Arthur Ransome - Swallows and Amazons (Complete Series)

“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 oar.

“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.