This was the scene that Captain Flint found when he came rowing into the cove. And already, long before he had come so near, the explorers knew that he was bringing a great deal to add to their burdens.
“He’s got an awful lot of things in the stern,” Captain John had said, after taking his turn at the telescope. “Two sacks, as well as parcels.”
“Well I hope he’s brought some bread,” said the mate. “We’ve eaten nearly all the bunloaf.”
“It’ll be all the more to carry,” said John, who for some time had been wishing that the expedition had a camel or two.
“We’ll have to carry it sometime,” said the mate. “We all eat such a lot.”
“What’s he bringing a tree for?” said Roger.
“Hullo,” said Captain John, “there’s Swallow’s old mast.”
It was the tree which made them after all feel happier about going up to the camp on the moor. Captain Flint explained it at once.
“Give me a hand with the Norway pole, Skipper,” he said, as he ran his boat ashore. “I thought you might like to be hurrying things on by making the new mast. It’s a good pole this, and they’ve done the rough shaping. All you’ll have to do is to copy the old mast.”
John took one end of a long bare pole, which showed the marks of the adze. Captain Flint took the other and brought it ashore and then Swallow’s old mast in two pieces. It was hard to believe that the rough pole could be made as clean and smooth as that old mast had been.
“We’ve only got knives,” said John.
“Shipwrecked sailors have made masts with knives before now,” said Captain Flint. “But you won’t have to. I’ve brought you a shaping plane and a pair of callipers. And when you’re ready, we’ll see about linseed oil.”
Somehow, just to have a mast to make, just to see it lying there in the rough, made it seem more certain that sooner or later Swallow would be back and the shipwrecked sailors free once more to live on their island and voyage as they wished.
“We’ll come down here every day to work at the mast,” said Captain John.
“Aren’t you moving somewhere along the shore?” asked Captain Flint, looking at the baggage on the beach.
“No,” said Titty and Roger together. “We’re going up the moor to our valley.”
“The valley we told you about,” Titty went on, “you know, when you said there was a trout tarn higher up.”
“By the way,” said Captain Flint, “if it is the valley I think it is, I know why you stopped me when I was telling your mother about the tarn. I couldn’t think what was the matter, but I know now. Hasn’t it got a cave in it, on the left as you go up?”
Titty’s face fell. Had all the discoveries in the world been made already?
“It’s Peter Duck’s cave,” she said.
“Thirty years ago I used to call it Ben Gunn’s. It’s a good place for a camp up there.”
“Do Nancy and Peggy know about it?”
“They’ve never been up this side of the moor, as far as I know.”
“Don’t tell them about it,” said Titty.
“All right,” said Captain Flint. “But won’t you have a bit of a job carting the pole all the way up there?”
“I’ll come down here to work at it,” said John.
“We all will,” said Roger.
“And you’re just off, are you? The rest of my cargo,” said Captain Flint, looking back at the rowing boat, “is ship’s stores. Your mother told me to hand them over to the mate. You’ll want them up on the moor, whether you want the mast or not. On the whole, don’t you think you’d better take me on as a porter?”
“Thank you very much,” said the mate.
“They do have native porters,” said Roger. “All explorers do.”
“But he isn’t really a native,” said Titty, “not after the battle last year.”
“Still, I can come up to the moor to carry some of the stores.”
“Please do,” said Titty.
Captain Flint might be fat but he had a broad back and the explorers loaded him thoroughly. He had a long anchor rope in his boat, and with this and one of the old ground-sheets, he made an enormous bundle of all the bulkier stores, the bigger kind of pemmican tins, tins of biscuit and bread, and the two small sacks of peas and potatoes he had just brought from Holly Howe.
“Will he be able to lift it?” asked Susan doubtfully.
“Not if you put another matchbox in.”
So they roped it up as it was. Then Captain Flint bent and set his shoulder under the loose end of the rope and swung the bale on his back. He staggered under it, but he could still walk, and, as Roger said, that was the main thing.
*
“Hullo, what are you doing?” came a loud, cheerful voice over the water. “What’s Uncle Jim trying to run away with?”
The Amazon was already in the cove. Everybody looked round. The Swallows found it hard to believe that Captain Nancy Blackett and Mate Peggy Blackett, in their red knitted pirate caps, their brown shirts and blue knickers, hauling up the centre-board and lowering the sail, could be the same as those two little girls whom they had seen only yesterday, in white frocks, sitting primly side by side, being taken for a drive in a carriage with the great-aunt.
“How have you escaped?” asked Captain Flint, moving slowly round with the tremendous bale upon his back.
“As soon as she heard you’d gone, the great-aunt made up her mind it was a good day for going to the head of the lake. She said she wanted to tell the vicar how things used to be done. She’s heard he’s doing some things differently. Mother had to go too, of course. They won’t be back till lunch-time.”
This was Peggy.
“It’s a rattling good easterly wind,” said Nancy. “A reach both ways. No need for tacking. So we jolly well took our chance.”
“We’ve got to be back to lunch,” said Peggy.
