“Ahoy! Ahoy! Dick! DICK!”
He glanced round. Aboard the motor boat he could see the egg-collector, with his binoculars to his eyes. He could not see the sailor but guessed he must be somewhere on the shore of the cove. A moment later he knew that Nancy’s plan had worked. The egg-collector was pointing up the valley, straight at John. Nancy yelled again.
“Ahoy! Dick! DICK CALLUM! Ahoy!”
John grinned, did not trust himself to shout back, waved a hand and waited.
Nancy came galloping after him.
“We’ve done it,” she said. “I do believe we have. Those goggles are grand at a distance. One’s trickling down your cheek a bit, but it doesn’t matter now. It’s his own fault if he doesn’t know you’re Dick. I’ve told him clear enough. He fairly jumped when I yelled your name. That sailor was just going to get into the dinghy, and the old Dactyl looked as if he was going to explode with rage. The sailor saw him in time and didn’t push off. The Dactyl was pointing straight up the valley. Anybody could see he was telling the sailor what to do.”
“What’s he doing?”
“Coming after us.”
“What do we do? Wait for him to give a ‘View Halloo’?”
“Mustn’t let him get too near. You’ve just got to go on being Dick. What would Dick be doing?”
“Looking at birds.”
“Well, look at them. That’s easy. But he wouldn’t be dawdling much if he was on his way to see his Divers. Come on. We’ll lead that sailor a lovely dance. There are lots of lochs up this valley. We’ll give him half a dozen to choose from and every one of them wrong. With the Dactyl thinking his sailor’s close on Dick’s heels there’s no danger at all from him. And if Peggy and Susan lure the Gaels up into the hills there’s no danger from the other side either. The Ship’s Naturalist’ll get his pictures and be back aboard the Sea Bear without anybody seeing him at all.”
“Are you sure that man’s coming after us?”
“Of course he is,” said Nancy. “Don’t look round. We mustn’t let him guess we know he’s after us. Just keep going. When we want to make sure he’s there, one of us points up into the sky … hawk or something … and then we can swivel round with our heads in the air and have a squint at anything we want.”
Five minutes later, Nancy stopped short.
“John! Dick, I mean. Just look at that albatross. Up there!”
John turned to see Nancy pointing up into the empty sky.
“Can’t you see it?” she said. “Pink, with green wings. And there’s another, speckled gold and purple. Go on. Keep your head cocked up to see the albatrosses and take a good squint astern.”
“Can’t see the motor boat any more,” said John.
“Bother the motor boat,” said Nancy. “It’s that sailor we want to see.”
“Got him,” said John. “He’s just dodged behind a rock.”
“Where? Where?”
“There he is again.”
“Victory,” said Nancy. She too had seen the dark blue jersey of the sailor. “And he’s trying to hide from us. Grand. I knew a decoy Dick would do it. Gosh! These albatrosses give me a crick in my neck and a squint with having to look along my nose with my head in the air. But we needn’t look back again for a bit. We’ve got him fairly hooked. We’ll keep him going till he drops. Jiminy, I wish I knew if the red herrings have started the Gaels.”
“Couldn’t we work up again till we can see across our valley?”
“No,” said Nancy. “It’s the one thing we mustn’t do. We’ve got to keep him thinking that Dick’s birds are not in our valley at all but in this. Come on. There’s one of the lochs ahead. We’ll make for that, and then go on and find another. We must take him so far that he won’t have time to get back till it’s over. We won’t let him stop till Dick’s in the Sea Bear and we hear Uncle Jim hooting triumph on the foghorn.”
“Still coming after us?”
“Must be. But if we keep turning round he’ll know there’s something fishy. No more albatrosses for a bit.” She wriggled her neck. “We’ll go on for a good long way, and then we’ll both see a great auk at the same moment and swivel round like lightning to get another look at him.”
They went steadily on, aiming at the first of several small lochs in the valley. For as long as they could, they put off seeing great auks, feeling that hard purposeful walking was the likeliest way to keep the Pterodactyl’s sailor hurrying in their tracks.
