Arthur Ransome - Swallows and Amazons (Complete Series)

“Have you hurt yourself?” asked Titty, jumping across the stream.

“Rather,” said the boy.

“Badly?”

“Very badly. I can’t get up. But I was right about the tree. Look at it.”

If Roger had something in his mind, nothing would stop him from talking of it. He had been thinking of the tree before he jumped. He was thinking of it still, as he lay beside the stream. Titty looked up.

Close above them a tall pine towered like a grey ghost in the white mist. Titty was almost as much troubled by the tree as by Roger.

“There are no trees on the top of the moor,” she said. “There aren’t any till down the other side of Swallowdale in the wood above Swainson’s farm.”

“Well, there it is,” said Roger. “Ouch!”

“Where does it hurt?”

“It’s my best foot. Broken, I think.”

“Oh, Roger.”

“And there is no more chocolate.”

“But it can’t be our wood, because the Swallowdale beck is twice as big as this when it comes out of Trout Tarn and it’s bigger still by the wood. It can’t be our beck at all. And we’ve been following it for miles and miles.”

“I can’t move my foot,” said Roger.

“Oh, Roger,” said Titty again, kneeling beside him, “try not to squeak while I get your shoe off.”

Roger sat still and stiffened himself all over, waiting for a twinge, but none came. The shoe slipped off in the able-seaman’s fingers almost before he knew she had loosened the laces.

“I don’t think it’s broken,” she said. “Try waggling it, just a little.”

But the first beginning of a waggle brought the pain back at once. It was as if someone were pushing a red-hot skewer through the boy’s ankle. “Ouch!” he said, “I’m not going to waggle it any more.”

“Try putting it in the water. I wish the mate were here. She’d know what to do. Anyhow, you ought to be sitting on your knapsack.”

The boy slid himself over the stones and lowered his foot carefully into a little pool in the stream.

“Cold,” he said, “but not half bad.”

“I wish I knew where we were,” said the able-seaman, undoing the boy’s knapsack and putting it so that he could sit on it. Susan, she knew, would have thought of that at once.

“Well, it isn’t anybody’s fault,” said the boy. “Bother the fog. Hullo! Look at the tree now. It’s breathing.”

So it was. The drooping branches of the pine were moving very gently up and down in the mist, though the trunk of the tree did not stir.

“Listen! Listen!” said Titty. “Wind’s coming at last.”

There was a faint noise of wind in tree-tops somewhere behind the white blanket of mist that closed them in from all sides.

“There’s another noise, too,” said Roger.

Titty listened. Yes. “Plunk, plunk, plunk.” It was the noise of an axe. “Woodcutters,” she said.

“Ouch!” squeaked the boy. “Sorry. It’s all right really. It was only when I turned round too quick. The fog’s going away. More trees. Lots. A forest. Wherever are we?”

Titty licked the back of her hand and held it in the air to feel where the wind was coming from.

“It’s coming from the other side of the trees. Look, the whole fog’s lifting. I told you it would. I wish we’d waited.”

The able-seaman and the boy now saw that they were in a place where they had never been before. They were on the very edge of the moorland, which stretched up behind them into the thinning mist. Before them the ground dropped so sharply that they could see over the tops of trees growing only a few yards away. The little stream that had led them to this place flung itself down into the forest. Far away below them they could see fields, and beyond them woods climbing the other side of a valley.

“Where’s the lake?” cried Roger.

“There isn’t a lake,” said Titty. “It isn’t our valley at all.”

“But the lake must be there somewhere.”

“It isn’t. And those hills aren’t the hills behind Rio or Shark Bay.”

The mist lifted up and up, so that first the low hills showed beneath it, and then other hills above them, and then a patch of sky. But at one place, higher than this, though the mist was still lifting, there was nothing to be seen but dark rock and heather. The mist rose higher and higher, and still in that place there was no sky.

“There’s a mountain,” said Roger. “It must be a mountain, and there are really no big mountains behind Dixon’s farm.”

Still the mist lifted until at last they could see two great patches of sky on either side of the mountain, though they could not see its top. The two patches of sky grew upwards and towards each other, while wisps of mist drifted between them across the mountain-side. At last the patches of sky joined. The top of the mountain was clear of mist, and the boy and the able-seaman shouted together, “It’s Kanchenjunga!”

