“She ought to see it,” said Captain Flint, and in the end they sent it to Holly Howe. Captain Flint was to leave it there on his way up the lake. Very soon after tea he was off.
“I don’t want to be late,” he said. “Those two pirates were twenty minutes late for lunch yesterday. They ran into a calm. Not their fault, but their mother hadn’t heard the last of it when I ran away this morning.”
“Ran away?” said Titty.
“Well, hurried,” said Captain Flint. “I had to be down here early if we were to get going with the new mast.”
“Will the Amazons be coming to-morrow?” asked Susan.
“Don’t tell us, if they’re going to make their surprise attack,” said John.
“From what I heard I don’t think they’ll be able to get away. No, I’m sure they won’t be here to-morrow. But I’ll do my very best for them the day after that.”
“Perhaps it’s a good thing they can’t come to-morrow,” said John. “There’s a lot to do on the mast.”
“They don’t think it’s a good thing,” said Captain Flint.
“I think it’s horrid that they can’t come,” said Titty.
“So do I,” said Captain Flint, “but it can’t be helped.”
The big trout was wrapped in bracken, together with a bit of paper on which Titty had written, “Mother. With love from Titty and Roger”; and Roger had written, “We caught it ourselves.” For a moment, indeed he found it hard to say good-bye to the fish and to see its rounded, spotted sides for the last time, but, after all, mother was going to have it for supper, probably, and Captain Flint could not wait. Roger took a last look, and then held the bracken leaves together while Captain Flint made a neat lacing round them with string so that the big trout made a very handsome parcel.
Captain Flint left the rod and flies, a cast or two and the net and basket for John and Susan to look after, and they were carefully stored in Peter Duck’s. “Don’t waste time fishing the tarn unless there’s a good southerly wind like to-day’s,” he said as he went off. “You’ll do much better in the beck.”
There was a little gloom that evening at the thought of the native trouble that was bothering the Amazons, but it was difficult to think of fish and trouble at the same time, and Susan had more helpers than she needed when she was cleaning the little trout for supper. Each fish was admired, though no one could be sure which was John’s first fish and which Susan’s. “I wish we’d caught some of them,” said Roger, but John said he was a greedy little beast, seeing that he and Titty between them had caught a trout nearly as big as all the others put together. The sizzling and spitting of the boiling butter as Susan fried the trout in batches over the camp-fire reminded them of last year’s perch fishing.
For the next two days Roger could think of very little but trout. He spent that evening, between supper and bed, partly in sliding down the Knickerbockerbreaker and partly in turning over the loose stones at the side of the beck, looking for worms and mostly finding ants. Next morning, after going down with Susan for the milk and being darned, he went up again to Trout Tarn, and tried to tempt another monster, but caught nothing, and gave it up when he found that Titty, fishing the little pools of the beck just below the tarn, and using the less important worms, had caught four little trout in a way John had shown her before going down to work on the mast. After dinner he too began fishing the pools without a float, and by the time John came up from the cove, at the end of a hard day’s work on the mast, bringing with him mother and the ship’s baby, who had rowed into the cove in time to come up to Swallowdale for tea, Roger had himself caught two, and there was a good deal of hurry in getting them cleaned and cooked in time for mother to try with the bunloaf and butter.
Yesterday’s big trout had been boiled at Holly Howe, and had made a supper for mother and nurse, and Mr and Mrs Jackson had had some too, and there had been some for Bridget to have after her porridge at breakfast. Mother said it was the biggest trout she had ever seen in England, though she had seen much bigger in Australia and New Zealand. The ship’s baby was delighted with the ship’s parrot’s private perch. Mother liked the bathing-pool. She had been all up the valley before, at last, they showed her its secret and pulled aside the heather from the doorway and gave her Susan’s torch and told her to go in to see Peter Duck’s cave. What she said about that pleased everybody.
