Arthur Ransome - Swallows and Amazons (Complete Series)

So they climbed on, to the place where the larch trees ended and the other sort of wood began, hazels and oaks, like the trees in the wood by the lake. At the edge of the larches they stopped, though this time John wanted to go on, and it was Titty who thought it was time for a halt.

“I don’t believe this wood is a very wide one,” John said. “If we go on a little way we shall be out of the trees.”

“That’s just it,” said the able-seaman. “The new country’s just the other side. And we ought all to come out of the trees together.”

“All right,” said Captain John. “You’re in command. It’s your discovery, anyhow.”

“And Roger’s. We’d have turned back if he hadn’t begun climbing by the waterfall. And really, it was the stream most of all. We had to go on to see where the noise was coming from. You’ll hear it as soon as we’re up on the moor.”

So the captain and the able-seaman lay on their backs on a smooth slope of copper larch needles, and looked up through the clear green larches to the blue sky high overhead. A squirrel hurrying through the feathery branches was startled at the sight of them lying there, and chattered at them, pretending he was more angry than afraid. They heard him, and lay still, and moved nothing but their eyes until they saw his bushy red tail and then his tufted ears lifted high above his face.

“He must hurry up,” said the able-seaman. “I’ll have to be blowing the mate’s whistle in a minute, and he won’t like it. She’ll have got the milk by now and they’ll have started up from the farm if the old man didn’t keep them to sing. We ought to begin whistling to let them know which way to go.”

“Well, give her another minute or two. She can’t lose the way, because of the stream. It doesn’t really matter where she comes to it.” But he stirred as he spoke, and the squirrel fled away through the tops of the larches, running out on a branch that dropped with his weight and then leaping from it to a branch in another tree, when the branch he had left swung up again behind him as if trying to hurry him on his way.

“It won’t matter now,” said Titty, and she sat up and blew the mate’s whistle.

An owl called not far away in the woods.

“There they are,” said Titty. “They’re higher than we are.” She whistled again.

The owl answered. John jumped to his feet. So did the able-seaman.

“Come on,” she said. “They are higher up. They may get to the edge of the wood first.”

But the captain and the able-seaman had not climbed more than another twenty yards or so along the banks of the stream before they heard the talking of the mate and the boy, and presently saw them, not far away among the trees.

“There’s a path here,” called the mate.

“Is it coming this way?” called the able-seaman.

“Yes, and it’s going up all the time.”

“Much used?” called Captain John.

“I thought it was when we were coming through the larches, but here it looks as if nobody used it at all.”

“Sheep, perhaps,” said Roger.

“Keep along it,” called John. “It looks as if we were going to meet, anyhow.”

So John and Titty went on up the banks of the stream, and a few yards away, coming nearer and nearer, Susan and Roger pushed their way up under the branches that had grown over the path.

They came out of the trees at the same moment and close together. To right and left, as far as they could see, was wide rolling moor, and straight before them the beck hurried down over the moorland to meet them, singing its way through the heather.

“Don’t lose sight of the path,” called John. “Which way does it go?”

The mate stood still and looked at the ground ahead of her.

“It’s more like a rabbit track here,” she said, “but you can see where it goes quite plainly.”

“It doesn’t go up the beck, does it?” asked Titty anxiously.

“It goes down to the beck just in front of you.”

“Half a minute,” called John. He slipped along the edge of the trees to where the mate and the boy were standing. Then he began trotting forward, stooping low as he trotted.

“People use it,” he called out. “Here’s the mark of a heel.”

“Oh, no, no!” said the able-seaman.

“Yes,” said John. “It goes down to the beck, just here. There are stepping-stones. And yes, there it goes, up the other side and along the edge of the wood.”

“That’s all right,” said the able-seaman. “So long as it doesn’t go up the beck into our valley.”

“How much farther is it to your valley?” asked the mate.

“Not very far,” said the able-seaman.

“If you were to begin eating a doughnut now,” said Roger, “and ate it very slowly, it would be about done before you got there.”

“Roger wants his breakfast,” said Titty.

“We all want our breakfasts,” said Susan. “We’ll have it here, so that we shan’t have to go so far to get wood for a fire.”

Even the able-seaman, who was in a hurry to get to her valley, thought this a good idea. After all, it was just as if the expedition had been travelling all night and were stopping to breakfast now at the beginning of a new day. There was nothing against it at all. The farther away the valley seemed the better it was. In a moment the explorers had dumped their knapsacks on the ground and were making ready for a meal.

“There is one good thing about camping near a stream,” said the mate. “We’re all right for water. And here’s a good place for a fire.”

She had found a little bay of bright grey pebbles left dry by the stream during the hot weather. Close by were some bigger stones and these she made into a ring, with the three biggest stones arranged so that she could balance the kettle on them and have plenty of room to keep up a fire underneath it. She found some last year’s bracken, dry as tinder, to start her fire with, and by the time she was ready for them, the other explorers were bringing in armfuls of dry sticks from the edges of the wood.

“Nobody can ever have made a fire up here,” said Titty. “There’s more wood lying on the ground than we could use if we made a bigger fire than Captain Nancy makes, and kept it going for a whole year.”

Once more John remembered the island and Swallow and all that he wanted to forget. But not for long. Before breakfast was ready he was back again in this new adventure on the way to the able-seaman’s secret valley.

“If we want to keep your valley secret,” he said, as soon as breakfast was done, “we’d better leave no tracks that we can help, and we’d better get on quickly before any of the natives come this way.”

So, good fireplace as it was, they pulled it to pieces and scattered the big stones, and put the charred embers from the fire into the beck to be washed away down to the lake, and buried the egg-shells from the hard-boiled eggs, so that no native, unless he was looking very carefully, would have guessed that explorers had passed that way, and camped and made their breakfast there before going on into unknown country.

They hurried on along the sheep tracks that wound among the rocks and heather at the side of the stream, climbing steadily up the moor. Able-seaman Titty went first, and Captain John next. Roger had begun by going first, but he kept stopping at every pool in the beck to see if there was a trout in it, so that very soon he would have been last of all, if the mate had not waited to hurry him up, and to see that nothing that mattered got dropped by anybody and left behind.

Always before them, they could hear the noise of the waterfall, a noise that grew more and more stirring as they came nearer. And presently they could see the white splash of the falling water, not so very far ahead.