“It’ll be beastly being on the edge of the lake and having no boat,” said John.
“All right,” said Susan. “But after bathing, you must have something to eat. I’ll boil some eggs to take with us. It would be a pity to waste the fire now it’s lit.”
“Chocolate wouldn’t be bad for now,” said Roger, “and then we can have proper breakfast afterwards.”
“Do you think it’ll be all right to leave the tents?” said Susan.
“Nobody ever comes here but the Amazons, and they can’t be coming to-day. The great-aunt wanted them.”
It was settled. While the eggs were boiling, food for the day was divided up among the four knapsacks. There was bunloaf, pemmican, butter, a pot of marmalade, four apples and two tins of sardines. John took the compass, Titty the telescope, and the borrowed egg-basket, Roger the empty milk-can, and Susan the kettle, though it was agreed, of course, that this was to be carried in turns.
“Lead away, Able-seaman,” said Captain John, when all was ready and they had eaten the bit of chocolate and the hunk of bunloaf that Susan handed out to each of them as a sort of bathing ration.
“Aye, aye, sir,” said Titty, who had just given the parrot a good supply of food and water and three lumps of sugar as his day’s pay. “Come on, Roger.”
Mate Susan looked carefully round the camp before they left, to see that all was as it should be. John was in a hurry to be on the way. He wanted as soon as possible to stop being reminded every other minute that he had not got a boat.
The able-seaman was in command of the expedition, but when she led them past the place where they had turned off to the cart-track in showing mother the way to Swainson’s farm, John could not help saying, “Oughtn’t we to turn off here?”
The able-seaman stopped short.
“You can get that way,” she said. “That’s the way if you’re going to cross the road. It’s all right for going to get milk. But Roger and I found a better way. We can get to the other side of the road so that even if savages were watching for us all along it they would never see us.”
“Oh, look here, Titty,” said Susan, “that’s a Peter Duck story.”
“It isn’t a story at all,” said Roger.
“Of course Peter Duck thought it was a good way,” said Titty.
“Is it much farther than crossing the road?” said John.
“Nearer. It’s close here.”
The able-seaman led them on round a bend in the little stream, and there before them, thickly covered with ivy and overhung with trees, was the low arch of the bridge.
“We go through that,” said the able-seaman, “and even if there were scouts from one end of the road to the other they wouldn’t know how we got past them.”
“It’s a jolly good way of getting across,” said John.
“Roger and I took our shoes off,” said Titty, “but we could almost have got through without.”
“Better not try,” said the mate. “There’s no point in getting shoes wet and having to dry them.”
“The next bit would be awfully tickly barefoot,” said Roger, remembering the larch needles that made a carpet to the wood at the other side of the road.
They took their shoes off and, stooping low, waded upstream under the bridge.
“You couldn’t get through if there was much more water,” said the mate.
“If there was a spate, you’d have to swim for it,” said John.
“You could float through, clinging to a log, with only your nose above water,” said Titty, “even if the enemy were watching the river itself.”
“If you were going downstream,” said John.
“You would be,” said Titty, “escaping to your boats.”
“But we haven’t got any boats,” said Roger.
There was a grim silence. Once more everybody had been reminded of the shipwreck.
But they forgot it again when they came out from under the bridge into the larch wood on the other side, and waded ashore to dry their feet and put their shoes on. Then it was decided that two were enough to fetch the milk. Susan and the boy, with the milk-can and the egg-basket, went off close along the wall at the bottom to get to the cart-track and so to Swainson’s farm. After getting the milk they were to join the rest of the party higher up the stream. Meanwhile the able-seaman and Captain John followed the stream up through the steep green larch wood, up and up past one little waterfall after another, until they were out of sight of the road. There is no undergrowth worth speaking of in a larch wood, nothing under the bright green trees but the copper-coloured carpet of last year’s fallen needles, so that it is much harder to hide in that sort of wood than in any other. As soon as they could no longer be seen from the road, John was ready to stop, but the able-seaman was all for pressing on. “It’s not much farther to the top of the larch wood,” she said. “Besides, we’re awfully near the road to begin whistling. Somebody else might hear us instead of Susan and Roger.”
So they climbed on, to the place where the larch trees ended and the other sort of wood began, hazels and oaks, like the trees in the wood by the lake. At the edge of the larches they stopped, though this time John wanted to go on, and it was Titty who thought it was time for a halt.
“I don’t believe this wood is a very wide one,” John said. “If we go on a little way we shall be out of the trees.”
“That’s just it,” said the able-seaman. “The new country’s just the other side. And we ought all to come out of the trees together.”
“All right,” said Captain John. “You’re in command. It’s your discovery, anyhow.”
“And Roger’s. We’d have turned back if he hadn’t begun climbing by the waterfall. And really, it was the stream most of all. We had to go on to see where the noise was coming from. You’ll hear it as soon as we’re up on the moor.”
