Pigeon Post by Arthur Ransome

  Fried cannon balls were an improved form of pemmican. John opened a tin of corned beef while Nancy was stirring up the fire to do its duty, and Peggy, with reverent fingers, was putting Susan’s mincing machine together. The corned beef, a couple of onions and some stale bread saved by thrifty cooks were put through the machine, and then mixed together in a pudding bowl with a raw egg and the little that was left of the morning’s milk. The mixture was rolled into balls, by Titty and Dorothea, who happened to have the cleanest hands. Butter was melted in the frying-pan, and then a skilful circular motion, close above the flames, gave the cannon balls a chance of being browned on all sides. This was very hot work, and the prospectors did it in short shifts, those who were resting anxiously watching the one in charge of the heavy frying-pan, because a slip, or twist of a weak wrist had been known to send all eight cannon balls together headlong into the fire.

  The cannon balls were nearly ready when they heard Susan calling “Roger” below them in the wood.

  They looked at each other with horror.

  “But wherever can he be?” said Nancy, almost angrily.

  The next minute Susan panted into camp with the milk. She had come up the steep path out of the valley just about as fast as she could. They could see at once that she was very worried.

  “Mrs Tyson’s never seen him,” she said. She almost choked on her words. “He must be still on the Topps … or anywhere … He may have gone and twisted an ankle like he did last year … He may have gone into one of the old workings … Roger!” she called out desperately. “Come along. Supper. Nobody’s cross with you!”

  “He may be stuck in a mine,” said Dorothea, her eyes widening, “shouting and shouting and no one to answer.” She was divided between pity for Roger and the awful thrill of the mess into which he might have got.

  “Starving,” said Titty, with tears in her eyes, and for once nobody laughed at the thought of Roger’s hunger.

  “And it’ll be pitch dark in another few minutes,” said Susan.

  “Come on, John,” said Nancy, pulling herself together. “No time to lose. Nothing else for it. We’ve got to go up again and find him. Dick, Titty, and Dorothea stay here in camp. We four’ll go and look for him. Better take lanterns. Where’s that alpine rope? …”

  And just then the pale red glimmer of a dying torch showed between the trees and Roger walked into camp.

  *

  Pity and fear for him were gone in a moment.

  “Miserable little idiot,” said John.

  “Where have you been?” said Susan.

  “Hullo,” said Roger, seeing what was in the frying-pan that Peggy was holding. “Cannon balls. I’m jolly glad I wasn’t late.”

  “Shiver my timbers,” said Nancy. “If you were a ship’s boy in my ship … or an able-seaman.”

  He came slowly towards them, keeping one hand behind his back.

  “What have you done to your hand?” said Susan.

  “Nothing,” said Roger.

  “Why are you hiding it?”

  “Got something in it,” said Roger.

  He faced the whole indignant company and held out a large lump of white quartz.

  “Gold,” he said simply. “Look at it and see.”

  Nancy grabbed the stone.

  “The other side,” said Roger.

  “Golly,” said Nancy. “Hi! Look at this, John. Where’s Dick? Come on, Professor! Is it or isn’t it?”

  Everybody was crowding round. Heads, shoulders, bumped together. Nancy gave the stone to John.

  “Come on, Dick,” said John.

  Dick pushed his spectacles straight. His hands shook a little as John pushed the lump of quartz into them.

  Everybody had caught a glimpse now of the crack in the white sparkling stone, the brown earth in the crack, and in the earth, and on either side of it shining specks of yellow.

  “It must be,” cried Dorothea.

  “Of course it is,” said Titty.

  “It’s the right colour,” said the Professor.

  “Hurrah!” cried Peggy. “We’ve done it after all.”

  “Yes, but where’s the place,” cried Nancy. “Come on. We’ll want these lanterns after all. We must stake our claim before Squashy finds it too.”

  “I couldn’t find the way there in the dark,” said Roger, looking at the cannon balls.

  Nancy’s face fell.

