Great Northern?

by Arthur Ransome

  “Hold ’em! Hold ’em!” shouted John.

  The boat had all but reached the shore. One of the shepherd’s big dogs crouched and leapt as if to throw itself aboard. The sailor backed water. Then he pulled in again. Again they heard that deep, dangerous barking. Suddenly they saw the sailor pull in his oars, grab the gun that Mr Jemmerling had been holding and stand up in the boat….

  As the man swung the gun towards the dogs, he staggered, made a wild effort to keep his balance.…

  “He’s over,” shouted Nancy.

  BANG! Splash!

  The gun went off and the folding boat tipped sailor and Mr Jemmerling into the loch. It seemed to happen quite slowly. They had seen the man snatch the gun, leap to his feet to aim at the dogs and feel that the boat was slipping from under him. Then, like a felled tree, he was falling. They saw his arm fly up with the gun. They heard the bang as the gun went off. They saw the gun, loose, in the air. They saw and heard the resounding splash as man and gun came down on the water.

  CAPSIZE OF THE FOLDING BOAT

  “He fired at the dogs!” said John.

  “I hope he drowns!” said Nancy.

  But the folding boat was already on the shallows. They saw the man get up, dripping. They saw that Mr Jemmerling, who had been sitting in the boat, had not fallen head first but had thrown his legs over the side. Both were standing with the water not much higher than their knees. The man was feeling under the water for the gun. They saw Mr Jemmerling give him an angry push. On the shore the dogs, unhurt, had been startled by the gun-shot into silence.

  A whistle blew and the dogs vanished.

  Mr Jemmerling and his man, leaving gun and boat behind them, waded ashore. For a moment John and Nancy lost sight of them among the rocks. Then they saw them again, floundering up through the heather towards the ridge.

  “HEY!” shouted Nancy.

  As she and John rushed in pursuit, they heard another shout and saw the two dogs bounding up the slope after the men.

  Not far ahead of the men was a big rock with a flat, cliff-like face to it. They reached it just as the dogs were at their heels. The sailor was three or four yards in front of Mr Jemmerling. The leading dog passed Mr Jemmerling and leapt, sending the sailor headlong. Mr Jemmerling pressed his back against the face of the rock as if he were trying to push through and get inside it.

  There John and Nancy found him as they came panting up from the shore.

  “Good dog!” he was saying. “Good dog!”

  The dog, watching every move he made, answered with a growl.

  A few yards away the sailor lay, flat on the ground, with the other dog snarling by his head, daring him to get up.

  “Three cheers!” said Peggy who was the next to arrive.

  “Call your dogs off,” commanded Mr Jemmerling.

  “They’re not our dogs,” said Nancy cheerfully.

  “They’re not mine either,” said another voice, “but they’ll do what I say.”

  The young McGinty who, in spite of his long run round the head of the loch, was not out of breath at all, had joined them.

  “Call those dogs off, boy,” commanded Mr Jemmerling.

  “Watch him, Rory! Watch him, Dandy!” said the young McGinty, and each dog gave a furious growl as if to say that he could be trusted not to lose his man.

  The shepherd was coming up the slope, and both dogs looked round at their master as if to make sure they were doing right. He said a word in Gaelic. The dogs wagged their tails. Mr Jemmerling, who had been standing with his arms above his head against the rock, dropped his hands. There was a deep growl.

  “If you stir he will have the throat out of you,” said the shepherd pleasantly, and Mr Jemmerling lifted his arms again and stood there not daring to move.

  Susan, Titty, Roger and Dorothea arrived in a bunch.

  “Oh, good,” said Titty. “You’ve got him.”

  “I say,” said Roger, “who fired a gun? We heard it. Was it at you?”

  ‘The sailor fired at the dogs,” said John.

  “He didn’t hit them?” said Titty in horror.

  “Got a ducking instead,” said Nancy.

  “What are you going to do with them?” said Susan.

