Pigeon Post

  Titty lying in her sleeping-bag sniffed happily at the clean smell of grass and canvas. She wriggled a hand out into the night to feel the dewy grass so near.

  “Rogie,” she whispered. “Can you hear?”

  “Yes,” said Roger from the next tent.

  “This time last night we were still at school.”

  “Well, we aren’t now,” said Roger.

  CHAPTER III

  CONSULTING SLATER BOB

  WALKERS, Blacketts and Callums, Swallows, Amazons and D’s, eight of them together, were nearly half-way up Kanchenjunga. They had set out in the Beckfoot rowing-boat, but had not been able to get far upstream because there was so little water in the river. So they had pulled its nose up a shingly beach and tied its painter to a hazel bush, and continued their journey on foot. All but Nancy carried knapsacks, with sandwiches and thermos flasks of tea. Peggy’s knapsack held Nancy’s provisions as well as her own, for on Nancy’s shoulders, instead of a knapsack, was a pigeon-basket with Homer, Sappho and Sophocles inside. The expedition had followed their old track of the year before, past Low Farm, turning up from the Amazon beside the little beck, that usually came tumbling down to join the river but this year was no more than a trickle. They had come up out of the trees close by last year’s half-way camp, and were following the cart-track up to the quarries. “We may just as well use it,” Nancy had said. “No point in pretending no one’s ever been here, when we’re going up to see Slater Bob.”

  A great spur of Kanchenjunga, Ling Scar, rose above them to the left. They had been slowly climbing ever since they had left the river.

  “There it is,” said Nancy at last, and pointed ahead of them, up the side of the Scar to a rampart of loose stones that rose out of the heather and bracken and scorched grass. “All that stuff has come out of the inside of the hill.”

  “Come on,” said Peggy. “Buck up the able-seamen.”

  But Susan stopped short. “What’s the time, John?” she said. “Ages after twelve o’clock. He’ll be in the middle of his dinner if we go in now. We’d better have ours first.”

  “Good idea,” said Roger.

  “Oh well,” said Nancy. “Everybody is a bit out of breath.”

  Knapsacks were unslung and tired explorers flung themselves down on the heather at the side of the track. Nancy wriggled out of the straps by which the pigeon-basket had been fastened to her shoulders.

  “I’ll let them go now,” she said. “No point in keeping them just for another few hundred yards. Come on, Roger, let’s see you fly one. And you, Titty. I’ll send Sappho off to show you how.”

  She opened the basket, and put her hand in and caught the plump Sappho. A moment later, with a quick upward swing, she launched her into the air.

  “Now then, Roger. Careful not to squeeze him.”

  “Which is it I’ve got?”

  “Homer. Off with him. That’s right, Titty. Get hold of Sophocles. Don’t wait, Roger.”

  Homer and Sophocles were tossed into the air almost together. In a few seconds they were joined by Sappho, and circled high over the heads of the explorers.

  “Mine’s off,” said Roger.

  “That’s Sappho,” said Nancy.

  “There goes Sophocles,” said Peggy. “And old Homer.”

  “I wonder which’ll get home first,” said Roger.

  “We can’t tell,” said Nancy, “unless someone sticks at home to watch the pigeon loft.”

  “Couldn’t they work some sort of signal?” said Dick.

  “It’s no good trying to teach pigeons to go and tap at windows,” said Nancy.

  “But what about a bell?” said Dick, with sudden eagerness. “I say, Peggy, how do those wires work when the pigeon flies home and pushes through them to get in?”

  Out came pocket-book and pencil, and if it had not been for Dorothea reminding him about them, Dick would have had no time to eat his sandwiches. “There ought to be a way of working it,” he said, putting his pocket-book almost unwillingly away, as Nancy jumped to her feet once more and empty thermos flasks were being stowed in the knapsacks.

  “He’s sure to have finished his dinner by now,” said Nancy, and the eight would-be prospectors took to the road again.

  And then, just as they left the main track and began to climb up to the left towards that rampart of grey stones, they saw a man working his way down the ridge.

  “Hullo,” said John, “somebody’s been climbing Kanchenjunga.”

  “He’s chosen a funny way to come down,” said Peggy.

