Arthur Ransome - Swallows and Amazons (Complete Series)

“No, don’t empty out the kettle,” she said. “There’s enough tea in it to fill the mug for the Amazons. They may want it.”

“The best thing about being on the march,” said Roger, “is that there’s only one knife and one fork to clean instead of four of each.”

“Three of each less to lose,” said the mate. “You hand that knife and fork over here instead of sticking them in the heather, where they’re bound to get lost.”

“They’re stuck there to dry,” said Roger.

“Hand them over,” said the mate. “We’ll get everything except the mug packed before the others come. Hullo, what’s that?”

There was a noise in the wood below them, a noise something like an owl and something like a cuckoo, ending in a gurgle of laughter that was not like a bird at all.

“Here they are,” said John.

“It’s no good their trying to make the owl call,” said Roger. “They can’t do it.”

“What they’re good at is ducks,” said John. “I’ve never heard anybody quack so well as Peggy.”

“Nobody can be good at everything,” said Titty.

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One reason why the Amazons found it hard to make good owl calls was that they had very little breath. They had pulled hard all the way up the river and then had had to climb the steep gorge to the top of the woods. Not even guides can run uphill and make good owl calls at the same time, and the Amazons, after all, were more pirates than guides, and knew more about sailing than about climbing mountains. Still, for the moment, they were being guides, and Captain Nancy, beside her knapsack, had a huge coil of rope slung on her shoulder for easy carrying. She took it off as she came into the camp and threw herself panting on the ground.

“Where’s Peggy?” said Susan.

“Just coming. We raced from the bottom.”

“Would you like some tea?” said Susan.

“Wouldn’t I?” said Nancy, rolling over. “We had breakfast awfully early because of saying good-bye to the G.A. But it was worth it. Everybody thought so. We saw the housemaid dancing in the kitchen. And cook said, ‘Now we can breathe again.’ And it wasn’t any good mother and Uncle Jim pretending. Anybody but the G.A. would have known how they felt.”

“Come on, Peggy,” called Titty, as the mate of the Amazon struggled up out of the trees.

“I couldn’t come any faster,” said Peggy. “I could hear the nectar sloshing round in the bottle in my knapsack, and hitting the top of the bottle inside, and I thought it would bust the cork out any minute. It’s a weight, too.”

“Nothing to the rope,” said Captain Nancy. “And cook crammed my knapsack with doughnuts.”

“I’ll carry the bottle now,” said John.

“Or shall we leave everything here?” said Susan.

“And just make a desperate dash to the summit,” said Titty.

“Much better have it to drink on the summit,” said Nancy.

So while Peggy and Nancy were using the expedition’s mug to share the tea that Susan had kept for them, John shifted the big bottle of nectar from Peggy’s knapsack to his own.

“We’ll carry it part of the way,” said Nancy.

“How do we fasten the rope?” said Roger.

“Give them time to get their tea down,” said Susan.

“It’s all right,” said Nancy, “we can’t both drink at once.”

“Has the great-aunt really gone?” asked Titty.

“She jolly well has,” said Nancy. “If we hurry, we ought to be able to see the smoke of the train that’s taking her away. The quicker the better. Swallows and Amazons for ever. Hurrah for Wild Cat Island and the Spanish Main. And Swallow’s nearly ready. And Uncle Jim is so sick of being a nephew that he’s going to be a first-rate uncle for a change.”

“We packed our tent and stowed it in Amazon last night,” said Peggy.

Nancy held the mug upside down and let the last dregs of the tea hiss on the embers of the fire. “What about going on?” she said, and was going to put the mug as it was in one of the knapsacks, but Susan took it in time to save that, and washed it out in the beck and dried it so that wet sugar should not trickle out of it into places where it was not wanted. The four sleeping-bags, neatly rolled up, were packed between two rocks with everything else that was not being taken to the top. Nothing but food was being taken, besides, of course, the telescope, the compass, and the huge bottle of lemonade, nectar or grog, that Peggy had carried up from the valley.

“How do we fasten the rope?” asked Roger again.

“We fasten it to all of us,” said Nancy.

“Then we mustn’t pull different ways,” said Roger.

“Nobody exactly pulls,” said Nancy. “It’s so that nobody falls over a precipice. There are six of us. If one tumbles, the other five hang on so that the one who tumbles doesn’t tumble far.”

“Are there any precipices?” asked Roger.

“Dozens,” said Titty, “and if there aren’t we can easily make some.”

“There really are plenty,” said Peggy.

“We shan’t go by the path,” said Nancy. “When we come to a rock, we’ll go over it.”

“Let’s begin,” said Roger. “Who goes first? Can I?”

“No,” said John. “The rope isn’t a painter for you to jump ashore with. We must have somebody big in front. It ought to be Nancy. I’ll take the other end.”

“We must make loops in it,” said Nancy. “Six loops, big enough to stick our heads and shoulders through.”

It was done. There were about five yards between each loop. Nancy hung the first loop on herself. Mate Susan took the next, and after her came Able-seaman Titty, Boy Roger, Mate Peggy, and Captain John.

“Now then,” said Nancy, “everybody ready?”

“We ought really to have ice-axes,” said Titty.

Nancy heard her. “I thought of that,” she said, “but they’d get horribly in the way. Worse than the rope. Hands and feet are better, especially on the rocks.”

The long procession moved off. Just at first the rope made it difficult to talk. This was because when anyone wanted to talk to the one in front he hurried on and tripped over loose rope, while at the same time he stretched the rope taut behind him and so gave a disturbing jerk to someone else. By the time they had learnt to talk without hurrying forward or hanging back they were climbing slopes so steep that nobody wanted to talk at all. There were things to shout, such as “Don’t touch this rock. It’s a loose one,” but mostly it was grim, straight-ahead, silent climbing.

At the start they had been scrambling up beside the tiny mountain beck that was now all that was left to remind them of the river far down below them in the valley. But as soon as they had come to a place from which they had had a clear view of the summit, Nancy, the leader, had turned directly towards it, and within a minute or two everybody had learnt how useful it is on a mountain to have four legs instead of two. Sometimes Nancy turned to left or to right to avoid loose screes, but when she came to a rock that could be climbed, she climbed it, and all the rest of the explorers climbed it after her.

“The really tough bit’s still to come,” she said cheerfully.

The tough bit came when nobody expected it, and the explorers were very glad they had a rope in spite of its being such a bother from the talking point of view. They had come to a steep face of rock, not really very difficult, because there were cracks running across it which made good footholds and handholds, but not a good place to tumble down, because there was nothing to stop you and there were a lot of loose stones at the bottom of it. Nancy had gone up it easily enough, and Susan after her. Titty was just crawling over the edge at the top of it and Peggy and John were waiting at the bottom ready to start, when suddenly Roger, who was about half-way up, shouted out, “Look! Look! Wild goats!”