Ian’s second thoughts came just in time to stop him from waking the trespasser with an indignant shout. If he were to wake that boy there and then send him back to his boat with a flea in his ear, he would merely be warning the invaders. He waited, perfectly still but very angry. A stranger in the place that had always been his own and no one else’s. Making himself at home too. Ian noted the empty lemonade bottle, the sucked orange, the scout-knife that had been used to cut a hole in it, and paper that had held the sandwiches tucked loosely into the open pocket of the knapsack so as not to be blown away. This was no island boy either. Clever of him, whoever was behind the plan of shifting the deer, to use boys from elsewhere and to bring them by sea, so that there would be no hope of tracing them once they had done their work and gone. He saw the telescope lying close to the boy’s hand. He had been using the broch for a look-out post too, just as Ian had used it ever since he could remember. Lying there, where Ian himself had so often lain, he could look out to sea. What was he watching for? Ian turned his head. Two fishing smacks. The smoke of a steamer on the horizon. He looked slowly round. What was that? A white motor yacht nosing along the coast from the north. Some rich man from Glasgow, showing his guests the beauties of the Hebrides. Ian suddenly stiffened.
What was it his father, the old laird, had said when Angus had told him the interlopers he had chased off had landed from a small sailing yacht? “If they’re up to real mischief there’ll be more of them, and they’ll want something bigger than that to bring them and to take them away if they mean not to be seen by someone on the roads.” What if that motor yacht were bringing the rest of the party? That would explain why it was nosing so close along the coast. It was looking for them. That would explain what this boy was doing on Ian’s private broch. He had been sent to watch for them and to signal to them where to come in. Ian grinned. Not much of a look-out, he thought, looking at the sleeping Roger. And if that motor yacht were bringing the rest of the scoundrels, why, so much the better. “Don’t chase them off,” his father had said. “Round them up and we’ll settle this deer-shifting business for good.”
He was thankful now that he had not wakened Roger with an angry shout and asked him what he had to say for himself. Much better to let him sleep. Ian decided to slip quietly away to let them know at home of what was happening. But he took another look at Roger, sleeping there never dreaming that an enemy was watching him. Ian felt the pride of the successful stalker. That boy was at his mercy and did not know it. Let him sleep. Yes. But when he should wake … Ian grinned. He crawled silently over the rim into the hollow, and set about his work. The lemonade bottle first. Then the telescope. The knapsack. That would puzzle him. He took the sandwich paper, opened it slowly so that it should not crackle, dug in his sporran for a stump of pencil and wrote. He grinned again, took the boy’s scout-knife and skewered the paper to the ground just above the sleeper’s head. He listened a moment to his victim’s even breathing. Then, moving carefully backwards, he slipped over the edge of the broch and was gone.
The afternoon crept on. Roger, tired out after the last two days and nights, scarcely stirred. He was wakened at last by a hoodie crow which, seeing something on the top of the broch, swooped down and, not so careful as the stalking Ian, loosed a wild squawk as it flapped past only a foot or two above the sleeper.
Roger opened his eyes, stretched, yawned, sat up suddenly and remembered where he was. His hand groped for his telescope and could not find it. Puzzled, he saw it standing on its end, like a tiny lighthouse against the sky, on the edge of the hollow. Surely he had not left it there. Then, to the right of it, he saw his empty lemonade bottle with a small blue flower sticking out of it that he knew he had not picked. His knapsack had turned itself completely inside out, and was arranged like a punctured football at his feet. Gosh! He jumped to his feet and saw something else. Pinned by his own knife to the ground just above where he had been resting was the sandwich paper, with large black letters scrawled across it. Roger grinned, not too happily. It is never pleasant for a coastguard or a sentinel to find himself labelled as
“THE SLEEPING BEAUTY”
“The beasts!” he said to himself. “The horrid beasts! They might have waked me. It must have been tea-time long ago.”