“Another beastly drive this afternoon,” said Nancy. “But never mind that. What are you all doing?”
“We’re shifting camp,” said John.
“To the valley Roger and I found.”
“The valley with a …” said Roger, but he saw Titty’s face just in time.
“Well,” said Nancy, “you’re wasting Uncle Jim. You could put lots of the other things in his pockets. He’s got fine pockets, really big ones.”
“Captain John,” said Captain Flint, “you’ll be wasting these pirates if you don’t make them carry their share. They’ve plenty of time for that, and they’ll get cool again, sailing home.”
“Come on, Peggy,” said Captain Nancy. “Let’s have one of the oars. We’ll show them how to do it.”
So the two pirates took an oar from the Amazon and used it as a pole, and slung a bundle from it done up in the ground-sheet from which John and Captain Flint had cut a patch for Swallow. There were a few small things left over, but, as Nancy had said, Captain Flint had big pockets.
The expedition was ready to start.
“What about the parrot?” said Susan. Everybody was so much in the habit of thinking of Polly as part of the crew that it had been forgotten, even by Titty, that he could not very well carry his own cage, especially if he was inside it.
“Polly and I are old shipmates,” said Captain Flint. “You’d better let me take him.”
“Well if you could take his cage,” said Titty, “Polly could perch on our pole and Roger and I would carry him between us.”
“Pieces of eight,” said the green parrot as he perched on Titty’s hand and then on the pole and balanced there while she and Roger lifted it to their shoulders.
“If you mean my bundle,” said Captain Flint, “it’s heavier than that.”
“It can’t be really,” said Roger.
“Well, it feels like it,” said Captain Flint. “Let’s get going and then perhaps it won’t be so bad.”
And so the expedition moved off, but not before Titty had been able to remind John and Susan to say nothing about Peter
Duck’s cave. “At least not yet,” she said. “You never know. After all, they are pirates.”
Captain John and Mate Susan went first. Mate Susan had slung the milk-can on their pole, so that she could steady it with a hand if it splashed. Then came Captain Flint, bent nearly double, holding the parrot cage in one hand and keeping his great bale on his shoulders with the other. Then came the Amazons with their bale slung on an oar. Last came Titty and Roger with the parrot perched on the pole between them, and their bundle hanging from it.
Captain Flint took one look at the bridge and said there wasn’t room under it for him, let alone his bundle, and he was going through the gap in the wall and across the road and if any savages saw him, well, they would be a hard-hearted lot if they weren’t sorry for him. And then John pointed out that after all if anybody did see them crossing the road they might very well mistake them for natives carrying something to the farm. So John and Susan, with all that was hung from their pole, crossed the road as if their business was of a native kind and had nothing to do with explorers or shipwrecked sailors. Even the Amazons, who at first had wanted to go through the bridge, thought better of it at the last minute. There was not much room under the bridge anyhow, and it did not seem possible to get through stooping without soaking the bundle that hung from their oar. So, though they did not look very native, they followed Captain Flint, John and Susan, and crossed the road.
But nothing would stop Titty and Roger from going through. Their bundle was smaller than those of the others, but even so, Titty thought it best to take the parrot through first, by himself, and leave him on the other side to look after her shoes. Then she came back for Roger and the baggage.
“That’s the second time it’s dipped,” said Roger when they were half-way through.
“Hold the pole right up against the roof,” said Titty. “Like this.”
“I am,” said Roger. “I’ve even scraped some more of the skin off my knuckles.”
The parrot welcomed them with loud screams at the other side of the bridge. Here they halted to put their shoes on again and to wash the boy’s knuckles and put a bandage round them. Luckily the boy had a handkerchief a good deal of which was perfectly clean. After that was done, they went ahead at a gallop, with the bundle swinging wildly below the pole and the green parrot with flapping wings balancing himself on the top of it, as they scrambled up the steep larch wood beside the stream. They tried keeping step, but it swung worse than ever.
“Never mind about that,” said the able-seaman. “Hang on, Polly. The main thing is to hurry.”
They caught up the others at the top of the wood, where they had camped for breakfast the day before. Here there was a short rest and a ration of chocolate all round. Even the parrot had a bit. The mate had wisely put the chocolate in the outer pocket of her knapsack, so that she could get at it on the march. Then everybody helped in heaving Captain Flint’s huge bale on his back, poles were shouldered again, and the expedition went on up over the moorland along the sheep-tracks that led in and out among heather and boulders at the side of the beck. This time Titty and Roger and the parrot got away first, and Nancy and Peggy came next. Susan and John came last of all, because the mate was really a little afraid that Captain Flint’s pockets were so crammed that something might fall out on the way.
“This is no sort of road for a man of my age,” panted Captain Flint after a few minutes of twisting and turning up and down among the rocks and clumps of heather.
“It’s a very good sheep-track,” said Captain John. “There’s plenty of room in it really, if you put your feet in the right places.” Already he thought of it as the road to Swallowdale, and he would hear nothing against it, just as he would never let anyone say that anywhere at any time there was a better boat than Swallow.