“The compass hasn’t gone wrong after all,” said Titty. “It was the stream that was going the wrong way.”

“And us,” said Roger.

“We must have turned right round in the fog.” She laid the compass open on the ground.

“How are we going to get back?”

For a moment the able-seaman thought of turning round and going upstream to the top of the moor where, perhaps, with the fog blowing away, she would be able to see where they had gone wrong, and find the trail of pine-cones again, and so come to Swallowdale not too late.

But the next moment she knew that this was no good. There was Roger unable to move his foot. It was no good thinking she could carry him. Besides, even if she could, she could not be sure of finding the pine-cones, and then perhaps the mist would come rolling down on them again and they would be worse lost than ever. What would Susan do if she were here? There could be no sort of doubt. Though the able-seaman found it hard to have to give in, she knew that there was only one thing to be done. Help had to be got from the natives. And who could tell what sort of natives she would find?

“Plunk, plunk, plunk.” She could hear the noise of the axe somewhere in the woods beneath them. She turned to Roger with her mind made up.

“I’m going on down,” she said.

“But I can’t move.”

“You must wait here till I bring help.”

“By myself?”

“Look here, Roger, I’ll lend you Peter Duck. You can have Peter Duck while I’m away. I must go down and find the woodcutters. Peter Duck says so too.”

“You stay here, and let Peter Duck find the woodcutters.”

“Perhaps he doesn’t know their language. No! There’s nothing else to be done. I’ve got to go.”

“But I don’t want to be left behind.”

“Roger,” said Titty sternly, “just you remember, you’re a ship’s boy. And not the youngest any more.”

“Of course I’m not,” said Roger. “There’s the ship’s baby.”

“Well, that’s what I said. And there’s no time to lose. We ought to be back already. It’ll be evening soon. And it’s been night for the parrot ever since yesterday morning.”

Roger pulled himself together.

“I don’t mind, now the fog’s gone,” he said.

“So you’ll be all right? I’ll be as quick as I can.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” said Roger.

“There’s one lump of chocolate left in the pocket of my knapsack,” said Titty, wriggling out of the straps.

“I won’t eat it unless I’m very hungry,” said Roger.

Titty dropped her knapsack beside him, and set off down into the forest.

The ship’s boy felt suddenly a good deal less brave as the able-seaman disappeared among the trees. Almost he called after her, but stopped himself in time. He thought then of giving the owl call, to show that he was still being a ship’s boy and not afraid of anything. But he remembered that Titty might not know that his owl call meant exactly that. She might think he wanted her to come back. Then she would come and that would be no good at all, because she would have to start all over again. No, there was nothing for it but sitting still and being ready for anything that might happen. Bears, for example. It looked just that kind of forest. Or wolves. But, after all, the bears and wolves had missed their chance. The fog had lifted now. Before, a bear or a wolf could have crept close up on the able-seaman and the boy as they struggled along in the fog, and then leapt upon them without warning. “They needn’t even have growled or snarled. The first thing we’d have known would have been the snap of their jaws.” It was an unpleasant thought and though, now that the fog had lifted, surprises of that kind were impossible, Roger took three or four good stones and put them together where he could grab one up in a moment if he needed it. Then he had another look at his wounded foot, and found that somehow it did not hurt so much to move it when he was by himself as it had when someone else was there hoping it would not hurt him more than he could bear. Still, it hurt quite badly enough. Moving it at all reminded him of the mermaid who had to walk on sharp knives. He found that if he had been a mermaid he could have managed quite well without legs even on dry land. He heaved himself up on his hands and then let himself down again. It would have taken a long time to get very far, but, happily, he did not need to. He made himself a comfortable lair, arranged both knapsacks on the ground and, sliding himself along, settled down on them, with his stones within easy reach and the stream so near that he could take a drink from it in the palm of his hand. It did come into his head that dragging himself about in this way was not too good for the seat of his breeches, but, after all, it was nothing to what they had had to suffer from the Knickerbockerbreaker in Swallowdale, and Mary Swainson, when she last darned them, had used good strong stuff and had said, “It’ll take you more than a slide or two to get through that.” Then, of course, came a rather grimmer thought. He would not be able to do any more sliding on the Knickerbockerbreaker with his foot all gone wrong, even if the seat of his breeches had been made of leather instead of being mostly Mary Swainson’s darning.