with the marks of torn up tent-pegs. “It’s a good thing the G.A. isn’t here to see that.”

“Lots worse than daisies,” said Roger.

“Never mind,” said Mrs. Blackett. “It’ll have cured itself by the time we’ve got the house straight. But perhaps it is a good thing Aunt Maria can’t see it now.”

They had hoped to get off right away, but the wrecking of the camp was only the beginning of getting ready. There were a hundred things to do. The handcart was waiting in the stableyard with the dromedaries, but it was very soon clear that the expedition had more baggage than it could carry. More and more things joined the waiting pile. A big wooden pigeon-cage, with wire netting in front and a slanting roof, was lifted up and made fast on the handcart with a loose end from the big coil of alpine rope. Bags of tick beans, Indian corn and maple peas for the pigeons were slung on underneath. Boxes of tinned foods joined the pigeon-cage. The handcart looked already as if it could hold no more while the big pile of baggage had hardly been touched. Every other minute one of the workmen came out of the house to ask Mrs. Blackett this or that. And Mrs. Blackett was going through a list with Susan and at the same time trying to answer not only the questions of the workmen but also those of the prospectors.

“What about our sleeping-bags?”

“Do the tents go on the handcart?”

“Can’t we hang the cooking things on the dromedaries?”

“Titty, where’s your ground-sheet? Oh, where is Titty?”

“She’s in Captain Flint’s room with Dick.”

“Where’s Peggy’s pillow?”

“Look here,” said Mrs. Blackett. “Don’t all talk at once. You needn’t carry anything you don’t want. I’ve got to go up to see Mrs. Tyson before you can begin to unpack, and I can take as much baggage as ever you like in Rattletrap.”

Nancy hesitated, and then made up her mind.

“That’ll make things a lot easier,” she said. “And after all, we could bring it all ourselves, but that would mean making two journeys, and we’ve no time to lose. It isn’t as if it was just going to the North Pole or climbing Kanchenjunga or anything like that. It’s serious business, with no pretence about it. We’ve got to find that gold before Captain Flint comes back, and he’s on the way already.”

They pushed the old car out into the yard, and when they had crammed it with stores and bedding, things began to look a little more hopeful, though there was still plenty left to be carried by the dromedaries. By that time three parts of the morning were gone, and it was clear that there could be no hope of starting till after the mid-day meal.

Nancy dashed off to Captain Flint’s room and found Dick busy copying out paragraphs from the Encyclopædia into his note-book.

“Look here, Dick,” she began, and broke off.

“Good for you, Titty,” she said. “That looks jolly fine.”

Titty, who felt that it was rather like desertion to go off without waiting for the arrival of Timothy, had hurriedly made some garlands of marigolds, and with red and blue pencil had drawn the letters of “WELCOME HOME” on the lid of an old shoe-box, cut them out, strung them on cotton, and was now hanging them with the garlands on the front of the armadillo’s sleeping-hutch.

“Look here, Dick,” said Nancy, glancing round the shelves of her uncle’s room. “Is there anything else we want for mining, besides the hammers?”

“I was thinking about that,” said Dick. “If we do find gold, we’ll have to crush it and pan it, and we’ll want a crushing mill. He’s got one, but it’s a most awful weight.”

They looked at a big iron mortar and a huge pestle, the handle of which was bound with rags. Nancy lifted first the pestle, then the mortar itself.

“Jolly heavy,” she said. “But we’re sure to need them.”

They were carried out to the yard, and wedged on the handcart between two boxes.

“Gosh!” said Roger, when he saw them. “What about pick-axes, too?”

“Borrow them,” said Nancy. “But I bet no one’s got a crushing mill but us.”

Things were looking a good deal more hopeful by the time cook called them in to eat cold mutton and salad in the dismantled dining-room.

“We’re practically ready,” said Peggy.

“I’m glad of that,” said Mrs. Blackett.

And soon after they had finished up a cold rice pudding and a lot of bananas and gone out for a last look round to see that nothing had been forgotten, Dorothea ran back into the house to tell Mrs. Blackett that the expedition was starting.

John, who was taking first turn at pushing the handcart, had trundled it out into the road. Titty and Dorothea took the ends of the short tow-ropes to help pull it along. Nancy and Peggy were holding the heads of the heavily laden dromedaries. Susan was still making fast some of the baggage. Dick bolted back to the study for Captain Flint’s copy of Phillips on Metals. He came back with the red book.

“I’ll take great care of it,” he said to Mrs. Blackett.

“All right,” she said, “so long as you keep it dry . . . and it doesn’t look as if we’re going to have any rain before next year,” she added, looking at the dusty road and up at the clear blazing sky.

“Half a minute,” said Nancy. “Somebody take my drom. I’ve forgotten the blue beads.”

She gave her bicycle to Susan, and was gone. They could hear her charging up the carpetless stairs. She was out again in a moment with two small necklaces of blue glass beads, which she hung on the lamp-brackets of the dromedaries.

“Every camel in the East wears them,” she said, “to keep off the evil eye, and our dromedaries will need them extra badly to save them from getting punctures.”

“How are we going to get them up the hills?” asked Roger, looking at the dromedaries, slung all over with baskets and bundles.

“You’ll pull,” said Nancy. “They always have a little donkey to lead the caravan.”

At the very last minute Peggy leant her dromedary against the wall, and raced up to the pigeon-loft for the tin of hemp and canary seed, a pinch of which was allowed to good pigeons for a treat.

