Great Northern?

by Arthur Ransome

  Dick had just glanced at the tunnel, and then climbed the steep side of the mound.

  “I thought so,” he said. “The roof’s fallen in. It’s just like that one in Skye. A room in the middle and a tunnel for getting in and out …” He stopped suddenly. “There are the lochs!” he said, and, thinking of his Divers, was for setting off straight across country.

  “Father’ll want to know about it,” said Dorothea.

  Dick, after one more glance at the lochs in the valley, pulled out his pocket-book.

  A PAGE FROM DICK’S NOTEBOOK SHOWING THE SHAPE OF THE “PICTHOUSE”

  Dorothea, Titty and Roger had all climbed up beside him. The middle of the mound was like a shallow saucer where it had fallen in, perhaps centuries before. Standing in the dip they looked round over the edge.

  “It’s like being on the top of the whole world,” said Titty.

  On one side they looked out over the sea to Scotland, southward to the Head, northward to another great cape jutting out. Far out to sea were the black specks of two fishing boats, each with a long wisp of black smoke blowing from it. Looking down to the cove where they had left the Sea Bear, they could see the top of her mast. The rest of her was hidden close under the steep shore. They could see both inlets with the rocky spit between them, and then rolling moorland stretching towards big grey hills. Here and there were lochs. They could see part of one of the lochs, that had raised hopes in Dick, and the whole of the other. Looking up the valley they could see that there was a ridge to the south of it and another to the north rising slowly towards the mountains. Along the slopes of the northern ridge they caught glimpses of a cart track that seemed to come from the head of the valley and, not far away, turned sharply into a gap on the skyline.

  “Crouch down,” said Titty. “When you’re on the bottom you can’t see anything but sky. Not even the hills. If we were hiding in it, nobody could see us, unless they came here and climbed up to look in over the edge.”

  The others crouched beside her. It was true. There was nothing to be seen but the great circle of blue sky overhead, from which the last white scraps of cloud had blown away.

  “Buzzard,” said Dick, as a black speck swung across high over their heads.

  “It’s like being in a bird’s nest,” said Titty.

  “The hero could lie here laughing,” said Dorothea, “while the villains were searching the whole countryside.”

  “It’s a bit like the igloo,” said Roger. “We ought to fetch Nancy and Peggy. We’ll tell them about it when we get back. They wouldn’t come anyhow,” he added. “Not when they’re in the middle of their scraping and scrubbing. I say, it’s an awful pity we haven’t got that chart to mark exactly where it is.”

  “But I have got it,” said Titty. She pulled the little chart out of her knapsack, unrolled it and spread it out flat.

  “Pict-house Hill,” said Roger. “Put it in with a pencil. You can ink it afterwards.”

  “It’s a good name anyhow,” said Dorothea. She stood up and looked round. “That long ridge can be the Northern Rockies. Then there’s Low Ridge on the other side of the valley. It gets lower and lower till it turns into those rocks we didn’t want to hit in the fog.”

  “What about Dick’s tarns?” said Titty.

  “Upper and Lower,” said Dorothea, “but they’re lochs, not tarns.”

  “And the lump that wouldn’t let us see them till we got up here and still doesn’t let us see the stream ….”

  “Burn,” said Dorothea, “not a stream.”

  “It would be a beck if we were at Holly Howe,” said Roger.

  “That lump’s not big enough for a hill,” said Titty.

  “Let’s call it the Hump,” said Roger. “It’s very camelious.”

  Just putting in those few names on the chart made the valley seem almost their own.

  “I wish we weren’t sailing tomorrow,” said Dorothea.

  “I’m going in again,” said Roger, “to see how far I can get.”

  “Look out,” said Titty. “Remember the tunnel in Kanchenjunga. More of it may cave in on the top of you.”

  “All right,” said Roger, and slid down the steep side of the mound. Dick was down there, too, making a sketch of the entrance to show his father. Eager as he was to get away to the lochs, he was Professor Callum’s son and, for the moment, had to turn from birds to ancient monuments.

