Pigeon Post, Page 2

  “Did you see who it was?” said Nancy. “It was Colonel Jolys. He took off his hat … No, don’t try to turn round. He knows you didn’t see him, and I gave him a grin anyway.”

  “What’s he got a trumpet for?” asked Roger.

  “It’s a hunting-horn,” said Titty.

  “It isn’t,” said Nancy. “It’s one of the old coach horns. He’s been having a review of his fire-fighters. Didn’t you see those brooms on long handles sticking up out of the back of his car?”

  “It’s the drought,” Mrs Blackett explained. “We’ve had no rain for weeks, and if the fells should catch fire it would be a dreadful thing for everybody, and old Colonel Jolys has been organising so that the moment there’s a fire all the young men know where to go to be rushed off in motor-cars to help to beat it out.”

  “They sound coach horns,” said Nancy, “and then see how soon they can start. Everybody who’s got a motor-car is in it, and all the men … Oh do look out, mother.”

  Mrs Blackett, who had somehow got to the wrong side of the road, swerved back and straightened again. They were coming down the last steep drop into the little village that the Walkers and Blacketts called Rio. They turned the corner at the bottom. There was the sparkling water of the bay, with its landing-stages and its anchored yachts. Roger and Titty had seen it last in winter, frozen and covered with skaters. Mrs Blackett, with a screech of the brakes, pulled up. Nancy was out as the car stopped.

  “Come on, you two,” she said, and Titty and Roger got out and followed her, wondering, along a wooden boat pier that seemed strangely high out of the water.

  “What’s happened to the lake?” said Roger. “It used to be nearly up to the road.”

  “No rain,” said Nancy, looking eagerly out beyond the islands. “Half a minute. Yes, it’s all right. Sophocles has got home. You stick here and wait for them …”

  Already she was running back along the pier.

  “I say,” cried Roger, staring after her. “Mrs Blackett’s turned round. Nancy’s getting in. They’re off. Hi! I say, Titty! They’ve taken all our luggage!”

  But Titty hardly heard him. Far away over the water, glittering in the evening sun, she had seen the white speck that had sent Nancy hurrying to the car. Two years had slipped back in a moment, and once again she was seeing for the first time the little white sail of the Amazon pirates.

  Roger shook her by the arm.

  “Titty,” he said, “They’ve gone …”

  Titty pointed to the little boat.

  “It’s all right,” she said. “John and Susan and Peggy must be coming to fetch us across.”

  CHAPTER II

  THE PLAN

  TITTY and Roger stood on the end of the boat pier, looking up the lake and across to the big hills and the proud peak of Kanchenjunga that they had climbed the year before. Over there was the Beckfoot promontory, hiding the Blacketts’ house, and between the promontory and the islands was the little white sail of the Amazon. And then, as they watched, they began to doubt. Who was sailing her? The little white sail flapped in the wind. If that had happened once they would have thought nothing of it. But it happened again and yet again, and not only when the little boat was going about at the end of a tack.

  “Can’t be John,” said Roger. “Or even Susan. They’d never let her shake like that. And Peggy’s just as good as John.”

  The wind was blowing up the lake and the little boat was beating down against it. A big lake steamer hid her for a moment. Then she was gone behind an island. She turned again and was slipping across towards the mouth of the bay. And every now and then a long-drawn-out quivering of her sail shocked the two experts watching from the pier.

  “There’s a red cap,” said Titty. “That must be Peggy. But it can’t be her steering. I say, Roger, it’s the D’s. Peg’s on the middle thwart. Dorothea’s hanging on to the main-sheet. Dick’s at the tiller. I saw the sunshine on his spectacles. Three cheers. Mrs Blackett must be having them too.”

  “But they didn’t know anything about sailing.”

  “They were learning on the Broads. Don’t you remember? Dot sent a postcard.”

  “Let’s wave,” said Titty. “They can see us now.”

  Peggy Blackett waved back to them. Dick and Dorothea were far too busy.

  “They’re not doing half badly,” said Roger. “For beginners.”

  The little boat came quickly nearer.

