Arthur Ransome - Swallows and Amazons (Complete Series)

“But a patteran is to show other people how to follow us.”

“These are for finding the way back,” said Titty. “You see, on the moor there are no trees to blaze, and we couldn’t leave bits of paper. But there are no pine-cones on the moor, so if we mark our trail with them we shan’t miss it when we are finding our way home from Kanchenjunga.”

Susan and John knew very well when it was no use arguing with Titty, so, once their sleeping-bags were inside, they were allowed to fill their knapsacks to the brim with the pine-cones they had brought up from the forest.

They crowded into Peter Duck’s for a last look round by the light of one of the candle-lanterns that the mate had lit and put in its old place on the shelf with the other three beside it. She had made a first-rate job of the stowage. At one side of the cave there was a deep bed of firewood, already cut and broken to a useful length. On the firewood in four rolls side by side were the four sleeping-tents, each with its own bundle of tent-poles and little sack of tent-pegs. There they were well out of harm’s way. The old ground-sheets from last year’s camp had been spread on the floor opposite the woodpile, and on them were the stores tent, rolled up, the tin boxes with the main stores in them, and the spare clothes, and three other tin boxes, one of fishing tackle, one with Titty’s writing things in it, and one with books, the ship’s papers of the Swallow, and the barometer.

“I say, Mister Mate,” said Captain John, noticing this box, “I don’t much like leaving those behind.”

“It’s no good taking them,” said the mate. “It isn’t as if we were sailing. And you’ve got the compass to take, anyhow, and the telescope. And, anyway, it’s only for one night.”

“Peter Duck’ll look after them,” said Titty. “He knows how important they are. He’ll take watch and watch with the ship’s parrot.”

“You’d better bring the parrot in now,” said Susan.

Everything that could be done to make the parrot comfortable had been done. He had been given a lovely piece of bacon rind to tear at, and three days’ allowance of seed and a lot of fresh water. Also Titty had explained to him carefully how much they were trusting to him, and that he was to be on guard too, so that Peter Duck could take a rest now and then. There was a good deal she would have liked to say to Peter Duck himself, if only he had not happened to be out at the time. So she made things very clear to the parrot. The parrot had been noisier than usual in the camp, saying, “Twice, twice, two, two, pretty Polly, pieces of eight,” besides several times giving the wild shriek that showed he knew everybody else was agog about something. But as soon as he was put in the cave, though his cage was in a very good place, on the top of the pile of tin boxes, he stopped saying anything at all and it was only too clear that he did not think he was being fairly treated.

ON THE MARCH

“We’re coming back to-morrow,” said Titty, “and you know you wouldn’t like it on the top of a mountain.”

But the ship’s parrot said nothing and there was a look in its eye that was worse than a lot of things it might have said.

“We can’t possibly take him with us,” said Susan.

For one dreadful moment the able-seaman began to think that perhaps she ought to stay behind to look after both Peter Duck and Polly, but she thought better of it.

“It’s much darker than this in a tropical forest,” she said, “even at midday. So you’d better be sensible.” She gave the parrot three lumps of sugar which she had been keeping for him till the last minute and then hurried out of the cave into the sunlight. She slung her knapsack on her back, stuffed her pocket with some of the small pine-cones left over, and was ready to start.

Susan blew out the lantern and followed her. She arranged the big tufts of heather at the mouth of the cave so that no one who did not know of it would guess it was there. On the rocky ground there were no footmarks leading to and from the cave as there would have been in soft turf, and John and Roger had already seen that the bits of broken stick that might have betrayed it had been cleared away. When the four explorers climbed the northern side of Swallowdale and looked back into the empty valley, there was really nothing but the charred stones of the fireplace and the paler patches where the tents had been to show that it had been a camp.

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Captain John once more looked carefully through the Amazons’ message. “ ‘About north’ is what they say, but really it’s north-north-west till we get to that rock.” He looked at the compass. “North-north-west is what I made it last night, but we’ll just have one more look from the watch-tower.”

From the top of the watch-tower everybody turned the telescope towards Rio and Holly Howe, but to-day there seemed to be no one about. Then they looked the other way at the peak of Kanchenjunga towering into the morning sunlight. It was hard to believe that they were going to the top of it.

“North-north-west it is,” said John, taking the bearing of the jagged rock past which the Amazons had come when they made their attempt to surprise the camp.

“But we needn’t go straight across the heather,” said Susan.

“Not if we can find a sheep-track,” said the captain.

There seemed to be two or three going in the right direction. John chose a likely one, and in a few minutes the expedition had left the watch-tower and was fairly on its way, walking in Indian file along a narrow sheep-track in the heather, John first, then Roger, then Titty, and Susan last of all.

This order was not kept for very long.

“Don’t waste pine-cones,” said the able-seaman. “It’s silly when we’re still close to our own watch-tower. We shall want all we’ve got when we’re in really unknown country beyond the other rock.”

But Roger’s pockets were bursting with pine-cones, and every dozen yards or so he stopped and put two pine-cones in the middle of the sheep-track, one crosswise and one pointing along the track. Then, of course, he had to stop to see that Titty and Susan did not tread on them by mistake. Again and again the mate found herself brought up short by Roger crouching in the track to make his patteran and by Titty who, though she urged him not to waste pine-cones, stood on guard all the same to see that the mate walked over them without moving them. So the mate let the able-seaman and the boy have the track to themselves while she walked in front of them immediately after the captain.

Long before they came to the jagged rock Roger’s pockets were empty and he wanted to get a new supply out of his knapsack. This Titty would not allow.

“You see now,” she said, “if you go on putting them down like that there won’t be enough to last and then we shall have no patteran just when we want them most, in the most difficult part of the trail.”

Empty pockets brought the boy to reason and it was agreed that only one pine-cone should be laid at a time, because they knew, anyhow, which way they were going, and that they should be laid a long way apart.

“We don’t want a regular string of them,” said Titty. “We want to be able to find one every now and then so as to be sure that we are in the right way.”