“Slater Bob perhaps doesn’t even know there’s been a fire,” said Dorothea, thinking of the old miner working away alone in the middle of the hill.
Captain Flint, and Timothy, and the Atkinsons and Tysons came slowly back along the edge of the Topps with their fire-brooms over their shoulders.
Mrs Tyson came straight up to the prospectors where they were standing on the Great Wall looking out.
“Well,” she said, “I was wrong that time, thinking you’d set the fell afire. I should have seen that if you’d done it, ’twould have been the wood to burn first. But you mun forgive me. When fire’s afoot a body can’t think. And if you’d not been here with they pigeons, we’d have had our farms burnt, and the hay in t’ fields and all, before anybody could have gotten word. So I thank you, and yon pigeon of yours most of all. Eh, Mrs Blackett, they’re welcome to camp where they like and when they like and how they like and as long as they like. Now then, Robin. Nowt to stare at. We’ve the cows to milk, fire or no fire. And late it is and all.” And Mrs Tyson and Robin and the farmhand went down into the wood.
“So that’s all right,” said Mrs Blackett.
“You seem to have made a friend of Mrs Tyson,” said Captain Flint.
“Oh well,” said Nancy dismally, “it doesn’t matter now. The whole fortnight’s wasted and we’ve failed …”
“Failed?” said Captain Flint. “Failed? What do you mean?”
“It isn’t gold,” said Nancy. “Dick says it’s only copper, after all.”
“But it’s copper we’ve been trying for,” said Captain Flint.
CHAPTER XXXV
THE END
AND then, at last, the prospectors heard the whole story of what had happened. Captain Flint and Timothy had been together in South America, looking for gold where there was not any. High on a mountainside they had talked of English mining, and the old copper mines on the fells, and the copper that must still be there where the old miners had failed to find it. They had talked of the new ways of prospecting that the old miners could never have tried. They had made up their minds to have a look for themselves. “There was something I remembered seeing above High Topps …” Timothy had been going home first, and was to have brought with him a letter to Mrs Blackett. “And I wrote the letter,” said Captain Flint, “and found it still in my pocket when I’d been a week aboard ship myself. But I didn’t worry. I’d given him the Beckfoot address and told him to go and talk to Slater Bob. And I’d telegraphed besides. It never occurred to me that he’d be too shy to call.”
Timothy’s blush could be seen even through his sunburn and the black smears of smoke on his face.
“I wanted him to have the run of my room because of my maps and things. Oh well, another prospector had the run of them instead …”
“I’m awfully sorry about that crucible,” said Dick.
“Bother the crucible,” said Captain Flint, “but I’d like to see the place where you found that copper.”
“Come on,” said Nancy, looking across the black and smoking Topps.
“When did anybody last have anything to eat?” said Mrs Blackett.
“A hundred years ago,” said Roger.
“Let’s make supper for everybody,” said Susan.
“Let’s,” said Peggy.
“May I help?” said Mrs Blackett.
“Signal when you’re ready,” said Nancy. “We’ll have time to get across there and back.”
*
Little wisps of smoke drifted from the blackened ground. The ash from burnt bent and bracken spirted from under their feet. Nothing was left of the purple heather but blackened stems that looked like tiny trees that had been struck by lightning.
“It’s like walking about in a volcano,” said Titty.
Far away in the distance along the foot of Ling Scar they could see some of Colonel Jolys’ volunteers.
“It isn’t really fair,” said Roger. “They don’t give the fire a chance.”
“All jolly well,” said John. “The fire wouldn’t have given us much of a chance if we hadn’t been able to get into the mine.”
“And think what would have happened if Sappho hadn’t done her best,” said Dorothea.
“She didn’t keep the natives away that time,” said Roger. “She stirred up the whole crowd of them.”
Captain Flint and Squashy Hat were walking together talking copper, and Dick, stumbling along beside them, was doing his best to understand.
“I found the gosson all right,” Squashy Hat was saying, pointing across the Topps to the white spots he had painted on the slopes of Kanchenjunga.
“I beg your pardon,” said Dick. “But what is gosson?”
“Decomposed ore,” said Captain Flint. “No good in itself, but a sign of good stuff lower down …”
“I found the gosson all right … red, porous muck, as promising as any I’ve seen anywhere … But, be hanged if I could find the vein once I followed it down. The gosson ended, and that was that. The only good ore I’ve seen was some loose bits I came on this morning …”
“Ours,” interrupted Nancy.
“Yes,” said Captain Flint. “From what Dick tells me, I think they beat you to it.”
They came to the edge of the gulch, where the rocks, except for their dark smoke stains, showed paler than the blackened ground.
Timothy pulled out a much-folded map.
“Look here, Jim,” he said. “Here’s the line of the gosson … Those white splashes mark my scratchings as I traced it down … I’ve picked it out in red on the map … It must come across this way, but never a sign of the vein …”
“Come and look at it,” said Nancy, in something of her old manner. Gold it might not be, but if it was what Captain Flint wanted, it was good enough, and her spirits were going upstairs again three steps at a time. “Come and look at it,” she said. “Claim’s staked, of course. The fire’s burnt our notice, but the claim’s staked all the same.”
