Pigeon Post

  “After you,” said Squashy Hat.

  “It’s not your mine,” said John.

  “I beg your pardon,” said Squashy Hat. He stooped and bent his long legs and worked his way through the tunnel with John close behind him.

  They were not a moment too soon. They were hardly inside the mine, where the lantern still burnt and lit their startled faces, before thick smoke closed the entry.

  “We’ve just got to wait till it’s over,” said Nancy, and sat down comfortably on the floor of the cave, to show Peggy that there was really nothing to worry about. John and Susan stared at her. “Nothing to worry about!” And then, suddenly, there was a glow of red in the mouth of the mine. Then leaping flames as the fire roared past. Then, again, nothing but smoke.

  “I’m very much obliged to you,” said Squashy Hat gravely. “I shouldn’t have stood much of a chance outside.”

  “You oughtn’t to have been there,” said Nancy. “Didn’t you see our notice? It’ll be burnt now, but you must have seen it.”

  THE FLAMES ROARED PAST OUTSIDE

  “Well, yes, I did,” said Squashy Hat. “But I was busy looking for something, and I didn’t think any of you were about …”

  Nancy jumped to her feet. “All the worse,” she said. “What were you looking for?”

  “It wouldn’t interest you,” said Squashy Hat mildly. “Not really. Mining, you know. It’s my job. I was following up a vein …”

  “What?” Nancy’s indignation was almost more than she could bear.

  “Funny I never noticed this,” he said. “I was thinking there might be something of the sort.”

  “It’s ours,” said Nancy. “Couldn’t you read that notice?”

  “Something about some game,” said Squashy Hat. “Something about riding or leaping wasn’t it? And a picture of a death’s head?”

  “Telling people not to jump claims,” said Nancy. “You must have known …”

  But there was no more on that subject, for the noise of the fire was further away, and the smoke was clearing outside, and John and Susan were already starting out of the mine.

  ‘Take care,” said Squashy Hat suddenly. “Give it time to cool underfoot.”

  “We’ve got to go,” said John.

  “The others won’t know what to do,” said Susan, and followed John.

  “What others?” said Squashy Hat.

  “Three more of us,” said Peggy. “Younger than us. In the camp at the top of the wood.”

  Squashy Hat hurried after John and Susan. Nancy and Peggy hurried after Squashy Hat.

  Even in the mine the air had been bitter with smoke. It was far worse outside. The fire was raging at the northern end of the gulch. It had swept through, burning everything but earth and rock. Clumps of heather were still flickering like torches dropped and forgotten by a procession on the march. The ground smoked under their feet. They burned their hands when they touched the rocks in scrambling up the steep side of the little valley. The fire had poured northwards over the Topps, which were black and smoking as far as they could see. Stretches of grass and bracken were still blazing between the gulch and Tyson’s wood. A high curtain of smoke hid the Great Wall and the trees beyond it, and along the foot of that curtain they could see little spirts of flame.

  “The wood itself may be on fire,” said John, as he dashed forward with the ashes smoking about his feet.

  “They may be asleep in their tents,” cried Susan.

  “Oh, no … No …” shouted Nancy fiercely. “They aren’t utter galoots …”

  “Not that way,” shouted Squashy Hat. “You follow me. We’ve got to cut round that lot.”

  His long arms were working like a windmill. He was leaping rocks that came in his way, dodging others he could not leap.

  The four prospectors raced after their rival. They were not prospectors now. There was only one thought in all their minds as they skirted a stretch of blazing bracken and ran splashing through the hot ash, towards that wall of smoke. Somewhere behind that smoke was the camp.

  “If only they’ve had the sense to run away,” panted Susan.

  “They’ll be all right,” said Nancy, and choked with the fine ash in her mouth.

  And then a puff of wind blew the smoke towards them. It lifted and for a moment cleared. Dimly beneath it they saw figures, small, dim, beating frantically at the ground.

  “Titty … Dorothea …”

  “There’s old Roger,” shouted Nancy.

  The smoke rolled down again thicker than before. But Squashy Hat had seen them, too. A moment later, racing straight for them, he, too, had disappeared.

