“We might not hear the foghorn as far away as this,” said Susan. “I’m going to turn back fairly soon.”
“Not yet,” said Peggy.
“We ought to hurry on and get ahead of them again,” said Dorothea.
“No hurrying,” said Susan urgently. “We’re not doing any harm. Just going for a walk. We’ve got to look as if we didn’t know they were after us.”
A whistle shrilled behind them. They swung round. All four of them saw a man high on a rock above the cart track.
“He may have been hidden there when we passed,” said Titty.
“We can’t go back that way,” said Susan.
“We don’t need to,” said Peggy. “When it comes to going back we’ll cross the valley and go back down the other side.”
“Last time,” said Dorothea, “dogs came charging down at us out of the heather.”
“The Gaels called them back,” said Titty.
“And then that old man came shouting after us,” said Dorothea.
“We bolted like hares,” said Titty.
Susan looked across the valley. “Dot,” she said, “how long does Dick take to photograph a bird?”
“I don’t know,” said Dorothea. “But he said it wouldn’t be any good until the sun had gone over. You see, in the morning it would be shining into the camera.”
“Anyhow, he’ll have got his photographs by now. Give him another half hour to get home and then we’ll work across the valley and start back.”
Susan spoke in a whisper to Peggy.
“Right,” said Peggy. “Of course they can’t go the lick we can. Look here, you two. We’re going to spread out. Susan and I’ll keep along the track, but you two had better begin edging down into the bottom. You won’t have so far to go, if we have to bolt for it.”
“Go on, Titty. Don’t wait,” said Susan.
“But we don’t turn back yet,” said Dorothea.
“No. No,” said Peggy. “We’ll go on as long as we possibly can.”
Titty and Dorothea left the track and went slantwise down the hillside into the valley. Peggy and Susan strolled slowly on along the track, trying not to show in any way that they knew that an invisible army of stalkers was moving with them.
It was perhaps twenty minutes later when two loud whistles on the hillside startled them again.
“I say, Peggy,” said Susan, “I wish I knew what we ought to do.”
They stopped and looked down into the valley. Down there, on the mosses, Dorothea and Titty had stopped too, and were looking up at them for orders. Deer were moving this way and that, for no reason that they could see.
Suddenly, with a sigh of relief, Susan caught sight of Nancy’s red cap on the top of the ridge across the valley.
“There’s Nancy, and John,” she said. “Does it mean we can start back? Look, she’s waving.”
“Signalling,” said Peggy. “Gosh, and I haven’t a handkerchief.”
“I have.”
“Quick,” said Peggy.
On the other side of the valley, they watched the flick, flick of white.
“Morse,” said Peggy. “Bother it. I wish she’d semaphore. Whatever is she doing? All the same letter. Why doesn’t she get going and say something. I’ve given her the answering signal. Hullo. Short… short… long … short… short. Long. One U after another.”
“Danger signal,” said Susan. “It means, ‘you are standing into danger!’”
“We know we are,” said Peggy.
“Perhaps John and Nancy can see more than we can,” said Susan.
“With the stalkers all over the place, what do they want us to do?”
A whistle shrilled again on the hillside behind them, answered instantly from higher up the valley. From behind rocks, from out of the heather, Gaels were sprouting into sight. Frightened deer were streaming down from the upper slopes.
Below in the valley, Titty and Dorothea were looking this way and that.
“Why haven’t they the sense to bolt across to Nancy?” said Peggy.
“They can’t,” said Susan. “Look! Look! We’d better be all together.” She blew her own whistle and beckoned.
“Gosh!” said Peggy. “It’s Roger’s dogmudgeon himself.”
Titty and Dorothea had seen him too, the grey-bearded giant of a man, from whom they had fled once before, the same grim man who had watched them put to sea, the same who had come down to the water’s edge last night. He was close to them. Susan was beckoning. They had heard the mate’s whistle. They waited no longer, but ran to join her. The dogmudgeon turned and came after them.
“Signal again,” said Susan. “Signal to Nancy. John’ll know what to do. Quick. Tell them we want help. Three shorts and a long one. Go on. Do it again.”
