Arthur Ransome - Swallows and Amazons (Complete Series)

“I wish we had our fishing-rods,” said Roger. “We’d catch dozens and dozens and take them back to feed the camp.”

“We couldn’t fish in all these trees,” said Titty.

“Well, there are lots of fish,” said Roger.

“Anyway, we can’t fish now. We are explorers, sent out into the jungle by the rest of the expedition. We mustn’t think of anything else. At the very moment when we were looking at a fish there might be a yell. . . .”

“A blood-curdling kind of yell?”

“Of course blood-curdling. Boomerangs and arrows might come whizzing through the air. And even if we weren’t killed at once the savages would tie us up and take us away, and then when the others came to look for us they would walk into the very same trap.”

“What’s that noise?” said the ship’s boy suddenly.

It was the noise of a motor horn. They both knew what it was, but it was far too good a noise to waste.

“The trumpets of the savages,” said Titty. “There’s probably a causeway through the forest. We must be near the edge of the jungle.”

Another horn sounded, on a different note, and they could hear the fierce throbbing roar of a motor bicycle.

“Trumpets and tom-toms,” said Titty. “The savages have their scouts on the road trumpeting to each other. We shan’t be able to go much farther. Peggy said we couldn’t.”

“Well, let’s go as far as we can,” said Roger.

This part of the wood was all smallish trees, growing thickly together. There were hazels, oaks, birches, and here and there an ash, and here and there a stout prickly bush of holly, or a lonely feathery pine waving high above the rest. There was honeysuckle, too, tangling bough with bough. It was as good a jungle as anyone could want. And through this jungle ran the little stream hurrying on its way to the lake.

The able-seaman and the boy pressed on. Suddenly they saw what looked like an opening in the trees away to the left. They crossed the stream and pushed through the bushes towards the opening, and found a cart-track, which led through the trees to a gap in the stone wall along the edge of the wood. Perhaps there had been a gate in the gap once upon a time, but there was no gate now, and the ends of the wall had fallen down. Beyond the wall lay the road, and on the other side of the road was another wall of loose stones covered with moss. Beyond that was another kind of wood, larches and pines and a few firs climbing steeply up into the sky.

The able-seaman saw the road first. She dropped flat at once on the ground by the side of the cart-track. The boy waited for half a second and then dropped beside her.

“We don’t know whether they’re friendlies or not,” said the able-seaman.

“The only people we know on this side of the lake are the Amazons,” said the boy.

“Well, we know where they are, so anyone on the road must be someone else.”

A motor car flashed across the gap in the wall. For a moment they caught through the trees the glint of sunlight on something bright; then they saw it in the gap; then it was gone. Then three natives on bicycles passed the gap, going the other way. Then came a noise which promised something better. It was the noise of horses’ hoofs clumping on the hard road.

“Trotting or walking?” said Roger.

“Probably walking,” said Titty. “It usually is when it sounds like the other. A lot of them, anyhow.”

The horses were a long time coming into sight, but when they came they were worth waiting for. Through the gap in the wall the able-seaman and the boy saw them pass by, three huge ruddy-brown horses, harnessed one before the other, and after them the thing that they were pulling, the trunk of a great tree chained down to two pairs of big red wooden wheels, a tree four or five times as big as the tall lighthouse tree on Wild Cat Island. One man was leading the first of the horses, and another man was resting, smoking a pipe, sitting high in air on the thin end of the great tree which stuck out over the road behind the second pair of wheels. He had his back towards the explorers, or he might easily have seen them from so high above the wall.

THE EXPLORERS

“Where is it going?” said Roger.

“Probably to be made into boats,” said Titty.

The larch wood at the farther side of the road looked easier going than the tangled jungle through which they had come.

“Can’t we wriggle a bit nearer to the road,” said Roger, “and then rush across when none of the natives are looking?”

“It’s no good,” said Titty. “There’s someone passing every other minute.”

As she spoke another motor car went trumpeting by.

“I say,” said Roger a minute or two later. “The natives couldn’t see us if we went under their road instead of across it.”

“Of course they couldn’t,” said Titty.

“There must be a bridge,” said Roger, “where the stream comes through.”

“That’s a jolly good idea.”

“I thought perhaps it would be.”

“We’ll get back to the beck at once,” said Titty. They could hear it, not very far away, when they listened for it, and indeed they had left it only when they had been tempted by seeing the clearing where the cart-track ran through the wood. They jumped up and plunged back into the bushes, found the stream and hurried along its banks. Not more than fifty yards from the place where they had lain watching the road through the gap in the old wall, they came to the bridge, a low, wide, ivy-covered arch. The road ran over it, but the ivy was so thick and the trees below the bridge grew so close to it that the explorers found that they could follow the stream right into the arch without being seen by anybody, unless some native happened to be looking down from the bridge at the moment. Looking through under the archway they could see the bright greens and browns of the larch wood and the glitter of sunlight on the water at the other side.

The able-seaman sat down. “Take off your shoes, Boy,” she said.

“Aye, aye, sir,” said the boy.

“Tie the laces together so that you can hang them round your neck.” Her own shoes were off as she spoke. It was easier to untie them when there were no feet in them to put them into awkward positions. She untied them and then took the end of a lace from each and tied the two ends in a bow. “You needn’t tie yours so tight,” she said, looking to see what the boy was doing. “You’ll want them when we get through. Now, then. Put your feet exactly where I put mine.”

She stepped into the water. It rose to her ankles at the first step she took, and nearly to her knees at the second, but after that it got no deeper, and at one side, under the bridge, it was quite shallow.

“Slip in here,” said the able-seaman. “I wish your legs were a bit longer. Don’t let your knickers get wet. Roll them up as high as you can. Keep to this side.”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

“And whatever you do, don’t tumble down.”

Steadying themselves with their hands against the low arch of the bridge that curved over their heads, and paddling in shallow clear water over stones slippery with moss, they crept carefully through under the bridge.

A big motor lorry passed overhead, making the old bridge shiver. The boy looked with scared eyes at the able-seaman. But this was one of those dangers that was gone before you had really had time to know it was there, and the able-seaman was already feeling for steadier stones in the pool above the bridge to find the best way to the bank.

“It’s all right,” she said. “Keep close along the wall. Don’t step on the big stone. It waggles, but there’s a good one here.”