  “It’s all right,” said John. “No moon. Squashy couldn’t find it either.”

  “They’ve got to have their suppers,” said Susan.

  “Oh well,” said Nancy regretfully. But even she could see it was no good going stumbling about the Topps in the dark. She gave up the idea. “Squashy’ll be having his supper, too … But not a celebration feast. Come on. Those cannon balls are cooked. Kettle’s boiling. Let’s get at it. Flowing bowls! … Oh, well done, Roger!”

  Roger grinned, but looked a little doubtfully at Susan.

  Two minutes later supper had begun. The night closed down and shut them in with their camp-fire. They bit into their cannon balls and asked questions. Roger bit into his and answered, but did not tell too much.

  “But just where is it?” Nancy asked.

  Roger finished his mouthful before speaking, with a politeness that was almost maddening. He wanted time to think. He had found the place, and tomorrow he would show it them, but he wasn’t going to tell them exactly where it was and have them all dashing in ahead of him.

  “You turn to the right after a bit,” he said, “and then there’s a clump of dead grass, and a bit to the left and then a bit straight and a bit to the right again, and then you go down a bit after going up, and you leave a patch of bracken on the port hand, and a brownish rock to starboard …”

  “Oh shut up, Roger,” said John. “Don’t play the donk.”

  “Well, she asked me,” said Roger, and took another largish bite of cannon ball.

  “But is there a lot of it, or just this bit?” said Susan.

  “Is it an old working?”

  “Was there any heather?”

  Roger, when he was again free to speak, told them that it was in just such an old working as Slater Bob had described, that the heather was there, and that there was lots more gold where the first lump came from.

  Titty listened to him and watched him.

  “It’s all right,” she said at last. “He really has found it. Good old Rogie.”

  More than that he would not say, but it was enough. As the meal went on, and empty stomachs were filled, the realisation of what had happened sank deeper and deeper. Somewhere above them, out there in the blackness of the night … out there in the wilderness they had searched so long … the gold was waiting for them, after all … And Roger, sitting there with his mouth full, had seen it and touched it and brought some away and knew the very place where it was. People kept getting up from the fire and sitting down again. The lump of quartz was passed from hand to hand. Dick, cramming in the last of his cannon ball, scrambled into his tent to get the metallurgy book. Dorothea, forgetting for once The Outlaw of the Broads, murmured to herself.

  “Walking up and down on deck,” she murmured. “Up and down … Up and down …”

  “As glum as anything,” said Titty. “If only we knew the name of his ship to send him a telegram … or, just think, if only a pigeon came flying to perch on the mast with the news …”

  Even John could hardly keep still.

  Nancy went stamping round in the dark, spilling the tea out of her mug, and talking to herself. “Shiver my timbers!… Done it after all!… Barbecued billygoats!… Giminy!… Golly!… Forty million thousand pieces of eight!”

  “You’ll get your hair on fire if you don’t look out,” said Susan. “Look out … Dick!”

  And Dick, who had not heard at first what she was saying, moved just an inch or two further from the flames still reading Phillips on gold by the flickering light of the camp-fire, looking first at the page where the letters seemed to dance b
efore his eyes, and then at those glittering specks on the white quartz.

  “Go to bed, everybody,” cried Nancy suddenly. “Now. At once. We’ve got to get our claim staked the moment it’s light enough to see.”

  CHAPTER XXI

  STAKING THEIR CLAIM

  “SHOW a leg, my hearties!”

  Nancy woke the camp with a cheerful shout. The prospectors leapt to life. Everybody was awake and busy by the time she was half-way down to Tyson’s with the milk-can. She astonished Mrs Tyson by reaching the door of the dairy almost before the milk was brought in. By the time she was back at the camp, all faces had been washed, teeth cleaned, beds made and tents tidied. The kettle was already boiling. Breakfast was the quickest meal they had ever eaten. They even used cold water to cool their tea because it was too hot to drink. Peggy took her apple up the ash tree and reported that Squashy Hat must be still in bed. John, between mouthfuls, sharpened a stout stick. If there was a claim to be staked it was just as well to have things ready. It was no good thinking there were sticks to cut on the Topps. Nancy watched him for a moment, and said, “We’ll want a good-sized bit of paper.” Dorothea dived back into her tent and came out with an exercise book.