“Any explorer would be glad if he’d found a cave like that.” This pleased Titty and Roger. “It’s a very neat and well-kept larder.” This pleased Susan. “It wants nothing but a stone table.” (John at once decided he would make one.) “And what a place to hide in.” This pleased all of them. “But no sleeping in it.” Susan explained that nobody was going to sleep in it except the parrot. “And Peter Duck,” said Titty.
“Of course,” said mother. “Hullo. What’s this? Ben Gunn?”
She was looking at a patch of wall lit by Susan’s torch, the very patch on which Captain Flint had carved the name “Ben Gunn,” so many years before. Another name had been added underneath the first and a bracket joined the two.
“You see, Ben Gunn belongs to Captain Flint, and Peter Duck is ours,” said Titty.
The others peered at the wall. This is what they read:
The letters were not all of the same size. Nor were they very straight. But it would have been hard to do better, working with a knife by the light of a candle lantern.
“But when did you do it?” asked Susan.
“When you and Roger went for the milk this morning,” said Titty, “and John had gone up to the Watch Tower Rock.”
“The Watch Tower Rock?” said mother. “What’s that?” and they took her up there and she lifted the ship’s baby up to John and then climbed up herself and looked back over the lake to Holly Howe far away down below, and up over the moor to the big hills. They told her which of them was Kanchenjunga and how some day they were going to join the Amazons and climb that mountain together.
“Poor dears,” said mother, “from what I hear they’re having rather a poor time.”
“Horrible,” said John. “We saw them out driving.”
“With gloves on,” said Titty.
“What’s the great-aunt really like?” asked Susan.
“Didn’t she come to tea to make friends the day after we sailed away to Wild Cat Island?” said Titty.
“I wouldn’t say she came to make friends,” said mother. “It was a curiosity call. She made Mrs Blackett bring her because she wanted to know what we were like.”
“But didn’t she make friends when she saw how nice you are?”
Mother laughed.
“Perhaps she didn’t think so.” She would say no more about the great-aunt, and all the rest of the time she was up on the Watch Tower Rock and at tea in Swallowdale and on the way down to the cove, when all the explorers went with her to see her safely through the jungle, she talked about fishing and about caves and about camping in the Australian bush, where there were much worse snakes than adders.
All the same, as they climbed through the woods on the way back to the camp that evening, Titty said to John, “Mother doesn’t like her either.”
“No,” said John. “I’m sure she doesn’t. Anyway, perhaps the Amazons’ll manage to get away from her to-morrow and make the attack on Swallowdale.”
Next day, almost sure that the attack would come, John waited most of the morning in Swallowdale or on the Watch Tower Rock. Titty and Roger were sent for the milk by themselves and told not to be a minute longer than they could help, for fear the attack should come while they were away. Later on, Susan said she must have some more wood, and while three of the explorers were gathering wood one was waiting on the Watch Tower Rock to signal to them in case of need, and the wood-gatherers kept near the edge of the forest and kept looking every few minutes to see that the look-out away on the rock above Swallowdale was making no sign. But the whole morning passed, and in the afternoon when John went down to the cove, sure that the Amazons wo
uld not think it worth while to cross the moor so late, he found that Captain Flint had been in the cove all morning working on the mast. John worked hard all the afternoon and as Captain Flint had left a note pinned to the mast to say he would not be coming next day, John decided that something ought to be done about the holiday tasks. When he came up to Swallowdale in the evening he said so to Susan, and Susan agreed that with a whole week of the holidays gone and the holiday tasks not yet begun, it was high time that everybody settled down to them.
“I don’t believe the Amazons are really going to attack,” he said. “Not now, anyway. It isn’t as if they were free, like last year.”
‘They probably can’t get away,” said Susan.
“Even Captain Flint can’t,” said John.
But on the fourth day after the move to Swallowdale, when nobody was really expecting it, the attack came.