  They could see Dorothea holding the main-sheet in both hands, watching Peggy for orders. They could see Dick’s earnest face. They saw Peggy give him a sign. The little boat swung round, headed into the wind, and stopped at their feet. Roger knelt on the pier and grabbed her.

  “Jolly well done,” he said. “Hullo. You’ve got another pigeon.”

  “Hop aboard,” said Peggy. “And hang on to the pier. We’ve got to send her off with a message. What’s the time?”

  “My watch is bust,” said Roger. “It always is.”

  “Fourteen minutes past seven,” said Dick.

  Peggy was scribbling on a bit of paper. She rolled it up tight, opened another wicker basket like the one that had been sent to meet them, and brought out a pigeon. “Come on,” she said. “You slip the despatch under the ring … the rubber one.”

  The pigeon had a metal ring on one leg and a rubber one on the other. Titty, with trembling fingers, trembling for fear of doing it wrong and making the pigeon uncomfortable, slipped in the tiny roll of paper.

  “Off you go,” said Peggy, and the pigeon was circling above their heads, above the yachts in the bay, and was suddenly flying straight as an arrow for the distant promontory.

  “Cast off,” cried Peggy, and in another moment they had left the pier and, with a fair wind to help them, were sailing up the lake after the pigeon.

  “We didn’t start to meet you till we got your message,” said Dorothea.

  “What message?” said Roger.

  “Sophocles,” said Dorothea.

  “Which one is this?” said Titty.

  “Sappho,” said Peggy. “You watch the flagstaff on our promontory. They’ll send the flag up as soon as Sappho’s in.”

  They were hardly clear of Rio Bay before Roger sang out, “There’s the flag.” Away up the lake, a flag, that at this distance looked plain black, was fluttering up the flagstaff on the Beckfoot promontory.

  “Pretty quick,” said Peggy.

  “It’s as quick as a telegraph,” said Roger.

  “Very nearly,” said Dick. “On short distances like this.”

  “There’s Susan … She’s running away.”

  “Gone back to camp,” said Peggy. “They’re busy with the tents. You know we’re camping in the garden …”

  “In the garden?” said Titty, rather sadly.

  “Only till your mother comes to Holly Howe. You won’t have Swallow till then, and we can’t all eight of us cram into Amazon. So Wild Cat Island’s no use. And anyhow, while mother’s the only parent she wants to have us all within reach. She says she’s too busy with paperhangers and plasterers to keep an eye on us if we camp too far from the house. It’s not going to be as bad as it might be. We’re going to do our own cooking. I say, did you know Susan’s blued a birthday present on a mincing machine? To improve the pemmican.”

  Titty cheered up. After all, it was only for a fortnight.

  “Has Timothy come?” asked Dorothea.

  “Not yet,” said Titty.

  “We went to the Luggage Office to ask,” said Roger.

  “I wish we knew when he was sent off,” said Peggy.

  “Can I have a go at the tiller?” said Roger.

  “Come on,” said Dick, and, for part of the voyage home, Titty and Roger took turns in the steering, just to make sure that they had not forgotten their ancient skill, while Peggy told them how the pigeons had been trained little by little to longer and longer flights, and Dorothea told them how she and Dick had been turned into able-seamen on the Norfolk Broads. Soon they we
re near enough to the promontory to see the white skull and cross-bones on the black flag.

  “I say,” said Titty. “It can’t be piracy or even war while we’re camped in the garden. What’s it going to be? It won’t be North Pole again …”

  “Too jolly hot,” said Roger.

  Peggy looked at them. “Gold,” she said. “Dick’s a geologist and Nancy’s turned him on to reading all Captain Flint’s mining books, and tomorrow we’re going right inside Kanchenjunga to talk to Slater Bob. He’s an old miner, and mother says he knows where we ought to look for it.”

  “Inside Kanchenjunga?” said Titty.

  “With candles,” said Dorothea.

  “Further away from the point!” cried Peggy. “We’ll be aground.”

