Arthur Ransome - Swallows and Amazons (Complete Series)

They went a little slower through a broad belt of heather, and after that were picking their way among stumpy little bushes, fresh saplings, fern and moss-covered rocks, and huge old tree stumps still left in the ground.

“Don’t go so fast,” panted Roger.

John and Susan were already far ahead of them.

But the captain stopped when he came to the four big fir trees that they had seen from the moor. He pulled out the message again.

“These are the trees all right,” he was saying as Roger and Titty came galumphing down. “ ‘Follow the way they point,’ it says, and they point down the hill. ‘Keep to the stone wall.’ . . . There it is. They’re pointing to it.”

It was a tumble-down old wall, built, like all the walls of these parts, of rough stones with no mortar. There were big gaps in it made by the sheep, who always pull down walls sooner or later, but even where no more was left of it than a lot of loose stones lying on the ground where they had fallen, anybody could see that it had at one time been a stone wall running straight up the fell from the valley below.

“Come on,” said John, “but go quietly. There’s the road somewhere in front of us.”

They followed the old wall down from the partly cleared ground into thick bushy forest like the woods round Horseshoe Cove.

“That’s why they chose this way,” said John. “Nobody could see us here. Hullo! Listen! Halt!”

There was the sound of a motor horn only a little way ahead of them. The explorers stiffened like startled hares. The sound died away, and at a signal from John they crept on, pushing their way through the hazel bushes, with the remains of the old wall close on their right.

“Steady, Mister Mate!” whispered John. “I’ll see if the coast is clear.”

“Steady, Able-seaman!” whispered Susan, stopping short.

“Steady, Ship’s Boy!” whispered Titty.

“Steady, Roger!” said the ship’s boy to himself.

“Sh!” said Titty.

John had seen, close in front of him, a different wall. It was in much better repair than the old wall, and higher, and he guessed at once that the road must lie on the other side of it. At a place where a big copper beech spread its branches over the wall John climbed carefully up and lay at full length along the top, covered by the dark coppery leaves. He lifted a thin spray of leaves so that he could see out. There was nothing on the road. On the other side of the road there was another wall. Beyond it there were grass meadows not long since cut. But the meadows ended only a few yards farther to the left, where another wood began.

“That’s the thing to do,” said John to himself. “We’ll cross the road and get into that wood and keep in it along the edge of the fields until we come to the river. Two fields away, they said it was.”

He whistled softly, and a moment later a hand touched his foot. The mate was there.

“Get the others,” he whispered. “We’ve got to cross the road.”

He heard the crack of a twig, no more, and then “All right,” said rather firmly by Roger. His foot was touched again. Another twig cracked. The mate and the crew were just below the wall, ready for orders.

At that moment they heard the quick clumpety clump of horses’ feet and the rattle of heavy wheels, and clear above all that noise the loud and cheerful whistling of a tune.

Whispering seemed useless.

“What is it?” said the mate.

Three horses, trotting heavily along with the two pairs of great wheels on which the big logs are carried from the woods, and Mary Swainson’s woodman sitting on the shafts at one side and whistling like the very loudest of all blackbirds, made such a noise that it was quite safe to talk. There was no great log being carried, and the road just here was a little downhill, and the three huge horses, one before the other, were trotting like overgrown colts, with the heavy, red-painted wheels clattering and rattling behind them. They passed in a towering wave of noise, and a moment or two later were out of sight round the next bend in the road, though for some time the explorers could hear their hoofs and wheels, and sometimes the shriller notes of the woodman’s whistling.

“I saw them,” said Roger, “through the hole in the wall. Meant for rabbits, I should think. You can see quite well. It’s Mary Swainson’s woodman.”

“I thought it must be when I heard the whistling,” said Titty. “Of course, this must be the same road we cross, going down to Horseshoe Cove. Mary Swainson said they come round by Beckfoot with the big trees from the next valley. I wish I’d seen them too. Was it the same three horses?”

“Shut up, you two, for a minute,” said Susan. “John says, be quiet and listen. We’ve got to slip across the road.”

There was a soft thud as John dropped on the grass at the other side of the wall. Susan climbed up where John had been. John was already across the road and looking for a good place at which to cross the other wall. He found a stone jutting out and was up in a moment.

“This is the place,” he called softly. “Easy climbing. Come one at a time. Send the boy first.”

“Good-bye,” said Roger to Susan, when he had climbed up beside her among the beech leaves.

“We’re coming too,” said Titty.

But Roger was scampering across the road. He was already at the foot of the other wall when the horn of a motor sounded beyond the bend.

“Quick!” said John, and reached down to help him. There was a tremendous scrabbling at the wall. Moss flew in all directions, but somehow or other, with John pulling and Roger climbing, he came to the top and rolled over and dropped into the wood on the other side. A motor car, full of natives, shot past down the deserted, empty road.

“Now then, Titty,” said Susan, the moment the motor car was out of sight. “Your turn. Quick, before something else comes along.”

Titty slithered down out of the dark beech leaves.

“One minute,” she said. “The last patteran of all. Just so that we shall know where to get over on the way back. There may be lots of other trees like this one.”

She pulled a tuft of grass and stuffed it firmly in between two stones half-way up the wall.

“If we climb just there on the way back,” she said, “we’ll find a good step on the other side.”

“Buck up, Titty,” called John, and the able-seaman ran across the road, and was soon over the wall and in the wood beyond it where she found the boy, still a little shaken and out of breath.

“I wonder if they had scouts in that motor car,” he said.

“They didn’t see anything, anyhow,” said John from the wall just above. “Hi, Susan. This is much the easiest place.”

There was nothing to stop them now, and they hurried through the trees towards the river. They could see where it was by looking out across the meadows. “Two fields away,” said John, “and a stone barn, and then an oak.”

“There’s the stone barn,” said Susan. “It’s straight ahead, at the corner of the field, almost touching the wood.”

The trees were already not so thick, and when they came to the barn there was but a strip of green grass between them and the rushes at the river’s edge.

“And there’s the oak,” said John. “Stop a minute while I scout.”

He crawled carefully out from among the trees, looking this way and that.

“All clear,” he said, and the four explorers rushed headlong towards the great tree with low, wide-spreading branches that grew at the very edge of the river.

“The Amazon,” said Titty solemnly. “We ought to lie full length beside it and dip water with our hands to cool our parching throats.”

“Why,” said Susan, “it’s no time since you had an apple.”