  Titty and Dorothea were alone in the shallow saucer where the ancient roof had fallen in, and long, long ago been grown over with green turf.

  “It is a most gorgeous place,” said Titty. “And wasted. Think of no one knowing about it but us.”

  “Perhaps no one’s ever been here since the last of the ancient Picts died fighting to defend it as the strangers from the sea came roaring up from their boats.”

  Roger, a good deal dirtier than before, came climbing over the edge. “Someone’s using it,” he said, looking round over the wild moorland as if he expected to see that someone close at hand. He held out a biscuit box. “I’ve been as far as I can, and I found this when I was feeling round where the tunnel comes to an end. It’s somebody’s provisions.”

  He shook the box and they could hear something sliding about inside it. There was, alas, no doubt that the box had not been left by an ancient Pict. Much of its paper covering was still sticking to it and they could see the trademark and the name of a famous firm of Glasgow biscuit-makers.

  “Oh well,” said Titty, “it can’t be helped … and it doesn’t really matter. It isn’t as if we were ever going to be here again.”

  “I’m going to open it and see what’s inside,” said Roger.

  “But it isn’t ours.”

  “It’s treasure trove,” said Dorothea. “Roger found it. He can’t do any harm by looking at it.”

  She wanted to know what was in it, and so, in spite of her scruples, did Titty.

  “Of course there may be a message in it, like the one we left in the cairn.”

  “Urgent, perhaps,” said Dorothea. “Think if people didn’t open bottles cast up on the shore just because the bottles weren’t theirs.”

  “I’m going to open it anyhow,” said Roger.

  He put the box on the ground and took the lid off. They saw at once that the thing that had been sliding about was a paper parcel.

  “Provisions,” said Roger. “I thought so. Bread … No … Cake of a sort …” He had opened the paper and found a heavy hunk of cake, very dark, like Christmas pudding.

  “It’s not old,” said Dorothea, poking it with a careful finger. “Soft and still sticky. What’s that underneath it? I say, perhaps it’s someone writing a story.” From the bottom of the box she pulled out an ordinary school exercise book.

  “French verbs more likely,” said Titty. “I had to fill a whole book of them the summer we found Swallowdale.”

  “Do you think I’d better taste the cake?” asked Roger.

  “Of course not,” said Titty. “Wrap it up again and put it away.”

  “All right,” said Roger. “You never know. There may be poison in it.”

  Dorothea had opened the exercise book. “It’s all in a foreign language,” she said.

  “Let me look,” said Titty. “If it’s French … But it isn’t. And it isn’t Latin either. Perhaps it’s a secret code.”

  “It looks like a diary,” said Dorothea. “Those numbers must be dates.” She and Titty pored over the book together. Yes. It looked as if the figures at one side of the page might be dates, but they could make nothing of the words: “Da fiadh dheug … damh a fireach …” On and on it went, short entries and each with its figure at the side. “Damh is eildean.” Here and there was a short word like “is” and a shorter like “a” but all the other words belonged to no language that they knew, and if it was written in code, perhaps even “is” and “a” did not mean what they usually meant.

  “I know what it is,” said Titty suddenly. “It’s Gaelic. It belongs to one of the natives.
A savage Gael. Look here, Roger. You put it back where you found it.”

  All three of them looked at the ridge before them, and up the long wild valley and down again at the cove far away below them where the mast of the Sea Bear spoke to them of friends and allies. There were no Gaels to be seen. Up here, on that hill above the sea, on the top of the old dwelling place of Picts who had been dead a thousand years, they might have been the only people in the world. But there was the biscuit box and its contents to show that someone counted the old Pict-house so much his own that he could safely leave his things in it.

  “Dick,” said Dorothea, “do look, before Roger puts it back.”

  But Dick took no more than a polite interest in biscuit box, exercise book and hunk of cake. He was bursting to be gone and had almost done what he had to do. He had made a sketch of the mound from one side, giving a rough idea of its shape. Now he was making a drawing of it to show as well as he could the way in which it was built. There was a circle with a smaller circle for the dip made by the fallen roof and dotted lines to show how the tunnel lay.

