Pigeon Post

  “Three more days’ll do it,” said Nancy. “We can fend off Squashy for that long. But we mustn’t give him another chance of hunting about in the gulch.”

  They sat round the camp-fire, sipped the scalding cocoa and held council. By the time John and Roger went off to grope their way back to the gulch for the night, plans for the morrow had been made. Roger and Dorothea were to be trusted with the scouting. John, Susan and Nancy were to have a last go at the crushing and panning, and then begin gathering wood for the charcoal. Peggy, Titty and Dick were to go down to Beckfoot to do some shopping and borrowing. At least, it was not to be exactly borrowing, because, with things as they were, it had been decided that even at Beckfoot nothing more was to be said about the finding of the gold. That was why Peggy was to be one of the party. Neither Titty nor Dick had quite liked the idea of raiding Beckfoot and getting away with the bellows. They did not mind taking Captain Flint’s things, because it was for his sake they were wanted. But the burgling of Mrs Blackett’s bellows had to be done by one of Mrs Blackett’s daughters.

  “Anyway, Susan,” said Nancy, as she came down into the camp after watching the will-o’-the-wisp of John’s torch flickering its way across the Topps, “it’s a jolly good thing the able-seamen did go through. It would have been pretty awful if we’d gone across tomorrow with the gold dust and given the whole show away.”

  CHAPTER XXVII

  A RUN ON BLOWPIPES

  TWO dusty dromedaries turned in at the Beckfoot gate. Peggy was riding her own, standing on the pedals, with Titty sitting on the seat behind her. Dick was riding Nancy’s and finding it rather big in the bone, even after the seat had been let down as far as it would go. Two or three times he had nearly come off, though that was mostly because he had been thinking of something else. It was all very well, Nancy labelling him Professor and expecting him to know everything. He had made a sketch of a furnace, partly copied from the book, but he had not yet thought out how to hold a crucible steady in the middle of the red-hot charcoal.

  Squashy or no Squashy, he would very much have liked to have a talk with Slater Bob.

  They stopped in the stableyard.

  “We’ll shove the droms against the wall,” said Peggy to Dick. “They’ll be all right here … Hullo, Cook!”

  “Well, Miss Peggy, and you’re a stranger … And how’s Miss Ruth …?”

  “Nancy’s all right,” said Peggy. “And how are you? We’ve brought nothing to eat …”

  “I thought Cook couldn’t be talking to anybody else …” Mrs Blackett was leaning from an upstairs window. “Tired of prospecting? And how are you, Titty? And you, Dick? There are letters for both of you. Any more miners about? No? Did you say we had anything for them to eat, Cook?”

  “There’s always dry bread, ma’am.”

  “We’ll give them just that,” said Mrs Blackett. “Oh yes, and Dick, it’s a good thing you’ve come … That bell of yours isn’t what it was. Yesterday it only gave a tinkle and stopped. If I hadn’t happened to be in the passage, your pigeon might have come home and nobody the wiser. He was very late, too …”

  “We didn’t send him off till pretty late,” said Dick. “You see …” And then he caught Peggy’s eye, and remembered. After all, as Nancy had said, everybody had got back out of the hill all right, and there was no point in stirring people up about it afterwards.

  They went through the kitchen door and the back passage into a house that still looked rather as if tornadoes and hurricanes had been chasing each other from room to room. Mrs Blackett came running down the carpetless stairs, kissed Peggy and Titty and shook hands with Dick.

  “Here are your letters,” she said. “One for Dick, one for Dorothea, one for Titty … Oh yes, and two coloured postcards of the River Plate for a pair of wild nieces.”

  “From Uncle Jim!” said Peggy, who, like Dick, had something on her mind, and was, indeed, already working round towards the drawing-room door. She took her postcard and looked at it as if she had nothing else to think of. “Nothing about Timothy?” she said. “And nothing’s come?”

  “Only the crates,” said Mrs Blackett. Dick, with his letter half-opened, saw the big printed labels on the two huge crates that were standing in the hall. “International Mining Equipment Corporation.” He wished he could have seen inside. “I rang up the station again only yesterday,” Mrs Blackett went on. “But they had nothing and there isn’t even a word on your postcards. I do wish your uncle would write letters …”

  “He’s drawn his elephant flag at the masthead of one of the ships in the river,” said Peggy.

