Pigeon Post

by Arthur Ransome

  Tonight nobody wanted to turn aside to have another look at the old pitstead. Titty, as she passed it, looked the other way. She was still seeing Captain Nancy walking desperately up and down with the forked stick and at last throwing it into the bushes. She knew that Nancy had been hoping that, after all, the divining rod would work with her as it had seemed to work with Titty … If indeed it had worked. Titty had begun to feel doubtful about it herself, though, when she thought of it, she could almost feel the ends of the twig twisting in her hands. What if the whole expedition was going to peter out and come to nothing because of their having to camp in a place that could hardly be called a camp … at least not a camp like Swallowdale or Wild Cat? Why even the Beckfoot garden was better. What if Captain Flint were to come home? … “Well, and what have you been up to?” he would say, and they would have to answer, “Nothing.” … No nugget of gold … Nothing … And then he would hear how a perfect stranger had nipped in before them … Titty could hardly bear the thought. And there was Might Have Been, the perfect camping place, with the cleared platform for the pitching of their tents, and the Great Wall handy to look out over the Topps, and the Look-out Tree even handier to let a sentinel keep an eye on Atkinson’s. If only the beck had not run dry. Suppose Dick was right about those tufts of dark green rushes. Suppose the water were there all the time needing only to be found. Suppose the hazel twig would work with her and she could find it if she chose to try. Suppose the expedition had its own water diviner, and the water diviner, just at the very moment of real need, was refusing to help them.

  Titty walked a little faster.

  For the first time the prospectors were back at Tyson’s in time for supper.

  “That’s right,” said Mrs Tyson. “Better for everybody. Keep it up if you can, Miss Nancy. You’ve had a good day, I reckon, and home early to end up well.”

  There was talk of other holidays during the meal, of sailing, of battles on sea and land, of stories made up by lantern-light in the cabin of an old wherry in Norfolk, of fishing for trout that other summer when the becks had been full of water. But no one had the heart to talk of mining. Nobody could have guessed that this was the evening meal of a company of gold seekers.

  “What’s the matter, Titty?” asked Susan privately, noticing that all through supper Titty had not said a word.

  “I’m quite all right,” said Titty.

  After supper she slipped out.

  “Where’s Titty?” said someone a little later.

  “Giving fresh water to the pigeons, probably,” said someone else.

  But Titty, her lips firmly together, was once more climbing the steep track up Tyson’s wood.

  CHAPTER XV

  TITTY MAKES UP HER MIND TO IT

  THERE was plenty of light in the sky but the wood was in shadow and it was almost dusk under the trees. Titty climbed the steep path, bending forward, hurrying, her lips pressed together, moving as quietly and quickly as she could, and listening all the time for a call from the farm below her. She knew very well what she meant to do, but she did not want the others to guess. She must try the thing again … But not with anyone to see. It would be too dreadful if the others were watching and at the last moment she could not bring herself to touch the twig. So for the first ten minutes she climbed fast but set down her feet as softly as she could, and listened, almost as if she were an escaping prisoner.

  It would have been fun to take Dorothea with her, or Roger, or Dick, just for the escaping, but not for the work she had to do. For that she did not want a single one of them. Whatever happened when it came to the point, she would find it a good deal easier if she were alone.

  After ten minutes’ climbing she stopped to take breath. A good thing there had not been much regular prospecting that day. A good thing, too, that it was the cool of the evening. She listened. From far away down the valley she heard the mooing of a cow. A sheepdog was barking. Hens were fussing loudly in the Tysons’ farmyard. She could just see a bit of the grey slate roof far below her. It looked as if she could almost drop a stone on it. But no one was calling “Titty!” That was all right, and she set off again.