CHAPTER XVI
SURPRISE ATTACK
TITTY on that morning had taken the telescope and a French grammar up to the top of Watch Tower Rock to be getting on with her holiday task. Sometimes she swept the horizon with the telescope and then, as nothing was moving but the sheep, put the telescope down and had another go at the book. She had a pretty firm hold on J’ai, tu as, il a but was still muddled with avais and aviez and avaient and lost hope altogether when it came to eus, eûmes, and eurent. Roger, who had no holiday task to bother about and had wanted Titty to come fishing with him, was looking, very carefully, for adders. Presently he tired of that, climbed to the top of the watch-tower and threw himself down beside Titty. He picked up the telescope and looked away over the moor to the north, and then away to the north-east over the woods and across the lake to Rio and Holly Howe. He watched a steamer until he could see it no more, and then, slowly, swung the telescope back towards the north, looking at the farther edge of the moorland where it dropped down towards the invisible valley of the Amazon River.
WATCH TOWER ROCK
“Hullo,” he said.
“Shut up,” said Titty. “There’s nothing there. J’eus, tu eus, il eut …”
“But there is,” said Roger.
“Nous eûmes, vous … vous … vous … Botheration. Roger, now I’ve lost the page.”
“It’s a red cap,” said Roger, “like a red spider … moving very fast.”
Titty took the telescope, and a moment later French verbs had lost their chance for that day.
“It’s Nancy,” she said, “or Peggy. Yes. There’s another. Two red caps. They’re a long way apart. They must be crawling, too … keeping low in the bracken. What donkeys not to take their red caps off. Come on, Roger. Don’t stand up. Wriggle backwards to the edge and then let yourself down. I’ll go first. They’ll be watching. Don’t let them see we’ve spotted them. Lucky we’ve not got red caps.”
“One more look,” said Roger.
Titty gave him the telescope, took the edge of the French grammar between her lips, so as to have both hands free, and slid feet foremost over the edge of the rock on the side nearest to the camp, where there were ledges in the rock that made good steps.
“Come on, Roger. Hand down the telescope. Take care.”
Roger, lying flat on the rock, handed down the telescope and then slewed round. His feet showed over the edge. They wriggled. His knees showed. He hung by his middle, scrabbling for the top step with one foot. Titty, risking getting kicked, grabbed the foot and put it in the right place. A moment later, Roger was safely on the ground.
“Keep the rock between us and them,” said Titty, “and be quick. We must catch John before he goes up to the Tarn to do algebra. And Susan was going too.”
They dodged through the heather and in a minute or two were over the edge and scrambling and sliding down into Swallowdale. Then they picked themselves up and ran towards the tents. John, with an algebra lying open on the ground beside him, was just knotting three flies on a cast. The rod was ready, propped up against the rocks by the door of Peter Duck’s cave. Susan, with an exercise book and a pencil, was busy with geography and at the same time keeping half an eye on the saucepan. John had suggested that it would be a good thing to serve out rations of hard-boiled eggs, and the water in the saucepan was very slow in boiling.
“Quick, quick,” called Titty. “They’re coming. Over the moor.”
“We’ve seen them,” squeaked Roger. “Both of them. I saw their red caps. They’re trying not to be seen.”
“How far away are they?” John quickly wound up his cast on his hand and put it back in the basket with the rest of the fishing tackle.
“Right away on the edge of the moor.”
“I wonder if there’s really time. It would be silly to let them catch us half in and half out.”
“They’re a long way off,” said Titty. “I’m sure we can do it.”
“Well, you two, start away with your tents, and the mate and I’ll scout. Then if there isn’t time, we can easily put your tents up again in a minute or two.”
“Come on, Roger, I’ll race you,” said Titty. “You say, ‘Strike tents’ when you’re ready to begin, and then we’ll both start together.”
