The Picts and the Martyrs

by Arthur Ransome

  Inch by inch he worked himself out of the hutch, stopping, breathless, when the boots shifted and made a noise that seemed like thunder in the dark. Safely out, he sat on the floor and rubbed hard at the calf of his leg and then at the inside of his knee joint. That was the way to cure cramp. He stretched out his leg and turned his toes up as far as he could. Good. The cramp had gone, though he felt a frightening twinge of it as he stood up. There was absolute quiet in the house once more.

  He switched on his torch and looked about him. Everything was just as it had been. The little box with the scales in it was lying on the table where he had left it. Nothing had changed, except that he knew that behind those thick dark curtains was a closed window instead of an open one.

  Suddenly he heard voices upstairs.

  “No, Ruth. I merely wished to make sure you were in bed. Someone had carelessly left the study window open.” That must be the Great Aunt. He heard a faint mumble … Nancy or Peggy. Then the Great Aunt again … “No. You need not go down. I have closed it myself. I must speak to Cook about it in the morning.”

  He shut off his torch, for fear that any glint of light might show under the study door.

  He heard first one door and then another close upstairs. The Great Aunt must be back in her bedroom. What now? Nancy and Peggy must be thinking that the burglary was over and that he and Dorothea were already safely away. And there was Dorothea waiting in the garden not knowing what had happened. And here he was still in the house with that book to find and the window to open before he could escape. And Nancy had said that this particular window was a beast. He tiptoed towards it. No. He must find the book first and open the window only at the last moment, in case it made a noise. Whatever happened he must get that book, or the whole burglary would have been in vain. Timothy could buy chemicals in Rio, but not the book. That and the scales were the most important of all.

  He turned once more to the bookshelves and shone his torch on the backs of the books. He had been through that shelf already, and the one above it. He searched along the next. Books on mining. Books on Peru. Books on the Dutch East Indies. And then, at last, he found it, pushed far in between two others, a grey book, with the lettering worn faint on its back. He took it out, made sure that it was indeed the right one, put it on the table, listened and slipped quietly across to the window.

  He pushed through the curtain and found that to reach the catch he had to climb on the sill. The catch would not open. He had to take the risk of shining his torch on it to see how the thing worked. It flew open with a louder click than he would have thought possible. Now for the window. He slipped down from the sill, took hold of the handles at the bottom and tried to lift it. With a squeak and a jerk it went up about a couple of inches. He tried again. It was stuck. He gave a hard, desperate pull, and the window shot up, groaning and squeaking and coming to a standstill with a bang that seemed to shake the house. Nancy had been right when she had said that no one could open that window quietly.

  He pushed quickly back through the curtains and grabbed the book and the box of the chemical scales. He was just going to get out through the window when a voice from somewhere above him called out, “Who is there?”

  He waited. He heard a door open upstairs. Was she coming down again? Dick got one leg out and then the other, thankful to find that the moon had swung further round so that, though the lawn was still bright, there was a narrow strip of shadow along the side of the house. He slid down to the gravel path.

  “Stop. I can see you. I have a gun here and I will shoot.”

  “Oh, Aunt Maria, you can’t!” That was Peggy’s voice, shrill with horror. Then came Nancy’s, almost a shout, “But, Aunt Maria, you haven’t got a gun.”

  Dick raced, careless of noise now, round the corner of the house. Dorothea was waiting for him with the suitcase in the shadow of the trees. She could hardly speak. “Dick … Oh, Dick!”

  “She couldn’t really see me in the shadow,” said Dick, though at the time he had not been sure.

  “I saw her at the window,” whispered Dorothea. “She had a lamp. What did you do? When the window shut I thought she’d got you.”

  “Hurry up,” said Dick. “We’ve got to get away. Everyone’s awake.”

  The bottles jingled in the suitcase.

  “I’ll take that,” said Dick. “You take these. Whatever happens, we mustn’t break the bottles.”

  Looking back from the Beckfoot gateway, they saw lights in the window that lit the staircase, and this time not a reflection of the moon. A moment later light showed behind the glass of the front door.