“Now,” said Nancy at last. “What about it?”
“All right,” said John.
“I’ll count three and then … round like a flash and we’ll spot anything moving. Are you ready?”
“Yes.”
“One … two … three … Great auks!”
Round they spun and, sure enough, three or four hundred yards behind them, they caught sight of the sailor just before he dropped in the heather and disappeared.
“That settles it,” said Nancy. “He’s after us and he doesn’t want us to know it. Three million cheers! Well done, the goggles! And my yelling your name must have helped. All we’ve got to do now is to keep him going.”
Once they knew for certain that their trick had worked and that the Pterodactyl’s scout was busily following the sham Dick while the real Dick was taking his photographs unseen, they began to enjoy themselves. It was, of course, a pity that they could not go up and look across the other valley to see what was happening to the red herrings, but they were going to take no risks. They knew the red herrings would be doing their best and, after all, misleading the egg-collector was the most important part of the plan, and it was silly to worry about the others while they had plenty to do themselves. They settled down to a long day of hard but joyful work. Hither and thither, to and fro, from one small loch to another, they led the unfortunate sailor. Soft marshy ground, that bore John and Nancy so long as they kept moving, let the sailor, in his heavy sea-boots, sink to his knees. Once, glancing back, they saw him hurriedly emptying the water out of a boot before dragging it on again to come squelching in pursuit.
“Good thing we’re not near enough to hear what he’s saying,” said John with a grin.
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Nancy. “We might learn some good new words.”
The sun climbed high in the sky. Their shadows no longer ran ahead of them but dragged behind them. The day wore on to afternoon and still, like will-o’-the-wisps, John and Nancy flitted up the valley, cheered to their work by occasional glimpses of the blue jersey of the sailor far behind them. At last they began to listen hopefully for the hooting of the Sea Bear’s foghorn that would tell them that their work was done. They were very hot, but it was pleasant to think that the Pterodactyl’s sailor must be hotter still. It was long past dinner-time and they began to be hungry.
“I say,” said John. “It’s a long time since I’ve seen him. You don’t think he’s given up?”
“Dick’s bound to have got his pictures by now,” said Nancy.
They stopped and looked back over a wide stretch of rocky moorland. There was not a single moving thing in sight.
“We’ll have our grub,” said Nancy. “And my tongue’s hanging out for grog. If that bottle’s as hot as I am, it’ll burst in another minute.”
“It must be safe to stop now,” said John. “And we ought to get a sight of him again when he comes over that rise.”
They threw themselves down on short dry heather, shrugged out of their knapsacks, opened their sandwiches and let the corks from their bottles go off like guns.
“He probably got stuck in that last bit of bog,” said Nancy, after the first few urgent mouthfuls.
“What about cleaning off these goggles?” said John. A hand that he had put up to wipe his forehead had come away with a black smudge that had reminded him that he was being Dick. “They can’t matter now.”
“They aren’t quite as good as they were,” chuckled Nancy looking at him. “But you’ll only make them worse. It’s no good trying to
clean off burnt cork without soap. You may even need pumice stone.”
“Bother,” said John, touching his cheek with a clean finger and looking at the black finger-tip he brought away. “I wonder if there is any pumice stone in the Sea Bear.”
“There’ll be a file in the engine room,” said Nancy. “We’ll get the black off all right when we get back. Gosh! I wish I knew what was happening to the others.”
“There hasn’t been any shouting,” said John.
“If they didn’t get stalked,” said Nancy, “they’ll be pretty sick by now of being red herrings all for nothing.”
“Susan’ll be glad enough,” said John. “She didn’t really much like the idea of being hunted by Gaels.”
“Uncle Jim’s fault,” said Nancy. “Rubbing it into her that we didn’t want to get into trouble for trespassing. But she’ll have done her best. She knew how important it was.”
“If we climbed up that ridge we’d probably see them,” said John.
