Arthur Ransome - Swallows and Amazons (Complete Series)

He had another look at the damaged foot, and when he saw how blue and green a bit of it was turning, he thought for a moment that it must be hurting him badly. But he soon found it was not, by waggling it, when it hurt at once, so that he could easily tell the difference. He remembered what he had heard in several stories about wounded men fainting from pain. He was not quite sure how they did it. He flopped backwards, but a sprig of heather tickled the back of his neck. He had to find a smoother place to faint on. He wriggled until he could lie very comfortably at full length and then set about fainting in the grand style, but just when he thought he had at last found out how to do it, breathing very slowly with his eyes tight shut, something happened that he had not expected. He had been up early the day before for the march to the Amazon River. He had waked early again to-day in the camp half-way up the mountain. A great deal had been happening to him ever since and now, without thinking about it at all, he fell asleep.

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The noise of the axe, “Plunk, plunk, plunk,” was very near. Titty slackened her pace. She had come fast down the steep wood, holding now to one tree and now to another to steady herself. But, now that the noise was so near, she moved a little less like someone running for a doctor and a little more like an explorer in an unknown country. With Roger lying wounded at the edge of the moor, there was no time to be lost, but Titty did not want to run straight into the natives without knowing first what sort of natives they were. She tried to keep her feet from making so much noise among the dry leaves and fallen twigs. This was difficult because the wood just here was of the noisy kind, oaks, beeches, rowans, and especially hazels, with leaves and twigs that seemed to crackle and snap on purpose. Here and there were a few old giants, but most of the trees were short, young, bushy, and so near together that even a small and careful able-seaman could not push her way through without making a noise. Close in front of her, however, the trees had been lately cleared. The green curtains of leaves were not so thick as they had been, and in another moment she would be able to see who it was so steadily chopping away down there with hardly a rest between the blows. Titty heard the “plunk” of the axe, and then another, and then the noise of a chopped stick breaking off with a loud crack. Whoever it was, he was not cutting down a big tree, but was chopping small stuff. Almost it seemed too much to hope, and yet the noise did sound very much as if it might be charcoal-burners. Titty crept quietly to the edge of the clearing and looked out.

There beside the stream was a stretch of level ground, as it might be a platform on the side of the hill. On it there was a ring of sticks laid for the burning. The round stack was three or four feet high already, made of sticks about a yard long, all pointing towards the middle. Between the stack and the stream was a great pile of cut sods of earth. Titty knew what they were for, because last year she had seen one of the charcoal-burners’ stacks already alight, and covered all over with sods of earth, so that the fire should not burn too fast. She had seen the charcoal-burners keep the fire caged inside by covering every little hole with a sod the moment smoke or flame showed that the fire was finding a way out. On the other side of the half-finished stack, so close against the trees that she would hardly have seen it unless she had been looking for it, was the charcoal-burners’ hut, a wigwam built of long poles, their thick ends on the ground, their thin tops meeting high overhead. In front of it a big black kettle was hanging from a tripod over a small fire. At the other side of the flat space the wood dropped steeply again down into the valley. The sun, which had disappeared altogether during the fog, was now low over the shoulder of Kanchenjunga, and shone straight into Titty’s eyes as she looked out from among the trees. For a moment she did not see the charcoal-burner, though she heard him. Then the chopping stopped and from the other side of the wood-pile came an old, bent, brown man with a bundle of sticks which he put on the fire under the kettle.

Titty ran joyfully out. She did not know which of them he was, but she knew that the old man was one of the two Billies, the charcoal-burners who had shown them their adder last year when they had been making charcoal up in the woods on the other side of the lake.

“Well, lass,” said the old man, “we’ve been talking of seeing you again. And where are the rest of you?”

“There’s nobody here but me,” said Titty. “But Roger’s up on the moor at the top of the wood and he’s hurt his foot and I’ve got to get him home.”

The old man looked at Titty. She thought perhaps he had not understood.

“We got lost in the fog.”

“Aye,” said the charcoal-burner, “I was thinking it would be that. Came on fast, didn’t he? Thick, too. Older folk than you lose the road on the fells when he comes on thick as that. I was lost three days up on the tops fox-hunting one back end. Fifty year ago, it’ll be. Roger’s the little lad, eh? Where did you leave him? Top of the wood. By the beckside? You and I’ll be going to look to him right away.”

He walked to the edge of the flat space and put one hand to his mouth, to shout down through the trees.

“Kettle’s on,” he shouted, in a much louder voice than Titty had expected. “Kettle’s on. Come up, one o’ ye, to see to’t. I’m away.”

“Aw reet, Billy.” A shout came up from far below, and now for the first time Titty heard noises from down there, the clanking of chain over a pulley, the stamping of horses and the creak of heavy timber.

“What is it?”

“Shifting timber,” said the old man. “There are some rare big logs to go yet. You’ll have seen some of them going round to the foot of the lake. Like to run down and have a look?”

“I must go back to Roger,” said Titty.

“I’ll be thinking I’m getting old next,” said the charcoal-burner. “I was forgetting the lad already. Come on then, lass, and we’ll soon see what’s to do.”

The old man and the able-seaman set out to climb through the trees up to the moor.

“Aye,” he said, “they were saying you were back and up on fellside above Swainson’s. There was a rare lot of talk last year about you folk and finding Mr. Turner’s things for him that were taken. And this year they say you’ve had a bit of a sad do with your boat.”

“It wasn’t John’s fault,” said Titty. “It might have happened to anybody. And Swallow’s nearly mended and she’s coming back as good as new. And the new mast’s done. And as soon as we’ve got her again we’re going back to the island.”

“And the Blackett lasses,” said the charcoal-burner. “There’s old Miss Turner been staying at Beckfoot. You’ll not have been seeing so much of the lasses, I reckon.”

“She’s gone now,” said Titty. “And Nancy and Peggy are camping with us to-night. They’ve sailed down the lake, with John and Susan. And we ought to have had the fire lit before they got to the camp. And then the fog came. And now Roger . . .”

“Don’t take on, lass,” said the old man. “Happen the fog bothered them a bit, too, on the water.”

That was true, she thought. Perhaps the boat party were not yet at Swallowdale. It might yet be possible to get there first. Titty looked at the old man and made up her mind to ask him a question.