They ran down the side of the gulch and crossed it and showed the way into the mine, not so well hidden now that the heather had been burnt round the opening.
“This way,” said Nancy, and dived into the mine. The others followed.
“Hullo,” said Captain Flint, as he straightened himself when well inside. “Somebody’s working here.”
“We forgot to put it out,” said John, looking at the hurricane lantern, still burning, hanging from the iron peg in the wall.
“And isn’t that my old mortar?”
“Borrowed,” said Nancy.
“And where’s the vein? … Gosh, Timothy, do you see that? Let’s have that lantern a bit nearer.” He picked up one of the hammers and started eagerly chipping at the quartz. “Vein,” he said. “It’s better than I ever hoped.”
“It’s the vein all right,” said Timothy. “And I was in here this afternoon and never saw it even then.”
“You were looking the other way,” said Nancy. “We all were, while the fire went roaring past.”
“But how did you find it, Nancy?” said Captain Flint.
“I found it,” said Roger.
“But how?”
“I just banged with a hammer and a bit of stone fell down, and there it was.”
“The old chaps must have stopped just an inch too soon?” said Captain Flint. “Well, Timothy. We’ve missed the train. Roger and the rest are in before us and we may as well give up. Unless they’ll float a company and let us join them …”
Everybody looked at Nancy in the dim light of the lantern.
Was not that just what she had been wanting? The others expected her to jump at the chance. But Nancy set her lips firmly together, took all she could of the sparkle out of her eyes and looked doubtfully at Captain Flint.
“Um,” she said.
“Oh, look here, Nancy.”
“Conditions.”
“Out with them.”
“No more being away in the summer holidays,” said Nancy. “Wild geese in South Ame
rica and all that.”
“We can’t work this properly without staying at home,” said Captain Flint. “That’s what I’ve come home for.”
“Oh is it?” said Nancy. “What about us? You can work it in term time. And, of course, a bit in the holidays. But what’s the good of the houseboat if you’re never there?”
“What do you want me to do?”
“We’ll have two boats again when Mrs Walker comes, and Dick and Dorothea have never seen a battle.”
Captain Flint turned to Squashy Hat.
“Two against eight,” he said. “Timothy, my lad, you don’t know what you’re in for. You wait till you walk the plank and step on nothingness and meet cold water and the sharks. All right, Nancy. It’ll do him good. And, look here, Titty, will you help to make me a new flag? The old elephant’s a bit moth-eaten and mildewed. What about something in the armadillo line? …”
There was a laugh from everybody except Squashy Hat, and even he smiled politely, as people do at some joke they do not understand.
And then, of course, Roger reminded them that Susan and Peggy and Mrs Blackett were probably already waiting for them. They started back.
Dick had said little, but now he had a question to put to Captain Nancy. “Do you think it really didn’t matter my being wrong about the gold?”
“Jolly good thing,” said Nancy. “We might have just chucked it if we’d known before. Gold or copper, it’s all the same if you have enough. Two hundred and forty pennies make a pound. Just look at them.” She pointed at Captain Flint and Squashy Hat, who were walking ahead comparing lumps of copper-laden quartz and talking eagerly together. “Didn’t you hear? They’re going to get old Slater Bob to come and help them.”
“He said he’d like to give slates a rest and have another go at metal,” said Dorothea.
“And we can have a go too,” said Nancy, “whenever we aren’t too busy with something else.”
“Good,” said Roger. “I thought so. There she is.”
Peggy was at the edge of the Topps, signalling with a handkerchief tied to a stick. There was no need for them to read more than the first two letters. Everybody knew that the word was “GRUB.”
“Hurry up, Uncle Jim,” said Nancy. “Everybody’s starving.”
“All right … Now, look here, Timothy … It’s just as we guessed up above Pernambuco. Those old miners knew nothing about gosson as a sign of good copper. They scratched what they saw, and if they couldn’t see anything they gave up. Now this is just where it should be, on the line of the gosson higher up, and if we cut in there we’ll be coming at richer ore than’s ever been mined in these fells …”
“Greedy, greedy,” said Nancy.
Roger looked round indignantly.
“All right, Roger,” she said. “I wasn’t thinking of you.”
*
Supper was over.
Even people who had been too tired to be anything but silent began to talk.
Titty slipped off in the dusk.
The bramble thicket had been saved from the fire, but the little hedgepig, she thought, might have died from fright, with all that smoke, and the roaring of the flames, and the trampling of the fire-fighters. Something stirred by the well. She crept nearer. It was something small, thin, with a curved back … a weasel. It drank, lifted its little snakelike head, sniffed and was gone … The water had risen in the well again, and there was some to spare even for weasels, but she wondered whether the coming of the weasel would frighten the hedgepig away. Behind her she could see the red glow of the camp-fire in the trees, and she could hear Mrs Blackett’s voice saying how thankful she was that everybody was all right and how awful it would have been if somebody had got burnt just when the parents were coming. She heard Roger’s voice, “I did have to put some butter on my hand.” Would the talking keep the hedgepig away?
