Pigeon Post

  “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 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 midday 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 shoebox, 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 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 lunchtime 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.”

  “Goodbye, mother. Goodbye. Goodbye …”

  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 uphill, 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.

  ON THE ROAD

  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 river-bed.

  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.

  “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?

  CHAPTER VIII

  HIGH TOPPS

  “HERE we are,” said Nancy. “That’s Tyson’s.”

  A narrow lane turned to the right out of the road, crossed the almost dry bed of the river by a small hump-backed stone bridge, and ended in the cobbled yard of a whitewashed farmhouse. On one side of the yard was the house itself, with low windows and a porch with clematis climbing over it, a big cowhouse with a barn above it, and an old pump with a shallow drinking-trough. On the other side was a wall of loose stones with a gate in it shutting in an orchard. Behind orchard and buildings a wood of oaks and birches and hazels, with here and there a pine, rose steeply up into the sky. Somewhere above the wood was High Topps, the workings of the old miners of long ago, and the precious metal they had come to find.

  The handcart rattled over the bridge and across the hard cobbles of the yard. The dromedaries followed more quietly, though Roger felt it was only right that the journey should end on the run, and that the leading donkey should announce the arrival of the caravan with a loud triumphant bray.

  Mrs Tyson came out of the porch just as Nancy was leaning her dromedary up against the orchard wall. Her arms were white to the elbows with flour, for she was busy baking, and she did not seem too pleased to find the farmyard full of prospectors with their handcart and their laden dromedaries.

  “And here you are,” she said. “And where’s Mrs Blackett? Goodness there’s a lot of you. There was only three yesterday. I don’t know where we’re going to put you all.”

  “Mother’s coming along.”

  “You’ll have told her what I said about fires,” said Mrs Tyson. “And about there being no water up in the wood, with the beck run dry.”

  “We told her everything,” said Nancy. “It’s all right. It’s no good lighting fires where there isn’t any water. And we’re not going to unpack tents or anything till mother’s been. Oh, hullo, Robin …” A young man came out from behind the barn with a long pole and a bundle of brushwood at the top of it. He set it to lean against the wall of the barn with half a dozen others.

  “That’s Robin Tyson, Mrs Tyson’s son,” Peggy explained to Dorothea.

  “More fire-brooms,” said Roger.

  “We’ll likely need ’em,” said Robin.

  “Have you joined Colonel Jolys’ volunteers?” asked Nancy.

  “No good to us,” said Mrs Tyson. “However can we let them know if there’s a fire? If owt catches here, we mun fight it ourselves. Before we’d get the word to the Colonel at head of the lake there’d be nowt left of our valley but ash and smoke.”

  “If there’s a fire we’ll all help,” said Nancy.

  “So long as you don’t light it I’ll be well pleased,” said Mrs Tyson.

  “We won’t do that,” said Roger indignantly.

  “If I could be sure,” said Mrs Tyson. She looked up at the blue sky over the high wood behind the farm. “Never a sign of rain,” she said. “And it’s weeks now the ground is cracking for it. Oh well,” she said, “I’ve my baking to do whatever … and Mrs Blackett coming.”

  “She won’t be here just yet,” said Nancy. “At least I shouldn’t think so … not until the painters and paperers have gone. May we just leave our things here while we go up the wood to have a look at the Topps?”

  “There’s no carts stirring today,” said Mrs Tyson. “Your things’ll be out of the road again yon barn wall.”

  “You’ll want the pigeons out of the sun,” said Robin Tyson. “Best wheel them into the barn.”

  “Thank you very much,” said Titty, who had been trying to make a shady place for the pigeons by draping a bit of a ground-sheet over their cage.

  “Dump everything,” cried Nancy. “Travel light. It’s a bit of a pull to the top.”

  The handcart was run into the barn, with the pigeons’ cage upon it. Dromedaries leaned against the orchard wall. Knapsacks were slung off and piled in a heap.

  “No need to carry anything,” said Peggy. “Just a dash up the wood to have a squint at the goldfields.”

  “Compass,” said John, digging one out of the outer pocket of his knapsack.

  “And we’d better have the telescope,” said Titty.

  “We might jolly well want it,” said Nancy. Already she was leaving the farmyard, and opening the gate into the wood.

  The others crowded through.

  “Shut the gate, some one,” said Nancy.

  “Aye, aye, Sir,” said Roger.

  It was pleasant to come into the shade of the woods after the long trek in blazing sunshine along the valley road. There seemed to be less dust in the air, and there was a clean smell of resin from the scattered pines, with their tall rough-scaled trunks, that towered among the short bushy hazels, the rowans, and the little oaks. A track wound upwards through the trees. Anybody could have told that it was very little used. Here and there were stony patches in it, where dried moss covered the stones. Here and there were little drifts of last year’s leaves. Here and there under and near the big pine trees the path was soft and brown with fallen pine needles. The track was not wide enough for a cart, and probably it had been used only by sleds bringing bracken from the fells above.

  “Is it wide enough for the handcart?” Peggy asked Susan. “There won’t be much room to spare.”

  “We won’t be taking it up there,” said Susan.

  “Unless it rains and the beck fills,” said Nancy over her shoulder.

  “
Where is the beck?” said Titty, remembering the pleasant little stream up which she and Roger had explored together last summer when they had discovered Swallowdale and the cave they had called after Peter Duck. But in this wood there was no tinkling of falling water.

  “Just crossing it,” said John, and a moment later a strip of shingle across the path and a deep furrow beside it showed where the beck had been.

  “Stepping stones,” said Roger, and walked gaily across, stepping on the big stones that had been left there so that when the beck was flowing people crossing it could keep their feet dry.

  “And no water,” said Dorothea.

  The track climbed steeply upwards through the trees, sometimes leaving the stream, sometimes close to it, and then swinging away to one side and back again, in wide zigzags, to make the climbing easier. But this August of the drought it was not a stream but the dry bed where a stream had been. The expedition had been climbing for a long time before coming on a drop of water, and then, below what had once been a waterfall, they saw a tiny pool.

  “Water! Water!” shouted Roger.

  “Couldn’t we camp here?” said Peggy.

  “No good,” said John. “It’s only a birdbath.”

  “It’s stagnant,” said Susan, “or very nearly, and there isn’t enough for any washing or cooking.”

  A chattering jay blundered noisily away through the trees, when Titty pushed through the hazels to have a closer look.

  They climbed on.

  “How much further?” said Roger, who had been growing less and less talkative as they climbed.

  “Probably another hundred miles or so,” said Titty.

  “Stick to it, Roger,” said Peggy. “We’re getting near the top.”