  “Will this do?” she asked.

  Nancy looked at it and saw The Outlaw of the Broads printed on the cover.

  “It’s all right,” said Dorothea. “There’s nothing inside this volume yet.”

  “Look here, Dot,” said Nancy. “We’ll get you another in Rio …” and then she hesitated. After all, Roger was Roger.

  “I won’t tear any leaves out now,” she said, “but bring it along, just in case it’s needed.”

  Today even Susan was ready to put off washing up until a little later, and the whole expedition set out across the Topps.

  Roger, for once the leader, was the least hurried of the party. The others kept pressing round him, as if the nearer they kept to him the sooner they would see the place for themselves.

  “Can you see it now?” asked Nancy.

  “It’s beyond those rocks.”

  “Which rocks?”

  “Those.”

  “But there are rocks all over the place.”

  “It’s beyond the ones I’m looking at.”

  “Oh go on, Rogie,” said Titty. “Do tell us what to look for.”

  “There’s nothing to see till we get there,” said Roger, and kept steadily on at his own pace.

  Presently he walked a little slower, and then stopped, and looked about him.

  “Don’t say you’ve gone and forgotten where it is,” said Peggy.

  Roger grinned.

  “Don’t be a donk,” said John. Both he and Titty had seen that grin and known that Roger had fished for Peggy and caught her.

  “Well, I might have forgotten,” said Roger. “It was jolly dark before I got home.”

  They walked on over that rolling, rocky country, which had changed in the night for all of them. It was no longer a country to be searched by long, laborious combing, with everybody out in a row. Roger had almost come to hate it by the time he had given up being a tooth in the comb and begun a little Indian work of his own. Today it seemed altogether different even to him. Gold had been found, and he had found it. No more combing for anybody. The only thing they had to do was to gather up the nuggets. Or was there more to do?

  The others were cross-questioning Dick as they walked along, and Dick was showing Nancy a paragraph in the metallurgy book.

  “Crushing and panning,” she was saying. “We’ll have to do that anyhow, to get the gold by itself. Jolly good thing we brought Captain Flint’s crushing mill.”

  “It won’t be an ingot even then.”

  “A nugget,” said Titty.

  “Of course not,” said Nancy. “Gold dust.”

  “And what then?”

  “Slater Bob’ll show us how to make it into ingots. We must have at least one ready for Captain Flint.”

  “We might make him a pair of gold ear-rings,” said Titty. “Like Black Jake had in Peter Duck.”

  “He’d never wear them,” said Peggy doubtfully.

  “A good big shiny blob to hang on his watch chain,” said Nancy.

  “And enough to make a gold collar for Timothy,” said Dorothea.

  There was a sudden melancholy pause.

  “If he isn’t dead,” said Peggy at last.

  “It’s weeks since that telegram came,” said Nancy grimly, and then suddenly shaking off her momentary gloom, “Oh, well, if he’s dead he’s probably been dead ages, and been sunk to the bottom of the sea.”

  “Wrapped in a Union Jack,” said Dorothea.

  “Suffered a sea change,” murmured Titty, “rich and rare … probably coral …”

  “Anyway we can’t do anything about it,” said Nancy. “And the gold’ll console Uncle Jim a bit, or it jolly well ought to … Though you can get awfully fond of things like armadillos … Oh giminy … It can’t be helped. Look here, Roger, how far now?”

  “Nearly there,” said Roger.

  “But we’ve searched every bit of this.”

  “I know,” said Roger.

  A minute or two later he stopped short, looking down into the narrow little valley.

  “But we’ve been here,” said John.