  It was growing darker very quickly. The glow in the sky over Swallowdale and the fells on the other side of the valley was climbing higher, and the dusk was coming up after it over the eastern hills. Just for a moment it felt a little queer to be alone there in the darkening wood. And then there was a sudden disturbance of leaves and presently the long “Tuwhoooooooooooooo” of an owl. Real owl, thought Titty, not an owl call, and she remembered a night when she had been alone on Wild Cat Island, and an owl had called like that and everything had turned out right just when it seemed to be going wrong. It was a good omen.

  She passed the place where, that morning, she and Dick had found those tiny footprints round the lingering puddle of the dried-up stream. It was too dark now to see if it would still be possible to track Nancy by the scraps of hazel twig she had left behind her. Her hands opened and shut as she wondered whether after all she could make herself take Nancy’s hazel fork into her fingers.

  She must. She must.

  “Steady,” she said to herself. “And don’t be a gummock. No point in getting out of breath.” Thinking about Nancy’s forked hazel she had almost broken into a run. She slowed down again.

  She had reached the top of the wood and the turning through the bushes to the old pitstead of the charcoal-burners when she heard a quick rustling of dried leaves and twigs. Something small was coming down to meet her. She pulled out her torch, but did not light it. The thing, whatever it was, on the path close above her. She stood perfectly still. There it was. A rabbit? No. She knew now what it was that had left the muddy prints by the pool half-way down the hill. Steadily trotting down the path, now and then lifting its head to sniff, a hedgehog came hurrying in the dusk. He seemed to know that something strange was about, but he looked for things of his own height, and never saw Titty, towering above him. He passed close to her feet, carelessly, noisily hurrying down the path as if the wood belonged to him.

  “He wants water, too,” said Titty to herself. “And he’s got to go down the hill for it, just like us. He’d be jolly glad if I did find any near the top.”

  She let the hedgehog get well below her, so as not to startle him, and then went on to the camp that might have been. There was more light in the open space that the charcoal-burners had cleared. Titty knew just where Nancy had thrown her forked twig in the morning. Nancy would be sure to cut the right twig. It would be better to try with that instead of looking for another.

  She found the twig at once and picked it up by the point of the fork, putting off to the very last minute the holding of those two ends in her hands. But perhaps it would not work, anyway.

  Titty swallowed once or twice. No one was here to see. No one would know if, after all, she could not bring herself to do it.

  “Oh, come on,” she said to herself. “You’ve got to. Better get it over.”

  She turned the twig round and took the two ends, one in each hand just as Nancy had shown her by Mrs Tyson’s pump. She found herself breathing very fast.

  “Duffer,” she said firmly. “You can just drop it if you want.”

  She began walking to and fro across the level platform of the old fire spot. Nothing happened.

  “Idiot,” she said. “It won’t be here, anyway.”

  She left the platform and went in among the trees, looking in the dim light for Dick’s green rushes. She found a tuft of them. Still nothing happened.

  “It’s all right,” she said to herself. “You can’t do it. It was only accident the other night. Nothing to be afraid of anyway. And you’ve tried. So it isn’t your fault …”

  And then she nearly dropped the twig. There it was, that tickling. Faint. Not like that other night at Tyson’s. But the same thing. The twig was trying to move.

  For a long time she stood where she was, somehow not daring to stir. Then she took a step or two, and the sti
ck was as dead as ever.

  “This is silly,” she said, and stepped back to the place where she had been and felt the stick press against the balls of her thumbs just as it had before.

  “Well, it can’t bite you,” said Titty, and made herself walk to and fro, in and out among the bushes and low trees at the edge of the wood just as she had on the open platform of Might Have Been.

  The twig was moving again. Again it stopped. Again it twitched in her fingers.

  “There is water here,” said Titty to herself. “There must be. Unless it’s all rot, like Dick thought.”

  She walked slowly on. The twig was pulling harder and harder. She wanted to throw it down, but, somehow, by herself, she was not as frightened of it as she had been when, all unexpectedly, she had felt it for the first time. No one was watching her now, for one thing. She had won her battle the moment she had brought herself to hold the twig again. Now, already, she was almost eagerly feeling the pulling of the twig. When it weakened she moved back until she felt it strengthen. Then again she walked on. It was like looking for something hidden, while someone, who knew where it was, called out hot or cold as she moved nearer to or further from the hiding place.