He put his knapsack right, gathered up his knife and, obeying the ancient rule, never leave a scrap of litter, pushed it into the knapsack with the empty lemonade bottle, debated what to do with the orange skin and, seeing no rabbit hole, put it in with the sandwich paper. Then he looked down from the top of the Pict-house to Scrubbers’ Bay. He saw the Sea Bear and, in the same moment, saw something else that made him hot to the tips of his ears. Beyond the Sea Bear, just on the other side of the rocky spit, a second boat was lying, a motor yacht, white, with a large deckhouse. He had no need to use the telescope to know that it was the Pterodactyl.
THE SLEEPING BEAUTY
Instantly he knew what had happened. He had seen her pass out of sight to the northward. She must have steamed north until she had gone beyond the place where she had met the Sea Bear three days before. Then she had turned and followed the coast south again, looking into every bay until she had seen the old pilot cutter lying at anchor. They had not given her the slip after all. And who could tell how long the Pterodactyl had been there? Or how much the egg-collector had seen? And he, Roger, had been the look-out and had slept and never warned them that the enemy was coming back. The rest of the crew had come to look for their sentinel and, instead of waking him, had scornfully let him sleep to wake at last with that label above his head. “Beasts! Beasts!” said Roger. His shame turned into anger not at himself but at the others. For one moment he thought of never going back at all. Then, clenching his teeth, he jumped from the top of the Pict-house, landed heavily and set off down the steep slopes to the cove.
CHAPTER XVII
ENEMIES AFLOAT AND ASHORE
ROGER CAME DOWN the rocks into the little bay where the Sea Bear had been scrubbed two days before. He looked at her lying quietly at anchor in the creek and saw that no dinghy was lying astern of her. Somebody must be ashore. He wondered who. He saw Peggy up aloft, sitting on the cross-trees, with her back towards him and guessed that she must be looking at the Pterodactyl. From up there she would be able to see across the lower part of the rocky promontory that divided the inlet. Some of the others were on deck, Susan, Titty, Dorothea. He could not see Dick, Nancy, John or Captain Flint. Then he saw the dinghy, pulled up the beach at the head of the cove where the stream came down into the salt water. Somebody, he thought, must have landed to get a nearer view of the Pterodactyl. Oh, why had he fallen asleep and let her come back without giving them a warning? Roger did not hail his ship. He was not going to ask to be taken aboard when they had found him sleeping and left him to wake with that label at his head. He sat on his heels on the shore, hating everybody.
Aboard the Sea Bear nobody noticed him. Peggy, up the mast, looked down from time to time and the others looked up at her from whatever it was they were doing, but not one of them looked at the waiting Roger. He thought they were not looking on purpose to make him feel that he was in disgrace.
He was on the point of stumping away inland again by himself when he saw Dick come down to the dinghy and busy himself with the stowage of some sort of cargo. Then he saw Captain Flint coming down the rocks on the far side of the cove and knew that he must have been looking at the enemy. Both of them were putting something in the dinghy. They had her afloat. They had pushed off from the shore. Dick was sitting in the stern and Captain Flint was rowing towards the Sea Bear. The dinghy was nearing the Sea Bear when Roger saw Dick pointing towards him. Captain Flint looked over his shoulder and changed course. In another few minutes the dinghy grounded at Roger’s feet.
“Hop in,” said Captain Flint. “You’re a good look-out. Why didn’t you let us know she was coming?”
“I saw her go right out of sight,” said Roger. “It wasn’t until long after that I fell asleep
. I didn’t do it on purpose.”
“All right,” said Captain Flint. “Cheer up. There’s no harm done. Tell you the truth, I’ve been to sleep myself.”
Dick, very gloomy, said nothing.
The dinghy was half full of heather. Roger did not ask what for.
Dorothea grabbed the painter which Roger threw grimly aboard as the dinghy came alongside.
“Peggy says he hasn’t landed,” she said.