  The burglars, without another word, hurried out of the gateway, and then, as quietly as they could, tiptoed along the shadowed side of the road. They were climbing the path up into the wood before Dick spoke again.

  “We’re all right now,” he said.

  “But where were you when she was in Captain Flint’s den?”

  “I had most awful cramp,” said Dick.

  “But where?”

  “In the calf of my leg.”

  “But where were you?”

  “I got into the hutch we made for Timothy, you know, when we thought he was an armadillo.”

  Dorothea, who during all that long wait under the trees while Dick was in the house and the Great Aunt prowling round had felt much more like crying, suddenly laughed, not her usual quiet laugh, but a laugh like one of those coughs that will not let you stop.

  Dick grabbed her arm. “Dot,” he said. “Don’t make such a noise.”

  “Sorry,” said Dorothea.

  Back at home, in the hut, Dick lit the hurricane lantern and opened the suitcase. Nothing was broken, and he put the case to lean against the wall, so that the bottles should be the right way up.

  “We’ve got everything,” he said.

  Dorothea was on her knees, blowing at the embers of the fire on which she had put some fresh sticks.

  “Hadn’t we better go to bed?” said Dick. “We ought to start early in the morning.”

  “Not after all that,” said Dorothea. “I can’t go to bed … Not just yet. I’m going to make some cocoa. I’m sure that’s what Susan would do. Only Susan would never be a burglar.”

  The sticks flared up. In a few minutes there was a good fire burning under the kettle, and Dorothea in the warm glow of the firelight in their own home, forgetting the horror of waiting under the trees after she had heard the study window shut with Dick inside, was herself again. What a story it would make!

  “Dodging the bullets they fled with their dear-won booty. Back in their lair, safe from pursuit, the burglars feasted their eyes on diamond necklaces and golden chains. …”

  “I’d have got out before,” said Dick, “if only I could have found the book. And I was a long time finding the scales. I ought to have looked for them first. The other things didn’t matter so much.”

  They made their cocoa, adding hot water little by little while they stirred.

  “I’m sure they all do it,” said Dorothea.

  “Do what?” said Dick, sipping his drink.

  “It’s burglars’ wives I’m thinking about,” said Dorothea. “I’m sure they all have hot cocoa ready when the burglars come home with their swag.”

  “I do wish we’d got away without her hearing at all,” said Dick.

  CHAPTER XX

  POLICE!

  THE burglars, who had not gone to bed till after one in the morning, woke late, but were up and dressed and had the kettle boiling for breakfast when Jacky, bursting with news, brought them their milk.

  “You didn’t hear owt t’night?” he asked.

  “Hear what?” asked Dorothea, who had the empty bottle ready for him.

  “Old Mother Lewthwaite says there was burglars at Beckfoot.”

  “What!” said Dorothea. Dick said nothing but stared at Jacky.

  “She knows, with her son a policeman and all,” said Jacky. “I asked Mrs Braithwaite at Beckfoot, but she wouldn’t tell me n
owt.”

  “Who is Mrs Braithwaite?” asked Dick.

  “That’s Cook,” said Dorothea. “Go on, Jacky. What did she say?”

  “She telled me to get along before she helped me,” said Jacky with a grin. “So I knew well enough there’d been something doing. Pity you missed it being up here. And you didn’t hear nowt? Reckon burglars don’t make more noise than what they can’t help. Wish I’d seen ’em. I’d have shot ’em dead … so …” He aimed the empty milk bottle as if it were a gun … “And likely got a medal from the police.”

  “D-do you think they’ll catch them?” asked Dorothea.

  “’Course they will,” said Jacky. “Why, we had sheep stolen year before last and they copped the chap as far away as Kendal. I’ll be going now. I mun tell my dad to look out for ’em and load his gun.”

  And Jacky hurried away.

  While he had been standing in the doorway of the hut, Dorothea had kept herself from looking at the suitcase that held most of the swag, leaning against the wall where Dick had put it last night. Now that he was gone, neither she nor Dick could take their eyes off it, except to glance at the wooden box with the chemical scales, and Duncan’s Quantitative Analysis, both in full view on the shelf above the fire.

