When the washing was all done and the bundles of dry sticks carried up out of the forest to the camp-fire, which Susan had already coaxed to life again, there were soon leaping flames about the kettle. That was Susan’s strong point. She never allowed excitements such as sleeping in the open half-way up a mountain, or a naval battle, or a dangerous bit of exploring, to interfere with the things that really matter, such as seeing that water is really boiling before making tea with it, having breakfast at the proper time, washing as usual, and drying anything that may be damp. Really, if it had not been for Susan, half the Swallows’ adventures would have been impossible, but, with a mate as good as that, to see that everything went as it should, there was no need for any native to worry about what was happening. To-day, for example, she had turned all four sleeping-bags inside out and laid them on the heather to air in the sun. And up here, high on Kanchenjunga, there was a breakfast plain but satisfying, hot tea and plenty of it, hunks of pemmican improved by being held for a moment over the fire (this gives the meat just that touch of camp-fire smoke that makes the difference), bunloaf and apples. What more could any explorer want? And the moment breakfast was over, she set the captain and the crew to tidying up, just as if they had been in Swallowdale and not half-way up the mountain and waiting only for the Amazons and the rope to make the final dash to the summit. The expedition’s mug was washed in the beck. The sleeping-bags were turned the right side out again and rolled up in their waterproof covers.
“No, don’t empty out the kettle,” she said. “There’s enough tea in it to fill the mug for the Amazons. They may want it.”
“The best thing about being on the march,” said Roger, “is that there’s only one knife and one fork to clean instead of four of each.”
“Three of each less to lose,” said the mate. “You hand that knife and fork over here instead of sticking them in the heather, where they’re bound to get lost.”
“They’re stuck there to dry,” said Roger.
“Hand them over,” said the mate. “We’ll get everything except the mug packed before the others come. Hullo, what’s that?”
There was a noise in the wood below them, a noise something like an owl and something like a cuckoo, ending in a gurgle of laughter that was not like a bird at all.
“Here they are,” said John.
“It’s no good their trying to make the owl call,” said Roger. “They can’t do it.”
“What they’re good at is ducks,” said John. “I’ve never heard anybody quack so well as Peggy.”
“Nobody can be good at everything,” said Titty.
CHAPTER XXVII
THE SUMMIT OF KANCHENJUNGA
ONE reason why the Amazons found it hard to make good owl calls was that they had very little breath. They had pulled hard all the way up the river and then had had to climb the steep gorge to the top of the woods. Not even guides can run uphill and make good owl calls at the same time, and the Amazons, after all, were more pirates than guides, and knew more about sailing than about climbing mountains. Still, for the moment, they were being guides, and Captain Nancy, beside her knapsack, had a huge coil of rope slung on her shoulder for easy carrying. She took it off as she came into the camp and threw herself panting on the ground.
“Where’s Peggy?” said Susan.
“Just coming. We raced from the bottom.”
“Would you like some tea?” said Susan.
“Wouldn’t I?” said Nancy, rolling over. “We had breakfast awfully early because of saying goodbye to the G.A. But it was worth it. Everybody thought so. We saw the housemaid dancing in the kitchen. And cook said, ‘Now we can breathe again.’ And it wasn’t any good mother and Uncle Jim pretending. Anybody but the G. A. would have known how they felt.”
“Come on, Peggy,” called Titty, as the mate of the Amazon struggled up out of the trees.
“I couldn’t come any faster,” said Peggy. “I could hear the nectar sloshing round in the bottle in my knapsack, and hitting the top of the bottle inside, and I thought it would bust the cork out any minute. It’s a weight, too.”
“Nothing to the rope,” said Captain Nancy. “And cook crammed my knapsack with doughnuts.”
“I’ll carry the bottle now,” said John.
“Or shall we leave everything here?” said Susan.
“And just make a desperate dash to the summit,” said Titty.
“Much better have it to drink on the summit,” said Nancy.
So while Peggy and Nancy were using the expedition’s mug to share the tea that Susan had kept for them, John shifted the big bottle of nectar from Peggy’s knapsack to his own.
“We’ll carry it part of the way,” said Nancy.
“How do we fasten the rope?” said Roger.
“Give them time to get their tea down,” said Susan.
“It’s all right,” said Nancy, “we can’t both drink at once.”
“Has the great-aunt really gone?” asked Titty.
“She jolly well has,” said Nancy. “If we hurry, we ought to be able to see the smoke of the train that’s taking her away. The quicker the better. Swallows and Amazons for ever. Hurrah for Wild Cat Island and the Spanish Main. And Swallow’s nearly ready. And Uncle Jim is so sick of being a nephew that he’s going to be a first-rate uncle for a change.”
“We packed our tent and stowed it in Amazon last night,” said Peggy.
Nancy held the mug upside down and let the last dregs of the tea hiss on the embers of the fire. “What about going on?” she said, and was going to put the mug as it was in one of the knapsacks, but Susan took it in time to save that, and washed it out in the beck and dried it so that wet sugar should not trickle out of it into places where it was not wanted. The four sleeping-bags, neatly rolled up, were packed between two rocks with everything else that was not being taken to the top. Nothing but food was being taken, besides, of course, the telescope, the compass, and the huge bottle of lemonade, nectar or grog, that Peggy had carried up from the valley.
