Titty sniffed and coughed.
“It’s sea-fog,” she said. “The tickling sort. Don’t breathe it more than you can help.”
“There’s a pine-cone somewhere close here,” said Roger. “I saw it a minute ago.”
He ran on a yard or two and was gone in the white mist.
“Roger.”
“Hullo!”
“Where are you?”
“Here.”
“Don’t move. Where are you now?”
“Here. Where are you?”
“Keep still. I’m just coming. Good. I can see you. That’s all right.”
“I can’t find that pine-cone.”
“Don’t run on again, anyhow,” said Titty. “We must stick together or we’ll lose each other. The fog’ll blow over.”
“Your hair’s all over dew.”
“I wonder if they’ve got it like this on the lake.”
“Shall I make a fog signal?” said the boy. “I will.”
“There’s no one to hear it.”
“I will, anyway,” said the boy, and a few damp sheep up on the top of the moor were startled by hearing what they did not know was the deep hooting of an Atlantic liner feeling the way towards Plymouth in a Channel fog.
“Don’t,” said Titty in a minute or two. “I want to think.”
Roger sent one more long booming hoot into the fog, and stopped.
“Nobody’s going to run us down for a minute or two,” he said.
“We ought to be able to find the next pine-cone. Keep fairly close to me and we’ll look for it. We shan’t be able to cover much of the ground if we’re very close together, but if we try going far apart one of us’ll get lost.”
“If one of us is lost both of us are,” said Roger. “Because if the one that was lost could see the one that wasn’t lost then neither of them would be lost, and if the one that was lost couldn’t see the one that wasn’t lost, then that one would be lost, too, as well as the one that it couldn’t see.”
“Oh, shut up, Roger. Do. Just for a minute.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” said the boy; and, a moment later, “may I say something?”
“What is it?”
“Here’s the pine-cone.”
“Good,” said the able-seaman. “Now you see the use of patterans. We’ll be able to find our way to Swallowdale in spite of the fog.”
“How will they manage on the lake?”
“With the compass. Oh, we’ve got it. But probably Captain Nancy has one of her own.”
Titty pulled the compass out of her knapsack and opened it.
“The black end points north,” she said, “so the white end points south. And south is where we have to go to find the next patteran.”
She held the compass before her, looking down into it and moving slowly ahead.
Roger, who had been keeping close to her, searching the ground, presently pulled at her sleeve.
“We’ve probably passed it,” he said.
The trouble was that Titty thought so too, but there was no way of knowing. The compass did not seem to help. This part of the moor was covered with short grass with patches of bracken and rocks and loose stones, and stones not quite so loose, bedded in the ground, with ants’ nests under them, if you lifted them. Here and there were thin tufts of dark green rushes, the sort of green rushes that are white when peeled and can be made into rings and plaits and even baskets. There was no track that anyone could have seen even if there had been no fog. Here and there were the sheep runs, but they ran all ways, and mostly from side to side of the moor and not straight along the top. It was very puzzling.
“You stand still,” said Titty, “and I’ll walk round in sight of you and look for the next patteran.”
That let her look all over a circle of a dozen yards across. But when she had worked all round it she was no better off.
“Now you stand still, and I’ll hunt,” said the boy, but he was no luckier.
“The only thing to do is to go on,” said Titty at last. “We must get home, because of Polly. And Susan said, ‘Get the fire going,’ too.”
She held the compass close in front of her and moved forward with her eyes fixed on the needle. The needle swung to and fro, no matter how steadily she held it, and the worst came to the worst when she caught her foot in a tussock of lank grass and fell on her face. The compass did not touch the ground. She saved it by letting herself fall anyhow, without trying to put out her hands. After all, the compass mattered most, so she kept it in the air, though she hit the ground herself much harder than she thought possible.
“Is it smashed?” asked Roger.
The able-seaman picked herself up.
“No, it isn’t hurt,” she said. “But I wish I knew how to use it properly. John didn’t try to look at it all the time. I watched what he did. He looked at the compass to see which way was north and then he looked north and found a rock or something. And then he put the compass in his pocket and walked till he came to the rock. But it’s no good us looking south because there’s nothing to see.”
“Just one blanket everywhere,” said Roger.
Titty looked at the compass again.
“South is there,” she said, pointing into the fog. “If we walk perfectly straight we can’t go wrong, and anyhow we can’t help coming to the beck, and as soon as we’ve found the beck it’ll be easy enough to find the camp.”
She had one more look at the compass, and then, putting it in her pocket, set out doggedly into the fog, looking straight before her, and doing her best to take steps with her right foot exactly the same length as those she took with her left.
“Come on, Boy,” she said.
“Aye, aye, sir,” said the boy, and followed close at her heels, scouting a yard or two to either side in hope of finding one of the pine-cones to show them that they were in the right way.
They moved slowly along the moor in a white, almost empty world, a world in which something that they thought might be a stray cow turned out to be a rock, and rocks turned out to be worried, black-faced sheep that bleated and scurried away into the whiteness all about them.
“Are we properly lost?” said Roger at last.
