Arthur Ransome - Swallows and Amazons (Complete Series)

“Let’s.”

“We will some day. Daddy’s done it.”

“So has Uncle Jim,” said Peggy.

“Of course, you couldn’t see round, however high you were,” said Roger.

“You wouldn’t want to,” said Titty. “Much better fun not knowing what was coming next.”

“Well, up here you’re properly on the roof.” Nancy threw herself down on the warm ground. “What about that nectar? Oh, I say, I’ve forgotten all about it and let you carry it all the way up.”

“That’s all right.” John brought the big bottle out of his knapsack, and the mug began to make its rounds with lemonade rather warm after its journey, while Susan and Peggy were cutting up the bunloaf and opening the last of the pemmican tins, and Nancy emptied out the doughnuts.

“I wonder whether anybody’s ever had dinner on the top of Kanchenjunga before?” said Titty, when she had eaten her share of pemmican and was finishing off with a doughnut.

“They must have done, when they built the cairn,” said Peggy. “Think of the time it must have taken to build up all those stones.”

“Perhaps it didn’t take any time,” said Titty. “Perhaps some tribe or other had won a victory, and everybody brought one stone and put it there.”

“But they’d have a feast after that,” said Roger. “Can I climb up the cairn?”

“No,” said Susan. “You’ve had one tumble already, and there aren’t thousands of us to build the cairn up again if you go and bring it down.”

“It’s very well built.”

“That just shows the people who built it didn’t want ship’s boys to pull it down.”

“I’ll be very careful.”

“Have an apple.”

“May I lean against the cairn?”

“Anything you like so long as you don’t start climbing on it.”

Roger sat down with his back against the cairn, so as to be less tempted to climb it. It seemed a pity not to and so be a few feet higher even than the top of Kanchenjunga. He would climb it, he thought, next year or perhaps the year after. In the meantime . . . He looked down towards Swallowdale somewhere on the moors so far below, tried to see Wild Cat Island, but could not be sure if he had, watched a steamer moving at the low end of the lake, looked out to sea and then, when he had eaten his apple, rolled over and began feeling the stones at the foot of the cairn. Was it so very well built, after all?

The others were planning what they would do, now that the great-aunt was gone, and the Amazons were once more free to be pirates, and there seemed to be hope that Swallow would soon be back, when they were startled by a shout from Roger. “Look, look! What’s this?”

In his hand was a small round brass box with the head of an old lady stamped on the lid of it. Framing the head of the old lady were big printed letters: “QUEEN OF ENGLAND EMPRESS OF INDIA DIAMOND JUBILEE 1897.” Roger had found a loose stone at the foot of the cairn, had pulled it out, and seen the little brass box hidden behind it.

“She must be Queen Victoria,” said John. “She came before Edward the Seventh.”

“She really is awfully like Bridgie used to be,” said Titty.

“There’s something inside,” said Roger, shaking the box.

“Let’s open it,” said Nancy.

“I’ll open it,” said Roger, and he did. Inside was a folded bit of paper and a farthing with the head of Queen Victoria on it.

“Take care,” said Titty. “It may be a treasure chart. It may be a deadly secret. It may crumble at a touch. They often do.”

But the paper was strong enough. Roger let Nancy unfold it. She opened it, began reading it aloud, and then stopped. Peggy took it and read it aloud, while the others looked at it over her shoulder. It was written in black pencil that had scored deeply into the paper:

“That’s mother and Uncle Jim,” said Peggy in a queer voice.

“Who is Bob Blackett?” asked Susan.

“He was father,” said Nancy.

Nobody said anything for a minute, and then Titty, looking at the paper, said, “So that was what they called it. Well, it’s Kanchenjunga now. It’s no good changing it now we’ve climbed it.”

“That was thirty years ago,” said John.

“I wonder how mother and Uncle Jim escaped from the great-aunt to come up here,” said Peggy. “She was looking after them, you know.”

“Probably father rescued them,” said Nancy.

“Why did they put the farthing in?” wondered Roger.

“Let’s put it all back,” said Titty hurriedly. “They meant it to stay for a thousand years.”

“Has anybody got a bit of paper?” said Nancy suddenly.

Nobody had, but Titty had the stump of a pencil. Nancy took it and wrote firmly on the back of the paper on which her father and mother and uncle had set forth their triumph of thirty years before:

“Aug. 11. 1931.

We climbed Kanchenjunga.”

“Now,” she said, “we all sign here,” and she wrote her name. “You next, Captain John. Then the two mates, and then the able-seaman and the ship’s boy.”

Everybody signed. Then Nancy folded up the paper, put it back in the box with the farthing, and gave it to Roger.

“You found it,” she said. “You put it back, and then perhaps in another thirty years. . . .” She broke off, but presently laughed. “Shiver my timbers,” she said, “but I wish we had a George the Fifth farthing.”

“I’ve got a new halfpenny,” said Roger.

“Can you spare it?”

“I’ll give you another if you can’t,” said John, “when we get back to the camp.”

Roger dug out his halfpenny. The box was closed and pushed far back into the hole at the foot of the cairn. Roger wedged the loose stone firmly in its place.

“Nobody’d ever guess there was anything there,” said Roger. “I wouldn’t have found it if the stone hadn’t worked loose.”

“And now perhaps it won’t be found for ages and ages till people wear quite different sorts of clothes,” said Titty. “Perhaps it’ll be more explorers just like us. I wonder how big Captain Flint was then?”

“I wonder if they had a clear day for it,” said Peggy.

“And saw the Isle of Man,” said Roger.

They looked out to sea.

“Hullo,” said John. “We can’t see it any more.”

“I saw it a minute ago,” said Titty.

“There must be a fog out at sea,” said John. “What luck that we came up early while it was still so clear.”

“Come along,” said Nancy suddenly. “Remember we’ve got to get down to Watersmeet and then to Beckfoot and then sail to Horseshoe Cove and carry our tent up to Swallowdale. We ought to be starting.”

“Where’s the rope?” said Roger.

“I’ll carry the rope,” said Nancy. “We used it all right coming up. I don’t see why we shouldn’t use the path going down. It’ll be lots quicker.”

A minute or two later, after a last look round from the top of the world, the six explorers who had climbed Kanchenjunga as Kanchenjunga should be climbed, were hurrying down the mountain at a good jog-trot.

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It was early afternoon when the Beckfoot war canoe, or rowing boat, shot through the bridge into the lower reaches of the Amazon. The two captains were rowing, Roger was in the bows, and the rest of the explorers were in the stern, together with the rope and the knapsacks and the sleeping-bags, the kettle and the milk-can that they had picked up at the Half Way Camp on their way down from the top of the mountain.