So the captain and the able-seaman lay on their backs on a smooth slope of copper larch needles, and looked up through the clear green larches to the blue sky high overhead. A squirrel hurrying through the feathery branches was startled at the sight of them lying there, and chattered at them, pretending he was more angry than afraid. They heard him, and lay still, and moved nothing but their eyes until they saw his bushy red tail and then his tufted ears lifted high above his face.
“He must hurry up,” said the able-seaman. “I’ll have to be blowing the mate’s whistle in a minute, and he won’t like it. She’ll have got the milk by now and they’ll have started up from the farm if the old man didn’t keep them to sing. We ought to begin whistling to let them know which way to go.”
“Well, give her another minute or two. She can’t lose the way, because of the stream. It doesn’t really matter where she comes to it.” But he stirred as he spoke, and the squirrel fled away through the tops of the larches, running out on a branch that dropped with his weight and then leaping from it to a branch in another tree, when the branch he had left swung up again behind him as if trying to hurry him on his way.
“It won’t matter now,” said Titty, and she sat up and blew the mate’s whistle.
An owl called not far away in the woods.
“There they are,” said Titty. “They’re higher than we are.” She whistled again.
The owl answered. John jumped to his feet. So did the able-seaman.
“Come on,” she said. “They are higher up. They may get to the edge of the wood first.”
But the captain and the able-seaman had not climbed more than another twenty yards or so along the banks of the stream before they heard the talking of the mate and the boy, and presently saw them, not far away among the trees.
“There’s a path here,” called the mate.
“Is it coming this way?” called the able-seaman.
“Yes, and it’s going up all the time.”
“Much used?” called Captain John.
“I thought it was when we were coming through the larches, but here it looks as if nobody used it at all.”
�
��Sheep, perhaps,” said Roger.
“Keep along it,” called John. “It looks as if we were going to meet, anyhow.”
So John and Titty went on up the banks of the stream, and a few yards away, coming nearer and nearer, Susan and Roger pushed their way up under the branches that had grown over the path.
They came out of the trees at the same moment and close together. To right and left, as far as they could see, was wide rolling moor, and straight before them the beck hurried down over the moorland to meet them, singing its way through the heather.
“Don’t lose sight of the path,” called John. “Which way does it go?”
The mate stood still and looked at the ground ahead of her.
“It’s more like a rabbit track here,” she said, “but you can see where it goes quite plainly.”
“It doesn’t go up the beck, does it?” asked Titty anxiously.
“It goes down to the beck just in front of you.”
“Half a minute,” called John. He slipped along the edge of the trees to where the mate and the boy were standing. Then he began trotting forward, stooping low as he trotted.
“People use it,” he called out. “Here’s the mark of a heel.”
“Oh, no, no!” said the able-seaman.
“Yes,” said John. “It goes down to the beck, just here. There are stepping-stones. And yes, there it goes, up the other side and along the edge of the wood.”
“That’s all right,” said the able-seaman. “So long as it doesn’t go up the beck into our valley.”
“How much farther is it to your valley?” asked the mate.
“Not very far,” said the able-seaman.
“If you were to begin eating a doughnut now,” said Roger, “and ate it very slowly, it would be about done before you got there.”
“Roger wants his breakfast,” said Susan. “We’ll have it here, so that we shan’t have to go so far to get wood for a fire.”
Even the able-seaman, who was in a hurry to get to her valley, thought this a good idea. After all, it was just as if the expedition had been travelling all night and were stopping to breakfast now at the beginning of a new day. There was nothing against it at all. The farther away the valley seemed the better it was. In a moment the explorers had dumped their knapsacks on the ground and were making ready for a meal.
“There is one good thing about camping near a stream,” said the mate. “We’re all right for water. And here’s a good place for a fire.”
She had found a little bay of bright grey pebbles left dry by the stream during the hot weather. Close by were some bigger stones and these she made into a ring, with the three biggest stones arranged so that she could balance the kettle on them and have plenty of room to keep up a fire underneath it. She found some last year’s bracken, dry as tinder, to start her fire with, and by the time she was ready for them, the other explorers were bringing in armfuls of dry sticks from the edges of the wood.
“Nobody can ever have made a fire up here,” said Titty. “There’s more wood lying on the ground than we could use if we made a bigger fire than Captain Nancy makes, and kept it going for a whole year.”
Once more John remembered the island and Swallow and all that he wanted to forget. But not for long. Before breakfast was ready he was back again in this new adventure on the way to the able-seaman’s secret valley.
“If we want to keep your valley secret,” he said, as soon as breakfast was done, “we’d better leave no tracks that we can help, and we’d better get on quickly before any of the natives come this way.”
So, good fireplace as it was, they pulled it to pieces and scattered the big stones, and put the charred embers from the fire into the beck to be washed away down to the lake, and buried the egg-shells from the hard-boiled eggs, so that no native, unless he was looking very carefully, would have guessed that explorers had passed that way, and camped and made their breakfast there before going on into unknown country.