“We can’t,” said Nancy. “Not with a spy at our heels.”
“He isn’t at our heels now,” said John. “But we’ll be seeing him in a minute. Keep an eye on that open bit we crossed when we came up off the flats.”
They finished their sandwiches and tipped the last drops of their lemonade down their throats. They were both sitting up, looking a quarter of a mile away for a blue, plodding sailor, when Nancy suddenly grabbed at John. Somebody was watching them from not twenty yards off. Over the top of a rock they saw a battered blue sailor’s cap and a startled, puzzled face, the colour of old mahogany. It was too late for John to turn over and hide the smudgy ruin of his spectacles. The secret was out. The sailor, who had spoken to Dick aboard the Pterodactyl, knew now that this was not the real Dick and that he had his chase for nothing. Nobody spoke. The sailor and the decoy Dick stared at each other. The sailor wiped his face with a large red handerkchief. He stared again. He stood up looking so angry that John stood up too, not knowing what was going to happen next. But the sailor just stood there staring, as if he could not take his eyes from John’s zebra face. Nancy scrambled to her feet and stood beside John.
Suddenly the sailor seemed to make up his mind. He swung round and set off at a steady trot down the valley towards the distant creek.
“He’s off to tell the Dactyl he’s been after the wrong Dick,” said Nancy.
“Pretty good stalking on his part,” said John, “getting right up to us like that.”
“I hope the Dactyl pays him well,” said Nancy, “he’s earned it. But I bet he doesn’t. The Dacty’ll be tearing raging mad.”
“It won’t take him so long to get back,” said John. “He’ll go straight instead of all over the place like we did.”
TOO CLOSE A VIEW
“It’s all right,” said Nancy. “We’re bound to hear that foghorn any minute. Unless Uncle Jim’s hooted already and we’re too far away to hear it.”
“It’s a pretty good foghorn,” said John. “I wonder if we ought to have kept him here.”
“Too late,” said Nancy. “And parleying wouldn’t have worked. Nothing would have stopped him once he’d had a good look at your mug.”
“Let’s get up on the ridge,” said John, “and see what’s happening in our valley.”
“Wait till the sailor’s out of sight,” said Nancy.
“He hasn’t turned round once,” said John.
They watched the spot of dark blue moving quickly down the valley, losing sight of it in hollows and among rocks, seeing it again as it crossed the rises in the uneven ground.
“He’s going straight back,” said John again. “Come on. From the top of that ridge we’ll be able to see right across.”
They quickly poked their sandwich papers into their empty lemonade bottles, and packed them in their knapsacks before setting off, knapsacks flapping on their backs.
The sailor had passed altogether out of sight and they did not catch sight of him again even when they were climbing the steep slopes of the ridge that divided the two valleys. They had their first news of something happening before they reached the top. A long shrill whistle that nobody could have mistaken for a bird’s sounded from far away.
“Did you hear that?” panted Nancy, stopping short.
“Yes,” said John. “And it’s not Susan’s. I know the noise hers makes.”
“That’s not hers either,” said Nancy, as another whistle sounded on a slightly different note.
They fairly raced up the last fifty yards till they were able to look down into the valley beyond. Far away to the right of them they could see the little hill with the Pict-house on it and a line of blue sea. They could see just a little of one of the lochs. High above it, on the other side of the valley, smoke, drifting above the skyline showed where the houses must be. Beginning at that end of the valley, where they knew the red herrings must have started, they searched along the opposite ridge.
“There they are,” said Nancy. “Some of them. They’ve got a very long way. But who blew those whistles? I can’t see any Gaels. Can you?”
“No,” said John. “No … At least … How many of them can you see?”
“Pretty well spread out,” said Nancy. “That’s Titty and Dot down in the bottom. They’ve gone further than we have.”
“We’ve come a long way round, looking at those lochs and giving that sailor a run,” said John.
“There’s Peggy’s red cap … Jolly useful for spotting purposes.”
