“Remember the row there was the day before yesterday,” he said. “And to-day there’s no shipwreck for an excuse.”
“Even the shipwreck wasn’t much good, was it?” said Nancy. “We’ll hurry. We won’t get you into another mess.”
“There wasn’t really a row because you stayed to help down at Horseshoe Cove?” said John.
“Wasn’t there?” said Nancy. “You don’t know the great-aunt. I say, what’s the valley look like from outside?”
“You simply can’t see it at all,” said Titty, delighted to get the Amazons well away from the cave. “Come and look.”
They climbed all together up the steep northern side of the valley and looked out over the moorland.
“From ten yards away you can’t see there’s a valley at all,” said John.
“What’s that big rock?” said Nancy, pointing away to the north.
“Watch-tower,” said John. “At least it’s going to be.”
“Um,” said Nancy. “You can see it from far enough.”
“That’s why it’s a good watch-tower,” said Titty.
“It’ll help us to find the valley if we come over the moor,” said Nancy. “We will. That’s what we’ll do. We’ll make a surprise attack. The very first day we can get away. We can’t come to-morrow.”
“We’ll be ready for you,” said Captain John.
“You won’t be able to get away at all,” said Captain Flint, “if you don’t bolt for it now.”
“Come on,” said Peggy. “You’ll be late too. We shan’t. Not with this wind.”
“No. I don’t come on duty until tea-time. But for goodness’ sake don’t you be late. I really should like to keep out of hot water for a day or two at least.”
“He’s as much afraid of the G.A. as we are,” Peggy explained to Susan.
“He’s much more afraid,” said Nancy. “So’s mother, poor dear.”
“He even puts on townish clothes,” said Peggy.
“Phew!” said Nancy. “What about our best frocks? Come on. We’ve only just got time. I forgot we’d slipped out in comfortables.”
They hared down into the valley, grabbed their oar, coiled their rope, raced for the waterfall, and a few minutes later the Swallows and Captain Flint, looking after them, saw their red caps disappear into the trees.
“They didn’t spot the cave,” said Roger.
“No,” said Titty.
“By gum,” said Captain John, “just wait until they make their attack.”
“Don’t count on their making one,” said Captain Flint. “It really is a bit difficult for them to get away.”
“I think the great-aunt must be horrid,” said Titty.
Captain Flint said neither “Yes” nor “No” to that, but reminded them that he would be going by Holly Howe and would take a mail if they liked to make one ready. So while the baggage was still lying about the fireplace and the tents not pitched, they dug out Titty’s writing things and made a despatch, dated from Swallowdale, and signed by everybody, to say that the move had been made, that there was no longer fear of fevers or floods, and that they hoped that mother and the ship’s baby would come as soon as possible to tea.
“But how will she find the way?” said Susan.
“I’ll be working at the mast,” said John. “So it’ll be all right if she comes to the cove.”
This was added, and the despatch was folded up and put in an envelope and addressed to mother at Holly Howe. Roger wrote “Pirate Post” in the top left-hand corner.
Captain Flint had been quietly smoking his pipe during the making of the despatch. “By the way,” he said, when it was finished, as if he had just remembered something, “I’d like to have a look in your cave if I may. I suppose it’s all right now those two have gone?”
Susan lent him her torch and he squeezed in. The explorers crowded after him.
“It’s smaller than I thought it was,” he said when he was inside and able once more to stand up. He turned to the right inside the doorway and there, carved with a knife on the rock, he found the name “Ben Gunn” in big sprawling letters.
“We’ll put Peter Duck’s name there too,” said Titty.
“Ben Gunn’ll be glad to meet him,” said Captain Flint.
“Did you carve it?” asked John.
“More than thirty years ago,” said Captain Flint.
Soon after that he went off down the moor. He said he’d like to stop with them but after carrying that huge bale he was afraid if he didn’t keep moving he might get stiff. Anyway he’d be at the cove in the morning to show John how to use the shaping plane and the callipers. They went with him to the edge of the waterfall, told him he had been very useful as a porter, and said good-bye to him when he had safely climbed down beside the stream. When he had gone a little way towards the top of the woods, he turned to wave to any of the explorers who might still be looking down from above the waterfall. But none were there. They were busy putting up the tents in the new camp.
CHAPTER XIV
SETTLING IN
THERE was a great deal to be done and, privately, the shipwrecked sailors were glad to be left by themselves for the doing of it. Natives and pirates (even Captain Flint and the Amazons) were all very well when they were wanted, useful to carry things, for example, sometimes full of information and, of course, very good for taking part in an adventure. But no one wanted them about when there was a new camp to make in a new place and there were half a hundred things to be decided. There were some minutes that day when it was almost settled that until Swallow came back mended, her captain and crew would not go on being shipwrecked sailors, but would be a savage tribe instead, cave-dwellers, dancing at night round their fires, setting up totems on long poles and worshipping them with wreaths of heather. But John remembered the mast that was to be made, and Susan said the cave was not really fit to live in, and Roger didn’t see the good of having a new tent of his own if he didn’t sleep in it, and Titty knew that savages never made maps, and so they made up their minds to go on being explorers and sailors, even if they had been shipwrecked. But there had been discussion about it and, when it was over, they were glad that no outsiders had overheard it. They themselves could forget it at once, but if other people had been there it would have been much harder to go on as if there had never been any doubt about what they were to be.