“Of course we aren’t,” said the able-seaman. “Besides, it isn’t as if we were alone. Peter Duck says it’s quite all right, so long as we keep going straight.”
“We must be nearly there.”
“I expect we are. We may hear the parrot any minute.”
“It’s very squashy here. I’ve got water into one of my shoes.”
“It’s only a bit of swamp. We’ll have to go round it.”
For some time they picked their way from one tuft of green rushes to another. The able-seaman was rather bothered by this, because though they had seen plenty of these rushes, they had not crossed any really swampy ground on the way to the Amazon. Still, there were lots of small marshes up on the moor, and just a little bit to right or left would not matter much if they kept on moving straight ahead. Suddenly she stopped short, listening.
“What is it?” whispered Roger.
“Listen!”
There it was, quite clear, not very far before them, the gentle tinkle of water.
“It’s the beck. Now we’re all right.”
They ran forward and almost fell across a little stream trickling down the moor from one tiny pool into the next.
“We’ve come much too far to the right,” said Titty. “This must be a long way above Trout Tarn for the beck to be so small. But we can’t miss the way now.”
With the beck to guide them through the fog, they hurried cheerfully along.
“We’ll have the rest of the chocolate when we come to Trout Tarn,” said Roger, but when they had walked a long way without coming to it, though the beck was much bigger than it had been, the able-seaman agreed that it was time for a short rest.
They took their knapsacks off to sit on, first emptying out the chocolate. Titty took the compass out of her pocket, and, while she
was eating her chocolate, opened the compass on the ground beside her.
“There’s something gone wrong with the compass,” she said suddenly. “It makes the beck flow west, and of course it flows east all the way by Trout Tarn and Swallowdale down to Horseshoe Cove.”
“Did it happen when you tumbled?”
“I don’t think it could have done. It didn’t touch the ground at all. Perhaps it got too much shaken up on Kanchenjunga. We did come down at a good pace.”
“Well,” said Roger, “it’s lucky we found the beck.”
CHAPTER XXIX
WOUNDED MAN
“AREN’T you ever going to stop hogging?” said the able-seaman at last.
“There’s only one more bit of chocolate left,” said the boy, “and now it’s gone in. Let’s start. But the fog hasn’t lifted like you said it would.”
“That doesn’t matter now we’ve got the beck,” said the able-seaman. “Come on.”
They wriggled into the straps of their empty knapsacks and set off again, cheered by the chocolate and by the little stream beside them, trickling from pool to pool, and showing them the way.
Titty, of course, was sorry about the compass, but even if John couldn’t put it right, she was sure Captain Flint could. And, anyhow, the compass going wrong wasn’t half so bad as losing the way home when she was in charge of the ship’s boy. Just for a little while she had known the sort of worry that kept on making Susan go native. Now she was free to be happy with the thought that the candle-grease had not done any harm and that anyhow, whether the candle-grease had helped or not, the great-aunt was gone. Swallow was nearly finished, too, and then on the top of these thoughts, happy in themselves, came another that would have made the able-seaman galumph, if only the fog had not been so thick and she had not been afraid of tumbling among the loose stones at the side of the stream.
“Boy,” she said, “we’ll be back on Wild Cat Island before the end of the week, and then anything can happen.”
“I’m going to be allowed to sail Swallow,” said the boy. “By myself. Not like last year. John’s promised not to put even one finger on the tiller.”
“And the Amazons are coming. Six tents there’ll be, counting our stores tent. And we can put up the other old tent for a spare room.”
“Or a dungeon, in case of prisoners,” said Roger.
“Bridget’s coming to stay. And mother.”
“Why not Captain Flint?”
“We’ll have him, too. And we’ll have Mary Swainson. We’ll have everybody. Come on. Peter Duck’s just reminded me that the ship’s parrot is all alone. And there’s the fire to light. Come on.”
They hurried along the banks of the little stream.
“It can’t be far to the tarn now,” said the boy some little time later.
“No,” said the able-seaman, “and from there it’s no way to the camp.”
They walked on and on, sometimes on one side of the stream, sometimes on the other, but always keeping close to it, and to each other, because they could not see more than a yard or two in the fog and neither of them liked to lose sight of the stream or to see the other one looking like a soft grey shadow instead of like a solid boy or able-seaman. The stream began to be stonier, and noisier, and less like a tiny ditch draining the swamp on the top of the moor. It was a real stream now, though they could easily jump across it. It made more noise than it had, as if it was in more of a hurry. And still there was no tarn.
“We must have gone an awful long way to the right,” said the boy.
“It can’t be much farther now,” said the able-seaman.
And then, suddenly, their cheerfulness came to an end.
“Look,” said Roger, who was a yard or two ahead, “there’s a tree! On the other side. I’m going to cross.”
“There aren’t any trees,” said Titty.
“I can see it. It’s a big one,” said Roger, and jumped.
He landed with a short squeak of pain on the other side. His left foot slipped between two stones and twisted over. He fell forward, tried to pick himself up, squeaked again and flopped on the ground.
“Have you hurt yourself?” asked Titty, jumping across the stream.