CHAPTER XXII
THE ROUND-UP
SQUELCHING THROUGH THE soft moss of the flats, stumbling, picking themselves up, and stumbling again as they struggled up the heather-covered slopes, Titty and Dorothea ran to join Susan and Peggy, who stood waiting while the Gaels closed in. The deserted valley was full of movement. Nancy’s red cap, Gaels, deer … wherever one looked something was astir.
“The dogmudgeon’s coming after us,” panted Titty, looking over her shoulder, “and John and Nancy’ll be too late to do any good.”
“I can’t go any faster,” gasped Dorothea.
“Stick to it,” said Titty.
By the time they came breathlessly up to the cart track on the hillside, Susan and Peggy were already prisoners. Half-a-dozen wild-looking Gaels were standing round them.
Susan was talking, rather loudly, like someone talking to the deaf.
“I’m very sorry if we were trespassing,” she was saying. “We didn’t see any notices. We haven’t done any harm really, only walking. If we have done any harm it was only by mistake….” She faltered into silence and Titty and Dorothea knew that she had been talking for some time. The Gaels stared at her with grave faces but said never a word.
Peggy started the moment Susan stopped and the Gaels stared at her instead of Susan.
“Look here,” she said. “It’s quite all right. We want to get to a place from which we can see the Atlantic. You know … The Atlantic Ocean … America … Over there….” She pointed vaguely towards the hills and all the Gaels swung round but seeing only John and Nancy hurrying across the valley they turned again to Peggy as if they were listening hard and wanted to know what she was saying.
“We’re here,” said Titty.
“I wish the others would come quick,” said Susan.
“They don’t understand a word of English,” said Peggy desperately.
The prisoners and their captors waited in silence, watching John and Nancy who were already climbing up out of the valley. They had passed quite close to the dogmudgeon, who had not tried to stop them but was striding steadily after them, seeming not to hurry but moving nearly as fast.
“It’s all right, Susan,” said John, racing up to the cart track and slipping through the Gaels who made room for him to join the other prisoners.
“Oh, John, John, have you hurt yourself?” said Susan. “What have you done to your face?”
John, who had forgotten the burnt cork, wiped his face with a hand and made it worse. The Gaels stared at him. Two of them spoke urgently to each other.
“They don’t know any English,” said Peggy.
“It’s all right,” said John impatiently. “Only Dick’s spectacles. What’s happened?”
“Let me do the talking,” said Nancy, but even she for a moment found nothing to say to those silent Gaels who were looking now at their prisoners, and now up the ridge, as if they were waiting for somebody else.
The dogmudgeon, that old, grey-bearded giant, came striding up to them. He stood, leaning on his long staff, and glowered at the prisoners from under bushy eyebrows. He moved a little closer, to peer into John’s face. There was nothing in his blue eyes to show what he was thinking. He asked a question in a language the prisoners kne
w must be Gaelic. One of the other Gaels answered him, and all of them turned and looked up the hillside and back along the track.
“How far do we have to go to see the Atlantic?” asked Nancy.
The dogmudgeon frowned at her. “You will be seeing the inside of a jail first,” he said after a pause.
“Oh good,” said Nancy. “We were afraid none of you knew English.”
“I do not need the English to see you driving our hinds.”
“But we didn’t. We were just walking,” said Susan.
The dogmudgeon turned his back on her. One of the younger Gaels spoke to another. They all turned. Titty plucked at Dorothea’s elbow. A boy in a kilt came leaping down the hillside towards them.
“It’s the young chieftain,” said Dorothea. “Now we’ll be all right.”
“How do you do?” said John, as the boy jumped down out of the heather on the track beside them.
“Well,” said Nancy cheerfully, “it’s been good fun while it lasted. You’ve caught us. One up to you. But now we’ve got to get back to our ship.”
The boy stared first at John, then at Nancy, but did not answer. He looked at the faces of the prisoners one after another.
“One missing,” he said in English. “There’s another boy, smaller.”
“Don’t tell him,” Dorothea almost squeaked, thinking of Dick.