Titty summed up what everybody felt when she said, “So long as we’re explorers, anything can happen. Think of last year. But if we’re savages there wouldn’t be any point even in climbing Kanchenjunga. We’d just have to sit on our hunkers and eat raw meat.”
“Besides,” said Susan, “we’ve got our holiday tasks to do. It’s all right for explorers to read books.”
It did just occur to Titty that one good point of being a savage was that you did not have to learn French verbs, but she did not say so. The French verbs had to be learnt, anyhow.
“Mine’s all algebra, and sailors have to know it,” said John.
“We’ve been wrecked,” said Titty, “and now to get out of the way of tidal waves and giant crabs and things like that …”
“Alligators, too,” said Roger.
“We’ve moved up into the hill country. It was the only sensible thing to do. We might all have got fever chills where we were.”
“Good,” said Susan. “Now it’s settled. Let’s get on with putting up the tents.”
“It’s a jolly good thing daddy gave us these tents,” said Captain John. “We couldn’t have managed up here with the tents we had to sling between trees.”
“No trees for one thing,” said Roger.
“What about the stores tent?” said Titty.
“We’ll use the cave,” said Susan.
“And Peter Duck’ll be storekeeper,” said Titty.
There was a very good bit of flat ground, big enough for all four sleeping-tents on the southern side of the little valley, between the stream and the cave. The explorers made all the tents open toward
s the stream. They were well protected from the strong southerly winds by the steep side of the valley that rose behind them, and they could not be seen by anyone who was not near enough to the valley to look down into it from the moor. Between the tents and the stream was the mate’s fireplace, one of her very best, and in the stream, close below the fireplace, was the little whirlpool that might have been specially made for washing-up.
“It’s far the best camp we’ve ever had,” said Mate Susan, looking round when the last tent had been set up.
“Not counting Wild Cat Island, of course,” said Titty.
“It isn’t an island,” said Susan, “so it can’t be as good as that. It’s the best of all our other camps. But there’s a lot to do to it yet.”
“I’m going to dam the top pool for one thing,” said John, “to make a bathing-place.”
“Let’s go and start at once,” said Roger.
“We must get rid of the stores first,” said Susan, “and we can’t do that until we’ve got some of the dust out of the cave.”
“Peter Duck won’t mind,” said Titty.
“Of course he won’t,” said Susan. “He’s got to be spring-cleaned like everybody else. Somebody go and cut some good big bunches of heather. Go on, you two, while I’m getting dinner.”
“What about adders?” said Roger.
“All right, Roger,” said Titty, “I’m coming too. It’s a good thing we hadn’t remembered the adders the other day, or we’d never have discovered Swallowdale.”
“Don’t pick one up or tread on one. That’s all,” said the mate.
“If Roger makes half his usual noise,” said the captain, “they won’t have a chance to do either, unless the adder’s asleep.”
“Come on,” said Titty. “Let’s see whose knife is sharpest? And, I say, Roger, there’s something else to do at the same time.”
The able-seaman and the boy scrambled up the northern side of the valley and, talking very loudly and stamping very hard, to give the adders a good chance to get away, they set about cutting a bundle of heather to make a broom for the mate. They cut a bit here and a bit there, but moved steadily in one direction towards the flat-topped rock that John had said would do as a watch-tower. They had been the first to discover the valley. Why should they not be the first to climb the Watch Tower Rock?
While the mate was taking some of the stored wood from Peter Duck’s cave and making a fire on which to cook a dinner for the expedition, the captain was doing a bit of building. He was getting together large flat stones, of which there were plenty among the loose screes on the sides of the valley, and putting the biggest outside and filling in the middle with the smaller ones, he was making a square pillar, not very high, nor yet very big.
“What’s it for?” asked the mate.
“The parrot,” said the captain. “I want to get it done before Titty comes back.”
He cut one of the two long carrying-poles in half. One half was to be the handle of the mate’s heather broom. The other half he built crosswise into the top of his pillar, so that it stuck out on either side like the arms of a scarecrow. Susan helped him to lift a big flat slab of limestone or slate and lay it on the top of the pillar. On that he put the parrot’s cage and opened the door. He put in his hand and the parrot gripped a finger with its feet. A moment later and it had been lifted out and had taken a firm hold of one of the ends of the pole. It stretched its wings and flapped.
“Pretty Polly,” it said.
“He looks just right like that,” said the captain. “I wonder if he can get back into his cage.”
“Try him with a lump of sugar,” said Susan.
John showed the parrot a lump of sugar and then put it in the cage. The parrot shuffled sideways along the pole until he could just reach the cage with his beak. He then took hold of a bar and pulled himself up, scrabbling with his feet until he found a hold. He then climbed round the outside of his cage until he came to the door and went in.