  The shepherd and the young McGinty were talking together. The shepherd put his fingers to his lips and whistled. There was an answering whistle from the direction of the cove. The shepherd startled them all with a long wild cry in Gaelic. Again there was an answer from far away and another from close at hand beyond the ridge.

  “Just letting my father know we have them,” said the young McGinty.

  “We’ve got them all right,” said Nancy. “At least the dogs have. And I say, Peg, you should have seen them go kerflop out of the folder. You remember I told you it wasn’t safe to stand up in it. Well, one of them did.”

  “They can’t get away now,” said John. “We’d better rescue the boat.”

  And then, at last, Dick struggled up to them. After running the whole way round from the other side of the loch and getting across the stream without waiting to look for the easiest place, he was hardly able to speak.

  “Have you got the eggs?” he panted, and for the first time the others noticed that Mr Jemmerling’s hands were empty.

  “Where are the eggs?” Dick’s voice shook as he asked.

  Mr Jemmerling, his back to the rock, his eyes warily watching the dog growling at his feet, closed his lips tightly. Cornered as he was, he had not yet lost hope of showing in the Jemmerling Collection the first eggs of the Great Northern Diver to be found in the British Isles.

  “The birds are alive,” Dick blurted out. “We’ve got to get the eggs back. Quick! Quick!”

  “Where are those eggs?” asked John, but he could not help a hint of doubt coming into his voice.

  Mr Jemmerling looked at him with returning courage.

  “What eggs?” he asked.

  “Are you sure he had them?” asked Susan.

  “I saw him take them and put them in a box,” said Dick, “before he came after the birds again.”

  “He had something in his hands when the boat tipped him out,” said John.

  “So he did,” said Nancy. “I saw it.”

  “Where have you put the box?” Dick asked furiously.

  “What box?” said Mr Jemmerling.

  Nancy turned to the young McGinty. “Would the dogs give him a bite or two if you told them? Just a nip, to help him to remember.”

  “We can’t do that,” put in Susan. “Up to now it’s all his own fault.”

  “I’d like to,” said the young McGinty.

  “Call your dogs off at once,” said Mr Jemmerling.

  “Look out,” cried Roger, “the sailor’s getting away.”

  While everybody had been looking at the egg-collector spreadeagled against the rock, his man, finding that the dog that had knocked him down had joined the other to wait, growling, ready to spring at Mr Jemmerling, had seen a chance of escape. He had crawled further away and, as Roger shouted, he had jumped to his feet and bolted.

  “He’s running away with the eggs!” cried Dick.

  The shepherd said something in Gaelic to his dogs and in a moment, flashing over the heather, they had reached the man and rounded him up like a stray sheep. The man stood, panting, holding his hands out of the dogs’ reach.

  “Bring him back,” called the young McGinty.

  The shepherd spoke in Gaelic again and the dogs, growling now behind him, now on one side and now on the other, brought the man back to the rock where the egg-collector had let his hands drop. Both dogs, thinking their job with the man was done, turned at once against his master, and Mr Jemmerling’s hands flew up once more.

  “What have you done with the eggs?” Dick asked the man.

  “I’ve got no eggs,” said the man, and everybody could see that he had not.

  “Come on,” said Nancy. “The box must be somewhere. He must have hidden it in the heather.”

 
“The dogs didn’t give him much time,” said John.

  “He may have put it on the rock,” said Nancy. “Great Auks and Albatrosses! It may be right in front of our eyes.”

  “There’s no box on the rock,” said the shepherd slowly. He was tall enough to see.

  “It must be between here and the shore,” said Titty.

  “The eggs are getting cold,” said Dick, “and the birds may be back any minute.”

  “It’ll be where they landed,” said Nancy. “Come on, John. You’ll guard the prisoners, won’t you?” she turned to the young McGinty.

  “They’ll no stir from this place,” said the shepherd.

  “Quick! Quick!” said Dick, running down to the shore. Titty was already half way there.

  “Half a minute,” called the young McGinty. “My father’s just coming.”

