Swallowdale

  “Well, you can easily make another,” said John.

  “But she’s dead,” said Titty. “They’ll find she’s dead when they get back to Beckfoot and they’ll know it’s my fault.”

  “Rubbish, Titty,” said Susan. “She’s perfectly all right and scolding them like anything. All you’ve done is to make a dirty mess of a clean frying-pan. Go and wash your face and clean the frying-pan while I crack the eggs into a mug. I promised Roger I’d scramble them.”

  “Look here, Titty,” said John. “It isn’t as if you’d had the proper wax, and even if you had you’d have had to burn it on purpose if you were going to do any good. Just dropping it in the fire by accident means nothing at all.”

  Roger came out of the cave with an armful of wood and Susan’s torch.

  “I found it in the middle of the floor,” he said. “It’s gone very dim.”

  “I’m most awfully sorry,” said Titty. “I forgot it when I was casting the spell.”

  “What spell?” asked John.

  “Going round and round three times,” said Titty.

  “Go and clean the frying-pan,” said Susan, “and let’s have supper.”

  Susan built up the scattered fire and soon there was once more a cheerful blaze. Scrubbing the frying-pan made Titty feel rather better, and though at supper the scrambled eggs did taste a little of candle-grease, just eating her share of them by the fire with the others was enough to make black magic seem unreal.

  But late that night Susan heard Titty stir uneasily in her tent. Susan wriggled a hand out from under her tent and into Titty’s which was close beside it. Titty found the hand and held it tight.

  “I didn’t mean to kill her,” she whispered.

  “Of course you didn’t and you haven’t,” said Susan.

  “We’ll know in the morning.”

  “We know now,” said Susan. “Go to sleep.”

  CHAPTER XIX

  NO NEWS

  TITTY woke in the morning from a muddled dream in which she was trying to save the great-aunt, who was being hunted by all the hounds of the hound-trail with Peter Duck urging them on. All she had to do was to tell Peter Duck that it was a mistake and that he must call the hounds off. Just to call “Peter” or “Mr Duck” would be enough. But she opened her mouth and no sound came. She could not make any noise at all. And there was the great-aunt walking slowly along, not knowing that the hounds were on her track, and there was Peter cheering them on with yells like the yells they had heard in Swallowdale floating up from far away when the hound-trail was ending and each owner was shouting to his hound. If she could only make a noise enough to get him to look her way it would be all right. He would know then that she wanted the great-aunt to escape. But she could not get even a whisper out from between her lips. She woke almost choking and was very glad to hear nothing but the beck flowing by and to see nothing but the cool clean walls of her little tent.

  She wriggled out of her sleeping-bag and went up to the bathing-pool, and plunged into the cold water and put her head under the waterfall. What a donkey she had been the day before. Nothing could really have happened except that she had wasted three good candle-ends and used up the battery of the last of the torches. Susan and John were quite right. They always were, especially Susan. And yet she dreadfully wanted to be sure. She was in a hurry to be off down to Swainson’s farm for the morning milk. Roger came too, and was surprised that Titty did not hurry him away, but waited while old Mr Swainson sang one song after another. Old Mrs Swainson asked her advice about what patch of colour to sew next into her patchwork quilt. Mary Swainson bustled in and out with the milk-can and told them the name of the hound that had won the hound-trail yesterday. (Melody was its name.) It was clear that nobody at Swainson’s farm had heard of any sudden illness of the great-aunt at Beckfoot.

  But before she was back in Swallowdale with the milk, Titty remembered that it was still early and that even if anything had gone wrong at Beckfoot last night the news might not have reached this end of the lake. She pleased John very much by saying she would like to come down to the cove if he was going to work at the mast.

  “Captain Flint may be coming too?” she asked.

  “He said he would as soon as he could get away.”

  Roger went fishing. Susan went with him and took her geography book as well, but kept on finding she was reading a bit that she had read before.