  Suddenly, as she came nearer the Great Wall, the twisting of the twig became more violent. Here was a shallow dip in the ground between two rocks, and, yes, there was another tuft of those rushes in the bottom of it. She walked in between the rocks and it was just as it had been in the farmyard at Tyson’s. The stick seemed to leap in her hands. The ends of it pressed against her thumbs, while the point of the fork dipped towards the ground, bending the branches, twisting her hands round with them, and at last almost springing out of her fingers.

  “It’s here,” said Titty. “I’ve found it.” She had no longer any doubts. Dick was wrong. This was nothing of her imagining. No imagining could make the hazel twig twist her hands until they hurt. She was no longer afraid. This was a secret between her and the twig. Whatever the reason might be, the thing worked. She was as sure that there was water there, just where she was standing, as she was that it was late and getting dark and that Susan would be very cross with her if she were not at Tyson’s at bedtime. She laid the hazel twig on the ground exactly where she was standing, and then set off through the trees. She came out on the charcoal-burners’ platform. “Might Have Been,” she said to herself. “It’ll be Can Be after all.”

  It had grown much darker, and every now and then she found herself leaving the path. She listened for the hedgehog, but could not hear him. She tried to find the place where she and Dick had turned aside to the little pool left by the dried-up beck. But she had missed it in the dark, and dared not turn back. Well, tomorrow, perhaps, the hedgehog would not have to come so far for his evening drink. She lit her torch and hurried down the path.

  “Titty! Ahoy!”

  That was Nancy’s voice below her in the wood.

  “Coming,” she shouted. “Ahoy!”

  *

  Susan and John were talking things over on the bridge. Roger was with them, flipping small stones and bits of dried moss over the parapet on the stones of the river bed. Every now and then there was a faint splash when a stone happened to fall in a place where there was still a little water. It was like tossing up with a penny. A splash counted as “Heads.” No splash meant “Tails.” Roger was trying to get three splashes running. A little way below the bridge, in the shallow pool that was the best they had been able to find for a bathing place, Peggy, Dick and Dorothea were paddling or rather kicking their feet in the water, very soothing to tired feet after a long day’s prospecting in the upland wilderness.

  Up in the wood Nancy was calling.

  “Titty … Ahoy!”

  Titty had somehow disappeared, and Nancy, who thought she had seen her go through the gate into the wood, had gone off to look for her.

  John and Susan listened.

  “It’s all very well,” said John, “Nancy pretending she doesn’t really mind. We should, if it was Peggy who could dowse and didn’t. If only it had been you or me instead of poor old Titty.”

  “It’s no good,” said Susan. “You know what Titty’s like. She gets so stirred up by things. I thought she was going to be ill last night.”

  “I know,” said John. “But it does seem so awful when it’s one of us, and with the whole expedition being messed up because of not being able to camp on the Topps.”

  “Everything would be different if only we could,” said Susan, “but we can’t ask Titty to try it again.”

  “Three splashes running,” said Roger.

  But neither the captain nor the mate was listening.

  “The Amazons’ll be thinking we let them down,” said John.

  “There’s nothing we can do about it,” said Susan. “And anyhow she very likely couldn’t find water even if she did have a shot at it.”

  “It’s the not trying that’s so awful,” said John.

  “Three splashes running,” said Roger. “Didn’t you hear? Three splashes running. Something good’s going to happen.”

  “There she is,” said Susan.

  Far away up in the woods an answering “Ahoy” came through the dusk. They heard Nancy’s “Ahoy, Ahoy … oy” again.

  “What’s she been doing up there?” said Susan.

  “Just getting away from all of us,” said John. “I bet she’s pretty wretched about it herself.”