And then she heard the stirring of dry leaves, away under the brambles. She heard a sniff … a grunt … a sneeze. Perhaps some of the ash blown down from the Topps was tickling its nostrils. Then, in the dim light she saw it. With steady lumbering trot it was making for the well. She watched a little dark lump work itself down the steps. It was drinking. The water got into its nose, and she heard a small impatient snuffle. It climbed out again and trotted off. She lost sight of it in the shadows. But she had seen enough and slipped back to the camp.
The firelight threw everything outside the camp into darkness. Mrs Blackett and the two cooks were collecting the supper things, ready for washing-up. Titty looked round for Dick. He was lying on the ground, staring into the flames. She dropped between him and Nancy.
“It’s all right about the hedgepig,” she said. “He’s just gone hunting, and I’ve seen him have a drink at the well.”
“Good,” said Dick.
Dorothea, lying on his other side, had heard. “The animals and the birds will drink there for ever and ever,” she said, “and if it wasn’t for Titty there wouldn’t be a well at all.”
“Captain Flint wouldn’t believe you found water really,” said Nancy. “Not till mother told him all about it.”
Meanwhile Roger was telling and re-telling his share in the fire-fighting, not because he wanted to boast, but because by telling it he somehow made sure of it for himself. At the time, things had been happening too fast.
“It wasn’t very big flames at first,” he was saying. “Just smoke and cracklings and spirtings of fire along the ground, and then the wind roared it up and it was all over everywhere. And the smell … And we couldn’t see anything … And we sent off Sappho, just so she shouldn’t get burnt. We never thought she’d be good and go straight home … And then we thought of Titty’s well … And we were running with buckets … well, you know, tins … We emptied out the sugar and biscuits … And then there was no more water … We were beating with the fire-brooms … And Nancy and John and Susan and Peggy and Squashy Hat … Oh well, you know who I mean … They came bursting through the smoke and Susan was nearly crying … Oh yes, you were, Susan … Well, why not? … It would have been pretty awful if the wood had got burnt and all our tents …”
Captain Flint was talking, too, with Squashy Hat.
They were lying by the camp-fire, smoking their pipes.
“Yes, my lad,” Captain Flint was saying. “But why, why, didn’t you go straight to Beckfoot? I’d telegraphed to let them know …”
Squashy Hat seemed to be turning shy again.
“My dear Jim, how could I? There were children popping up all over the place. It was like a school feast … You wouldn’t have gone in yourself … How could I tell you hadn’t bunged me into the middle of a holiday school? So I couldn’t get at your maps, and that old chap up at the slate mine took a lot of thawing. He was all right the first day I saw him, but after that something seemed to have gone wrong with him, and he was like an oyster for days and days. I…”
Titty saw that Nancy was listening too. At this point Nancy rolled suddenly over so that the firelight no longer lit up her laughing face.
“But what business had you to be shy?” said Captain Flint, and, remembering something, burst into a roar of laughter.
“Shy? Why, they were expecting you. They’d even built a special bedroom for you. I’ve seen it myself with “Welcome Home” and your name on the door. A bit small, perhaps, but goodwill is what matters.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Arthur Ransome was born in Leeds in 1884 and went to school at Rugby. He was in Russia in 1917, and witnessed the Revolution, which he reported for the Manchester Guardian. After escaping to Scandinavia, he settled in the Lake District with his Russian wife where, in 1929, he wrote Swallows and Amazons. And so began a writing career which has produced some of the real children’s treasures of all time. In 1936 he won the first ever Carnegie Medal for his book, Pigeon Post.
Also by Arthur Ransome
Swallows and Amazons
Swallowdale
Peter Duck
Winter Holiday
/> Coot Club
We Didn’t Mean to Go to Sea
Secret Water
The Big Six
Missee Lee
The Picts and the Martyrs
Great Northern?
THE ARTHUR RANSOME SOCIETY
The Arthur Ransome Society (‘TARS’) was formed in 1990 with the aim of celebrating Ransome’s life and works, and of encouraging both children and adults to take part in outdoor pursuits – especially sailing and camping. It also seeks to sponsor research, to spread Ransome̻s ideas in the wider community and to bring together all those who share the values and the spirit that he fostered in his storytelling.
The Society is based at the Abbot Hall Museum of Lakeland Life and Industry in Kendal, where Ransome’s desk, favourite books and some of his personal possessions are kept. There are also close links with the Ruskin Museum at Coniston, where the original Amazon is now kept. The Society keeps in touch with its members through its journal, Mixed Moss, and its newsletter, Signals.
Regional branches of the Society have been formed by members in various parts of the country, including Scotland, the Lake District and North, East Anglia, the Midlands, the South and South West Coast, and contacts are maintained with overseas groups in America, Australia and Japan. Membership fees are modest, and fall into four groups – for those under 18, for single adults and for whole families, and for those over 65. If you are interested in knowing more about the Society or would like to join it please write for a membership leaflet to The Secretary, The Arthur Ransome Society, The Abbot Hall Gallery, Kendal, Cumbria LA9 5AL., or email to [email protected].
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