“Blown?” asked Dick breathlessly.
“They’re still warm!” said Titty. “I can feel them warm even without touching them.”
“The boat!” exclaimed Dick. “There’s still a chance. Quick! Quick! Cover up the eggs.”
The McGinty and Captain Flint were standing over them and looking down into the box. Roger was there too, Peggy, Susan, Dorothea, the young McGinty. Flitting through Dick’s mind came the thought that anyhow the thing was proved now. The whole crew of the Sea Bear and the two McGintys had with their own eyes seen the first eggs of the Great Northern Diver ever known to be laid in the British Isles. But it hardly seemed to matter. What mattered now was to get them back to the nest. He went hurrying down to the shore.
Titty heard above her head the grave deep voice of the McGinty. “Queer that a grown man should be ready to swindle a boy for a couple of eggs.”
“It isn’t just the eggs,” said Captain Flint. “What he’s after is a place in history.”
“I’ll see that he gets one,” said the McGinty, “if we hear any more of him. Preserve the birds! He was for preserving them dead. And the eggs too. And taking them from my loch without so much as a ‘By your leave.’”
“Boat’s ready,” shouted John.
“I’ll row,” said Nancy.
“No! No!” said Dick, thinking of Nancy pulling as in a boat race, straight for the island. That would be the last straw, even if the birds had not already been too frightened to return.
“Dick ought to do it himself,” said Dorothea.
“All right, Professor,” said Nancy. “Your eggs.”
“I’m bringing the eggs,” said Titty.
“Yes,” said Dick. He walked straight into the water, stepped into the boat and sat down.
A moment later they were both afloat. Dick was rowing as quietly as he could. Titty was sitting in the stern nursing the egg-box. The crew of the Sea Bear still on shore, the McGintys, father and son, Captain Flint, the raging egg-collector and his man, watched by the dogs and ghillies, all had ceased to exist for them. Nothing mattered now but the birds. Had they flown away for ever? If they had come back, would they be frightened away again by yet another human visit to the island? And that visit had to be made. Would the birds, in spite of everything, come back to their nest or would they not? Everything hung on that one question. If the eggs were put back in vain, there would be only miserable failure to remember. It would be a pity that the Sea Bear had come into the cove instead of being scrubbed in harbour. It would be a pity Dick had ever found the birds, a pity that, after he had found them, he had not sailed away without trying to prove what birds they were.
“The island’s over there,” said Titty.
“I know,” said Dick, but did not row straight for it. For a moment or two he said nothing more. Then he thought he ought to explain. “The nest’s at this end,” he said earnestly. “So we’d better come at the island from the other.”
“But every minute counts,” Titty all but whispered.
“If we frighten them again it’ll be longer before they come back.”
He rowed steadily on while Titty sat there with the egg-box, more and more afraid that they were too late and that the birds were already far away. Driven from their nest, shot at, missed, pursued again, the Great Northern Divers might have left the loch altogether and flown, despairingly, on and on, northward to the Arctic. Well, if they had gone, there could be no hope of saving the eggs. They could not be kept warm for very long. Sooner or later the life that was hidden in them would fade away. How long, already, had they been taken from the nest? Things had happened very quickly. The taking of the eggs had been long after the shots, for Dick had seen it done. Then, when Dick’s shout had saved the birds, the thief and his man had rowed for the shore and been caught. The search for the box had been a short one. Perhaps the eggs had been in the box not half an hour altogether. But where were the Divers? She saw that Dick kept glancing across the loch in the hope of seeing them. She too, kept looking out over the water but nowhere could she see those strange, great birds.
Suddenly Dick stopped rowing.
“There’s one of them,” he whispered. “Only its head showing.”
Titty stared in the direction in which he was looking, but could see nothing.
“Heuch! Heuch! Heuch!”
“That’s the other one,” said Dick. “They’re coming back. We’ve still got a chance.”
“Hoo! Hoo! Hoo!”
This time it was not the guttural screech of alarm but a weird yelping call.
Far up the loch in the gleaming water between herself and the evening sun, Titty saw a long line of splashes as the bird came down on the water.
“I can’t help it,” said Dick, more to himself than to Titty. “I can’t help it if they do see us. They’re coming back. We’ve got to go straight to the island.”
Rowing again, as quietly as he could, he turned the boat and made straight for the end of the island furthest from the flat bit of shore, where the Divers had their nest.
“Perhaps better if they do see us now,” he said presently. “Better than if they go back to the nest before we’ve put the eggs there.”
“We simply must get there first,” said Titty.
At last she saw the head and neck of one of the birds, swimming as if to meet the one that had just flown down to the loch.
“We’re all right,” she whispered. “It’s going the other way.”
Dick said nothing. He wanted to bring the boat in close by the reeds where he had hidden it that morning and again, in his hurry, he was finding it hard to steer. There was a gentle swish as the bows pushed into the reeds. A moment later the keel touched ground, and Dick stepped out into the water, pulled the boat up a foot or two, and held out his hands for the box.
“I’d better not come,” said Titty.
“No,” said Dick. “It’s a pity even one of us has to go there. They must be watching us now.”
She handed over the box and waited.
Dick seemed hardly to have gone before he was back.