  “It wouldn’t have taken him half so long just to say what ship he was sailing in and when she would arrive,” said her mother.

  “Mother sends her love,” said Titty, “And so does Bridget. And mother hopes we aren’t being too much of a nuisance. We aren’t, are we, being right away … I mean until now, of course.”

  “Not yet, anyway,” said Mrs Blackett. “As good as gold. You’ll deserve all you find … Come out of the drawing-room, Peggy. We’ve just begun getting it straight.”

  Peggy had dodged through the door only for a moment, but it had been long enough. She was out again in the hall, and, without turning round, slipped away with a quick crab-like motion, and disappeared through the door into the passage.

  Dick, reading slowly through his letter, saw nothing of what had happened, but Titty, who had darted through hers, caught a glimpse of what Peggy was hiding behind her. “Good as gold?” Her cheeks went hot. Oh well, nobody would be likely to want to light the drawing-room fire right in the middle of summer.

  “And what are your plans?” Mrs Blackett was saying.

  “We’ve got to go across to Rio,” said Titty. “We’ve used up all our torch batteries.”

  “And there may be other things, too,” said Dick. “We’ve got to look in Captain Flint’s room first.”

  Peggy was back in the hall. “You’re not spring-cleaning the study, are you?” she said.

  “He likes that left just as it is,” said her mother. “Something always seems to get lost if we even go over things with a duster. But I’m glad you’re going across to the village. It’ll save me going round. I’ll make out a list for you … I’ll just see what Cook wants. And you’d better have lunch before going.”

  Peggy looked at Dick.

  “Several things to look up,” he said. “And the bell to put right.”

  Mrs Blackett was gone. “Well, Cook, isn’t that lucky? What about our grocery list? Caster sugar running short … And what’s this? Cinnamon?” They could hear her chattering cheerfully in the kitchen as they went into Captain Flint’s deserted study.

  *

  “Got the bellows, anyway,” said Peggy.

  “I saw,” said Titty.

  *

  Ten days had passed since they had last seen the study. There was a smell of long-dead marigolds. Dick did not notice it. He went straight to the glass-fronted shelf where Captain Flint kept all kinds of apparatus, weighing scales, bottles, filters, spirit-lamps, and test-tubes in rows of six.

  “Good,” he said. “He’s got some splendid crucibles. I thought I’d seen them …”

  But Titty and Peggy hardly heard him. They were looking at the faded garlands that decorated the armadillo’s sleeping-hutch.

  “Oh,” said Titty, “everything’s dead. It’s really lucky he hasn’t come.”

  “Those postcards only came yesterday,” said Peggy. “Timothy may turn up any time if Uncle Jim sent him by the same boat. They always get the mails off first.”

  “‘Welcome Home’ still looks all right,” said Titty, “but we must put some fresh flowers.”

  “If we put them in water, they’d keep fresher than garlands,” said Peggy.

  “I’ll tell you what,” said Titty. “He’d probably feel more at home with tropical plants …”

  “There’s a cactus we could borrow for him,” said Peggy.

  “He’ll love it,”
said Titty. “And isn’t there a palm in the drawing-room? … and some ferns … do you think if we asked? …”

  “Jolly good to get them in here out of the dust,” said Peggy. “Mother’ll be delighted.”

  “We’ll make him a forest glade,” said Titty.

  And so, while Dick was looking up blast furnaces in the Encyclopædia and comparing the pictures with the sketch he made, the faded garlands were thrown away, and Timothy’s hutch, with its “Welcome Home” in red and blue cardboard letters, began to look altogether different, standing in the shade of a palm tree, with a prickly cactus by the front door and half a dozen spreading ferns to make a background of tropical greenery.

  “I think we ought to take the biggest of the crucibles,” said Dick.

  “Take the lot,” said Peggy, standing at a little distance to get a better view of the armadillo’s forest home.