Captain Flint said no more for a minute or two, but struggled along as well as he could.
“Why have we never been up here before?” said Peggy. “It’s not really very far. Look, there’s the …”
She said the name of the big hill with the peak. But the able-seaman, who had heard her, was quick in putting her right.
“That one’s Kanchenjunga,” she said, “if you mean the biggest.”
Nancy stopped dead, bringing up Peggy with a jerk at the other end of the boat.
“Why not Kanchenjunga?” she said. “Shiver my timbers, why shouldn’t we climb it?”
“We’re going to,” said Titty. “Have you ever climbed it before?”
“We were taken once,” said Peggy, “ages ago, but that’s not the same thing.”
“It’s an altogether different thing,” said Nancy.
“Well, let’s all climb it together,” said Titty, “with ropes.”
“If only it wasn’t for the great-aunt,” said Nancy.
“We saw you yesterday,” said Roger, “sitting in the carriage.”
“Did you?” said Nancy grimly.
They stumbled along and for some time no one spoke. It was hard to talk, carrying baggage slung on poles or on an oar along tracks so narrow and winding. And Captain Flint had no breath to spare.
The noise of the little waterfall grew louder and louder and at last Titty and Roger, leading the expedition, came to a stop just below it.
“Are we going to climb up that,” said Nancy, “with all these things?”
“I can’t,” said Captain Flint. “Not with a bale like this. We’d better go round and drop down into the valley from the side.”
“More fun going straight,” said Nancy. “We can haul the baggage up from above. Our rope’s more than long enough for that as soon as this bundle is undone.”
“Besides,” said the able-seaman, “the moment you leave the bed of the stream it’s all open moor and we could be seen for miles and miles.”
So all the loads were grounded at the bottom of the waterfall, and the long mooring rope from the Amazon which Nancy and Peggy had used for slinging their bundle from the oar was unfastened. John took one end of it up to the top of the waterfall. The other explorers and the two pirates climbed up after him, as soon as they saw that the rope was really long enough. Captain Flint stayed at the bottom to fasten the rope to each bundle in turn.
The Swallows were very glad they had moved from Horseshoe Cove when they saw how highly Nancy and Peggy thought of Swallowdale. The moment Nancy climbed up by the waterfall and was able to look up the valley she had seen what a good place it was. “It’s the best hiding-place I’ve ever seen,” she had said. “And to think that it’s been here all these years and we never knew it.”
“You don’t know yet how secret it is,” said Titty, and in her pride that Nancy thought well of her valley, was very near to saying a little more. But there was a shout from below.
“Haul away!”
Nancy turned instantly to business.
“Tally on on the rope,” she cried. “What about piping up a tune?”
“It ought to be ‘Way, Hay,’” said Titty.
So she started off with:
LOADING CAPTAIN FLINT
“What shall we do with a drunken sailor?
What shall we do with a drunken sailor?
What shall we do with a drunken sailor?
Early in the morning.”
Everybody joined in with:
“Way, Hay, up she raises,
Way, Hay, up she raises,
Way, Hay, up she raises,
Early in the morning.”
The waterfall was not very high, and, with the whole lot of them pulling, Captain Flint’s huge bale came rattling up and over the edge into the valley just as they got to the end of the chorus. That song, and particularly the chorus, brings a load up hand over hand so easily that you would hardly believe it, no matter how heavy the load is, when you have two captains, two mates, an able-seaman and a ship’s boy all tallying on on the rope, and a parrot on a rock beside them letting loose encouraging screams. In the end, when all the bundles had been pulled up, Captain Flint hung on to th
e end of the rope himself and came scrambling up the rocks while the captains and the mates and the crew panted and grunted out, “Way, Hay, up she raises.”
“It’s all wrong to sing that now,” said Roger, as Captain Flint got to his feet and they were able to stop pulling. “He isn’t a she.”
“Never mind,” said Captain Flint. “No more are anchors or bundles, if it comes to that.”
The Amazons and Captain Flint helped to shift the things from the top of the waterfall to the place where Susan meant to have the tents, close by the fireplace and the little whirlpool that was so handy for washing-up. The able-seaman kept close at their heels wherever they went, afraid every minute that they would see the heather pushed into the doorway of the cave. Roger kept pointing out trout in the little pools of the stream. Anything to keep their eyes away from the wall of grey rock with that dark shadow at the bottom of it, and the thick heather growing as if in a crack of the stone. The worst of it was that there was a track of bits of dry stick leading all the way from the fireplace to the cave, dropped, no doubt, when they were stowing the firewood away before going down to Horseshoe Cove the night before. Titty was telling herself what duffers they had been not to think of that, and how, whatever happened, they must never leave a track of anything again. You had only to see those sticks and to follow them to the rock and Peter Duck’s cave would be secret no longer. But the Amazons never noticed them. They might have seen them, if they had been in less of a hurry. But Captain Flint kept reminding them that they had to be back for lunch, and they were only looking round as quick as they could before racing down again to the Amazon and setting sail for home.
Swallowdale Page 14