Swallowdale

by Arthur Ransome

  “We must have one of them for Kanchenjunga,” said Titty.

  “Which one?”

  “The biggest.”

  The stream came tumbling and twisting across the moorland to drop at their feet into the woods. In its winter strength it had washed away the earth round great stones and carved a deep gully for itself, so that though they could see where it was they could not see the water except close to them.

  “Are we going on?” asked the boy.

  “We can’t get lost if we keep close to the beck,” said the able-seaman.

  She started forward again along a sheep track that led through the heather close above the stream. The boy ate a piece of the chocolate he had saved, and hurried after the able-seaman. Sometimes the bracken grew so high that they could hardly see each other. Sometimes the sheep track wound down along the edge of the stream, turning this way and that round pale grey stones, and then climbed up again to twist its way among the tough clumps of purple heather. There was the stream to guide them, and now there was a new noise to draw them on. This was the noise of falling water, the same noise that they had had close beside them while they were climbing through the larch wood, but much louder now, and different when heard on the open moorland instead of under the trees.

  “Look,” said the able-seaman suddenly. “There it is.”

  They hurried on until they stood below the waterfall. Above them the water poured down noisily from ledge to ledge of rock, and they could go no farther without climbing up the rocks beside the falling water or getting out of the long winding gully that the stream had carved for itself in the moor.

  The able-seaman hesitated. This time it was the boy who wanted to go on. Before she had made up her mind, he was already climbing. A moment later she was climbing too, and they came together to the top of the dry rocks at the side of the fall.

  “That was easy climbing,” said the boy. “Hullo! …”

  Neither of them had expected anything like what they found when they scrambled over the top. It was a little valley in the moorland, shut in by another waterfall at the head of it, not a hundred yards away, and by slopes of rock and heather that rose so steeply that when the explorers looked up they could see nothing but the sky above them. In there it was as if the blue mountains did not exist. The valley might have been hung in air, for all that they could see outside it, except when they turned round and looked back, from the top of the waterfall they had climbed, to the moorland, the woods and the hills on the other side of the lake.

  “It’s a lovely place for brigands,” said the boy.

  “It’s just the place for Peter Duck,” said the able-seaman. “It’s the most secret valley that ever there was in the world.”

  Peter Duck had grown up gradually to be one of the able-seaman’s most constant companions, shared now and then by the boy, but not taken very seriously by the others, though nobody laughed at him. He had been the most important character in the story they had made up during those winter evenings in the cabin of the wherry with Nancy and Peggy and Captain Flint. Peter Duck, who said he had been afloat ever since he was a duckling, was the old sailor who had voyaged with them to the Caribbees in the story and, still in the story, had come back to Lowestoft with his pockets full of pirate gold. Titty had had a big share in his invention, and now she made him useful in all sorts of ways, sometimes when she and Roger were together, but mostly when she was by herself. Anything might happen to Peter Duck and he would always come out all right. Dolls meant nothing to Titty. Peter Duck was a great deal more useful than any doll could have been. He could always tidy himself away. He never got lost. He had no sawdust to run out. And she had only to think of him, when there he was, ready for any adventure in which he might be wanted.

  “He could hide here from anybody who wanted to bother him. I don’t believe he’s ever had a better place. Let’s see what it looks like from the top.”

  Roger was already on his feet and crossing the stream, jumping from one dry stone to another.

  “You go up that side,” Titty called to him, “and I’ll go up this, and then we’ll see if it’s as secret as it looks.”

  They climbed up opposite sides of the valley and looked back at each other. They found they had only to go a few yards from the edge of it not to see that it was there. Titty in the heather above one side of the valley and Roger in the heather above the other side would never, if they had not known, have guessed that a valley lay between them.

  “It’s absolutely perfect,” shouted Titty.

  “I think so, too,” shouted Roger.

  They scrambled down again to meet in the bottom, and followed the stream to the upper waterfall. In several of the little pools on the way they saw small trout, and in the big pool under the waterfall, just as they got there, a larger trout jumped clean into the air after a fly and dropped again into the pool in a splash of silver.

  “Peter Duck’ll be able to fish,” said Titty. “He always liked it. Do you remember how he was always trailing a hook for sharks over the stern of the schooner?”

  “We’ll fish too,” said Roger. “What about our tea?”

  That was the worst of Roger. He might get hungry at any minute.

  “Have my chocolate,” said the able-seaman. “I don’t want it.”

  “Really?” said Roger.

  “Of course,” said Titty.

  “Let’s wait and see if that fish jumps again,” said Roger, “and I’ll eat the chocolate while we’re watching.”

  Titty handed over her chocolate and looked back down the valley and out through the V-shaped gap at the foot of it to the hills on the other side of the lake, and to other hills beyond them, hills so far away that she might have thought them clouds if the sky overhead had not been so very clear. From this upper end of the valley she could not see the moor below the waterfall, or the woods through which they had climbed. She looked at the valley itself, and its steep sides, one of them, on the right, almost a precipice of rock, with heather growing in the cracks of it, and the other, on the left, not so steep, with grass on it, bracken and loose stones. She was wishing she had her map with her, to mark in it the stream and the newly discovered valley, when, on a warm stone close to her, she saw a tortoiseshell butterfly, resting in the sunshine, with his brown and blue and orange and black wings spread out and all but still.