  “Even the biggest’s rather small,” said Dick. “But I think it’ll do … But I can’t find a blowpipe anywhere.”

  “What does it look like?”

  “Just a pipe to blow through,” said Dick. “Big at one end, with a very small jet at the other …”

  “He’s probably got it with him,” said Peggy, after poking about in the shelf, and startling Dick by nearly dropping the whole nest of crucibles on the floor.

  “I’ll buy one in Rio,” said Dick. “It’ll always come in useful.”

  Mrs Blackett stood in the doorway, looking at the forest.

  “Oh, Peggy!” she said, and then laughed in spite of herself.

  “It won’t hurt them,” said Peggy.

  “I must say,” said Mrs Blackett, “it looks lovely. It’ll really be a pity if the wretched animal’s died on the voyage … How are you getting on, Dick? What about the pigeon-bell? Lunch in another half-hour.”

  *

  Dick hurried out to the pigeon-loft. One of his wires must have slipped. Nothing much else could have gone wrong. He would put it right at once. He hurried out, with his mind still full of what the Encyclopædia had said about the blast furnaces. He climbed the ladder up to the loft and opened the door.

  “Hullo, Sophocles,” he said, thinking really of something else. “Hullo, Homer! …” and stopped. Sophocles … Homer … Two pigeons were fluttering about his head as he bent to look at his wires … Two … But … Surely … Oh, well, Titty would know … He went back to the outer door at the top of the ladder.

  “Titty,” he called.

  “Hey!”

  They were both just crossing the yard. Peggy had a handful of peas as a treat for Sophocles.

  “How many pigeons ought there to be?” said Dick.

  “One,” said Titty. “We’ve got two at home.”

  “But there’s two here.”

  Peggy hurled herself up the ladder.

  “It’s Homer,” she said.

  “He must have escaped,” said Dick.

  “Look at his leg,” cried Titty.

  “Shut the slide,” shouted Peggy. “Quick, Dick, you gummock. Don’t let him out. He’s got a message. Phiu … Phiu … Phiu …” She called to the pigeons, and they quieted down, and came nearer to look at the peas. In another moment she had caught Homer and pulled a rolled slip of thin paper from under the elastic band on his leg.

  Trembling fingers unrolled it.

  On it was the usual skull and two short sentences:

  “ENEMY IN FULL RETREAT. SCOUTS SAW HIM DRIVING AWAY.”

  “If he’s gone,” said Dick, with great relief, “we’ll be able to get Slater Bob to help.”

  Ten minutes later the wires had been put right. Homer, taken outside and bustling in again for more peas, rang the bell in the kitchen passage so loudly that cook nearly dropped yet another pile of plates. Dick, his work done, went into lunch with a very happy smile. Mrs Blackett noticed it.

  “Hullo, Dick,” she said. “What’s happened? Ought we to be wishing you ‘Many Happy Returns of the Day’?”

  “It’s jolly good news,” said Peggy. “Nancy’s sent Homer to let us know the enemy’s gone.”

  Mrs Blackett seemed pleased, too. “I’m glad he’s gone before he met Nancy,” she said.

  *

  But they did not enjoy the good news for long. After a lunch that was not dry bread after all, during which Mrs Blackett told them just what shops to go to and what to get – “Don’t get oranges, if they look dried up … I haven’t put down what brand of chocolate … Isn’t there a special kind that Roger likes? … Titty knows it … the kind that breaks into squares …” – they rowed across to Rio in the hot, windless afternoon. Peggy and Titty went off with two baskets apiece, leaving Dick at the door of the chemist’s shop to buy batteries and blowpipe.