  “Bother whoever he is,” said Roger, slipping over the edge with the box to put it back in the tunnel.

  “Father’ll want to know how big it is round,” Dorothea was saying, looking over Dick’s shoulder, as Roger came climbing back, wiping the earth from his hands. “It’s for Father,” she explained. “He always wants to know shapes and sizes when anybody finds antiquities.”

  “Boats are what Daddy always measures,” said Roger.

  Dick was pacing earnestly across the dip. “Five steps,” he said, “and it’s about thirty round. Very thick walls. And the dip isn’t quite in the middle. That means that the wall is thickest where the tunnel goes in.” He wrote the figures beside his diagrams.

  “And now,” he said, “I’m off.”

  “Much better come with us,” said Titty.

  “I’ve got to go down to those lochs,” said Dick. “It’s the very last chance of seeing Divers.”

  “Oh, let him go,” said Dorothea.

  “We’ll explore along the slopes of the Northern Rockies,” said Titty, glancing up the valley and then at the chart. “We’ll come back past Upper and Lower Lochs. They’ll show us the way to the beck … burn. And we’ll follow the burn past the other side of the Hump until it comes to the waterfall and our cove.”

  “Dick,” said Dorothea, “are you going to stay at those lochs all the time?”

  “I expect so,” said Dick. “There’s sure to be some birds, even if there aren’t any Divers.”

  “Good,” said Titty. “Well pick you up on our way back to the ship.”

  “But don’t wait for us if they sound the foghorn. Go straight back to the Sea Bear,” said Dorothea. “Only do listen for it … If he’s watching birds, you know …” She looked at the others. They laughed. They both knew that if Dick was looking at anything, even if it was only a caterpillar, you could shout at him from close by without his hearing.

  “I’ll hear all right,” said Dick, putting his notebook in his pocket. “Good-bye.”

  “Look here,” said Roger. “Even if somebody else is using this place, we’ll never find a better one for eating our grub.”

  “Eat yours with us, Dick, and get it over,” said Dorothea.

  “I can eat it going along.”

  “Susan’ll be very fierce if you forget it,” said Titty.

  “Bother birds,” said Roger. “Adventures are much better.”

  But Dick was already over the edge of the mound, and hurrying on his way to the lochs, thinking of the time that he had already had to waste.

  Dorothea watched him. Now and again, as he dropped into a dip in the uneven ground, she lost sight of him, and then saw him again as he came up on the other side of it, moving quickly slantwise down the slopes of the long ridge that sheltered the valley from the north.

  She turned to find that the other two explorers had emptied their knapsacks and were opening their packets of sandwiches.

  “Roger’s quite right,” said Titty. “Going a long way, it’s easier to carry your grub inside.”

  Dorothea wriggled out of the straps of her own knapsack and sat down beside them. In that hollow on the top of the old Pict-house, she thought, an escaping prisoner could hide from his pursuers. One moment, before sitting down, she could see for miles, out over the sea or up the valley to the mountains. The next, sitting on the ground, she could see nothing but sky and the short blades of grass stirring against the blue just above the level of her head. “Invisible to all but the eagle, the fugitive rested and was safe,” she murmured to herself.

  DICK GOES OFF TO THE LOCHS

  “What?” said Roger, taking a bite from a sandwich.

  Dorothea started. “Nothing,” she said. “I was only thinking how secret this place is.”

  “Listen!” said Titty. “Listen!”

  “Bagpipes!” said Roger.

  Faintly, from far away, the skirl of bagpipes drifted down the wind.

  They jumped up.

  “People … quite near …” said Titty.

  “I can’t see anyone,” said Dorothea.

  “You can’t tell,” said Titty. “Somebody may be seeing you.”

  “Come down,” said Roger. “Come down, and then you can’t be seen even if there’s somebody watching.”

  They dropped and for a moment waited silently, listening for the pipes. They could still hear them.

