She and John hurried off with the milk-can and disappeared among the trees. They were soon back, but the milk-can was only a quarter full.
“They haven’t milked yet,” said Nancy. “I was a galoot not to think of it. But there’s enough for some tea, and they’ll fill the can for you as soon as the cows come in. You’ll have to wait here. Anyway, there wouldn’t be time for us to come right up to the place where you’ll sleep. But you can’t miss it. Follow the beck right up till you come out of the trees and you’ll find yourself in a gorge halfway up the mountain. That’s the place. There’s a path, of course, but naturally you wouldn’t use it. You can get up by following the beck. We’ll be with you at nine o’clock to-morrow morning with the rope. Come on, Peggy. Right about turn. We’ve got to stir our stumps and then row fit to bust the oars. Come on. Back to best frocks and ‘Casabianca’! To-morrow Kanchenjunga and the roof of the world!”
“Won’t you have some tea, too?” asked Susan.
“No time,” Peggy was wriggling out of the straps of the boy’s knapsack. “So long, Swallows,” she said, and hurried after Nancy, who was already on her way back down the valley to the place where they had left the Beckfoot war canoe. For a few moments the Swallows watched the two red knitted caps bobbing up, now here, now there, along the rocky wooded bank until they were hidden by a bend in the river.
“What time is it?” asked Susan.
John showed her his watch.
“They haven’t much time to lose,” she said.
“The rowing’s all downstream,” said John. “They ought to do it all right.”
The explorers rested where they were. The Amazons, Nancy particularly, always left them a little out of breath. When she was there, things seemed to move so fast. Now that she was gone, it was a few minutes before things settled. For these few minutes everything seemed in a whirl like the dust and bits of paper in a railway station when an express train has roared through.
But presently Roger wriggled down the rocks till he could see into a small pool of clear water in the little stream that came rushing down through the trees from somewhere high on Kanchenjunga. He wanted to know if the trout he had frightened under a stone was going to show himself again. “Don’t move, Roger,” called Titty. “There’s a dipper, bobbing … there …. Farther up …. On the other side …” John looked at his watch and then tried to find a place where the trees did not get in the way, so that he could see the top of the mountain. “It’s not a bad thing that we’ve got to wait for the milk,” he said. “We can’t be very far from the camping-place, and it’d be a pity to get there too early.” “Hi,” called Susan, “don’t you go and tumble in, Roger. Let’s find a place for a fire, and then all hands to gather wood.
CHAPTER XXVI
THE HALF-WAY CAMP
THEY had had tea. They had bathed. They had scouted through the trees to see what sort of a farmhouse it was that John had visited with Nancy. They had decided that it was more like Dixon’s farm than Swainson’s, although, as Roger pointed out, there were no geese. They had returned to the place where the waters met, where they had left their knapsacks, and were already thinking that it must be time to fetch the milk, when a small boy, not bigger than Roger, carrying a huge milk-can, came out of the trees.
“Where’s your can?” he said. “Mother says you’re to have it filled for you.”
Susan had washed out the can and now gave it to the small boy. He put it on the ground, filled it to the very brim out of his big can, ran his finger round the edge where some milk had slopped over, licked his finger and was just starting back when he seemed to change his mind. He put his can down, turned round and put both hands in his pockets.
“Where be you going?” he asked. “Up the beck?”
“Yes,” said Susan.
“Foxes up there,” he said. “Bite you. I’m not afraid of them.”
“Neither are we,” said Roger.
“Eight lambs they took, and eighteen fat pullets. Ask my dad.”
“Jacky,” a loud call sounded through the trees, followed by a louder, “JACKEE!”
The small boy winked, picked up his can, said, “Happen I’d best be going,” and went slowly off again into the wood.
“Oh, bother,” said Roger a minute later, “I never asked him about the goats.”
“Never mind about the goats,” said John. “Shoulder packs. We can be getting on. All right, Susan, I’ll take the milk.”
Two minutes later the explorers were once more on the march.
*
Almost at once they began to climb. This stream hurrying down from Kanchenjunga fell far more steeply than the little beck that had led the able-seaman and the boy to the discovery of Swallowdale. It dropped sometimes ten, twenty feet at a time into pools from which the white foam spirted high in air to meet it. The explorers were glad they had no sticks to hamper them. They were glad to use their hands to cling to rock or tree as they pulled their way up. Careful as he was, John spilt a little of the milk, not more than a drop or two, but enough to show that anybody else would have spilt a lot. Sometimes they caught a glimpse of a path not far away, but remembering what Nancy Blackett expected of them, they took no notice of it whatever.
The evening sun shone down through the trees above them. It would soon be hidden behind the shoulder of the mountain, but when they looked back from high in the wood, they looked through the tops of pine and dark fir to broad sunlit country already far away. The hills beyond Rio now showed over the Swallowdale moors, and beyond those hills they could see hills more distant still, faint and blue, like clouds that had borrowed colour from the sky.