  They gave the promontory a wide berth, and were presently sailing in towards the mouth of the Amazon river. They pulled up the centreboard and lowered the sail. Peggy took off her shoes and jumped overboard to pull the little boat over the shallows. She climbed in again. They rowed up the river between the beds of tall reeds, far higher above the water than usual, because very little water had been coming down the river during the drought.

  “There’s the boathouse,” cried Roger.

  Beyond the boathouse, where the faded crest of the Amazon pirates was still to be seen, though it badly wanted repainting, was the old grey house of Beckfoot looking very strange with the ladders and scaffolding of the painters. On the lawn between the house and the river were a lot of white tents.

  “Here they are!” That was John’s voice, and there was John himself and Susan coming to the water’s edge to meet them, and a moment later Nancy came racing round the corner of the house.

  “Hullo,” said John and Susan.

  “Hullo,” said Titty and Roger.

  “Jolly good work with the pigeons,” said John.

  “Where are the keys of your boxes?” said Susan. “I’ll get out just what you’ll want in the camp.”

  Term time was gone as if it had been wiped out. Real life was beginning again.

  “Pretty good surprise, wasn’t it?” said Nancy. “I told mother not to let you know the D’s were coming. Able-seamen both of them now. And with Roger promoted we’ll have two able-seamen in each boat when your mother comes to Holly Howe and you have Swallow again. But we’ve got lots to do first. Did Peggy tell you? Lucky we’ve got Dick. He’s geologist to the company …”

  “What company?” asked Roger.

  “Mining,” said Nancy.

  “Supper in half an hour,” Mrs Blackett called from the house. “You’ll be ready by then. Supper in my camp tonight, not yours. I’ll come to supper with you another day … to try Susan’s minced pemmican.”

  “Buck up,” said Nancy.

  They had just time to look at their own tents, and at the camp fire, not on the lawn but in a little clearing among the bushes a few yards away.

  “Now for the pigeon loft,” said Nancy.

  They were raced across the lawn and round the house to the stableyard.

  “Hullo,” said Peggy. “There’s that Squashy Hat again.”

  A tall, thin man, in loose grey flannels, with a soft brown felt hat, was hesitating outside the garden gate. When he saw the eight of them pouring round the corner of the house he turned and went off up the road.

  “That’s the second time,” said Nancy. “He was here yesterday, looking over the wall when we were putting up tents ready for the D’s.”

  “Visitors think gates and walls are just made for them to goggle over,” said Peggy. “Here you are. Don’t kick up too much row going up the ladder. That’s the door they fly in at.”

  They went up the ladder to see the pigeon loft, with its whitewashed sill for the pigeons to land on, and the little doorway with its swinging wires to let the pigeons come in and to keep them in when they had come. Nancy opened the big door for humans at the top of the ladder, and showed them the inner door of wire netting, and the big loft behind it, where Homer, Sophocles and Sappho were enjoying their evening meal, sipping water, and talking over the afternoon’s flights.

  “Look here, you must get your things changed,” said Susan, and they were rushed across the yard and upstairs in a house strangely dismantled, to get into camping clothes in a room crammed with all kinds of furniture wrapped up in dust sheets.

  “Hurry up,” called Nancy from the hall, and they were rushed down again and into Captain Flint’s study.

  Captain Flint’s study, close by the front door, seemed to be the only room in the house that was as they remembered it. There were the high bookshelves, the shelves of scientific apparatus, the glass-fronted cupboard of chemicals and the queer things hanging on the walls; spears, shields, a knobkerry and the jawbone of a big fish. Even there, something was going on in the building line. Someone had been at work turning a packing-case into something rather like a rabbit hutch. On the table a big book of South American natural history was open at the coloured picture of an armadillo, and beside it was a slip of paper on which the careful Dick had noted down the usual size of such animals. This, no doubt, was as a guide in making a suitable place for Timothy to sleep in when he should arrive. Pinned to the mantelpiece, as if to let even his room know that he was coming, was the telegram, sent off from Pernambuco a week before, in which Captain Flint (Nancy’s and Peggy’s Uncle Jim) had announced that he was on his way.