  “It’s the other side of the Northern Rockies,” said Titty. “A road goes over where that gap is.”

  “There’s a robber castle just over the top of the range,” said Dorothea.

  “Conspicuous house,” said Titty, looking at the sketch on the little chart.

  “Far enough away, anyhow,” said Roger, and took another bite.

  CHAPTER V

  “WE ARE BEING STALKED!”

  THAT FAR AWAY skirl of bagpipes had come to an end.

  With little in their knapsacks but their empty lemonade bottles and all solid rations except chocolate stowed inside them for easy carrying, the three explorers looked out from the top of the old Pict-house and searched the skyline of the ridge before them. The gap in its rocky outline, and glimpses of a cart track winding up to it through the heather, told them where the house was that had been seen from far away when the Sea Bear had been sailing towards the coast the day before.

  “I’d like to see what sort of a house it is,” said Dorothea. “I’m sure it ought to be a castle.”

  “I bet it’s where that biscuit box comes from,” said Roger.

  “We ought to know the worst,” said Titty. “And if we go carefully up to that gap, we ought to be able to see without being seen.”

  Watching the skyline, they dropped down from the hill-top and then began to climb again.

  “It doesn’t look much used,” said Roger when they came to the cart track.

  “We could pretend it isn’t there,” said Titty.

  “But why?” said Dorothea. “At dead of night, with the hoofs of their horses muffled to make no noise, the smugglers come this way over the hills. A light blinks out at sea. Boats land and are gone again before the morning and when the sun comes up the smugglers are far away and everything is like it is now.”

  “Anyway,” said Roger, “it’s a lot easier walking on it. Come on.”

  “We oughtn’t to turn back without knowing what’s there,” said Titty, as much to herself as to the others.

  They knew almost at once. As soon as they were in the gap, with heather slopes to right and left, they could see down into the country on the further side of the ridge.

  “Native settlement,” said Titty at once.

  “I told you it must be a castle,” said Dorothea.

  “Don’t let them see you,” said Roger.

  They were looking at a group of low thatched buildings, cottages, barns and sheds. Just beyond these, was the “conspicuous house” of the chart and, though it was hardly big enough t
o be a castle, Roger and Titty were not inclined to quarrel with Dorothea about it. It was built into the steep side of the hill and looked down on a bay of the sea. In front of it was a stone terrace, level with the ground at one side but with a ten or twelve foot drop below it to the rocky face of the hill. It was a two-storey house, but was turned into something as good as any castle by a turret with a battlemented top that rose high above its steeply sloping roofs.

  “Get down,” said Roger, and dropped to the ground.

  But Titty and Dorothea were still standing, looking through the gap at a world very different from the desolate valley they had left. It was different because it was inhabited. Far away on the slopes of the hills that fell away towards the sea there were more of the queer low cottages, like those only a hundred yards or so in front of them, with their rough thatched roofs, the thatching held down by ropes weighted with big stones. Here and there on the dark slopes were little groups of men and women cutting peat.

  “Let me have your telescope,” said Dorothea. “There’s a watcher on the tower.”

  “Sister Anne,” said Titty. “It’s just the place for a Bluebeard.”

  “It’s a girl,” said Roger, lying at their feet, elbows on the ground and telescope to his eye. “Flop, or she’ll see you. She’s looking straight at us.”

  They flopped, but not quite quick enough. They heard the sudden, threatening barking of a dog somewhere among the cottages.

  “Now you’ve done it,” said Roger, working hurriedly backwards along the ground. “Even if that girl didn’t see us, that beastly dog’ll stir everybody up. They’ll come pouring out to see what it’s barking at and our valley won’t be uninhabited any more. It’ll be a mass of people asking questions, and we’ll have to go back to the ship.”

  “It wasn’t a girl,” said Dorothea, as soon as she had wriggled back far enough to be able to lift her head without being seen from the top of the tower. “It was a boy in a kilt. The young chief of his clan looking far and wide from the battlements.”