“Rather,” said the boy.
“Badly?”
“Very badly. I can’t get up. But I was right about the tree. Look at it.”
If Roger had something in his mind, nothing would stop him from talking of it. He had been thinking of the tree before he jumped. He was thinking of it still, as he lay beside the stream. Titty looked up.
Close above them a tall pine towered like a grey ghost in the white mist. Titty was almost as much troubled by the tree as by Roger.
“There are no trees on the top of the moor,” she said. “There aren’t any till down the other side of Swallowdale in the wood above Swainson’s farm.”
“Well, there it is,” said Roger. “Ouch!”
“Where does it hurt?”
“It’s my best foot. Broken, I think.”
“Oh, Roger.”
“And there is no more chocolate.”
“But it can’t be our wood, because the Swallowdale beck is twice as big as this when it comes out of Trout Tarn and it’s bigger still by the wood. It can’t be our beck at all. And we’ve been following it for miles and miles.”
“I can’t move my foot,” said Roger.
“Oh, Roger,” said Titty again, kneeling beside him, “try not to squeak while I get your shoe off.”
Roger sat still and stiffened himself all over, waiting for a twinge, but none came. The shoe slipped off in the able-seaman’s fingers almost before he knew she had loosened the laces.
“I don’t think it’s broken,” she said. “Try waggling it, just a little.”
But the first beginning of a waggle brought the pain back at once. It was as if someone were pushing a red-hot skewer through the boy’s ankle. “Ouch!” he said, “I’m not going to waggle it any more.”
“Try putting it in the water. I wish the mate were here. She’d know what to do. Anyhow, you ought to be sitting on your knapsack.”
The boy slid himself over the stones and lowered his foot carefully into a little pool in the stream.
“Cold,” he said, “but not half bad.”
“I wish I knew where we were,” said the able-seaman, undoing the boy’s knapsack and putting it so that he could sit on it. Susan, she knew, would have thought of that at once.
“Well, it isn’t anybody’s fault,” said the boy. “Bother the fog. Hullo! Look at the tree now. It’s breathing.”
So it was. The drooping branches of the pine were moving very gently up and down in the mist, though the trunk of the tree did not stir.
“Listen! Listen!” said Titty. “Wind’s coming at last.”
There was a faint noise of wind in tree-tops somewhere behind the white blanket of mist that closed them in from all sides.
“There’s another noise, too,” said Roger.
Titty listened. Yes. “Plunk, plunk, plunk.” It was the noise of an axe. “Woodcutters,” she said.
“Ouch!” squeaked the boy. “Sorry. It’s all right really. It was only when I turned round too quick. The fog’s going away. More trees. Lots. A forest. Wherever are we?”
Titty licked the back of her hand and held it in the air to feel where the wind was coming from.
“It’s coming from the other side of the trees. Look, the whole fog’s lifting. I told you it would. I wish we’d waited.”
The able-seaman and the boy now saw that they were in a place where they had never been before. They were on the very edge of the moorland, which stretched up behind them into the thinning mist. Before them the ground dropped so sharply that they could see over the tops of trees growing only a few yards away. The little stream that had led them to this place flung itself down into the forest. Far away below them they could see fields, and beyond them woods climbing the other side of a valley.
“Where’s the lake?”
cried Roger.
“There isn’t a lake,” said Titty. “It isn’t our valley at all.”
“But the lake must be there somewhere.”
“It isn’t. And those hills aren’t the hills behind Rio or Shark Bay.”
The mist lifted up and up, so that first the low hills showed beneath it, and then other hills above them, and then a patch of sky. But at one place, higher than this, though the mist was still lifting, there was nothing to be seen but dark rock and heather. The mist rose higher and higher, and still in that place there was no sky.
“There’s a mountain,” said Roger. “It must be a mountain, and there are really no big mountains behind Dixon’s farm.”
Still the mist lifted until at last they could see two great patches of sky on either side of the mountain, though they could not see its top. The two patches of sky grew upwards and towards each other, while wisps of mist drifted between them across the mountain-side. At last the patches of sky joined. The top of the mountain was clear of mist, and the boy and the able-seaman shouted together, “It’s Kanchenjunga!”
“The compass hasn’t gone wrong after all,” said Titty. “It was the stream that was going the wrong way.”
“And us,” said Roger.
“We must have turned right round in the fog.” She laid the compass open on the ground.
“How are we going to get back?”
For a moment the able-seaman thought of turning round and going upstream to the top of the moor where, perhaps, with the fog blowing away, she would be able to see where they had gone wrong, and find the trail of pine-cones again, and so come to Swallowdale not too late.
But the next moment she knew that this was no good. There was Roger unable to move his foot. It was no good thinking she could carry him. Besides, even if she could, she could not be sure of finding the pine-cones, and then perhaps the mist would come rolling down on them again and they would be worse lost than ever. What would Susan do if she were here? There could be no sort of doubt. Though the able-seaman found it hard to give in, she knew that there was only one thing to be done. Help had to be got from the natives. And who could tell what sort of natives she would find?
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