  But nobody waited with him except Roger and the shepherd. Roger, after one moment of hesitation, decided that there were plenty of people to look for eggs and that he did not want to miss seeing what happened when the McGinty and Captain Flint met the egg-collector face to face.

  Slowly, not hurrying, a group of people were coming down the ridge. There was the tall kilted figure of the McGinty. There was Captain Flint in his untidy shirt and flannel trousers. There was the old dogmudgeon. Spread out along the ridge was a line of ghillies. The McGinty’s strategy had been simple. Cut the invader off from his boats and you have him. He had sent the shepherd with the dogs to see that there was no escape by land. He himself with Captain Flint and the ghillies had gone down past the Pict-house, crossed the stream at its outlet, and come over the rocks to the shore of the further cove to wait by the Pterodactyl’s dinghy which they found pulled up on the shore.

  There, while Captain Flint had been telling the McGinty the whole story of how Dick had come to make his discovery, they had heard that third shot and the frantic barking of the dogs. Warily, in a long line, they had begun to move up the ridge towards the loch, had heard the shepherd’s call, and now were coming to consider what was to be done with the prisoners.

  Roger looked gleefully to see how the egg-collector was taking the sight of the McGinty and his allies coming down the slope of heather at their own pace, slow, unhurried, like the march of doom.

  He was astonished to see that the collector was perking up and looking at approaching doom as if it were a rescue party. Suddenly he laughed.

  “What is it?” asked the young McGinty, puzzled.

  “He’s more afraid of those dogs than he is of your father,” he said, and this time the young McGinty laughed too.

  Roger, looking up at the ghillies, had just a moment of doubt whether he would not have done better to go with the others to look for the eggs, but as soon as he saw that the piper was not among them, he had no further worries.

  “We’ve got him all right,” he called to Captain Flint. “And Dick says he missed the birds. Dick saw him take the eggs, but he hasn’t got them now. He’s even pretending he didn’t know about them.”

  The egg-collector, still flattened against the rock, gave Roger an angry glance. Then, with some attempt at dignity, not very easy as his eyes kept shifting to the growling dogs, he spoke to the McGinty.

  “Are you in authority here?” he asked. “Will you kindly bring this outrage to an end at once.”

  “And what outrage would that be?” asked the McGinty gravely.

  “These dogs,” said the egg-collector, “have been deliberately incited to attack me. You will be so good as to order your man to call them off and allow me to go about my business.”

  “Have you business here?” asked the McGinty, and then, suddenly, “Was it you fired those shots on the loch?”

  “I was shooting at game,” said the egg-collector. “My name may be familiar to you. Jemmerling. Jemmerling of the Jemmerling Collection. I am visiting the islands for scientific purposes. Allow me to present my card …” He made as if to take his pocket-book out of his pocket, but at the first movement there was a deep, threatening growl, and he hurriedly put his hands where they had been, flat against the rock.

  “You will call off these dogs,” he said furiously, “unless you wish to get into the most serious trouble.”

  At this, as Roger reported afterwards, the McGinty, always a tall man, shot up two inches taller.

  The shepherd spoke quietly in Gaelic to the McGinty.

  “Was it for scientific purposes that your man shot at my shepherd’s dog?”

  “They were preventing me from landing.”

  “From landing? Then you had a boat on my loch?”

  “I found a boat here.”

  “It was our folder,” put in Roger.

  “I see. You stole a boat on my loch. And then?”

  “I was not shooting game birds,” said the egg-collector. “I went, for scientific purposes, to collect some eggs that would, in my collection, be of general interest.”

  “How did you know they were there?”

  “What does that matter?” said the egg-collector angrily. “I knew they were there.” As he spoke his eyes wandered from the McGinty towards the shore of the loch, where John and Nancy, after rescuing the folding boat, were emptying it of water, while all the others, Susan, Peggy, Dorothea, Dick and Titty were moving slowly up from the water’s edge, searching every inch of the ground, groping under every tuft of heather.

  “Kindly bring this farce to an end,” said the egg-collector, “and allow me to….”

  “What were the birds at which you were shooting?” said the McGinty.