“It’s Roger he means,” said Titty.
The boy spoke urgently and privately to the dogmudgeon. Then he swung round and went racing homewards along the cart track.
“Hullo! Hey! You! Stop!” cried Nancy angrily.
The boy turned.
“Half a minute,” said John.
“My father will be talking with you,” said the boy, and was off again at a steady trot.
“Marrch!” said the dogmudgeon.
“What do we do?” said Susan, but there was no need to ask, for the Gaels were on the move at once and the prisoners found themselves moving with them.
“Didn’t you hear?” said Nancy. “March. That’s what he said. And so we will. Simply grand. Nothing to worry about. That boy talks English. So will his father. We’ll get it all cleared up later on. Dick’s had lots of time to get his pictures, thanks to you. Nothing else matters.”
They spoke to each other in whispers, though the old dogmudgeon, who had shown that he knew English, was walking at the rear of the party, not close enough to the prisoners to hear what they were saying.
“How thanks to us?” said Dorothea.
“Well, look at them,” said Nancy, glancing round at the Gaels marching beside them, in front of them and behind them. “If you hadn’t brought the whole savage clan up here one of them would have been sure to spot Dick on the lake and then there’d have been a hullabaloo and in two seconds the egg-collector would have known just what he wanted.”
“We haven’t heard the foghorn,” said Titty.
“Neither have we, but that’s only because we’ve come so far. Dick’ll be in the Sea Bear by now, and Uncle Jim’ll be getting sails ready and cursing because he’s got to wait for us.”
“Did the egg-collector come after you?” asked Dorothea, almost running at Nancy’s side.
Nancy chuckled. “Better than that,” she said. “John blacked first-rate goggles round his eyes, and the old Dactyl thought he was Dick and sent a sailor chasing after us, thinking he’d see Dick going to his birds. He’s been safe in his motor boat all the time with no dinghy to take him ashore.”
“Where is the sailor now?” asked Dorothea, glancing across the valley.
“Caught us up at last,” said Nancy. “And had a good view of John’s face. He’s gone bolting back, miles too late. Every bit of the plan has worked out like we thought it would.”
“It’s only Roger I’m bothered about,” said Susan.
“Where is Roger?” said John.
“We lost him right at the beginning,” said Susan.
“I think he went back to the Pict-house,” said Titty. “Anyhow, the Gaels haven’t got him. That boy said there was one missing.”
“Probably back in the Sea Bear,” said Peggy, “having tea with Dick and Uncle Jim.”
“I wish we were,” said Susan. “These people are furious about something and I don’t know what.”
“Jiminy,” said Nancy presently. “If they’re going to move as fast as this, it’s lucky we’re not in chains.”
“They’re taking us straight to the castle,” said Dorothea.
“Good,” said Nancy. “That boy looks quite decent. Rather a waste really. We might have kidnapped him if we’d known and turned him into an ally. Barbecued Billygoats! We could have kept him prisoner in the Sea Bear. Pity it’s all over. But it doesn’t matter. We’ve done what we wanted to do.”
They were walking too fast to have breath to spare for argument. Presently even Nancy stopped talking. The prisoners trudged silently back along the track that climbed slowly up the ridge on the northern side of the valley, while the Gaels leaped through the heather above and below them and the tall, grey-bearded man, Roger’s dogmudgeon, strode along the track behind them, like a shepherd driving sheep.
It had seemed a very long way up the valley while the red herrings had been luring all possible enemies away so that after he had taken his photographs Dick could escape from the island unseen. The distance seemed much shorter now, with the Gaels walking as if they did not know that walking could tire anyone, and the prisoners hurrying in the midst of them, determined not to be shamed by the Gaels. Also, though the red herrings were prisoners, they walked in triumph, sure that their work was done. Cheerful grins passed from face to face, puzzling the Gaels who, for their part, were just as triumphant as their prisoners. Only Susan was troubled. John and Nancy seemed to think that two words of English talk would put things right, but Susan was not so sure. The wild-looking men and lads were walking beside them without a smile, and when she glanced back at the dour face of their leader she began to feel guilty without knowing what was the crime. Whatever it was, these people thought it was serious and, if that boy and his father thought the same, explaining was going to be difficult.