“Just where they were,” he whispered, as he pushed the boat off and stepped in. “Luckily I’d seen how they lay … side by side, but not touching. That beast hadn’t upset things either. He said he wanted to take the whole nest, but he didn’t have time and he left it when he thought he had another chance of shooting them. He’d have had to dig up a bit of the shore. The nest looks just like it did. If only the birds come back to it before the eggs get cold.”
“That one in the water dived and came up much nearer. It’s dived again. At least I can’t see it.”
“We must get away,” said Dick.
They were nearly halfway across to the shore, when they heard that yelping cry again.
“Hoo! Hoo! Hoo!”
One of the birds was once more in the air. It came flying overhead so that they saw its pale underneath and its great folded feet. Round it swung high above them.
“If only it tells the other one we’ve really gone,” said Titty.
Dick went on rowing until a long splashing furrow in the water fifty or sixty yards away showed where the bird came down.
“Now,” said Dick.
“Are they both there?” said Titty.
Dick pulled in the oars and let the boat drift while he tugged Captain Flint’s binoculars from their case.
“That one’s swimming quite high,” he said. “Its back’s showing … Can’t be so frightened … I can’t see the other … Yes, I can … Still only head and neck … But they’re nearer the island … One’s gone under … Up again … Oh, don’t let the boat rock… They’re both swimming properly … I say, one’s going straight for the shore where the nest is … It must have seen the eggs by now … It …” There was a long, breathless pause … “It’s coming out … Using its wings like flippers … like a seal … It’s on the nest … Here, you look … What’s the matter?”
“Nothing, nothing,” said Titty im
patiently, scrumpling her handkerchief into a ball. It really was dreadful, the way her eyes would weep when there was nothing whatever to weep about … quite the contrary.
“Look,” said Dick. “Put your elbows on your knees to keep the glasses steady.”
Titty took the glasses and looked. For a moment the island swung from side to side, but, as the boat steadied, she saw it, the flat bit of shore, the rocks where heather had sprouted in the night, and yes, in front of those rocks, a yard or so from the water’s edge, a huge black and white speckled bird, with a dark neck on which were two striped patches, the Great Northern Diver, sitting on its nest. Its mate was swimming to and fro in the water just beyond the island.
“Come on,” said Titty. “Let’s go and tell the others.”
“Gosh! Oh Gosh!” said Dick, almost as if he were Roger, and, blinking joyfully through his spectacles, pulled for the shore.
FAREWELL TO THE SEA BEAR
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.
Other books by Arthur Ransome in Red Fox
Swallows and Amazons
Swallowdale
Peter Duck
Winter Holiday
Coot Club
Pigeon Post
We Didn’t Mean to Go to Sea
Secret Water
The Big Six
Missee Lee
The Picts and the Martyrs
THE ARTHUR RANSOME SOCIETY
THE ARTHUR RANSOME Society was formed in June 1990 with the aim of celebrating his life and his books, and to encourage both children and adults to take part in adventurous pursuits – especially climbing, sailing and fishing. It also seeks to sponsor research, to spread his ideas in the wider community and to bring together all those who share the values and the spirit that he fostered in all his storytelling.
The Society is based at the Abbot Hall Museum of Lakeland Life and Industry in Kendal, where there is a special room set aside for Ransome: his desk, his favourite books and some of his personal possessions. There are also close links with the Windermere Steamboat Museum at Bowness, where the original Amazon has been restored and kept, together with the Esperance, thought to be the vessel on which Ransome based Captain Flint’s houseboat. The Society keeps in touch with its members through a journal called Mixed Moss.
Regional branches of the Society have been formed by members in various parts of the country – Scotland, the Lake District, East Anglia, the Midlands, the South Coast among them – and contacts are maintained with overseas groups such as the Arthur Ransome Club of Japan. Membership fees are modest, and fall into three groups – for those under 18, for single adults, and for whole families. 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].
THE ARTHUR RANSOME TRUST
“I seem to have lived not one life, but snatches from a dozen different lives.”
Arthur Ransome wrote twelve adventures about the Swallows and Amazons and their friends. He also wrote many other books and articles. He had a lot to write about, because in “real” life he was not only an author, but also a sailor, journalist, critic, story teller, illustrator, fisherman, editor, bohemian, and war reporter, who played chess with Lenin, married Trotsky’s secretary, helped Estonia gain independence and aroused the interest of both MI6 and MI5.
The Arthur Ransome Trust (ART) is a charity (no: 1136565) dedicated to helping everybody discover more about Arthur Ransome’s fascinating life and writings. Our main goal is to develop an “Arthur Ransome Centre” in the Lake District. If you want to know more about Arthur Ransome, or about ART’s projects, or think you would like to help us to put Ransome on the map, you can visit us at:
www.arthur-ransome-trust.org.uk
[email protected]
GREAT NORTHERN?
AN RHCB DIGITAL EBOOK 9781446483770
Published in Great Britain by RHCB Digital,
an imprint of Random House Children’s Books
A Random House Group Company
This ebook edition published 2011
Copyright © Arthur Ransome 1940
First published in Great Britain 1947 by Jonathan Cape
The right of Arthur Ransome to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Great Northern? Page 31