  “Great Northern Divers,” said the egg-collector. “Colymbus immer. I wished to preserve them. Them and their eggs. No other collection has …” He broke off. His eyes were anxiously following the searchers as they worked their way through the heather. “All the world would have come to see them, the first birds of their species known to have nested in the British Isles. I should have had them preserved with their nest. The finest taxidermist in London … Your loch would be famous …” Again he broke off. “My solicitors … the police … Or I will make you a fair offer. If you let me go at once, you shall….”

  There was a yell from down by the shore. Dick, Peggy, Susan and Dorothea were scrambling through the heather to join Titty who was crouching over something. John and Nancy were running from the boat.

  “She’s found the box,” shouted Peggy.

  “My personal property,” screamed the egg-collector.

  The McGinty spoke in Gaelic to the dogmudgeon and the shepherd. The ghillies closed in round the egg-collector and his man. The dogs, knowing what was wanted of them, growled at the feet of their prisoners. The McGinty and Captain Flint left them and walked down to the shore after Roger and the young McGinty. Roger had been away first but tripped in the heather and fell headlong. He picked himself up to find that the young McGinty had passed him and to hurry after him as fast as he could.

  “Titty found it,” Dorothea was saying.

  Dick and Titty together were fumbling at the strap and buckle of a wooden box.

  “Let me get at it,” said Nancy.

  CHAPTER XXIX

  “QUICK! QUICK!”

  TITTY, LIKE DICK, had been thinking more of the birds than of the capture of the egg-collector. Her heart, like his, had missed a beat at hearing those shots on the loch that had turned the McGinty and his Gaels into allies instead of gaolers. She had pursued the egg-collector like a young fury but without hope, for she thought that all was over, the eggs stolen and the birds dead. Then had come Dick’s news that the birds had escaped and that if only they could give them back the eggs there was yet a chance that the story of the Divers might have a happy ending. The others were looking for the eggs to take them from the egg-collector. Titty, like Dick, was looking for them in the wild desperate hope that it might not yet be too late to give them back to the birds.

  It was Titty who had said, “Dick’ll want the boat as well as the eggs”, so that, while all the others were searching for
the box, John and Nancy, after rescuing the boat, had pulled it up and were emptying the water out of it. She herself moved fast from one patch of heather to another. The egg-collector or his man must have hidden the box in the heather, not among the stones where it would easily be seen. For less than a minute the two of them had been out of sight as they ran up from the shore. They must have known that their only chance was to hide the box and come back for it later. It could not be far away. Feverishly her hands groped among the tough stems of the heather. The trouble was that she did not know exactly what she was looking for. Dick, searching a dozen yards away, had said it was a box but he did not know what kind of a box or how big. Nor did John and Nancy, though they had seen that the egg-collector had had something in his hands. Titty groped on and on. This was worse than hunting for Captain Flint’s cabin trunk hidden under the stones of Cormorant Island. That, after all, had had in it only a book and a typewriter, things that were not in a hurry. This was a matter of life and death. Quick! Oh, quick! Life and Death! She thought of the Divers grieving for their rifled nest. She thought of the young Divers who might never peck through the shells into the world outside. What was that box like? Big! It could not be very small. And then, thrusting deep into a tuft of heather, she doubled her fingers against something hard. There was blood on the backs of her hands where she had scraped them against the heather stems. There was more blood now as her knuckles hit on a buckle.

  “Dick!” she called.

  Dick was beside her in a moment, the others close behind him. He had lifted the box from under the heather and was trying to help her to undo the strap. She heard Dorothea saying, “Titty found it.” She heard Dick saying, “The buckle’s stuck.” She heard Nancy’s, “Let me get at it.”

  Nancy’s fingers, not trembling like Titty’s and Dick’s, had unfastened the strap. Titty’s head bumped on Dick’s as they bent to look in. There were the eggs, the two big oval eggs of the Great Northern Diver, dark olive, blotched with darker brown, each in a nest of cotton wool in a compartment at the bottom of the box.