“He hasn’t,” said Captain Flint. “And I don’t think he will tonight. Too late. Besides a chap like that thinks that everybody else is like himself. He probably thought Dick would go straight back and take the eggs. That idea will be knocked out now because we’re still here, and if we’d got the eggs we’d have gone. His next idea will be that since we haven’t got the eggs yet we’ll be after them tomorrow, and he’ll be trusting to us to show him the way.”
“We ought to sail away and then he’ll come after us and leave them alone,” said Dick.
“He won’t do that unless he thinks we’ve got the eggs in the ship with us,” said Captain Flint.
“You’ve got a grand lot of heather,” said Dorothea. “I’m sure it’s going to be all right, Dick. I’m sure it is, in spite of everything.”
Dick and Captain Flint began passing up armfuls of heather. Roger climbed aboard without a word.
“I say, Roger,” said Titty, “didn’t you see him coming?”
“You know I didn’t,” flared Roger. “I think you’re all beasts, putting that notice. It was a beastly thing to do.”
“What do you mean?” said Susan.
“What notice?” asked Titty.
“What’s all this?” asked Captain Flint, as he handed up a great bundle of heather to Dorothea.
“I don’t care what you say,” said Roger. “It was a beastly thing to do.”
“But what have we done?” said Susan.
“Coming up to my Pict-house and putting that notice and going away again just because I couldn’t help falling asleep. I don’t believe I was asleep for very long anyway.”
“But we’ve never been near the Pict-house,” said Titty. “We came straight back here from looking at the birds and we’ve been working ever since.”
“Well, if you didn’t,” said Roger, “I know who did. Where’s Nancy?” he demanded. “John wouldn’t have done it.”
“Done what?” asked Captain Flint.
“She knows what she did,” said Roger.
“Ahoy … oy!”
Everybody looked round.
“There she is,” said Susan, “and John, just coming down to the shore. Who’s going to fetch them?”
“I’m going,” said Captain Flint, who was still in the dinghy. “Out you get, Dick.”
Dick climbed aboard and looked glumly at the long net that was hanging below the boom, one end of it still plain netting, the rest of it decorated with tied-on sprigs of heather.
“We’ll soon have it done,” said Dorothea.
“It won’t be safe to use it,” said Dick.
Roger looked at it, wondered what it was for, did not ask, and stood at the top of the ladder, waiting for Nancy.
“Jiminy!” Nancy was saying as Captain Flint brought the dinghy alongside. “We’ll just have to fend him off. It makes things a bit more difficult that’s all. I say, Susan, we’re starving. Just let me get my teeth into a bit of pemmican. Get out of the way, Roger. How can I come aboard with you standing there?”
Roger, red in the face, glared at Nancy. “I think you’re a perfect beast,” he said.
“Born that way,” said Nancy cheerfully. “What have I done now?”
“You jolly well know,” said Roger.
“I don’t.”
“What you did when you came to my Pict-house.”
“But I’ve never been to your Pict-house in my life,” said Nancy. “I was hard at work scrubbing the day you people went off exploring.”
“Today, I mean,” said Roger.
“Don’t be an idiot, Roger,” said John. “We’ve never been anywhere near you. We’ve been right up to the hills at the end of the valley, and, I say, Titty, we saw one of your stalkers, a keeper or something. He yelled at us like anything.”
Roger’s eyes opened wider. “Gosh!” he said. “But it couldn’t be one of them. It was in English. Whoever wrote it can’t have been a Gael.”
“Wrote what?”
“Get on,” said Captain Flint. “Let me come aboard. Now then, let’s hear all about it.”
“I couldn’t help going to sleep,” said Roger.
“Oh, never mind that,” said Captain Flint. “It made no difference. We couldn’t have stopped her coming in.”
“We saw her when she was nosing about outside,” said Titty.
“Go on, Roger,” said Nancy. “Who wrote what? What did he write? Where?”
“Well, if you didn’t do it, it was somebody else,” said Roger. “When I woke up, some beast had been there. My knapsack was inside out. Somebody’d put a flower in the lemonade bottle. My telescope wasn’t where I’d left it. And I’d folded up the sandwich paper and put it away and somebody’d taken it and spread it out and written on it and stuck my knife into it to keep it from being blown away.”