  “Isn’t he a beauty?” she said, and as she said it the butterfly fluttered off the stone and away down the valley, never far from the ground.

  “He’ll perch again and open his wings in a minute,” she said, and indeed the butterfly presently dropped on a clump of heather growing low down in a cleft in the steep slope of grey rock at which she had been looking.

  Titty, on tiptoe, followed to look at him, but when she was almost near enough to touch the heather on which he had settled, she forgot all about him. When the butterfly fluttered away once more, she did not even see him go.

  “Roger! Roger!” she cried. “It’s a cave!”

  Roger heard her, in spite of the noise of the waterfall. He did not hear the words, but there was something urgent in her voice that was enough to put the trout out of his head. What had she found? He came, running, and found her looking under the clump of heather into a dark hole in the wall of grey rock. It was a hole, narrower at the top than at the bottom, big enough to let a stooping man use it as a doorway, and yet so well sheltered by the rock which, just here, leaned outward over it, and so deep in the shadow of the thick bushy heather that was growing out of cracks in the stone above it and on either side of it, that it would have been easy to think it was no more than a cleft in the rock, and easier still not to notice it at all. The two explorers crouched together, and tried to see into the black darkness inside.

  “Fox,” said Roger, “or perhaps bear. It’s big enough for bear.”

  “I wish I had my torch,” said Titty. “To-day I haven’t even got a box of matches.”

  They picked up stones and threw them in. Nothing came out
at them, though they almost thought that something might. Titty held the heather aside and reached in the full length of her arm, just for a moment.

  “It gets bigger inside,” she said. “Higher, too. I believe we could stand up in it. Shall we go in? It’s not much good in the dark. Or shall we wait for torches?”

  “Let’s go and get torches,” said Roger.

  “Come on,” said Titty. “We’ll go and fetch the captain and the mate. We’ll leave Peter Duck to look after it till we come back. It’s his cave. I expect he’s known about it always. Come on.”

  They ran down the valley, scrambled down the rocks by the lower waterfall, and raced along the sheep tracks through the heather and bracken. Just where the beck left the moorland to tumble headlong down through the steep woods, Titty pulled up.

  “The Amazons are there too,” she said.

  Roger looked at her, more than a little out of breath.

  “They’ve discovered almost everything there is to discover,” she said, “but perhaps they don’t know about that. We’ll tell them about the valley, but keep the cave a secret, for us and Peter Duck.”

  “We’ll tell John and Susan.”

  “We’ll get them to come to see the valley and then have the cave for a surprise. A cave’s far too good a thing to waste, and it’s wasted if too many people know about it. Of course,” she added, “if they won’t come to see the valley, we’ll have to tell them about the cave.”

  They dropped quickly down through the trees, tore off their shoes and splashed their way under the bridge. They put their shoes on again without waiting to do much drying, and came breathless altogether to the shores of Horseshoe Cove.

  *

  They found, like many explorers before them, that somehow, in their absence, they had got into trouble at home. Tea had been made and drunk, scouting parties had been out to look for them, the Amazons were in a terrible hurry to be starting back, and the mate wanted to know why they had been away so long. The tea that had been saved for the able-seaman and the boy was nearly cold, and they were quickly bundled aboard the Swallow and told to drink it on the voyage home, for unless they started at once the Amazons, who were late already, would have to go without seeing the new tents.

  But while the Swallow and the Amazon were being launched, the able-seaman and the boy began pouring out their story. They both began talking at once, but the boy soon gave up. After all, Titty could do it better. And Titty told of the moor above the wood, of the waterfall, and of the little valley above the waterfall, a valley so secret that anybody could hide in it for ever.

  “Honest pirate?” called Nancy, who was already paddling Amazon towards the mouth of the cove. ‘Honest pirate, or is it a Peter Duck story?”

  “Peter Duck’s in it, of course,” said Titty, “but it’s all true.”

  The two little ships got under way. Nancy and Peggy in the Amazon waited for the Swallow outside the cove, and they sailed for Wild Cat Island within comfortable talking distance.

  “That’s the Pike Rock,” said Nancy, pointing out the rock opposite the southern of the two little headlands. “You wouldn’t be able to see it if the lake wasn’t so low.”

  “We saw it when we were coming in,” said John.

  “It’s awfully jagged,” said Peggy. “Uncle Jim saw a fisherman sink his boat by rowing into it.”

  In Swallow Titty was still talking of the secret valley. “Nobody would find it,” she said, “if they didn’t know it was there.”

  “She may be quite right,” said Nancy, from the Amazon. “We’ve never gone up to the moor from this side. Are you sure about it, Able-seaman? A real secret one?”

  “You couldn’t tell it was there at all if you hadn’t gone right into it,” said Roger.

  ‘It might be just the place to go to when the great-aunt says we mustn’t sail,” said Peggy.

  “Do you think I haven’t thought of that?” said Captain Nancy.