They hurried on along the sheep tracks that wound among the rocks and heather at the side of the stream, climbing steadily up the moor. Able-seaman Titty went first, and Captain John next. Roger had begun by going first, but he kept stopping at every pool in the beck to see if there was a trout in it, so that very soon he would have been last of all, if the mate had not waited to hurry him up, and to see that nothing that mattered got dropped by anybody and left behind.
Always before them, they could hear the noise of the waterfall, a noise that grew more and more stirring as they came nearer. And presently they could see the white splash of the falling water, not so very far ahead.
The nearer the able-seaman came to her valley the more she hurried and the less sure she felt that it was really all that she had thought it. It had so very often happened that things which she had thought lovely had turned out to be quite dull when she had taken somebody else to see them. She began to be afraid that her valley would turn out like that. And this made her hurry all the more, partly because she wanted to make sure, and partly because, if it was going to be a disappointment, she wanted to get it over as quickly as possible.
She was out of breath when she came to the foot of the waterfall, but she scrambled up the rocks at the side of it and, for the second time, looked up into the little valley. There it was, just as she remembered it, with the other waterfall at the head of it, the steep banks of rock and bracken and heather shutting it in on either side, the broad flat floor of the valley sheltered by those high, steep sides so that from inside the valley, unless you looked back over the lower waterfall, there was nothing to be seen but the sky, and from outside the valley you could not see it was there unless you were looking down into it from its very edge. Yes, it was all that she had thought it. She turned back to wave to John, who was climbing up not far behind her, though he had not such reasons for hurrying.
“Don’t look yet,” she said. “Keep looking at the ground until you’re right at the top. This way. Now, look …”
John scrambled over the top beside the able-seaman and looked on up into the valley.
“It’s a good enough place,” he said.
It was not much to say, but by the way he said it, Titty knew that it was all right and that the captain at least felt about her valley much as she felt herself.
CHAPTER XII
SWALLOWDALE
“COME on, Roger,” said Mate Susan. “You’ll be left behind.”
“It’s quite safe here,” said Roger. “It’s not like being in the jungle, where there might be savages behind the trees. Here you can see as far as ever you want. Hullo, where’s Titty? And where’s John?”
“Out of sight,” said the mate. “They’re up at the top of the waterfall already. If we can’t see them, there might be lots of other people we can’t see. Come on, quick, and catch up with the rest of the expedition.”
The ship’s boy hurried along. He had been held up by finding one of the big red-and-black velvet fox-moth caterpillars that feed on the heather. He turned now to more serious things and hurried along to catch up with the main body of the explorers. Susan was right. It would not do to be a straggler. Besides, Captain John and the able-seaman were already up the waterfall and in the secret valley that was his discovery as well as Titty’s.
In a few minutes Susan and Roger reached the bottom of the waterfall and began climbing up the rocks. They, too, disappeared over the top. From below no one could have seen them. There was the white water pouring over, and on each side of it rock and heather. But no one looking up from the stream below the waterfall could have guessed that just up there, only a few yards away, there was a valley in which a hundred explorers could have camped unseen.
*
“Hi, hi! Wait for us!” shouted Roger, as he scrambled, breathless, up into the valley.
Titty and John looked back. They were already nearly at the upper waterfall.
“Come along,” shouted Titty.
But now it was Susan who found hurrying difficult. One glance had
shown her what a perfect place for a camp the valley was, and now, looking at the steep, sheltering sides of it, and the flat spaces by the stream, she was thinking of just where she would lay out the tents, and where would be the place for the fire, and where the washing-up could best be done.
“That’s the place for a fire,” she said when they were half-way up the valley, “and there couldn’t be a better basin for washing-up in than this pool.”
“Which pool?” said Roger.
“This one.”
“There’s a trout in it,” said Roger. “Titty and I saw him. But perhaps he wouldn’t mind the washing-up. He might even like it.”
“It would depend on what was left on the plates,” said Susan.
“We don’t have mustard,” said Roger.
“Come along,” called the able-seaman again.
“Come along,” said Roger. “She’s waiting to show you the secret.”
“Coming, coming,” said Susan, but she had small belief in secrets, and she could not hurry much. “There’s room for all four tents on this side of the stream, and the stores tent, too, if we wanted,” she was saying half to herself and half to Roger. “Or we could put the stores tent on the other side.”
“Do come along,” said Roger.
“Hurry up,” said Titty.
At last the mate and the boy joined the able-seaman and the captain.
“Boy!” said the able-seaman, “did you say anything about it to the mate?”
“No,” said Roger, “except that we were just going to show it.”
“Did you see it?” she asked Susan.
“See what?” said Susan.
“John didn’t see it either. And you both walked close past it.”
“Close past what?” said John.
“Peter Duck’s cave,” said Titty.
“Not a real cave?” said John.
“That’s why we had to bring torches, and why it’s such a good thing Susan’s didn’t get wet.”
Swallowdale Page 12