“Where was it?” asked John.
“Just above my head,” said Roger.
“What was written on it?”
“A message?” asked Titty.
“Nothing like that,” said Roger.
“Well, what was it?” said Nancy, impatiently.
“Just something meant to be beastly.”
“But what?”
“Where is it?” asked Titty. “It may be a secret message.”
“Code,” said Dorothea.
Roger had not thought of that. He pulled the scrumpled up paper out of his knapsack and spread it out again. Even in that grim moment, when they all knew that the Pterodactyl had followed them, found them and was lying just on the other side of the rocks, the sight of the three words written on the paper made everybody laugh but Roger.
“I don’t think it’s code,” said Captain Flint. “Clear, to me.”
“It’s serious all the same,” said Nancy. “You didn’t hear anybody or see anybody?”
“No,” said Roger.
“It must have been one of the people who stalked us,” said Titty.
“But they were Gaels,” said Roger.
“The young chieftain himself,” said Dorothea. “He’d know English as well as Gaelic.”
“The natives are not friendly,” said Nancy. “You should have heard the one who shouted at us.”
“What are you laughing about?” Peggy called down from the cross-trees.
“We aren’t laughing,” said Nancy. “It’s going to be a lot harder than we thought. Enemies afloat and ashore. I say, come down. I’m going up to have a look. You come down and do your job. We’ve had nothing to eat since breakfast.”
“Supper in half an hour,” said Susan. “You others, get on with the net. We may as well finish it anyhow, even if Dick can’t use it.”
“Can’t use it?” said Nancy, as she started up the ratlines. “Who said he couldn’t? The Sea Bear’s not going to be beaten by a miserable motor boat.”
“I must say, I don’t like the idea of being done by that chap,” said Captain Flint.
“We aren’t going to be,” said Nancy from above his head. “You leave it to me.”
Dorothea and Titty were already hard at work, tying bits of heather on the part of the netting that had not yet been decorated. John and Captain Flint joined them. The two cooks went below.
“Come on, Roger,” said Titty.
“But what’s it for?” asked Roger who, while still boiling with rage against the writer of that label, no longer thought that one of the Sea Bear’s crew was to blame for it. They told him and he set to work with the others, after trying for himself how good a hide it made.
“But it’s going to be much more difficult now,
” said Dick. “We’ve got to get there without being seen. We’ve got to hide from people as well as from birds.”
“Hiding the hide,” said Roger, and Titty knew that Roger was feeling better.
“Once you get it there nobody’ll know what it is, even through glasses,” said Captain Flint.
“It’s getting it there,” said Dick. “If those birds are frightened they’ll start screaming and tell him just where they are.”
“You needn’t go near them till it’s nearly dark.”
“It doesn’t get half dark enough,” said Dick. “And anyway I’ve got to get the net to the island while there’s light enough to see what I’m doing.”
“You’ll manage it,” said Dorothea.
Somehow, with the return of Nancy the gloom that had settled on the Sea Bear had lifted. Perhaps Dick alone, after his talk with the egg-collector, understood quite how awful was the danger that threatened the Great Northern Divers and their eggs. For all the others, the presence of the Pterodactyl meant difficulty, but difficulty that they would find a way to overcome. One after another, after Nancy came down, champing for her supper, they climbed to the cross-trees, and looked across at the big motor boat lying beyond the rocks. There she lay, the enemy, in full view, and whatever happened, they did not mean to be defeated.
At supper, down in the cabin, there was a council of war.
Nancy summed up. “It’s like this,” she said. “There are two lots of enemies, not one. Dick’s got to take his photographs without being seen by the old Dactyl. And he’s got to do it without being seen by the natives. If the natives start yelling like they did at John and me, they’ll frighten the birds and he won’t have a chance.”
Great Northern? Page 18
