Arthur Ransome - Swallows and Amazons (Complete Series)

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.

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“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.”

“Well, where is it?”

Titty and Roger went back to the place where Susan had said she would like to put the tents.

“It’s here,” said Titty.

John and Susan looked about them, but there was nothing to show where the cave was.

Titty walked up to the steep wall of grey stone with the clumps of heather growing in the cracks of it, and there, close under the heather, showed them the opening, which, unless you looked closely, might have been no more than a cleft in the rock.

“If it hadn’t been for a butterfly perching on the heather no one would have seen the cave at all,” said Titty.

“Have you been into it?” said John.

“No,” said Titty.

“Not yet,” said Roger.

John twisted himself out of his knapsack straps and dropped the knapsack on the ground. Susan wriggled out of hers and rummaged in it for her torch. How lucky it was that in the hurry of starting on the day of the shipwreck she had left it behind. She gave it to John.

“Go on, John,” she said.

John, stooping and flashing the torch before him, disappeared through the opening.

“Can I come too?” asked Roger.

“Wait a bit,” said Susan. “I say, John, have a look at the roof of it. Is it all right?”

“Solid rock,” said John, “and high. I can only just reach it. I’m standing up. Pouf, it’s awfully dusty.” For years and years the dust had been settling in the cave, and now, when John moved, it rose in clouds about his feet.

“Is there room for more of us?” asked Susan.

“Lots,” said John, from far inside, and his voice sounded as if he were shouting from the bottom of a deep, echoing tunnel. “But look out for your heads till you’re well in.”

The others crawled in, and stood up one by one, feeling with their hands in the blackness and watching the splash of light flung by the torch now here, now there, on the rough walls and roof, all cut in solid rock.

“It’s not really so very big,” said John.