Arthur Ransome - Swallows and Amazons (Complete Series)

At the jagged rock they caught up the others and looked back.

“We needn’t have used a single one so far,” said Titty. “You can see the watch-tower from here. Where we shall want the patterans is where we can’t be sure of the way without them.”

Now, however, unknown country opened before them.

From the rock at which they had first aimed, they moved as nearly as possible due north. The captain kept looking at his compass, choosing a rock or a clump of bracken or heather that bore due north, walking straight to it, and then choosing another in the same way.

They were on a wide ridge of rolling moorland, so that often they could see not more than two or three hundred yards ahead of them and sometimes even less. Sometimes, though, when they were on the top of one of the waves that seemed to cross the moor they could see how the ridge sloped towards the right where, far away, they could see the green tops of larches and pines. Somewhere below those woods must be the lake. Sometimes they could see where the moor began to drop on the other side of the ridge, where also there were the tops of trees showing beyond the heather. Once they caught a glimpse of water on that side very far away, but even with the telescope could see no boats upon it.

“Perhaps it hasn’t yet been discovered,” said Titty.

“That’s where the swans were going,” said John.

Not all the moorland was covered with heather. There were wide stretches of tall green bracken, and short-cropped grass burnt brown by the sun. Grey rocks rose up out of the grass and heather alike. It was as if an old ragged counterpane of deep purple, patched with scraps of faded green and rusty brown, had been thrown over the earth’s skeleton and the bones were showing through the threadbare places. Peewits circled overhead, swooping down towards them, and tumbling and swinging up and away again, shrieking at them as if to say they had no business to be there. Twice a curlew with his long, curved, thin beak stretched before him, screamed shrilly as he passed overhead from one valley to another. Grouse rose suddenly out of the heather, with a loud whirring of wings and a shout of “Go back! Go back! Go back!”

“No, we won’t,” said Roger.

“They wouldn’t tell us to go back if they knew what we were going to do,” said Titty. “They think it has something to do with them. That’s why they shout at us.”

Always before them, away to the west of their course, though not much, on the port bow as they would have said if they had been afloat in Swallow, rose the great mass of the hill they had agreed to call Kanchenjunga. It changed its shape a little as they moved northwards. It looked less of a solitary peak, and they could see a deep gully running up into it just above the woods that covered its lower slopes.

By the time the first halt was called all the pine-cones from Roger’s knapsack had been used up and Titty’s knapsack was not as full as it had been. They had long ago lost sight of the watch-tower. To east of them they could see nothing but the rolling waves of heather. To the west there was less heather and the moorland seemed to come suddenly to an end. Before them the ground seemed to be still rising, though they knew it must sooner or later drop into the valley of the Amazon River. Nor could the end of the ridge be very far away. Going due north over the moor they were steering a straighter course than if they had been sailing to the Amazon from Wild Cat Island, when there was always Rio Bay to allow for and the islands, to say nothing of the wind. The line of their march over the moorland was as straight as a crow’s flight, thanks to the captain’s careful use of his compass.

He had explained this to Roger.

“It’s easier for crows,” said Roger. “Crows keep their wings still and go on and on without stopping, but if we keep our legs still for a minute nothing happens. We just stick.”

“This is a good place for sticking,” said the mate. “There’s a flat rock for a table. And we must be much more than half-way. Off with the knapsacks. Apples all round.”

“Yes,” said the captain. “It’s no good getting there with any of us tired. We don’t know what we may have to do when we come to the river.”

Knapsacks were dumped on the flat rock. Apples were taken out and a moment later only the peewits circling overhead could have known that the explorers were there. All four of them were lying flat on their backs on the dry turf beside the rock (the mate had felt it carefully and said it was not damp) eating their apples and shading their eyes while they blinked up between their fingers into the blue sky.

When they set off again, another half-hour’s walking brought them to the edge of the high ground. They looked down into the valley of the Amazon. A spur of the ridge along which they had come reached forward and hid the place where the river flowed out into the lake, but they could see the flash of water here and there in the green meadows far below them, and away to the right, under the foot of a wooded ridge, they could see a long ribbon of pale reeds that widened suddenly on either side of a little glittering tarn.

“That must be the lagoon,” said John. “Beckfoot must be just round the corner of those woods.”

Though they could not see where the river ran out into the lake, they could see the lake itself, the wide sheet of the northern end of it where they had never been, the Arctic of their maps, and the big hills above it.

“I wonder if any of these hills are as high as Kanchenjunga,” said John.

“They haven’t got a peak like his,” said Titty.

“More hummocky,” said John, who felt already towards Kanchenjunga much what he felt towards Swallow and Swallowdale and Wild Cat Island.

Looking the other way towards Kanchenjunga himself, they could see that the valley of the Amazon wound round beneath the high ground on which they were standing, so that the mountain was on the farther side of it. Below them woods dropped steeply down toward the meadows in the bottom.

“Let’s aim straight for the lagoon,” said Roger. “We know the Amazons live just the other side of it.”

“Duffer,” said John. “Coming down that way we could be seen for miles while we were getting across the fields. Besides, if that was the best way they’d have said so.”

“Perhaps nobody would be looking,” said Roger.

“The natives have probably got sentinels posted all round,” said Titty, “and anyhow we’ve got to get the canoe.”

Captain John once more opened the message that had been hidden in Nancy Blackett’s arrow. He read it all through to himself and then looked down into the valley towards the woods that covered the slopes between the moorland and the meadows.

“Four firs in what used to be a wood,” he said aloud.

Titty had the telescope and handed it to him.

“Over there,” she said, “it looks as if it might have been a wood some time or other.” She pointed a little to the left where close below the open moor there were short stumpy bushes and patches of rock and bracken and fern, with a few solitary oaks and ashes.

“There are the firs,” shouted John. “Come on. I thought there were only two, but that was because they’re all in a straight line. Come on.”

Titty had only three pine-cones left. She gave them, one at a time, to Roger, and the ship’s boy laid them carefully on the ground in clear open spaces, where they could easily be seen.

“The trees’ll show us how to find them,” said Titty. “We can’t miss them with the four trees being in a line.”

When the last patteran had been put in its place the able-seaman and the boy galloped downhill after the captain and the mate, their knapsacks bumping on their backs.