They were off.

“Now, Susan,” said Mrs. Blackett. “I’m counting on you to look after them. . . . And, Nancy, I’ll be coming along as soon as I can. Don’t try to rush things with Mrs. Tyson. Don’t unpack anything till I’ve seen her and heard what she has to say. She may say she doesn’t want to have you at all. . . .”

“All right, mother. . . . We’ve promised.”

“About that bell,” said Dick. “You do know how to turn it off when you catch the pigeon? You see if you don’t, it’ll ring until the batteries run down. . . .”

“And until we are all driven mad,” said Mrs. Blackett. “Oh, yes. I won’t forget. Pull down the swinging bit, and push the slide across till lunch-time next day. Then pull it back again, and wait with cotton wool in both ears until the next pigeon rings the alarm. . . .”

“You won’t really need cotton wool,” said Dick. “But, of course, you could make it not so loud by muffling the bell with a cloth or something. . . .”

“Never mind,” said Mrs. Blackett. “I was only joking. I shall want to hear it.”

“Good-bye, mother. Good-bye. Good-bye. . . .”

The caravan moved off along the road. As they turned the corner where the fir trees hid the Beckfoot gate, they looked back for the last time, to see Mrs. Blackett and cook, who had run out at the last minute to see them go, waving their handkerchiefs. The next moment they could see them no more. The Swallows, Amazons and D.’s Mining Company was fairly on its way.

“I can’t believe we’re really off,” said Titty.

“If it wasn’t for Susan, we wouldn’t be,” said Nancy. “Susan and Dick. . . . And the pigeons,” she added, looking at Homer, Sophocles and Sappho, balancing on their perches in the big cage as the handcart swayed along.

For the first half-mile it was easy going, but, when they had passed the place where the road round the head of the lake turned off over the bridge, things became more difficult. Their own road was narrow and winding, going up the valley close to the dried-up little river. Sometimes it almost touched the river bank, and then it would turn suddenly away to climb round a lump of rock only to drop steeply on the other side till it met the river once more. The handcart, with John pushing, Susan lending a hand, and Dorothea and Titty hauling in front, seemed light enough on level ground, but weighed as much as a steam-roller the moment it was going up-hill, and was inclined to get out of control as soon as it began to go down. It was the same with the dromedaries. The donkeys, Dick and Roger, had no sooner stopped pulling in front than they had to start holding back from behind.

Everybody, except John and Nancy, who had to mend it, was very glad when Peggy’s dromedary, in spite of its blue beads, punctured its front tyre. This meant a rest, a small ration of chocolate, and the paddling of dusty feet in the shallow pools that were left among the stones of the riverbed.

The puncture was mended and they went on. The valley narrowed. Steep woods came down on the left of the road, and they passed the place where Titty had come down with the charcoal-burner the year before, to ride home on the end of a felled tree pulled by three huge horses.

“Let’s go up and see if the wigwam’s still there,” said Roger.

“It isn’t,” said Nancy. “At least, no charcoal-burners. They’re miles away at the low end of the lake.”

On the right was the river, and on the further side of it the fell, all rock and bracken, rose steeply into the sky.

“Greenbanks,” said Nancy. “We were up there yesterday. High Topps ends just about there.”

“Couldn’t we cross the river and go straight up?” said Roger.

“Got to get to Tyson’s first,” said Peggy. “I say, do pull back a bit. The beast’s trying to run away.”

Beyond Greenbanks, the valley opened out a little, and there were fields on their left, looking brown and parched, with cows flicking flies with their tails. On their right the fellside was wooded, and the trees came right down to the river.

“How much further?” said Roger.

ON THE ROAD

“It’s a good thing you didn’t come yesterday,” said Susan. “We did all this twice, and a lot more, besides exploring on the Topps looking for water.”

They were climbing all the time now, and nearing the head of the valley. There were waterfalls in the river, though hardly any water was coming down. Ahead of them, the woods seemed to stretch across from side to side, closing the valley with a green curtain.

“We’re nearly there,” said John. “Stick to it, Titty. Atkinson’s is up at the top where the road goes through those woods. Tyson’s farm is this side of them, down at the bottom.”

“It’s such a pull,” said Roger.

“Let’s have a chanty,” said John, and Titty, though she had not much breath, started “Hanging Johnny,” and the rest of them, shouting the chorus and stamping their feet on the road, felt handcart and dromedaries suddenly lighter.

“They call me Hanging Johnny,

Haul away, boys, Haul away.

They say I hangs for money,

So Hang, boys, Hang.

And first I hangs me mother;

Haul away, boys, Haul away.

Me sister and me brother,

So Hang, boys, Hang.

And next I hangs me granny,

Haul away, boys, Haul away.

I hangs her up so canny,

So Hang, boys, Hang.

A rope, a beam and a ladder,

Haul away, boys, Haul away.

And I’ll hang you all togedder,

So Hang, boys, Hang.”

Then they tried “With one man, with two men, we mow the hay together,” but when they had got to “ninety men and a hundred men” they gave it up and went back to “Hanging Johnny.” They had gone through it for a second time, when Titty felt that the chorus was somehow fading away. Nancy had stopped singing, and John, and now Susan. . . . She stopped singing herself. What was it they were looking at? Were those chimneys, and a roof, under the wood at the other side of the river?