Arthur Ransome - Swallows and Amazons (Complete Series)

The puzzled faces of the Amazons looked down into Swallowdale from the edge of the valley.

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“Barbecued billygoats!” said Captain Nancy, “but however did you do it?”

“Where were you?” said Peggy.

“You had us all right,” said Captain Nancy. “One up to you. But where are all your things? What have you done with the tents?”

“Let’s tell them,” said Roger.

Susan looked at John.

“Go ahead,” he said.

“We were in Peter Duck’s cave,” said Titty.

“Peter Duck’s?”

“His cave.”

“Not a real one?”

“Of course a real one,” said Roger.

“Titty and Roger found it,” said John.

“But where is it?”

“Here,” said all the Swallows at once.

The Amazons stared about them.

John pulled aside the loose clumps of heather that partly hid the doorway.

“Go in and look at it,” he said.

“No tricks. No capturing?” said Nancy. “We’ve got to hurry back.”

“No, no. Peace,” said John. “Just go in and have a look. There’s a light inside.”

Nancy first, followed by Peggy, stooped and went in through the hole in the rock. The others crowded in after them. The Amazons were as surprised as even Titty could have wished when they saw the candle-lantern burning on its shelf, and by its yellow, flickering light saw the rough walls of the cave, the woodstack, and the piled boxes, the bundles, the fishing-rods, and the cooking things. Then John pulled some of the heather back into place and showed how they had laid in wait, able to hear all that went on outside. Then they went out again, blinking in the sunlight, and John covered the entrance with the big heather clumps, when really, unless you knew, you were hardly likely to guess that the doorway of the cave was there.

“No wonder you wanted to come up here instead of staying down by the lake,” said Nancy. “Barring Wild Cat Island, it’s the best place for miles round.”

“You could almost live in a cave like that.”

“Nobody’d ever find you there,” said Nancy.

“Well,” said John, “you saw how it was when the Amazon pirates attacked the camp.”

Nancy laughed.

“If you hadn’t come out, and if the parrot hadn’t shouted, we’d have gone home and told Uncle Jim you’d gone away.”

They went into the cave again.

“Let’s come and hide here from the great-aunt,” said Peggy.

“No good,” said Nancy, “because of mother.”

“I wish we had a cave on the island,” said Titty.

“Let’s make one when we get back there.”

“Why not?”

“I wish we could get the great-aunt into a cave like this and shut her up and forget about her,” said Nancy. “We could write ‘Leave Hope Behind’ over the doorway, and shove her in and wall her up.”

“Now, then, you fo’c’sle hands,” said Mate Susan to the able-seaman and the boy, “let’s see how long it takes you to get the tents up again.”

“We’ll help,” said Nancy.

“And then we’ll see about dinner,” said Susan.

“We haven’t brought much,” said Peggy. “We ought to be getting back.”

“Iron rations,” said Nancy. “Just things to be eaten on the march.”

“That’s all right,” said Susan, “we’ve got lots. The potatoes are in the sack in the far corner. And we’re not sick of pemmican if you aren’t.”

“We’re homesick for pemmican,” said Nancy. “We’ve been sitting up and saying please and thank you till we didn’t want to come to meals at all.”

Swallowdale was soon full of bustle. Susan was hurrying on the fire, boiling water in kettle and saucepan at the same time, and opening a large-sized pemmican tin. Peggy was peeling potatoes. John and Nancy and Titty were putting up tents, bringing things out of the cave, and sorting them out, some for one tent and some for another. They wanted to help Roger, but Roger would not be helped. He was working slowly but making no mistakes, putting up his own tent by himself for the first time. This was a good deal more difficult than taking it down.

When the camp was itself again, with the tents up and the parrot cage once more on its stone pedestal (“Oh, that’s what it’s for,” said Nancy. “We couldn’t think.”), and they were watching Roger carefully tightening his guy-ropes, Titty asked Nancy, “Has the great-aunt been getting worse? Is that why you want to wall her up? But it ought to be in a new bridge or a castle or something like that. It would be waste to do it with a cave.”

“Anything would be too good for her,” said Nancy. “It isn’t as if it was only us. We can stand it. But she will go for mother. There was an awful row again just because we ran into a calm the day we helped you to move camp. And, anyway, who can help being late in summer? But the moment she looks at her watch and thinks there ought to be a meal she doesn’t wait decently till the gong’s been banged once or twice in the house and then taken out in the garden and banged good and proper in case we’re up on the fell. She just goes into the dining-room and waits. And ten to one cook isn’t ready. And the old gong doesn’t go until she is. And mother doesn’t know what to do between the great-aunt and poor old cook. And even when her food’s shoved under her nose the great-aunt won’t begin until we’ve been rounded up. And when Uncle Jim isn’t there she’s even worse. Last night she made mother cry.”

Titty stared and her mouth stayed open. She tried to think what she would do if anybody ever tried to make the best of all natives cry.

“It was about us, of course. She dragged father in. We knew because after we’d gone to bed we couldn’t help hearing Uncle Jim talking to mother just outside our window, and he said, ‘Bob would have liked them as they are.’ And he called mother ‘Mops,’ which he only does sometimes. Then we made a noise and mother said, ‘Go to sleep, you donkeys,’ and pretended to laugh. But she couldn’t.”

Nancy walked suddenly away, but she came back in a moment with her face very red.

“If only we could get the G.A. to go,” she said. “I thought of putting little stones in her bed between the mattress and the sheet. And Peggy thought of putting drops of codliver oil in her morning tea. But it’s no good. It would only be worse for mother.”

“In some places,” said Titty, “the natives do this sort of thing when they have an enemy. I found it in a book. They make a doll and call it the name of the person. Then they stick pins in it, and every pin they stick in the doll is felt by the person, and if they stick the pins right through, the person dies. You could do that, and stick the pins in just a little way every night until she was so uncomfortable she would go of her own accord.”

Nancy laughed bitterly. “You could fill a doll cram full of pins. You could use it as a pin-cushion and it wouldn’t hurt the great-aunt. She wouldn’t notice it. Pins would blunt on her.”

“Perhaps they ought to be silver,” said Titty. “It said that in the same book about shooting witches and were-wolves. They always had to use a silver bullet.”

“Susan’s pins look like silver ones,” said Roger, who was listening now that his tent was properly pitched.

“They might do,” said Titty. “How could the great-aunt find out they weren’t really silver? She wouldn’t see you sticking the pins in.”

“All that’s rubbish,” said Susan. “Nobody believes in it now.”