  “Come on,” John shouted over his shoulder. “They’re all right. This way!”

  CHAPTER XXXIII

  AT BECKFOOT

  DICK braked carefully, feeling first in one pocket and then in another to make sure that he had forgotten nothing. Blowpipe in handkerchief pocket with fountain pen. Phillips on Metals bumping in the knapsack on his back … no forgetting that. Lumps of quartz in one side pocket of his shorts … Pinch of precious dust in handkerchief … Notebook with knife in hip pocket … Bump … Bump. His hand flew back to the jerking handlebar. Nearly off that time. He must not let himself think of anything but the steering of his dromedary … Oh … The dromedary skidded on the loose stones as the path suddenly turned a corner, and Dick got a foot to the ground only just in time to save himself.

  He pushed off again and found his pedal … Woa … Don’t let the beast get going too fast. And don’t go jamming the brake on so that the wheels lock … If only they had not put all the gold dust into the furnace. Quantity did not count. Nancy had said at the beginning that all that mattered was to prove that the gold was there … Just a blob … One golden blob would be enough. With the blowpipe and a proper spirit lamp he ought to be able to manage that, try it with aqua regia to make sure, and then everything would be all right after all. Meanwhile the dromedary was jolting him almost to pieces as it slipped and jumped and jibbed and skidded and bucked over the loose stones in the old path down the wood. You never would have thought it was possible to get so hot going downhill. He came at last to the bottom, bumped across the cobbles of the farmyard, was glad not to see Mrs Tyson, crossed the bridge and came out on the valley road which, dusty as it was, was much better travelling for dromedaries. He pedalled away down the valley as fast as anybody could on a girl’s bicycle at least two sizes too big for him.

  *

  Beckfoot looked quite different. Paperers and painters and plasterers were gone. The carpets were down even on the stairs, and chairs and tables were all back in their places. He met Mrs Blackett in the hall.

  “Hullo, Dick,” she said. “You’re just in time for lunch. Have you come to have a look at your pigeon-bell? I’ve just pushed the slide across to set it. It’s been working beautifully since you put it right the other day. Nearly deafens us with every pigeon …”

  “There won’t be one today,” said Dick, “because of me coming.”

  “I’m glad one of you has come. I’ve got news for all of you. Your father and mother are going to be at Dixon’s farm the day after tomorrow. And Mrs Walker and Bridget are coming here for a day or two before moving across to Holly Howe. And then I suppose you’ll all be shifting camp to Wild Cat Island. My brother’s in England, too. This postcard came today with a London postmark. A picture of the Tower Bridge and not a word on it except, ‘Give my love to Timothy’.”

  “But has Timothy come?”

  “No, he hasn’t,” said Mrs Blackett. “But what can I do about it? I don’t even know my silly brother’s address in town. Just like him …”

  “Timothy must have died on the voyage,” said Dick. “Not enough green food probably. Captain Flint’ll be dreadfully disappointed.”

  “Well I do wish he’d stop dashing off here and there about the world and sending home heaven knows what. It was bad enough with monkeys and parrots. But when it comes to dead lizards …”

 
“Armadillos aren’t exactly lizards,” said Dick.

  “Well, crocodiles,” said Mrs Blackett. Dick did not put her right. Zoology meant nothing to some people.

  “Can I work in Captain Flint’s room?” said Dick. “It’s something I’ve got to do before he comes back …”

  “After lunch,” said Mrs Blackett. “Come along, we’ll find an extra plate for you.”

  And Dick found himself somehow in the dining-room eating cold beef and salad. Dreadful, with the test still to be made and the acids waiting in their bottles in the little room on the other side of the hall. But it could not be helped, and Dick found himself very hungry, though two or three times he nearly fell asleep. Although, at Dorothea’s suggestion, he had done his best to clear the charcoal off his face, there must have been some smudges left. “I expect you’ll all be glad to get back from the desert and to have proper baths again,” said Mrs Blackett. Dick told her something about the charcoal-burning and the smelting, but not very much. She enquired after the bellows, and he said they had been very useful and that Nancy wanted her old purse to get a bit of leather for a patch, and some tacks … And he pulled out his notebook to make sure. “In drawer in hall,” he read. Mrs Blackett laughed. “I suppose I ought to be glad the bellows survive at all,” she said, and then she kept asking him how he liked the new paper, and a lot of questions like that which were hard to answer when he was so sleepy and could think only of gold and aqua regia.