“Not so good when she wants to hide,” said John. “But, of course, she didn’t. They’d all want to be seen to get the Gaels to come chasing after them.…”
“Red rag to a bull … Red cap to a Gael,” said Nancy. “There’s Susan. That’s four … Another higher up … That must be Roger. Hullo, who’s that, a bit behind? That makes six.”
“But there can’t be six unless they’ve got Dick with them, and he knew he had to get back to the Sea Bear the first moment he could. But look here. There’s another, right up on the skyline. Seven! I say, Nancy, you don’t think Captain Flint… ?”
“He’d never leave his masthead once he’d promised to stick there … Look! … Look! Further up, where there’s a sort of gorge going up into the hills. One … Two … Three … Four … There are a whole lot of people spread out in the heather.”
“If they are people,” said John. “Yes, they are. I saw one stand up and then go down again out of sight. And, hullo, look at those deer.”
“Great Guillemots!” said Nancy. “It’s the Gaels. They’ve been stirred up all right. A regular army. Oh, well done the red herrings! There are Gaels all round them. I wonder if Peggy knows, or Susan. It looks to me as if they’re walking slap into an ambush. I’m going to signal.”
“The Gaels’ll see you if you do.”
“Doesn’t matter,” said Nancy. “We’re miles from Dick’s loch. We’ve got to let them know.” She climbed up on a rock and waved a handkerchief in wide sweeps from side to side. “You watch with the telescope and sing out the moment one of them sees us.”
“Susan’s spotted you,” cried John a moment later. “She’s looking straight at us. So’s Peggy.”
“Right,” said Nancy, and waved her handkerchief with two short sweeps and then a long one from side to side as wide as she could reach. Then again two short quick sweeps and a long slower one. Then again. “Golly,” she muttered, “my arm’ll bust if they don’t understand soon.”
“Peggy’s waving.”
“Can’t the gummock see I’m signalling?”
“Hullo! She’s got it. Long … short … long … short … Answering sign. That’s all right … Now what?”
Suddenly things began to happen. John and Nancy heard two more whistles far away, and a nearer one. They saw Peggy and Susan come together, stop, look back, start to run forward and then stop again. They saw men and boys, no longer crouching, but running and leaping down the heathery slopes. They heard Susan’s well-known whistle. They saw both Sus
an and Peggy beckoning to Dot and Titty down in the valley. More men were coming down to join the others. Below them, they saw Dot and Titty run side by side to join Susan and Peggy on the opposite slopes.
“Why on earth didn’t they bolt across to us?” said Nancy.
“That’s why,” said John pointing.
“It’s the dogmudgeon himself,” exclaimed Nancy, as she saw a huge giant of a man stand up, snaking his fist, close to where Titty and Dot had been.
There was no way of escape. The red herrings were surrounded. The next moment, as the enemy closed in towards them, the watchers saw Peggy signalling again, three short waves and a long one. Three short waves and a long.
“Require assistance,” said John grimly.
“I should jolly well think they do,” said Nancy.
“Come on,” said John, and with Nancy beside him went plunging down the slopes.
CHAPTER XXI
THE RED HERRINGS
IT WAS HARD to say who were the leaders of the red herrings. Susan and Peggy were in charge, but naturally they depended on their guides. Titty, Roger and Dorothea had climbed this side of the valley before, had looked through the gap in the ridge and had already been stalked by the Gaels. It was Titty, Roger and Dorothea who had to show their leaders what to do if they wanted to make sure that the Gaels would come stalking them again. Roger, in a hurry to get to his Pict-house, was climbing ahead of the others. Titty and Dorothea were telling yet again, now that people were ready to believe them, exactly how they had been followed by invisible enemies crawling through the heather, and how, in the end, they had been chased down the valley by the old grey-bearded giant whom Roger had called a dogmudgeon. They told of the bagpipe music and of the grey house with the turret that lay, just out of sight, beyond the Northern Rockies.
Great Northern? Page 22