  “We ought to have hidden them,” said Dorothea.

  “He didn’t see them,” said Dick.

  “Suppose the police come looking.”

  “We’ve got to get them to Timothy’s quick.”

  “Breakfast’s all ready,” said Dorothea.

  Dick took the box and the book, put them in the suitcase with everything else, set the suitcase beside the other and covered them both with a rug from his hammock. “We won’t wait to wash up,” he said. “If we’d only waked up early we could have had them at the houseboat by now.”

  *

  After a hurried breakfast, they shut up the hut, and went down through the trees to the road. They dared not go by the path, for fear the police might be coming up and meet them with the suitcase. They waited before climbing the wall, listening for footsteps. They heard none, crossed the road, climbed the gate into the field, slipped into the edge of the Beckfoot coppice and came to Picthaven without being seen by anybody. They set the suitcase amidships, leaning against the centreboard case, so that the bottles should be the right way up, pushed off from the willow tree and worked their way out of the reeds and through the channel in the waterlilies.

  Dorothea took the oars, while Dick, leaning over the stern, was fixing the rudder in its place.

  “The wind’s just right,” he said, looking up, after seeing that the rudder was swinging freely on its gudgeon pins.

  “What for?” said Dorothea. “Nancy said it wasn’t safe to use the centreboard in the river.”

  “That’s just it. We shan’t want the centreboard. If we get just a bit of the sail up we’ll blow right out of the river without any noise at all. Those oars squeak like anything.”

  “It’s because they’re new,” said Dorothea, who had been desperately trying to keep them quiet.

  “Let’s stow them,” said Dick. “Half a minute while I get the sail ready.”

  ‘It’ll be all right, if only the Great Aunt isn’t looking out of the window,” said Dorothea. “Be quick. We’re in the river already.” The Scarab, caught by the current, was drifting out of Octopus Lagoon.

  “Now,” said Dick, scrambling aft, and putting the halliard into Dorothea’s hands on the way. “Pull at it now. Not right up. Just to lift a bit of the sail so that it catches the wind. We’ll get it up properly when we’re outside.”

  Dorothea pulled. The yard lifted and swung round, while the boom still rested on the gunwale.

  “That’ll do it,” said Dick. “Just hold it like that, and then you can let go if anything goes wrong. She’s moving very well.” They were in the river now and slipping past the trees of the coppice.

  “We’ll be in sight of the house in a minute,” said Dorothea.

  “She isn’t making any noise.”

  “Don’t even look at the house while we’re going by,” whispered Dorothea.

  But, as the house came in sight behind its new-cut lawn, neither of them could help taking just a glance at the scene of last night’s burglary.

  They gasped. Everybody seemed to be out in front of the house. They saw Nancy and Peggy. They saw the old Cook. They saw the Great Aunt herself, pointing at the study window with her stick and talking to a policeman. And they, the burglars, were sailing past in full view, suitcase and all.

  And just then, the wind failed them. Perhaps they were a little sheltered by the wood. Instead of slipping quickly through the water, Scarab, moving more and more slowly, was doing little more than drift with the stream. Every moment the burglars expected the policeman or the Great Aunt to turn and see them.

  “Only another few yards,” whispered Dick. “And there’s wind coming.” He had glanced upstream and seen the ripples on the water. He was steering with what little way Scarab still held, trying to keep her heading as she had been lest, when the wind came, it should blow the sail across with a noise that no one could help hearing.

  Good. Good. There was the wind again on the back of his neck. The bit of sail was pulling. Another minute and they would be out of sight beyond the boathouse. What was happening up there in front of the house? The big policeman was on his hands and knees looking at the ground. Gravel path, thought Dick. Lucky it wasn’t a flower-bed. The others were all watching the policeman. Suddenly Peggy turned her head and saw them. Dick thought he saw her mouth open, but heard, instead of a shout, a terrific fit of coughing. Cook and the Great Aunt and the policeman took no notice, but, just as Scarab slipped into safety beyond the boathouse, he saw that Nancy must have seen her. Nancy was watching the Great Aunt and the policeman, but she was whirling one hand in circles behind her back. The next moment they were safe. Scarab had passed the boathouse and was moving faster and faster out into the lake.