  Presently they saw that he, too, was making for those great piles of stones.

  “I say,” said Nancy. “I wonder if he is going to see Slater Bob.”

  “Who’s going to get there first?” said Roger.

  It was going to be a very near thing. They had not got so far to go as the stranger, but they were working uphill, whereas he was scrambling down.

  “Jib-booms and bobstays!” exclaimed Nancy suddenly. “Do you see who it is?”

  “It’s that Squashy Hat again,” said Peggy.

  “Who?” said Titty.

  “You know. That man who was goggling over our gate.”

  “You don’t think he overheard any secrets?” said Dorothea.

  Nancy stared at her. “He couldn’t,” she said, and then stopped. “But that other time we caught him looking over the wall. He may have been there ages and heard all kinds of things. Hurry up. If he’s going to be there, we shan’t be able to ask Slater Bob about gold.”

  But the stranger, it seemed, was as little anxious to meet them as they were to meet him. He was slowing up. He stood still, watched for a moment, and presently sat down on the hillside.

  “That’s all right,” said Nancy. “Come on. We’ll easily hear if he comes in after us.”

  A moment later they could see him no more. A scarred rock face rose above them. On either side were the great outworks of loose stones. A thin trickle of water ran along a winding gutter beside a narrow railway track. There was just room for them to step round a four-wheeled trolley. They passed a neat pile of the green slates with which the houses for miles round are roofed. Nancy put her head into a tumble-down shed.

  “Not here,” she said. “Bob must be inside.”

  And then, turning a corner between the high walls built up on either side of them, they saw the narrow railway line disappear into a black hole in the rock.

  “Hand out the candles, John,” said Nancy. “One for everybody.”

  John wriggled clear of his knapsack, opened it, and took out a bundle of eight brand-new candles that Nancy had wheedled out of cook.

  “Are we going into that?” said Roger, looking doubtfully at Susan.

  “We’re all going in together,” said Titty. “It’ll be just like Peter Duck’s cave in Swallowdale, only bigger.”

  “Your cave in Swallowdale was probably an old working,” said Nancy. “Uncle Jim said he thought it must be.”

  “How far does it go in?” said Dick, peering through the entry into the darkness of the tunnel.

  “Miles,” said Peggy. “Out the other side of Ling Scar. Only the other end isn’t safe. Here’s your candle.”

  “That’s not the way to hold them,” said Nancy. “Hold them miners’ way, like this. Between your fingers. That’s right. Palm up, wrist up, and fingers forward, so that your hand shields it from behind. Hold it low, so that the grease doesn’t splash over you. Like this.”

  “Better get inside before lighting up,” said John, who had had two matches blown out by little gusts of wind.

  “And we’d better leave our shoes here,” said Nancy. “It’s called the Old Level, but it isn’t as level as all that and there’s one place where you have to paddle.”

  “No adders?” said Roger.

  “None in there.”

  Eight pairs of shoes were left in a row outside the entrance to the level.

  “Now then,” said Nancy. “I’ll go first. Only room for one at a time.
Look here, Peg. You’re the other one who knows it. You’d better come last, just in case.”

  “In case of what?” whispered Roger.

  Nobody answered him. One by one they went into the tunnel. Candles were lit.

  “Everybody ready?” called Nancy, and her cheerful voice sounded strange and hollow though she was only a dozen yards into the hill.

  They moved slowly forward in the narrow tunnel, each with a splash of candle-light.

  “Hoo! … Hoo! … Hooo!” said Roger, listening to his own voice.

  “Look,” said Dick. “They must have blasted with gunpowder. You can see one side of the hole they bored for their charge.”

  “Where?” said Roger. “Oh, yes. I see it,” and he ran his finger along a smooth and narrow furrow in the rock.

  “Get along,” said Peggy. “Don’t let’s get left behind.”

  “Look out for the water splash.”

  A shout came from ahead.

  “It’s only about an inch deep.”

  That was Susan’s voice. They hurried on, and a moment later the lights far ahead of them disappeared. A faint glimmer on a damp wall of rock showed that the leaders had turned a corner.

  “Let’s run,” said Roger.

  “No,” said Dick, but walked as fast as he could along the uneven damp ground between the narrow trolley lines. “No good running if you can’t see. You’ll only catch a toe in a sleeper.”