  Luncheon was over at last and she took him to the study door.

  “Here you are,” she said. “You’ll find me somewhere about if there’s anything you want. It seems to me you’ll be glad to get back to school, Nancy’s kept you so hard at work these holidays. What is it this time? Encyclopaedia?”

  “Only partly,” said Dick. “It’s …” But he had no time to explain. Mrs Blackett was too busy to listen, and was talking to Cook in the hall even before she had shut the study door.

  *

  Dick knew exactly what he wanted and where it was. Lucky that in the general redecoration of Beckfoot, Captain Flint’s study had been left alone. The glass door of the instrument cupboard was not locked. There was the little spirit-lamp he had seen, and yes, there was some spirit in the blue bottle labelled “Meth.” He filled the little lamp and left it for the wick to soak, while he had just one more look at the article on gold in the Encyclopædia. Then, sitting at the table, he lit the lamp, opened his handkerchief with the gold dust, took out his blowpipe, put a pinch of dust in a hole in a bit of charcoal, and began. The spirit-lamp was much better than a candle, and he was able to keep a fine jet of flame playing on the dust. But everything happened just as it had in the camp. The dust seemed to gather together into a red hot blob just as he had hoped, and then, when he let it cool, the blob turned dark and crumbled into powder when he pressed it with a knife. He tried again. No better. Bother the blob. He would have to make the acid test on the gold dust itself. Why not? If it was going to work, it would be easy to see if the gold disappeared.

  In the cupboard was a stand with a row of test-tubes. Dick brought it to the table and chose the smallest. He put some of the gold dust on a scrap of paper and tilted it into the tube. Then he put the test-tube back in the stand and set about making the aqua regia. “Nitric acid and hydrochloric acid … Equal parts.” It was not too easy to stir the glass stopper of the nitric acid bottle, and Dick was very much afraid of letting even a drop of the acid spurt out on Captain Flint’s table. He managed in the end by wrapping his handkerchief round the stopper and so getting a better grip on it. He did not take the stopper right out, but, even so, the choking fumes of the acid seemed to fill the room. The bottle with hydrochloric acid opened easier. He poured a little into a test-tube, closed the bottle and put it aside. Then, doing his best not to breathe the fumes, he poured in the same amount of nitric acid. There. The aqua regia was ready. Dick might have been alone in a world empty except for two test-tubes, two bottles, Phillips on Metals and the Encyclopædia Britannica. He did not hear the sudden stir in the house … The opening and shutting of doors might have been in some other house a million miles away. Voices in the hall might just as well have been in Jupiter or Mars. Dick heard nothing, saw nothing, thought of nothing but the test that was at last to be made.

  “Gold dissolves in aqua regia.”

  That was the sentence in his mind. Well, would it? With a hand that trembled in spite of all he could do to keep it steady, he poured the aqua regia into the test-tube at the bottom of which lay that little pinch of glittering, golden dust.

  It was as if the liquid suddenly boiled. Bubbles poured from the dust, which rose and fell in the acid as if it were trying to get away. The tube was hot to the touch. For a moment he was afraid it would crack and scatter acid in all directions. It was not boiling quite so hard. Sediment was settling at the bottom of the test-tube. The liquid above it was transparent, yellowish. Dick held it up to the light. Every glittering particle was gone, leaving only a dull sediment. The metallic dust had dissolved. A slow, happy grin spread over Dick’s face. Gold after all.

  And then, slowly, he came to know that the door of the study was open and that Captain Flint was standing in the doorway, Captain Flint, with a face burnt redder than ever, smiling at him and polishing a bald head with a green silk handkerchief. Captain Flint threw a felt hat on the table, brought a suitcase bright with steamer labels in from the hall, closed the door behind him and laughed.

