Arthur Ransome - Swallows and Amazons (Complete Series)

“There’s our tree,” called Roger, as the boat turned a bend of the river and he saw the huge oak with its branches spreading far out over the water.

“Easy all,” called Mate Peggy.

“You’re sure you really do want to go home that way instead of coming in the Amazon?” said Mate Susan.

“Of course we do,” said Titty. “That’s what we laid the patterans for.”

“Besides,” said Roger, “there’s hardly any wind.”

“Well, look here, Titty,” said Susan. “There really isn’t much wind, so if you do get back before us you can get the fire going and put some water on to boil. You’ll find the saucepan in the larder.”

“Susan!” said Titty indignantly.

“In Peter Duck’s cave, I mean,” said Susan. “There’s no point in taking the kettle. The less you have to carry the better.”

“We don’t need anything but chocolate,” said Roger.

“And the compass,” said Titty. “We’ll take great care of it. We ought to have the compass, you know.”

“We shan’t need it,” said Susan.

“All right,” said John.

“Back water with your left,” cried Peggy. “Ship your oars!”

With a loud swishing of oak leaves, the rowing boat ran itself gently into the bank beside the big tree. Roger was out in a moment and hanging on to the painter to stop the boat from slipping back until Titty had picked out their two knapsacks and worked her way past the rowers to join him on the bank. John gave her the compass. Susan handed out a double ration of chocolate for each of them. Except for the chocolate and compass there was nothing in their knapsacks, but, when exploring, they would rather have had empty knapsacks than none. They would not need their sleeping-bags which, as Nancy said, would cram in with the rest of the cargo in Amazon. “Much better send things by sea than by pack-horses.”

“Pack-donkeys,” said Susan. “They’d be much better off in Amazon themselves.”

For a moment the able-seaman was afraid that Susan was going to think better of it, and not let them go after all, but Peggy called out, “Shove her off,” so Roger threw the painter aboard, and the two of them, pushing together, sent the boat shooting out into the river.

“Out oars,” called Peggy, who was enjoying giving orders to the captains. “Back water with your right. Pull left. Left. Pull both. Steady. Left again. All right now.”

The war canoe with the two captains and the two mates moved fast downstream and disappeared.

Roger looked after it.

“Suppose we never see them again,” he said.

The able-seaman was not going to allow that kind of talk.

“Now then, Boy,” she said, “get your knapsack on. We mustn’t hang about. It wouldn’t be fair to the ship’s parrot. He’s waiting in the cave.”

“He’s got Peter Duck,” said the boy.

“No, he hasn’t. Not now. We’ll have Peter Duck with us. He was waiting for us under the oak tree. It’s just the sort of thing he’d like, following patterans over the moor. Besides, he’ll be a help in case of natives.”

“Unfriendly ones?” said the boy, struggling into the straps of his flapping, empty knapsack.

“Savages,” said the able-seaman. “They might go for you or me if we were by ourselves. But if Peter Duck were to give just one look at them they wouldn’t dare.”

All the same, when they had slipped through the edges of the wood to the road, they listened carefully, lying on the top of the stone wall, to make sure that no natives of any kind were coming either way.

“Are you ready?” said Titty.

“Aye, aye, sir,” said the boy.

“Peter Duck says now’s our chance. Drop and hare across for all you’re worth.”

They dropped, and hared.

“Here’s my tuft of grass. That’s the first of the patterans. There’s a good step on the other side. Be quick. Give me one foot. Don’t kick with the other. Wriggle with the top of you. Quick!”

The able-seaman hoisted the boy up the wall. He scrambled over the top and disappeared, all but his hands, which for a moment clung on to the moss-covered stones.

“I’m feeling for the step,” his voice came in a whisper, as if he were afraid of being overheard. “I’ve got it.”

His hands were gone and Titty heard him drop into the dead leaves on the other side of the wall. She found it none too easy to climb the wall herself, and would have been glad if Peter Duck had been real enough to give her a leg up as she had given Roger. Of course, he would have done if he had been there. So she had to pretend that he had already climbed over. “He did it in one jump,” she said to herself. “It was nothing to him after running up and down rigging all his life.” A moment later she, too, had found the step on the other side and jumped from it down into the wood. Roger was already looking for pine-cones.

“No,” said the able-seaman, “we didn’t put any here. No need. We follow the wall till we see the four firs, and then the four firs show the way to the first of our patterans. We can’t go wrong here. All we’ve got to do is to keep along the wall and climb as fast as we can.”

They had crossed the road just at the place where the old wall came down from the moor. They could almost touch it when they dropped down into the wood. There was nothing to keep them, and they began at once scrambling up through the wood, keeping close to the old wall, and pushing aside the hazel branches. It was hard climbing, and they were glad when they came to the edge of the thick wood, to the place where the trees had been cut down and there was little left but old stumps, and foxgloves, and ferns, so that they could see where they were going and how the ruins of the old wall led on to the four dark fir trees standing one above another on the steep hillside.

“What about chocolate?” said Roger, less because he wanted chocolate than because he wanted a rest.

“Come on,” said Titty. “We’ll have our first chocolate under the four firs. That’ll be the first stage. Then we’ll have to look for our patterans to show us the rest of the way.”

They hurried on, climbing still, over the rough, broken ground where the old tree stumps and the few scattered young trees showed there had once been a wood. Under the four great firs, which were all that were left of that old forest of thirty or forty or fifty years ago, the able-seaman and the boy ate a ration of chocolate, and looked back into the valley of the Amazon.

Roger said, “I wish I’d seen the great-aunt close to.”

“It’s a good thing none of us did,” said Titty. “Just think of what happened to the people who looked at the Gorgon. We might all have been turned into stone and stuck about the Beckfoot garden with bird-baths or sundials on the tops of our heads.”

“It didn’t happen like that to the Amazons,” said Roger.

“Perhaps they always looked the other way,” said Titty. “And, anyhow, she almost did turn them into stone. Look at the way they got stuck here and couldn’t do any of the things they wanted to do. And remember how stiff they were when we saw them in the carriage. That was because they were sitting just in front of her. I don’t believe even Captain Flint felt properly springy while she was anywhere near.”

“I wonder where he is.”

“Playing the accordion in his houseboat probably. At least I think that’s what he’d do. He saw her off this morning, you know. Come on, Boy. Let’s get on to Swallowdale. Remember the Amazons are going to be in the camp to-night. Come on. We must keep the four firs in a line and look for the patterans.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” said the boy, and scampered on towards the moor with his eyes on the ground, running to right and then to left and back again like a dog trying to pick up a scent.