  Dorothea, Titty and Peggy hurried after them, their candles dribbling warm wax on their fingers.

  “Why, it’s nothing of a water splash,” said Roger, as he wriggled his toes in the puddle between the trolley lines.

  “Dry summer,” said Dick. “Perhaps it’s deeper other times.”

  “Last look at daylight,” said Peggy. “That’s the end of the straight bit.”

  They looked back. The walls of the tunnel disappeared into darkness but, far away behind them, the entrance showed like a pinprick in a sheet of black paper.

  “We must be right in the middle of the mountain,” said Titty.

  “Not nearly yet,” said Peggy.

  They turned the corner. That far away pinprick of light was gone. For a moment they saw a flicker ahead of them. It disappeared. The tunnel had twisted again, and John, Nancy and Susan were already out of sight. Just for a half second Titty hesitated. She looked back at Peggy. But Peggy was close behind her and showed no signs of stopping. Oh well, if Peggy did not mind it, Peggy who was afraid of thunderstorms, it must be all right. Titty looked down at her wavering candle. Was her hand shaky or was it not? Anyhow, everybody else’s candle was flickering too.

  “Listen,” said Dick.

  Faint and far away they could hear a steady thudding noise.

  “Slater Bob,” said Peggy. “Good. He’s there. I was a bit afraid he wasn’t, with the trolley being left outside.”

  Barefoot on rock and damp ground, they hurried on. Round another corner, and then another, and still the leaders were not in sight. The thudding noise ahead of them grew louder. It stopped, and began again on a different note.

  “Doesn’t sound like stone,” said Dick.

  “Have you read A Journey to the Centre of the Earth?” Dorothea asked over her shoulder.

  “About Hans Sterk and the hot water spouting out of the rock? said Titty.

  “About the mastodons,” said Dorothea. “It’s a whole herd of them, stamping.”

  “Hurry up,” said Peggy.

  At last, far ahead of them, they saw a group of shadowy figures with flickering candles held low.

  The noise grew louder and louder. The tunnel opened out a little wider and higher at a sort of cross-roads Where other tunnels joined it right and left.

  “Nearly there now,” said Nancy. “Had to wait for you, just in case Peggy forgot and you went straight on by mistake.”

  “I’d remembered all right,” said Peggy.

  “We might have gone on for ever,” said Dorothea.

  “Might have been a job to find you,” said Nancy. “Anyway, port your helm and head to starboard …”

  Close together now, the whole party turned one by one into a tunnel that led to the right out of the main level. It twisted this way and that, and when they had gone forty or fifty yards along it, they were suddenly almost blinded by a bright light that made their candle-flames seem dim.

  “Douse candles,” said Nancy, blowing out her own. “So that they’ll last out for the way back. We shan’t want them now. Hullo, Bob. We’ve brought some friends …”

  They were at the mouth of a lofty chamber in the rock. The dazzling light of the acetylene lamp, that hung from an iron spike driven into a crack in the rock, showed them a short, broad-shouldered old man leaning on a baulk of timber that he had been shaping with an axe. A ladder went up into the darkness overhead beside a wide smooth wall of green slate.

  “Come in,” said Slater Bob. “Come in and welcome. I’m nobbut shaping two-three props to put where there’s some gone a bit weak. Wouldn’t do for me to be shut out. Not likely. Eh, Miss Nancy, but there’s scarce room for t’ lot o’ ye. And no seats …”

  “We don’t want to sit down,” said Nancy. “Look here, Bob, mother says you know something about gold in the fells, and we want to know where to look for it, if there is any really.”

  “Gold,” said the old man, shading his eyes and looking at her through the dazzle of the light. “Of course there’s gold. There’s everything in these fells if only a man knew where. Slate for your roofs and slates for your schools and slate pencils too, though you don’t use ’em as we did when I were young. And copper, too, for your kettles and your saucepans, though that new aluminy come in that soaks away wi’ a drop o’ soda and makes food taste funny to me. And you never know what you’ll happen on. ’Twasn’t slate they was wanting, the folk that cut this level. Copper they was after, and they got a fair doing of it too, out of yon pocket on far side of the level where you turned to come in here. They were still getting copper out o’ that when I were a lad in the mines nigh sixty year since. And then they found no more and gave up, and I found the slate for myself just chipping about like. Slate’s not copper, but it’s right good stuff, and it’ll keep my belly full and a fire o’ nights, so long as folk build houses and set roofs on ’em to keep t’ rain out …”

  “But you don’t burn slate,” said Roger almost to himself.