On and on they climbed, and came suddenly out of the trees into a ravine of naked stone and heather. They stopped short. The sun had that moment sunk behind the mountain above them, but it still lit the tops of the pine trees they had left. Presently these, too, were in shadow, though for some time yet the explorers, looking back, could see bright sunshine on the distant hills. To the left the peak of Kanchenjunga rose above the lesser crags that curved about the head of the ravine. Far up among those crags they could see thin white lines where the becks were still carrying off the water collected on the tops. To right and left of them were rough fells through which it seemed that the little stream at their feet had carved a channel fit for a river a thousand times bigger than itself.
“Isn’t he a beauty?” said Titty.
“Who?” said Roger.
“Kanchenjunga, of course. He’s the finest mountain in the world. I say, Susan, let’s put our things down, and run up just this little bit so that we can look out over the trees.”
“Go ahead,” said Susan. “I suppose this is the place for the camp?”
“It must be,” said John, and putting down milk-can and knapsacks they climbed the side of the ravine and then, resting, looked back once more, out of the shadow, over the sunlit country far away.
“You can’t see Rio,” said Titty. “I thought perhaps you could. But we’ll be able to see it from the top.”
“Hullo,” said John. “Let’s have the telescope.” Titty had brought it up in hopes of seeing Holly Howe. She gave it to John, who looked through it, not at the distant country but at the Swallowdale moors. He had seen, even without the telescope, the grey blob of the watch-tower. Everybody looked at it in turn. There was the rock, and the dark patch of water in the middle of the heather that they knew was Trout Tarn. Just beyond the rock must be Swallowdale itself. Titty thought of the parrot and Peter Duck taking care of the cave. “I expect they’ll be quite all right,” she said.
“Who?” said John.
“Polly and Peter Duck. They’ll be keeping each other company, just like mother and Bridget. Bridget’ll be in bed. It’s a pity we aren’t a little bit higher, so that mother could see our fire.”
“We’d better be making it,” said Susan, “and getting bracken or heather for beds before it’s dark.”
They gathered fallen branches in the top of the
wood and cut a lot of bracken to make a soft place for their sleeping-bags. Then, while Susan was boiling some water over the camp fire, John opened a tin of pemmican, and the explorers had a simple and well-earned supper, just a scrap of pemmican for each of them, and some bunloaf after it, and a bit of chocolate, while the expedition’s one mug was refilled again and again with milk and a little tea and went round and round like a loving-cup.
NIGHT ON THE MOUNTAIN
Very soon after supper Susan blew her mate’s whistle, two short puffs and a long one, which means, “You are standing into danger, so look out.” Titty and Roger, who had been doing a little exploring in the dusk, knew what it meant and came running back to the camp where the fire was already beginning to look like a night fire, more flame than smoke, instead of like a day fire, which, in bright sunlight, often looks as if it has no flames at all.
“What danger?” asked Roger eagerly.
“Getting into trouble for going late to bed,” said Susan. “Hop in and go under.”
Titty was in her sleeping-bag in a moment. It was the first time in her life that she had ever slept half-way up a mountain and she did not want to waste a minute of it.
“It feels very naked going to bed without a tent,” said Roger.
“It’s all right,” said John. “I tried it last night.”
“Do I go under clothes and all?”
“Clothes and all,” said the mate, “and hurry up.”
“Where are you going to be? And John?”
“Close to you.”
“Near enough to touch?”
“Yes. But don’t do any touching when we’ve got to sleep.”
“Not even if the foxes come nosing round, like that boy said.”
“Not for anything short of bears,” said John, “and there are no bears. Remember you’re going to climb the peak to-morrow.”
“What am I to think about to get to sleep quickly?”
“Count the feathers in the ship’s parrot,” said Titty. “It’s much worse for him, poor dear, in the cave. It’s as if he’d had his cover on all day.”
Roger snuggled down in his bag. The stuffing in the bags was better than nothing, and with the bracken underneath he was comfortable enough.
“Who’s going to keep watch?” said Titty hopefully.
“Not you,” said the mate. “Go under and see if you can get to sleep before Roger …. If anybody wants a hot bottle,” she added presently, “I could put a hot stone from the fire at the foot of their sleeping-bag.”
“I’m as hot as anything,” said Titty.
There was no answer from Roger.
“Lucky there’s no wind,” said the mate.
“It’s almost stuffy,” said John.
For some time he and the mate sat by the camp fire.
“So long as they’re warm I suppose it’s all right,” said the mate at last.
“Of course it is,” said the captain.