  Unluckily Captain Flint did not come. Work on the mast was going well, so Captain Flint was not really needed; but Titty spent a good deal of the morning among the rocks on the northern side of the cove, looking up the lake and hoping that every distant rowing boat was bringing the retired pirate with news from Beckfoot. Of course it was all right, but until news came she could not be properly sure.

  When the captain and the able-seaman went up to Swallowdale for dinner the mate asked them at once, “Did he come?” and John said “No,” and, by the way both of them spoke, Titty knew that they, too, wanted news from Beckfoot. The captain and the mate felt that they were partly to blame for the lateness of the Amazons, though really it was the fault of the hound-trail, and they were wanting to know whether Nancy and Peggy had been able to get home so late without even worse trouble than they had feared. Roger alone was free from this kind of worry. His was of a different kind. He had not been able to catch any fish and he thought it was probably the fault of the worms. He remembered the bright red worms with yellow rings that John had brought for perch-fishing from Dixon’s farm last year and he wanted to ask Mary Swainson if there were any worms as good as that to be found in her farmyard.

  Everybody except the parrot went down to Horseshoe Cove that afternoon. A great deal of work was done on the mast, which was now almost everywhere about the same size as the old mast that John was copying, though not so smooth. Roger went to Swainson’s farm and Mary gave him a fork and left him in the farmyard and washed him up afterwards when he had half filled a tin with the best of all kinds of worms, “the friskiest,” as he said, “he ever saw.” He was a long time at the farm, because there was no one to hurry him away, and he and old Mr Swainson took their chance and did a lot of singing together.

  “Did they say anything about Beckfoot?” asked Titty, when Roger came back with his worms.

  “No,” said Roger, “but Mr Swainson said it was no wonder I was catching no fish because rain was coming and the fish knew it.”

  John, Susan and Titty looked anxiously up at the sky. It was certainly looking rather thick, and there was a heaviness in the air which all of them had thought was in their own minds. Perhaps it only meant that it was going to rain. They cheered up at once.

  “We’ll want some more wood in Peter Duck’s,” said Susan, “so as not to have to dry it.”

  “We haven’t tried the new tents in the rain,” said John. “Let’s go and get the wood, and have all snug before the storm.”

  John put the shaping plane and callipers in his knapsack to take them up to Swallowdale, and presently the whole party were loading themselves with dry sticks near the top of the woods. Already, as they trudged home beside the stream, they could see over the moor dark purple sky behind the hard edges of the hills.

  It rained heavily that night. The first drops fell as they were tidying up after supper, but that was no more than a shower. It was not until after “Lights out” that it settled down to rain in earnest. There was very little wind with it, just steady, tremendous downpour.

  “Take care not to touch the walls of your tents,” called John.

  “I’m not,” said Roger.

  “It’s trickling down the tent-pole by my head,” said Titty.

  “Don’t let it trickle into your sleeping-bag,” said the mate.

  “How’s your tent, Susan?”

  “None come in yet.”

  For some time the four explorers lay still listening to the rain drumming on the thin tent walls within a few inches of their faces. Then John remembered the guy-ropes, wriggled out of his s
leeping-bag and nightclothes and slipped, a naked savage, into the rain.

  “What are you doing?” asked the mate.

  “Loosening the guy-ropes,” said the savage, “and tumbling over them in the dark,” he added suddenly as he fell to the ground with a bump.

  “You’ll get your pyjamas wet.”

  “No, I won’t,” said John. “It’s a good thing I thought of it. The ropes are as stiff as wires already.”

  The rain made a different noise on the slackened tents. John crawled into his own, dried himself as well as he could, and settled down again to try to sleep.

  “Listen to the beck;” said Titty.

  The beck was sounding a new note, hurried, impatient, not stopping for anybody, quite different from the quiet music of the little waterfalls to which, in Swallowdale, the explorers had grown used.

  “If it rains like this to-morrow, the Amazons won’t come anyway,” said Susan.

  “And there won’t be any work on the mast,” said John.