  “Or eat it, you donk,” said Peggy.

  Roger pretended he had not heard. As if he had not understood. And anyway, he had not meant to say it aloud. It was just a private joke that had come into his head. He slipped across and climbed a little way up the ladder and sat there.

  “Yes, but what about gold?” said Nancy.

  Slater Bob was not to be hurried.

  “Copper and slate,” he said, “and then there’s black lead, graphite, they call it, for the wooden pencils. They think that’s all gone, but there’s more to find, for them that has eyes and a mind to ’t. Five hundred year folk have been working these fells, and now they’ve all give up, all but me, more fools they, when it stands to reason there’s more in t’ fells nor ever come out. There was Queen Elizabeth had her Dutchies here, and a mort o’ folk after that, scratting and scratting. And they’re all dead and gone and the fells is here yet, and the scrattings on ’em nowt but a scar here and there, and the best of all still to find. An I’m not the only one to think so, mind ye …” said Slater Bob. “A gentleman was here only yesterday asking this and that …”

  There was a sudden stir among his listeners.

  “Not a man with a squashy hat?” said Nancy. “I say, you didn’t tell him anything about the gold, did you?”

  “Nay, I didn’t look at his hat. Ordinary hat it was, same as what gentlemen generally cover their heads wi’.”

  “But you didn’t tell him about the gold …”

  “He didn’t ask about it,” said Slater Bob. “But the way he talked, I could see he knew a rare bit about mining.”

&nbsp
; “He must have heard us planning,” said Peggy.

  “Don’t you tell him anything,” said Nancy. “Not anything.”

  Slater Bob looked at her.

  “He said he’d be looking in again,” he said.

  “He’s just outside now,” said Nancy. “We saw him. Just fend him off somehow. Don’t tell him anything at all.”

  “Well, of course, Miss Nancy, if it’s like that … I never thought …”

  “He’s just spying round,” said Nancy. “We caught him twice.”

  “Well, I said nowt about gold to him, that’s one thing,” said Slater Bob. “And if he’s that sort he’ll get nowt out o’ me, not if he asks his questions till crack o’ doom.”

  “And now about that gold,” said Nancy.

  There was a moment’s silence. The old miner looked queerly at his audience. Somewhere, far away in the level, there was the noise of a small stone dropping.

  John looked at Nancy.

  “Half a minute,” she said, listening. “No. It’s all right. Go ahead, Bob, but don’t talk too loud.”

  “But there’s nowt to tell, Miss Nancy,” said the old man, “nowt but what most folk knows.”

  “We don’t,” said Nancy.

  “I can’t tell more than what I know,” said Old Bob.

  “Tell us all you can,” said Nancy.

  “Well,” said Old Bob, screwing up his eyes and looking at the dazzling, hissing flame of the acetylene lamp. ‘It was a young Government chap who found that gold. Just before the war begun. He’d been up here a week or two, looking round t’ fells wi’ his hammer and his compass and his maps and all. And when he come down in the evenings, he’d drop in every night to have a crack wi’ Old Bob. There’s none else living, he used to say, who knows more of the old mines. Not likely. My father was a miner before me, and his father before him, in the days when there was copper for all England going out o’ these fells. Best part o’ two weeks he’d been up above marking the old workings on his map, and then one day he comes in to me late at night. Near dark it was, and he’d had nowt to eat and nowt to drink, and he’d been up above scratting and scratting till he couldn’t see his fingers. All of a dance, he was. ‘Bob, my man,’ says he, ‘I’ve summat to show thee. Tak’ a look at yon.’ And he brought his hand out of his pocket wi’ a screw o’ paper in it that he’d been holding for safety like. He opened that screw o’ paper in the light o’ my lamp. ‘Tak’ a look at yon,’ he says, ‘and tell me if ye’ve seen owt like it.’