MAP SHOWING THEIR TRACKS
“Cheer up, Susan,” said Nancy. “It’s been a huge success.”
Susan tried to smile but could not. There was Roger to worry about as well as everything else.
Long ago they had lost sight of the young chieftain racing ahead of them to bring the news of their capture to the chief of the clan. Already they were nearing the foot of the valley and could see where the track turned through the gap in the top of the ridge. They could see Pict-house Hill and the lump on the top of it that had been a prehistoric dwelling. Below them in the valley were the two lochs with the little stream joining them. They passed the upper loch. A rise in the ground hid much of the lower loch, but they could see the island of the birds.
Titty suddenly stopped short and was run into by Peggy at her heels.
“Sorry,” she said. “I thought I saw something.”
“What?”
“Something moving by the Pict-house.”
“What sort of thing?”
“Roger,” whispered Titty, glancing at Susan. “But I can’t see anything now.”
Suddenly Dorothea grabbed Nancy’s elbow.
“Nancy, Nancy,” she whispered. “Dick’s in sight … rowing … on this side of the loch, between the island and the shore.”
Nancy’s head jerked, but she did not look round. “Don’t look that way,” she hissed. “Don’t take any notice at all. They may not spot him.”
“He’s in full view,” whispered Dorothea.
“Quick,” said Nancy sharply. “We’ve got to keep them all looking at us. Come on, all of you. Come on, John! I’ll race you to the gap!”
The prisoners broke into a weary gallop.
There was a chorus of shouts from the Gaels. In a moment some of them had closed in on the track in front of the prisoners, like sheep-dogs slowing down a
runaway herd.
“It’s no good,” said John. “They’ve seen him already.”
The prisoners stopped. Some of the Gaels were looking down towards the loch, so that there was no point in the prisoners not looking too. There was no sign of Dick and the folding boat.
“But I saw him,” said Dorothea. “Rowing this way. He must be close under the shore, and we can’t see him now because of those rocks.”
“Where’s the dogmudgeon?” said Peggy.
The prisoners looked at their guards. They looked both ways along the track; they looked up the ridge and down into the valley. The tall old Gael had disappeared, and, from the direction in which the others were looking, it was clear that he had gone just where the prisoners least wished that he should go.
Susan was the first to make up her mind what to do. “Don’t stop,” she said. “The sooner the Gaels take us to their chief the better. Till we’ve got things explained, we can’t do anything to help Dick.”
Nancy pulled herself together.
“Susan’s right,” she said. “If we all go charging down there, with the Gaels after us, hallooing like mad, it’ll undo everything we’ve done. We’ve kept the coast clear all day for Dick to take his pictures. He’s been a bit over long taking them. Not our fault. But what we’ve got to do now is to get the valley clear again with as little hallooing as possible. Bolting’s no good. Only makes them break into full cry. Come on. Sedate and proper. Pretend we’ve been invited wherever they’re taking us.”
“But Dick,” said Dorothea. “If he’s going to be made prisoner too, hadn’t we better wait for him?”
“No,” said Nancy firmly but hardly above a whisper.
“We’re a crowd here, for anybody to see. The sooner the valley’s empty the better. Keep on the march like a school crocodile. Pretend we haven’t noticed anything. Don’t look back.”
CHAPTER XXIII
SHIP’S NATURALIST
DICK’S WAS A very different day from that of the decoys and red herrings. He watched for a danger signal, saw Nancy and John quietly lying on a rock and knew that the coast was clear. He pushed through the reeds to the hidden boat, found her thwarts wet with dew, wiped a dry place for himself to sit, and poled her out, stirring the reeds and, no matter how he tried to avoid it, sending wide ripples chasing each other across the smooth water of the loch. If anyone were watching, he would see those ripples. The birds would see them too. Dick wished there were a little wind to make ripples everywhere so that his own would not be noticed. The best he could do would be to get to the island quickly and hide the boat again.