  “Did you see Nancy? What did she mean?” asked Dick.

  “She meant we’re to go ahead. She’s as pleased as anything. She’s guessed we’ve got the things in the boat. But Dick, what’s going to happen if the policeman finds my footprints by the trees?”

  “He may not look there,” said Dick. “Anyway, we can’t do anything except just take the things to Timothy.”

  “But it isn’t only burglary,” said Dorothea. “If we get caught, everything’ll be discovered. Nancy’ll have to say she left the window open for us. Timothy’ll have to explain, and then the Great Aunt. …”

  “Look here, Dot. Will you come and steer while I get the sail up the whole way? No. Just hang on to the halliard till I can get hold of it.”

  Nothing was forgotten this time. The centreboard was lowered, the sail hauled up, with Dorothea at the tiller, Scarab cleared the point of the Beckfoot promontory.

  “I’ve just got to get the boom down a bit,” said Dick.

  “It’s quite all right,” said Dorothea, looking back over her shoulder almost as if she expected to see the policeman coming after them in the Beckfoot rowing-boat.

  “A lot better now,” said Dick, after making fast the tackle. “Head for this side of Long Island. West wind. She’ll do it beautifully.”

  “You come and steer,” said Dorothea. “Anyhow, we’ve got the things away.”

  There was no more talking. So long as Scarab carried that cargo, the only thing that mattered was to get her to the end of her voyage and hand it over. Every now and then one of them glanced astern to see the promontory growing smaller. There was no sign of any pursuit but they did not feel safe. What was going on behind that promontory? Had the policeman found their tracks in the soft ground under the trees? Had Nancy or Peggy made a slip? Each time she looked astern Dorothea half expected to see people standing on the promontory and the policeman looking through a telescope and telling the Great Aunt, “There go the thieves!” Or would he telephone to headquarters? Would they meet a rowing-boat,
or a fast motor launch, coming out of Rio Bay, with a crew of police in their blue uniforms, hurrying to stop the Scarab? “What is in that suitcase?” the police would ask. Would they be taken as prisoners to Rio? What would it be safe for them to say, when they did not know how much had been discovered?

  “Is this the fastest she’ll go?” said Dorothea.

  “I don’t know,” said Dick. “It’s a reach with the wind like this and the book says you must keep the whole sail pulling but not have the sheet hauled in tighter than you need. I’m trying to find the right place. She’d go faster if Nancy was sailing her, or Tom.”

  Though perhaps Nancy or Tom Dudgeon would have done a little better at the tiller, Dick was doing pretty well. The water was creaming under Scarab’s forefoot. She was heeling over a little but not too much, and her wake (if not quite as straight as it should have been) was a long one. Rio and its crowded bay disappeared behind Long Island. Smaller islands were slipping by. A boat with a party of people fishing for perch in a little bay was hardly sighted before it was hidden again as Scarab hurried on her way. She came out into the open water at the far end of Long Island and Dick swung her round on her new course to Houseboat Bay.

  “Sorry. Sorry,” he exclaimed. “I say. Do see that the bottles are all right.”

  He had swung her round almost at right angles to her old course and the wind had flung the sail across with an unexpected gybe. Dorothea’s head had had a narrow escape from the boom, and the suitcase had been jerked over on its side. Dick very nearly let her fly round into the wind, stopped her just in time, narrowly escaped a second gybe and then, easing out the sheet, steadied her once more.

  “My fault,” he said. “Sorry.”

  Dorothea felt guilty even to look at what was in the suitcase but was glad to find that nothing had been broken.

  Scarab, with the wind aft, was heading straight for the old blue houseboat.

  “No flag,” said Dick. “But there wasn’t the other day either.”