  Titty shivered. That would mean another day without knowing what had happened at Beckfoot. With the others, in sunlight, she was almost ready to be sure that the great-aunt had gone on scolding and being horrible in spite of the burning of the candle-grease image. At night, alone in her tent, in darkness, she remembered the casting of the spell and the feeling of the image in her hands as she ran out of the cave. Something must have happened.

  “Mr Swainson says they’ll bite like anything when the rain comes,” said Roger. He was still thinking of trout.

  For a long time the explorers lay awake listening to the rain on their tents and the rushing noise of the stream and the new roaring of the waterfalls. But the rain was softer now. The noise was a steady noise and in the end even Titty fell asleep. In the morning they crawled out into a sodden world. The rain had stopped, but every stone was shining. The pale sunlight was glittering in thousands of drops that clung to every sprig of heather. The wet bracken was bowing to the ground. There was brown in the white foam of the waterfall, and the stream that flowed through Swallowdale was dark and coppery and had risen so much that it lapped the stones of Susan’s fireplace, and was within a yard or two of the tents.

  “It’s a good thing we weren’t still camped in Horseshoe Cove,” said Susan.

  “The dam’s gone,” called John, who had gone up to look at it. “At least one side of it has.”

  “May I go for the milk?” asked Titty, but at that moment Mary Swainson herself climbed up into Swallowdale bringing her own can.

  “Well,” she said, “I thought I might find you washed away. I see you’re not, and that’ll be good news for Mrs Walker. How are you for dry wood?”

  “We’ve got lots in the cave,” said Susan.

  “That’s good. Dad says the rain’s given over now, and weather’s going to pick up again.”

  Susan had brought out the explorers’ milk-can. Mary Swainson filled it from her own, and turned to go back down the valley.

  “Do stop and have some tea like you did the other day,” said Titty, but Mary was in a hurry. She was rowing across to the village, and, besides that, was going to Holly Howe to report that all was well.

  Titty ran after her and went with her as far as the lower waterfall.

  “Have you had any news from Beckfoot?” she asked nervously.

  “News? Nay. What news?”

  “Not about anyone being ill there, or anything like that?”

  “Not a word,” said Mary.

  “Not about Miss Turner?”

  “Nay. I’m sure I’d have heard if folk knew of anyone ailing there. I saw Jack last night. He’s loading logs round from over yonder, and working late, and he comes right by Beckfoot. He’d heard nothing of it or he’d have said.”

  With that Titty had to be content.

  Again Captain Flint did not come to Horseshoe Cove. Again there was no news of any kind from the Amazons. But in the afternoon, mother came rowing into the cove just as John was putting his tools away and Titty was going out on the rocks to have a last look in hopes of seeing Captain Flint.

  Mother came up to Swallowdale, felt the sleeping-bags and found them all dry, and praised Susan for making a good fire and making use of the sunshine as well for a thorough airing of anything that might seem a little damp.

  But she, too, had no news from Beckfoot.

  “I expect they got in an awful row,” said Susan, telling how one thing after another had helped to make Nancy and Peggy late in spite of running home by the road.

  “I know they got into trouble over the shipwreck,” said mother. “They were late then, poor dears, anybody would have been.”

  “I wish we could find out,” said Susan.

  “They’re probably locked up on bread and water,” said John.

  “Much more likely made to stay with their grown-ups and have afternoon tea,” said mother. “Why, Titty, what’s the matter?”

  Titty and mother walked up Swallowdale together, to look at the water pouring through the gap at one side of the dam. Roger was going with them, but John grabbed him just in time. Titty told mother the whole dreadful story of the candle-grease, and how the great-aunt had made Mrs Blackett cry, and how Titty had wanted to make the great-aunt feel weak and tired so that she would think of going away to the seaside and leaving the Blacketts to be happy, and how, somehow, the candle-grease image had slipped and been melted and burnt up in the fire, and did mother think the great-aunt could be all right, because really Titty had not meant it to be burnt up but only melted just a very little.

  Mother did not think it was a good thing to make candle-grease images even of great-aunts in order to do magic with them, but when she and Titty walked back together to the camp, where Susan had a kettle on the boil, and a ground-sheet spread for tea, Titty was looking happier than she had looked for two days.