  “You’ll make me upset the mug,” said Roger, as Titty prodded him gently with her finger.

  “They don’t know about it,” she whispered.

  “What about going there to-morrow?” said Nancy across the water.

  “Say yes, say yes,” said Roger and Titty together.

  “I don’t see why we shouldn’t,” said Captain John.

  John and Nancy sailed their ships past the harbour at the foot of the island, up the inner channel, and brought them in at the landing-place.

  “Just for one second,” said Nancy. “We’re late already.”

  “We always are,” said Peggy. “But the great-aunt makes being late seem much worse.”

  They raced up from the landing-place and looked round the camp. Susan thanked them for the wood-pile. Titty dived into her tent and brought out the envelope with the eight green feathers she had saved for them. John brought the arrow from behind the boxes in the store tent. Both the Amazons said, “How do you do” and “Pieces of eight” to the parrot, but the parrot had seen the green feathers and so would do nothing but squawk at them, though Titty tried to make him show off. They looked, sadly, at the place where their own tent used to stand. They said how good were the new tents of the Swallows, and then they hurried down to the landing-place, tumbled into the Amazon and pushed off.

  “What about to-morrow?” asked Susan at the last minute.

  “We’ll go to see Titty’s valley,” called Nancy. “It might be very useful. Mother’s taking the great-aunt out to lunch, so we needn’t be in till tea. We’ll sail straight to Horseshoe Cove in the morning. Be there before you are. So long, Swallows!”

  The four Swallows went up to Look Out Point to watch the little white sail grow smaller and smaller as the Amazon sailed away towards the Peak of Darien.

  “I don’t see why they shouldn’t have come here in the morning,” said Susan.

  “It’s beastly for them not being able to camp on the island when we can,” said John. “After all they knew the island first.”

  When the Amazon had sailed away so that the pirates could not hear shouts, let alone whispers, it was hard for the able-seaman and the boy to keep their secret. But keep it they did, though they came near giving it away.

  “There’s something more we discovered,” said Titty.

  “Something better than anything we’ve told you yet.”

  “What was it?” said Susan. “Probably a caterpillar.”

  “Well,” said Roger, “a butterfly did help.”

  “If it hadn’t been for the butterfly we wouldn’t have found it,” said Titty.

  “What is it?” said John.

  “It’s the very thing Peter Duck’s always been wanting.”

  CHAPTER V

  CAPTAIN JOHN HANGS ON

  “The old man said, ‘I mean to hang on

  Till her canvas busts or her sticks are gone’—

  Which the blushing looney did, till at last

  Overboard went her mizen mast.

  Hear the yarn of a sailor,

  An old yarn learned at sea.”

  MASEFIELD, The Yarn of the Loch Achray

  IN the morning Captain John had everything ready for pushing off and hoisting sail. He was waiting only for his crew and his crew were busy tidying up the camp after breakfast, because the mate would never allow things to be left dirty between one meal and the next.

  “She likes the camp to look as if no one had ever eaten even a biscuit in it,” said John to himself, rather grumpily, though he knew the mate was right. But he had a reason for being in a hurry.

  Long ago the Amazon had been sighted, sailing fast down the lake, along the farther shore. The explorers on Wild Cat Island had slept so well that there was never any chance that they could beat Nancy and Peggy Blackett in getting first to Horseshoe Cove. Nancy had said Amazon would be there first, and she would be, first by any amount. But that was not all. Captain John had seen what a good wind she had out there. Through the telescope he had seen that there were pretty big waves on that side of th
e lake. From the rock above the harbour he had watched Amazon race past Cormorant Island and on and on until she reached the narrow entrance into Horseshoe Cove. Then, watching through the telescope, he had seen how Nancy and Peggy jibed her smartly, brought the sail over on the other side, and shot out of sight into the little bay. While he was watching, he was planning, of course, exactly what he would do in sailing Swallow across there. The wind was north-east, so that it was blowing directly from Wild Cat Island to Horseshoe Cove. Captain John made up his mind that he would run down wind to the cove with the sail out on the port side. By doing that, he thought, he would be able to turn into the cove without having to jibe in the rough water and harder wind that he could see that he would find there. He had this plan clear in his mind, and now he wanted to be sailing and getting across there before the wind changed or something happened to make the plan no good. It seemed to him that the wind was getting stronger and he did not want to have to reef when, as he had seen, the Amazon had carried full sail. He wanted to be off at once and to-day everybody else seemed to be busy about something that did not matter at all. It had begun at breakfast when Titty had started making a fuss about torches, as if anybody wanted torches on a summer day. He had been a donkey to give in to her and to let her have his torch to put in with the rest of the luggage.

  At last he heard the others coming.

  Roger came first with the kettle. Then came Titty with a basket of eggs and a frying-pan. Then Mate Susan with two knapsacks, one full of towels and bathing things, and the other with rations for the expedition. “We shan’t want much,” she had said, “because the Amazons have got to get back to tea.” As she came, she was going over the things she had put in. “Biscuits, bread, seed-cake, spoons, knife, marmalade, butter …”