  THIS WILD GOOSE LAYS NO EGGS STARTING HOME BE KIND TO TIMOTHY GIVE HIM THE RUN OF MY ROOM – JIM

  “Read that,” said Nancy. “He’s come another mucker. Wild goose means he was on a wild goose chase. And when he says ‘Lays no eggs,’ he means he hasn’t found gold. That’s what he went for.”

  “You know,” said Peggy. “The goose that lays the golden eggs. Well, this one didn’t.”

  “He might just as well have stayed at home,” said Nancy. “And then he’d be in the houseboat and we could be making him walk the plank or anything else that turned up. The whole trouble is that he gets fidgets and goes off looking for things. Why shouldn’t he look for things here? If we can find just a scrap of gold, then he’ll stay at home instead of wasting our holidays by being too far away to be useful …”

  The gong sounded in the empty hall.

  They hurried into the carpetless dining-room to have their supper off a table made with the planks and trestles of the plasterers. Mrs Blackett served out good big helpings of mutton and green peas and potatoes, and everybody was too hungry to do much talking. Mrs Blackett herself talked all the time, of the papering and plastering and what not, and how the house must be ready before her brother came back, and how glad she was the Walkers and Callums had been able to come, and how much she was looking forward to seeing Mrs Walker and Bridget, when Bridget’s whooping-cough should be over, and Mr and Mrs Callum, as soon as Mr Callum could get away from correcting examination papers. It was not till supper was nearly over that serious subjects were mentioned. “And now,” said Mrs Blackett at last. “How soon do you begin prospecting?”

  “We’re going to see Slater Bob tomorrow,” said Nancy.

  “So long as you are all here to answer your names at night you can’t get into much harm,” she said. “I expect he’ll tell you enough to keep you busy hunting all over the valley.”

  “Is there really any gold?” said Roger.

  “Slater Bob’ll tell you there is,” said Mrs Blackett. “He’s been talking of gold ever since I was a little girl.”

  It was really growing dark when they went out to the camp in the garden. The sun had gone down over the shoulder of Kanchenjunga, and the fiery sunset had dimmed and cooled to a pale green light behind the hills. A starry darkness closed down over the valley of the Amazon, and the silent little river, and the cluster of white tents on the lawn. The camp-fire among the bushes made the night seem darker than it was. They sat around it and talked, seeing each other’s faces by the light of the flames. Bushes and tree trunks about them flickered into sight and out again as the flames leapt u
p or died. Everything seemed possible.

  “It’ll be the Swallows, Amazons and D’s Mining Company,” said Nancy, and Titty started suddenly. She knew that Nancy had been talking for some time, but she had not heard what she was saying.

  “When he sees what we’ve found, he’ll never desert again,” Nancy went on.

  Dorothea was still wide awake. She had not come a long railway journey that day. She spoke to Titty. “Isn’t it lovely?” she said. “To think of him coming home and knowing nothing about it. A failure. No gold. Nothing. Coming home alone. Even his faithful armadillo sent on ahead. And the boat moving through the tropical night. And Captain Flint walking up and down the deserted decks. Up and down, up and down. Thinking of failure. Not knowing that when he gets home, there’ll be a gold mine at his very door.”

  Titty looked away from the fire, and tried to see the outlines of the hills somewhere above them in the dark. She caught herself yawning. Tomorrow … Her eyes blinked.

  A sudden light showed through the bushes. Mrs Blackett’s voice sounded across the garden. “Time all you people were asleep. Titty and Roger must be nearly dead.”

  “All right, mother,” called Nancy. “We’ve a lot to do tomorrow,” she added, “and we want to get up in the morning before the whole place is flooded with paperers and painters.”

  “Come along,” said Susan.

  She was already raking the embers together. Pocket torches flashed out. The eight prospectors left their camp-fire and went back to the lawn where the tents shone suddenly out of the darkness. Lanterns were lit for each tent. Frantic shadows swayed on the canvas as the prospectors struggled into sleeping-bags.

  Presently the lanterns were blown out one by one.

  Mrs Blackett’s voice came again across the lawn.

  “Everybody in bed? Good night … Sleep well.”

  “Good night. Good night.”