Susan and John hurried up the steep side of Swallowdale and disappeared, while Roger and Titty flung themselves upon their tents, loosened guy-ropes, jerked up tent-pegs, took the little bamboo poles to pieces and folded up the pale, cream-coloured canvas. They rolled up their sleeping-bags and then, folding their ground-sheets once across, wrapped tent and sleeping-bags and poles together, put each set of tent-pegs in its little canvas sack, and stuffed each little sack into the middle of the bundle to which it belonged.
Titty would have been ready first, but she left a peg out and had to dig for the little sack to put it in. They were both sitting breathless on the top of their bundles when John and Susan came crawling over the edge of the valley, and hurried down to the camp.
“We’ll do it all right,” said Captain John, quickly taking the fishing-rod to pieces, “but there’s not much time to spare. All right, Mister Mate. I’ll do both tents if you can deal with the cooking things. What about that parrot, A.B.?”
“He’ll not say a word,” said the able-seaman. “We’ll put his cover on his cage to make sure. You won’t mind, will you, Polly?”
Ten minutes later the camp in Swallowdale was as if it had never been, or, at least, as if it had been long ago deserted. Nothing but the blackened stones of Susan’s fireplace showed that human beings had at one time or another had a fire there. Susan had been chosen to have a last look round. The others could count on her to notice anything that had been forgotten. She found a bathing-towel spread over a clump of heather to dry. She picked it up, but could find nothing else.
A loudish whisper came from behind her.
“Hurry up!”
The mate looked once more up and down the deserted valley and then joined the others in Peter Duck’s. The moment she was inside, John pulled into place the last of the big clumps of heather that disguised the doorway.
In the cave a candle-lantern had been lit and was standing on the narrow uneven shelf that ran across one of the rocky walls. Titty and Roger, already holding their breath, were sitting on their bundles close under the lantern. The tin boxes with the stores were neatly piled beside the woodstack, and on the top of the woodstack was the parrot’s cage, covered with its dark blue cloth. As the mate’s eyes grew accustomed to the dim, flickering candlelight she saw that Titty had arranged the cooking things in a neat row, and that the fishing-rods, which had been propped against the woodstack when she went out, were standing up in a corner, out of everybody’s way.
“Peter Duck’s enjoying this like anything,” said Titty. “He says it’s just what his cave is meant for.”
“Mister Mate,” said Captain John, turning round from the low and narrow slit of a doorway, “that was good work all round. You’ve got a very smart crew. Serve out a ration of chocolate.”
IN PETER DUCK’S CAVE
“No need, Roger,” said
the mate. “Don’t move. Don’t touch the lantern. I put a lot of chocolate out on purpose. It’s on the top of the tins.”
Voices sounded somehow hollow in the cave. “Thank you,” whispered by one or other as the chocolate went round, seemed even to the one who whispered it as if it had been whispered by someone else. And when a half-empty biscuit-box slipped and fell on the stone floor of the cave it startled everybody like an explosion.
“Sh! sh!” said John. “They may be quite near by now. They were coming fast, though they were keeping as low down in the heather and bracken as ever they could. They didn’t know we’d seen them.”
“Listen,” said Susan.
In the cave it seemed almost as if nothing outside could be heard except the noise of the stream. John lay down on the ground with his head on the threshold, hidden by the heather in the doorway. The others saw his hand signalling back to them for silence. For some minutes there was not a sound, except that once the parrot scraped his beak on his perch.
Then, suddenly, outside, there was a long shrill whistle that was heard not only by John but by everybody else. It sounded as if it came from just overhead. Then another whistle shrilled, this time from the other side of the valley. Then there were yells of “Amazons for ever!” from two different directions, the noise of stones slipping, the noise of scrambling feet, and then once more a long silence, broken at last by the voice of Captain Nancy, quite close to the mouth of the cave.
“Shiver my timbers, but where are they?”
“They must have gone,” came the voice of Peggy.
Both voices were puzzled and doubtful.
“Didn’t you say you saw someone on their watch-tower?”
“I thought I did.”
“But the whole camp’s gone. They’ve shifted.”
“P’raps they’ve got in a row, too.”