“How do we fasten the rope?” asked Roger again.
“We fasten it to all of us,” said Nancy.
“Then we mustn’t pull different ways,” said Roger.
“Nobody exactly pulls,” said Nancy. “It’s so that nobody falls over a precipice. There are six of us. If one tumbles, the other five hang on so that the one who tumbles doesn’t tumble far.”
“Are there any precipices?” asked Roger.
“Dozens,” said Titty, “and if there aren’t we can easily make some.”
“There really are plenty,” said Peggy.
“We shan’t go by the path,” said Nancy. “When we come to a rock, we’ll go over it.”
“Let’s begin,” said Roger. “Who goes first? Can I?”
“No,” said John. “The rope isn’t a painter for you to jump ashore with. We must have somebody big in front. It ought to be Nancy. I’ll take the other end.”
“We must make loops in it,” said Nancy. “Six loops, big enough to stick our heads and shoulders through.”
It was done. There were about five yards between each loop. Nancy hung the first loop on herself. Mate Susan took the next, and after her came Able-seaman Titty, Boy Roger, Mate Peggy, and Captain John.
“Now then,” said Nancy, “everybody ready?”
“We ought really to have ice-axes,” said Titty.
Nancy heard her. “I thought of that,” she said, “but they’d get horribly in the way. Worse than the rope. Hands and feet are better, especially on the rocks.”
The long procession moved off. Just at first the rope made it difficult to talk. This was because when anyone wanted to talk to the one in front he hurried on and tripped over loose rope, while at the same time he stretched the rope taut behind him and so gave a disturbing jerk to someone else. By the time they had learnt to talk without hurrying forward or hanging back they were climbing slopes so steep that nobody wanted to talk at all. There were things to shout, such as “Don’t touch
this rock. It’s a loose one,” but mostly it was grim, straight-ahead, silent climbing.
At the start they had been scrambling up beside the tiny mountain beck that was now all that was left to remind them of the river far down below them in the valley. But as soon as they had come to a place from which they had had a clear view of the summit, Nancy, the leader, had turned directly towards it, and within a minute of two everybody had learnt how useful it is on a mountain to have four legs instead of two. Sometimes Nancy turned to left or to right to avoid loose screes, but when she came to a rock that could be climbed, she climbed it, and all the rest of the explorers climbed it after her.
“The really tough bit’s still to come,” she said cheerfully.
The tough bit came when nobody expected it, and the explorers were very glad they had a rope in spite of its being such a bother from the talking point of view. They had come to a steep face of rock, not really very difficult, because there were cracks running across it which made good footholds and handholds, but not a good place to tumble down, because there was nothing to stop you and there were a lot of loose stones at the bottom of it. Nancy had gone up it easily enough, and Susan after her. Titty was just crawling over the edge at the top of it and Peggy and John were waiting at the bottom ready to start, when suddenly Roger, who was about half-way up, shouted out, “Look! Look! Wild goats!”
If he had done no more than shout all would have been well, but he tried to point at the same time. His other hand slipped. He swung round. His feet lost their places on the narrow ledges, and the word “goats” ended in a squeak. The rope tautened with a jerk and pulled Titty back half over the edge. Susan and even Nancy herself were almost jerked off their feet on the grassy slope above the rock. It was lucky that they had moved on from the edge and had the rope almost stretched between them.
THE WORD “GOATS” ENDED IN A SQUEAK
Roger dangled against the face of the rock, about four feet from the bottom, scrabbling like a spider at the end of his silk thread. Titty had grabbed a clump of heather and was being held where she was by Susan and Nancy who were now hanging on to the rope as hard as they could, and had dug their feet into the slope.
“Pull, pull!” called Titty.
“It’s all right, Roger,” said John. “Let me have hold of your feet and I’ll put them in the good places. Stop kicking.”
The scrabbling stopped, and Roger felt his feet being planted from below.
“Now then, start climbing again, or you’ll be bringing Titty down on the top of you.”
The moment Roger began to climb, he took his weight off the rope and Nancy and Susan pulling together found the weight suddenly less. Titty came head first over the edge and up on the grass above the rock.
“Keep on pulling,” she panted, “or he may go flop again. But don’t pull too hard.” She crawled on as well as she could. She had had much the worst of it, and had scratched her elbows and knees slipping back over the edge of the rock.
Roger’s voice came cheerfully from below.
“Did you see the goats?”
“Never mind goats,” called Susan from above. “Is he hurt?”
“Only another scrape,” said Roger. “But did you see the goats? There they are again”
“Don’t point!” shouted John, just in time.
“I must,” said Roger. But he didn’t. “There! There! You’ll see them again in a minute. There they go. Right up by the top.”
The topmost peak of Kanchenjunga was directly above the explorers. But to the right of it, as they looked up, the huge shoulders of the mountain, lower than the peak itself but high in the sky above them, swept round to the north, and it was up there, almost behind the explorers, that Roger, looking over his shoulder as he climbed, had seen things moving on the grey stone slopes under the top of the crags. Up and up they were going, now close under the skyline. Just as John and Peggy caught sight of them they crossed the skyline itself, tiny, dark things, goats cut out of black cardboard against the pale blue of the morning sky.