  “Well, Professor,” he said. “What is it this time? It was astronomy when I found you in the cabin of the old houseboat. What’s this? Chemistry?”

  “Gold,” said Dick.

  “Gold?” said Captain Flint. “Don’t you go and get interested in the wretched stuff. Gold or silver. I’ve sworn off both of them. Had quite enough of wasting time … Hullo. What have you got in that test-tube?”

  “Aqua regia,” said Dick. “And gold dust. And it’s gone all right.”

  “What?” said Captain Flint. “What’s gone?”

  “Dissolved,” said Dick. “Gold in the aqua regia. I was just a bit afraid it might not be gold, after all.”

  “But, my dear chap,” said Captain Flint. “Aqua regia will dissolve almost anything. The point about gold is that it won’t dissolve in anything else …”

  Dick’s face fell.

  “I’ve messed it again,” he said. “I ought to have tried with the nitric and hydrochloric separately first. I say, may I use a drop more of each of them?”

  “Go ahead,” said Captain Flint. “Got any more gold dust?”

  “Only a little,” said Dick. “Properly crushed and panned.”

  Captain Flint rubbed his little finger in the dust still waiting on Dick’s handkerchief. He pulled out a little magnifying-glass and held it close above those glittering particles.

  “But this,” he said at last, “looks to me like perfectly good copper pyrites. You haven’t been crushing up some of my specimens, have you? Where did you get it?”

  “High Topps,” said Dick. “We had a tremendous lot ready panned, but there was an accident with our blast furnace …”

  “Your what?”

  “Blast furnace,” said Dick, “and we lost it all mixed up with the ashes, and the crucible got broken … Oh, I say, it was your crucible, you know … We borrowed it … There was only one that was big enough. Nancy said you wouldn’t mind. You see, the gold was for you …”

  “For me …? But what is all this? I couldn’t make head or tail out of what my sister’s been telling me.”

  “She didn’t know, really,” said Dick. “At least not everything.”

  Captain Flint had hauled up a chair and was sitting at the table. “Let’s have a look at that test-tube,” he said. “What did you say was in it? Nitric acid, hydrochloric and some of this dust? … Just look along that shelf and fetch the bottle marked ‘Ammonia.’ … Good man … Out with the cork. Let’s have it … Now …”

  Drop by drop he let the ammonia trickle dow
n the tube. There was some more fizzing. The clear liquid clouded thickly and then turned a brilliant blue.

  “There you are,” said Captain Flint. “Copper … What on earth made you think it was gold?”

  And Dick told of the plan and of Slater Bob’s story.

  Captain Flint interrupted. “And the young man went to the war, and so his secret was lost. Why, I heard that story when I was a boy. Thirty years ago it was the South African war, and before that it was the Zulu or the Crimean, and I dare say a hundred years ago Slater Bob’s grandfather was talking of the gold some young fellow would have mined if only he hadn’t had to go off to fight Napoleon. But where did you get the copper? Nancy couldn’t have had the slightest idea …”

  Dick tried to explain, but he had hardly told Captain Flint about the old working in the gulch and the quartz before Captain Flint jumped up.

  “Quartz … Copper … In one of the old workings. Got any here?”

  Dick pulled a lump out of his pocket.

  Captain Flint weighed it in his hand, looked at it closely, scratched with his knife at what Dick had thought was gold.

  “Soft as butter,” he said eagerly. “And is there much like that?”

  “Lots,” said Dick. “Susan wouldn’t let us do any blasting. We had nothing to get it out with but hammers and a chisel. And I was sure it was gold. The others’ll be dreadfully disappointed.”

  “Do you know that’s the richest copper ore I’ve ever seen?” said Captain Flint. “If the rest’s up to sample we’re going to make our fortunes … Gold … Who wants it if there’s enough of this about? I was sure it was up there somewhere. Now if only Timothy hadn’t disappeared …”

  Dick suddenly remembered that, if Nancy and the rest were to be disappointed about the gold, Captain Flint also had a dreadful misfortune to face.

  “He’s never arrived,” he said. “And the worst of it is they would never know it was waste to bury him at sea instead of bringing him home to be stuffed for a museum.”