The shapes of the tree-tops grew harder and harder to see against the darkening western sky. Only, far above them, there was still light behind the mountain. The mate carefully built in her fire with clods of earth that she had cut with a knife and pulled up with her fingers. Like that, it would last till morning.
“We’re here, anyway,” she said. “So even if it is all wrong it can’t be helped now.”
“But it isn’t all wrong,” said John.
*
Ten minutes later four bundles lay side by side in the dusk. For a long time now the two middle bundles had stirred so little that they might have had nothing in them but old clothes. The two outer bundles were still wriggling to find positions in which bones and stones did not press too hard on each other.
There was quiet except for the stream and the waterfalls in the steep woods below the camp.
One of the outer bundles whispered across the two inner ones, “Are you all right, Susan?”
“Yes.”
“Good night.”
“Good night.”
Far away, down in the valley, an owl called.
John heard it, and thinking with a chuckle of that other owl that had been awake at midday, fell happily asleep.
*
Not one of the explorers slept all night without waking. But they woke at different times. Roger was wide awake for a minute or two, thinking he heard wild goats. He listened as hard as he could, but there was no other noise than the breathing of the others, and of course the stream and the waterfalls in the woods. He put out a hand to touch Susan’s sleeping-bag. It was still there and she was in it. He made sure of that, but did not wake her, and when she woke herself a little later, he was already asleep again.
Susan sat up when she woke, sniffing the wood-smoke from her smothered fire. Very carefully she wriggled out of her bag and covered up a place where the fire was trying to find its way through its blanket of earth. She damped the earth with a little water from the kettle. A drop of water hissed on a hot ember, sounding to her so loud that she thought the others would be sure to wake. It felt queer to stand up there, half-way up a mountain in the dark, and to know that the three dim bundles at her feet were the captain and the crew. But she felt warm and the others were fast asleep, and in their bags must be warmer still. She wriggled in again without waking them and went to sleep again a good deal happier.
John was awake for a minute or two before he knew that he was not in Swallowdale. Then he felt for his chronometer, wondering what time it was, and forgetting that he had no torch…. Lighting a match would be bound to wake the others. He tried to guess what time it was by looking at the sky and wondering if he could see any signs of the coming dawn. There did not seem to be quite so many stars as he had seen last night, looking up out of Swallowdale. Well, he would not try to count them. The boy and the able-seaman had gone to bed in good time, just as he had said they would. Swallow was coming back. The great-aunt was going. There was to be a race. Haul in the sheet. Keep her full, though. Keep her sailing … Luff now … Luff. Into the wind … And he was asleep one more.
Titty was waked by feeling the tip of her nose cold. She brought a warm hand up out of the sleeping-bag and rubbed it. Then she remembered that she was half-way up Kanchenjunga. This was real exploring. The smell of wood-smoke made it more real still. It was already not so dark as it had been, and looking east, away from the mountain, she saw the sheltering tops of the pines already black against a paler sky. She thought that now nobody would mind if she were to stay awake and keep watch over the camp. But there would be no harm in putting her nose down into the sleeping-bag just for a minute or two to warm its cold tip. By the time she looked out again it was already broad daylight.
*
The sun set a golden cap on the head of Kanchenjunga, and the morning glow, creeping down, found out the creases and wrinkles of his old face almost as well as it does in winter when the sunshine makes every crevice and gully a blue shadow in the gleaming snow. The light crept lower and lower down the mountain sides and lit the tops of the pine trees in the woods below the camp. The shadows of the trees, which at first had been flung far over the four bundles of the expedition, grew shorter. Roger suddenly turned over, bag and all, all in one angry movement, as if he felt that the sun had shone on his face on purpose. John yawned and sat up and looked straight into the eyes of Titty.
“I’ve been watching it,” she said.
“It’s too early to get up,” said John.
“Well, let’s go on not getting up. Susan’s hard asleep. Roger’s been dreaming about something. He said, ‘Of course I can,’ out loud.”
For a while they lay, propped up on their elbows, but not for very long. The sun rose higher and grew hotter, and presently the able-seaman said, “What about getting her some more wood?”
“She’ll want some,” said the captain, looking first at the smouldering fire, an earthy mound from which a thin trickle of pale smoke climbed up into the sky and disappeared, and then at the still sleeping mate. “She’ll want some. We
may as well get some. But don’t wake Roger when you wriggle out.”
Half an hour later Roger reached out towards Titty’s sleeping-bag, and finding it empty, sat up suddenly and looked about him. He prodded the mate, who was still asleep.
“What’s the matter?” said the muffled voice of the mate.
“Titty and John are gone.”
“What?”
“Gone,” said Roger, and added hopefully. “Probably eaten by bears in the night just because John went and said there weren’t any.”
“Rubbish,” grunted Susan.
“Well, wolves then, or some of those foxes.”
Susan sat up and saw the empty sleeping-bags, lying desolate and flat with noth