“I see them,” called Titty.
“Five,” said John.
“There’s one more,” said Roger.
A moment later they were gone.
“Well, I’m glad we’ve seen them,” said Roger.
“Get on up to the top of the rock,” said John. “And don’t look for any more. If it hadn’t been for Titty and the others hanging on to the rope you might have broken your leg.”
“And no stretcher to carry me on.”
Roger hurried up with his climbing and was soon on the grass slope above the rock, being looked over by Susan. Neither she nor Nancy had seen the wild goats, so naturally they thought more about the accident.
“Shiver my timbers,” said Nancy, “but that was a narrow go. We really ought to have waited at the top, taking in rope hand over hand so that he couldn’t slip. But you can’t allow for everything. Who would have thought of his seeing goats just at that moment? If they were goats. Probably sheep.”
“They were goats all right,” said Peggy, climbing up. “We all saw them.”
“All right,” said Nancy. “Goats. But not such goats as some people I know. What about you, Able-seaman? Are you hurt too?”
Titty had been trying to lick the blood off her right elbow, but had found that she could not reach it, and anyway it wasn’t really bleeding enough to matter.
“Lucky it was Roger who fell and not John,” said Nancy. “Not so heavy, for one thing, and if it had been John, what would have become of the grog?”
They were more careful after that, and there were no more accidents. The last few yards up to the top of the peak were easy going. The explorers met and crossed the rough path that they might have followed from the bottom, and then, with the cairn that marked the summit now in full view before them, they wriggled out of the loops in the rope and raced for it. John and Nancy reached the cairn almost together. Roger and Titty came next. Mate Susan had stopped to coil the rope and Mate Peggy had waited to help her to carry it.
All this time the explorers had been climbing up the northern side of the peak of Kanchenjunga. The huge shoulder of the mountain had shut out from them everything that there was to the west. As they climbed, other hills in the distance seemed to be climbing too, and, when they looked back into the valley they had left, it seemed so small that they could hardly believe that there had been room to row a boat along that bright thread in the meadows that they knew was the river. But it was not until the last rush to the top, not until they were actually standing by the cairn that marked the highest point of Kanchenjunga, that they could see what lay beyond the mountain.
Then indeed they knew that they were on the roof of the world.
Far, far away, beyond range after range of low hills, the land ended and the sea began, the real sea, blue water stretching on and on until it met the sky. There were white specks of sailing ships, coasting schooners, probably, and little black plumes of smoke showed steamers on their way to Ireland or on their way back or working up or down between Liverpool and the Clyde. And forty miles away or more there was a short dark line on the blue field of the sea. “Due west from here,” said John, looking at the compass in his hand. “It’s the Isle of Man.”
“Look back the other way,” said Peggy.
“You can see right into Scotland,” said Nancy. “Those hills over there are the other side of the Solway Firth.”
“And there’s Scawfell, and Skiddaw, and that’s Helvellyn, and the pointed one’s Ill Bell, and there’s High Street, where the Ancient Britons had a road along the top of the mountains.”
“Where’s Carlisle?” asked Titty. “It must be somewhere over there.”
“How do you know?” asked Nancy.
“‘And the red glare on Skiddaw roused the burghers of Carlisle.’ Probably in those days they didn’t have blinds in bedroom windows.”
“We know that one, too,” said Peggy. “But not all of it. It’s worse than ‘Casabianca.’”
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“I like it because of the beacons,” said Titty.
John and Roger had no eyes for mountains while they could see blue water and ships, however far away.
“If we went on and on, beyond the Isle of Man, what would we come to?” asked Roger.
“Ireland, I think,” said John, “and then probably America …”
“And if we still went on?”
“Then there’d be the Pacific and China.”
“And then?”
John thought for a minute. “There’d be all Asia and then all Europe and then there’d be the North Sea and then we’d be coming up the other side of those hills.” He looked back towards the hills beyond Rio and the hills beyond them, and the hills beyond them again, stretching away, fold upon fold, into the east.
“Then we’d have gone all round the world.”
“Of course.”
“Let’s.”
“We will some day. Daddy’s done it.”
“So has Uncle Jim,” said Peggy.
“Of course, you couldn’t see round, however high you were,” said Roger.
“You wouldn’t want to,” said Titty. “Much better fun not knowing what was coming next.”
“Well, up here you’re properly on the roof.” Nancy threw herself down on the warm ground. “What about that nectar? Oh, I say, I’ve forgotten all about it and let you carry it all the way up.”
“That’s all right.” John brought the big bottle out of his knapsack, and the mug began to make its rounds with lemonade rather warm after its journey, while Susan and Peggy were cutting up the bunloaf and opening the last of the pemmican tins, and Nancy emptied out the doughnuts.
“I wonder whether anybody’s ever had dinner on the top of Kanchenjunga before?” said Titty, when she had eaten her share of pemmican and was finishing off with a doughnut.