  Later in the evening when they went down to the cove to see mother off with half a dozen little trout Roger had caught in the stream during the day, John said, “I say, mother, if you do hear anything about what happened to the Amazons the other night, could you put it in a letter and send it us by native post?”

  Titty said, “Let’s all go there at once and ask to see them, and then we’ll know.”

  But mother said that this would only make things worse for Mrs Blackett.

  Again, on the third day after the surprise attack, there was no direct news. Captain Flint did not come. The morning was spent in mending the dam, now that the beck had gone down again after the rain. The afternoon and evening were spent in the cove, where Susan made a fire and they had their tea, going up to Swallowdale only in time for supper. There was still too much water coming down to let them go through under the bridge at all comfortably, and anyhow, they were feeling too glum about the fate of the Amazons to mind just crossing the road. After all, Nancy and Peggy had even gone home by it. And as they crossed the road they saw Mary’s woodman going off with his three horses and load of great trees, and were in time to call to Mary, who had been talking to him, when they saw her hurrying along the cart-track towards the farm. She came back at once.

  “I saw Jack this morning,” she said. “He happened to be coming by, and I asked him to find out if anything was gone wrong at Beckfoot, and he’s just been telling me, though how you should know it beats me.”

  Titty stiffened. But it was not what she feared.

  “He saw the cook there, who’s second cousin to Tom’s wife, that’s Jack’s brother, and she was in a fair taking about Miss Turner. Knows her own mind, Miss Turner does, so Jack says, and there’s no pleasing her. And it’s not as if the Blackett lasses aren’t as good-hearted a couple as any. But she’s always on to their mother about them, and there was a fair to-do when they came in late two nights gone by, and there’s to be no more of their being out all day, and if Miss Turner doesn’t leave soon Mrs Blackett’ll be losing her cook. Jack says she was boiling properly with what old Miss Turner had said about plates not being hot to meals.” br />
  It was comfort to Titty at least to hear all this. Miss Turner could hardly be dead if she were complaining of cold plates. But for the others it showed that they had been right. Nancy and Peggy had been late once too often.

  “Everything’s gone wrong this time,” said John. “First I go and wreck Swallow, and now the Amazons are done for.”

  “I wish Captain Flint would come,” said Susan. “They’d probably send a message by him.”

  The day after that the message came, but not through Captain Flint.

  CHAPTER XX

  WELCOME ARROW

  THE day began badly. They were late with breakfast, and after that there had been a wooding party, and then when at last John had gone down to work at the mast he found that Captain Flint had been and gone. He had done a lot of work on the mast. He had indeed done two things that John had wanted to see done. A round hardwood cap with an eye for the flag halyards had been neatly fitted to the top of the mast, and the sheave for the main halyard had been fitted in below it, a piece of neat work with the chisel. The pin on which it moved was flush with the mast which had, at this point, been smoothed with sandpaper. John ran his hand over the place.

  “I’d have liked to see him do it,” he said to himself.

  This was not all. Close beside the mast Captain Flint had left a lot of provisions, a huge roll of coarse sandpaper, and a big can of linseed oil. Tied to the roll of sandpaper was a page from a notebook, on which was written, “Hurry up. Get it good and smooth and then don’t stint the oil.”

  John packed the provisions into his knapsack, which was empty except for the plane, which he had thought might perhaps be needed. He then settled down to hard work with the sandpaper to give the whole mast as smooth a finish as Captain Flint had given to the masthead.

  In doing this he soon forgot all worries about what had happened to the Amazons. The smoothing of the mast left no room for any other thoughts. The wood changed colour and grew pale under the rubbing of the sandpaper, so that it was easy to see just how far the final smoothing had gone. Each foot of the paler colour seemed to bring Swallow nearer to coming back. It was about half done when John suddenly remembered the time, looked at his chronometer, slung his stuffed knapsack on his back, and hurried off up the beck to Swallowdale.