“He’ll find it more of a job getting back,” said John.
But no, the parrot was not a ship’s parrot for nothing. He could climb like anything, and very soon had found a way of clinging to the cage with his beak and one foot, while he felt for the pole with the other.
Heather is tough stuff to cut, and the able-seaman and the boy had their exploring to do as well, so by the time they came scrambling back down the steep side of the valley with an armful of heather apiece, the parrot was perched once more on the pole, the fire was burning well, the kettle was nearly boiling and the mate had set the captain to shelling green peas.
“Well,” said the mate cheerfully, “you’ve been taking your time.”
“We’ve been up the Watch Tower Rock. Hullo! What a gorgeous place for Polly. When did you make it? It wasn’t here before.”
“While you two were cutting heather.”
“We’ve been up on the rock, too. You can see a hundred miles from it all ways.”
“North, south, east and west,” said Roger.
“And there’s a bit of a hollow in the top of the rock so that if you lie down, nobody can see you except with a telescope from the tops of the mountains.”
“Come and look at it,” said Roger.
“Dinner first,” said the mate. “Come here, Able-seaman, and you too, Boy, and shell peas, so that the captain can be making the broom. Then you can all go to look at the rock after dinner while I’m sweeping out the larder.”
“Peter Duck’s,” said Titty.
The able-seaman and the boy set to work on the rest of the peas. They gave a pod to the parrot, and he shelled the peas beautifully, and tore the pod to bits and threw them away, but he dropped the peas and anyhow Susan said they would not be clean enough to put in with the rest. As soon as the peas were shelled, Susan was able to hurry on with the dinner: a good one, hotted pemmican and green peas with a lot of butter on them, and after that the usual bunloaf and marmalade, chocolate and apples. Meanwhile, John took the other half of the carrying-pole, left after making the perch for the parrot, and bound a huge bundle of heather to the end of it with stout string, whipping it round and round the black woody stems of the heather and finishing it off so that you could not see where the string began, as if he were putting a whipping on the end of a rope. He made a really good job of it, and when the mate saw her broom she was almost as eager to use it as the others were to go up to the Watch Tower Rock. But by that time dinner was ready, and no cook likes to let a cooked dinner wait, so the broom was propped against a rock until the meal was over and the dirty things were at the bottom of the little whirlpool being washed by clean beck water.
For one moment the able-seaman and the boy thought they would like to help in cleaning out the cave. But the mate stopped all thought of that.
“It’ll be very dirty,” she said, “and there won’t be room to turn round in it if we are all crowding in there. Let me get it swept out and clean so that we know where we are, and then you can come in as much as you like.”
“Come along,” said the captain. “No camp’s much good without a proper look-out place. We must have a good place for looking out over the moor. Remember what the Amazons said about a surprise attack. They’ll make it too, but they’ll be the ones to get the suprise.”
“There couldn’t be a better place than the rock,” said Titty.
“Well, leave the mate to her job and let’s go to the rock to make sure.”
The rock was all that Titty and Roger had promised. It was more, for the best way of climbing it, up or down, was on the side of it nearest to Swallowdale.
“It’ll do,” said Captain John, after he had tried it by leaving Titty and Roger on the top of it and going off himself a long way over the moor, waving his hand to show them when to start and finding that they were already down and creeping to meet him along a sheep-track in the heather while, watching the rock as hard as he could, he was still thinking that they hadn’t stirred.
“Good scouts!” he said. �
�Nothing could be better. Someone must keep watch up here every day, and then slip back to Swallowdale to give warning the moment the enemy are in sight.”
They went rejoicing back to Swallowdale to find the mate standing by the tents and looking at the side of the valley above the entrance to Peter Duck’s cave.
“What’s the matter?” said John, as he rushed down the steep slope on the other side and cleared the stream with a jump.
THE CAMP IN SWALLOWDALE
“Look,” said the mate.
“What is it?”
“Look.” The mate pointed to the rounded end of a stout stick poking out through a clump of heather above the way into the cave and a bit to one side. “That’s the broom handle. I pushed it through from inside. I had a candle lantern in there and knocked it over while I was brushing. And then I saw just a glimmer higher up in the roof, and I poked at it with the broom handle and it went right through. That’s why the air in the cave is not bad, except for the dust. I expect people lived in it, once.”
“Well done, Susan,” said John. “Then it’ll be all right for us all to hide inside the cave in case of an attack. It’s exactly what we wanted. I was bothered about it a bit. I’ll go up and clear the hole.”
“It means it’ll be all right to let the parrot sleep there at night,” said Susan. “We can’t put up the stores tent for him, and there isn’t room for him in Titty’s, and it wouldn’t have done for him to get stifled.”
“It was probably Peter Duck who knocked the lantern over so that you would see the hole,” said Titty. “He knew the parrot was coming to stay with him.”
“Well, it may have been,” said Susan, who was very pleased indeed to find that her larder was properly aired, and did not mind Peter Duck making any use of it he liked.
Swallowdale Page 15