  The chemist’s shop was rather crowded. Visitors were buying things to save their skins from sunburn, and things to save their throats from hay fever. But for Dick, chemist’s shops were always interesting, and he did not mind having to wait his turn. He found a place where he could see behind the piles of patent medicines on the counter to a laboratory bench where a man was making up a prescription. Dick watched him juggling with test-tubes and glass-stoppered bottles. After a minute or two he thought it might be his turn, but the man who was selling things was still busy and there seemed to be more people in the shop than ever. A lot of new people had come in. Close to Dick were some very long and very baggy flannel trousers. Money was being nervously jingled in a pocket. “Er … Er …” Twice the man who owned those trousers had made a shy beginning of asking for what he wanted. Dick looked up above the trousers … A grey flannel coat hanging very loosely … an old brown hat … Dick looked anxiously towards the door … What would the others think he ought to do? And then, before Dick could do anything at all, the man behind the counter dabbed some red sealing-wax on a pill-box done up in white paper, handed it to another customer, and turned to Squashy Hat …

  “Are you being attended to, sir?”

  “Er … Er …” said Squashy Hat. “I wonder if you have such a thing as a small blowpipe …”

  Dick’s mouth fell open. He shut it again. He took off his spectacles and wiped them. His fingers shook so that he nearly dropped his spectacles.

  The man behind the counter had offered Squashy Hat a handful of blowpipes to choose from.

  “They’re all a little dusty,” he was saying. “It isn’t often we’re asked for them.”

  “This’ll do very well,” said Squashy Hat. “How much did you say? Oh no. No need to wrap it up …” He slipped the blowpipe into his breast pocket, paid for it and worked his way nervously out between customers and narrow counters hung with sponge bags and hot-water bottles, and piled with thermos flasks and tooth-brushes and patent medicines.

  “And what can I do for you?”

  Dick pulled himself together.

  “I want a blowpipe, please,” he said.

  “Well, that is a funny thing,” said the man behind the counter. “We don’t get asked for them, not once in a blue moon. And I’ve just sold one this minute, and now another. And what are you wanting a blowpipe for? Egg-collecting?”

  “No,” said Dick, flushing red. But the man could hardly know that he was interested in birds and hated egg-collectors.

  “It isn’t the time of year, is it?” said the man. “Now I wonder what that gentleman …” But there were other customers waiting, and he gave Dick his blowpipe and took his shilling, and, before Dick had had time to answer his question, was telling an old lady with a bad cold that there was nothing like Sims’ Smelling Salts for hay fever.

  Dick stumbled out of the shop and ran straight into the others who were staggering along the pavement with baskets crammed to the brims.

  “I say, Dick,” said Peggy. “We’ve got to look out. Squashy’s not gone. He’s here, in Rio. We’ve just seen him.”

  “I know,” said Dick. “He was in the chemist’s shop. He was buying a blowpipe. He’s taken it away in his pocket …”

  “The beast. The awful beast
,” said Peggy. “That means he’s got something to use it on.”

  “Our gold,” said Titty.

  “Come on,” said Peggy. “Let’s hurry up. We ought to let them know about Squashy. We’ve done our shopping, all but the ginger beer. Where are the batteries?”

  But Dick had forgotten everything except the blowpipe. They went back into the shop. There was no waiting this time. Peggy caught the eye of the man, picked up the eight little batteries they wanted, handed over the money and was out again on the pavement in a moment.

  They looked up and down the street and along the front by the boat-piers. There was no sign of Squashy Hat. They went to the little shop where, two years before, Captain John and Susan had bought grog for the crew of the Swallow. Peggy ticked off the last thing on her list. “Two doz. pop.” And the man very kindly helped to stow the bottles, a dozen each, in Dick’s and Titty’s knapsacks. Peggy’s had been left behind with the dromedaries at Beckfoot, because there was something in it already. The two knapsacks, full of bottles, were just about as much as Dick could manage, one in each hand. The other two, laden with groceries, had no hands to spare. All three rejoiced in a breath of wind from the south that rippled the water by the boat-pier and allowed them to sail Amazon back to Beckfoot without having to use the oars except at the mouth of the river.

  *

  When they landed their cargo in the boathouse, and carried it across the lawn to the house, they learnt that most of the things they had been buying were for their own camp. Mrs Blackett offered to run them up the valley to Tyson’s in old Rattletrap. For a moment they hesitated, but, as Peggy said, the dromedaries would have to be loaded anyway to get the stuff up to the camp.

  “Just as you like,” said her mother. “And now there’ll be tea ready in half an hour. You’d better wait.”