  “Well,” said Susan. “Let’s get the lanterns lit in the tents. It’s about time people went to bed …”

  Five minutes later the tents were glowing dimly in the dusk. Every now and then the flash of an electric torch showed where Nancy and Titty were coming down the wood.

  “Ahoy,” shouted Peggy, who hated going to bed alone in the tent she shared with Nancy. “Hurry up!”

  And then suddenly came the sound of running feet and Nancy raced into the farmyard, through the orchard gate and into the bunch of prospectors who were just making up their minds to skin their clothes off and burrow down into their sleeping-bags.

  “Swallows for ever!” she was shouting. “Titty’s done it. All by herself. She’s done it after all …”

  “But what? … what?” everybody was asking at once.

  “What?” cried Nancy. “The only thing that matters, of course. She’s been dowsing. She’s been up the wood again to Might Have Been. She’s found a spring, by Dick’s rushes. Just where we wanted it …”

  Titty, suddenly very tired, came after her into the orchard.

  John grabbed her with one hand and kept patting her shoulder with the other. It was too dark to see his face but she knew how pleased he was.

  “Well done, Titty,” he was saying. “Well done. Jolly well done.”

  “How did you do it?” said Peggy.

  “Did you see any water?” said Dorothea.

  “Of course she didn’t,” said Nancy.

  “We may not be able to get at it,” said John.

  “Barbecued billygoats,” said Nancy. “If it’s there, we’ll get at it all right if we have to dig through to Australia.”

  Bit by bit the whole story came out, how Nancy had cut a forked stick in the morning and tried in vain, how she had been seen by Dick and Titty, how Titty had gone up the wood after supper, how, up there, close behind the pitstead, she had tried with the stick that Nancy had cut, and how, just by those clumps of rushes that Dick had noticed, the stick had twisted in her hands again.

  “Was it very horrible?” said Dorothea.

  “Not really,” said Titty honestly. “Not after the first moment.”

  “Did it really twist of itself?” said Dick.

  “Of course it did,” said Nancy. “Well done, old Titty. Three cheers for the Able-seaman. You’ve saved the whole thing. We’ll be nearer the Topps even than Squashy himself. Once a day somebody’ll come down for milk, and all the rest of the time all the rest of us’ll be prospecting like anything …”

  The tents, lit by their lanterns, were gl
owing brighter and brighter along the orchard wall as the dark closed down over the valley.

  Nancy, Peggy, and John were eagerly talking of what would be needed in the way of picks and spades for well digging. In one tent a shadow humped itself and straightened. One lantern was blown out.

  “Quiet,” said Susan. “Titty’s asleep already.”

  “I’m not,” Titty was just going to say, but the words would not come and a moment later they would not have been true.

  The others settled down for the night. Talk died. Lanterns went out one by one. There was dark in the orchard. There were no lights downstairs in the farm. A candle flickered behind a bedroom window. It went out like the lanterns of the camp.

  The prospectors called “Good night” from tent to tent, softly, so as not to wake the sleeping dowser, but much more cheerfully than on any night since they had left Beckfoot.

  Suddenly Roger remembered something.

  “Didn’t I tell you?” he called out. “Didn’t I tell you something good was going to happen, when I got three splashes running?”

  No one answered.

  “Pigs,” said Roger, and settled himself to sleep.

  CHAPTER XVI

  SINKING THE WELL

  IN the morning there were doubts.

  Titty woke to hear people talking outside her tent.

  “You know it may be just Titty,” Susan was saying, “and she won’t like it if we go up with spades and it turns out to be all Peter Duck.”

  “Um.” That was Nancy’s voice. “Bet you anything she tried it last night. Couldn’t you see what a dither she was in?”

  And afterwards, when breakfast was over, and the prospectors were nearly ready to start, John came to Titty and asked her privately, “I say, Titty. What about taking spades? We don’t want to cart them up there for nothing.”

  “I’ll carry a spade,” said Titty.

  “Anyway, she thinks she did,” said John to Nancy as they went off to see what they could borrow from Mrs Tyson.