  “I told you you had,” said Roger. “But it’s here all the same.”

  “It’s the place you said was just like Swallowdale,” said Dorothea to Titty.

  “So it is,” said Titty. “Only there’s no beck, and no cave.”

  “There’s a cave all right,” said Roger.

  At his first glance he had almost doubted whether this was indeed the place. Just for one moment he had had a panicky fear that he had brought them to the wrong valley, that he had found his cave only to lose it. Then he saw the place where he had slid down on the further side, the heather with which he had broken his fall, the dark shadow below it.

  “Heré it is,” he said.

  “But where?” said Nancy.

  “Don’t be a donk,” said John. “Where is it?”

  Roger was scrambling down into the ravine. He thought of wandering round and seeing how long it would take them to find the hole, but decided it wasn’t really safe. Nancy had been waiting long enough already. So he walked straight across the ravine, and before he was half-way across the others had seen it. There was a general rush. John and Nancy jostled in the hole.

  “In there?” said Peggy.

  “Roger, you didn’t go in?” said Susan.

  “Jolly lucky I did,” said Roger.

  “Look! Dick’s got a bit,” said Dorothea.

  “I must have dropped it coming out,” said Roger.

  “Hurry up, Susan,” said Peggy.

  “Oh, look here,” said Roger. “Play fair. I found it,” and he shot into the opening after Susan.

  The cave left by the miners of long ago seemed a good deal smaller now, with eight prospectors bumping about inside it and seven torches sending bright round patches of light over its rough hewn walls and roof. It had seemed quite large the day before to Roger, alone in it, with a single torch with which he could not light up more than a small bit of it at a time.

  “It’s the smallest of all the ones we’ve seen,” said Peggy.

  “So long as it’s the right one,” said Nancy. “But look here, Roger, where is that quartz?”

  “Perhaps there was only that one bit,” said John.

  “You’ve got to hammer for it,” said Roger. “I didn’t see any till I did.”

  Torch after torch flashed on the rocky wall at which he was pointing. There was a general shout. On the ground under the wall were chippings of quartz and a lump or two of grey stone, and above the chippings they could all see that it was as if two rocks had been pressed together sideways to make a sandwich with a thin layer of quartz as the potted meat between them. The crack ran almost straight up and down, and in it, beside the white gleam of the quartz under the light of the torches, there was
the yellow sparkle of metal.

  “Giminy,” cried Nancy. “He’s found it all right. Look out, John, with that hammer. Let’s get a fair whack at it.”

  In the general rattle of hammers up and down the narrow vein it was lucky nobody got hurt. Bits of stone and quartz were flying in all directions.

  “Do take care,” said Susan. “Put your goggles on … If a bit gets in somebody’s eye!”

  “That’s my nose,” said Roger.

  “Sorry,” said Peggy.

  “There’s gold on almost every bit,” said Dorothea.

  “Quartz is jolly hard stone,” said Titty.

  “So is Peggy’s elbow,” said Roger, very tenderly feeling his nose. “Not broken,” he admitted, “but it easily might have been.”

  “Look here,” said John after a few more minutes of hammering. “This is a waste of time. We ought to be using dynamite.”

  “Oh good,” said Roger.

  “Captain Flint’s got some gunpowder,” said Peggy.

  But for once Nancy was not for going to extremes.

  “Captain Flint’ll do the dynamiting,” she said. “He’ll simply love it. And we’ll all help. But it’s no good wasting any of the blowing up and all that before he comes. It’s that that’s going to keep him at home. He didn’t like us letting off that firework on the roof of his houseboat, but he likes blasting as much as anybody …”

  Susan was much relieved. “Fireworks are all very well,” she said, “but dynamite …”

  John was a little disappointed.

  “We don’t need it,” said Nancy. “The more blasting we leave him to do, the better he’ll be pleased. All we’ve got to do is to show him there’s something worth blasting for …”

  “There’ll be no holding him,” said Peggy, “as soon as he sees this.”

  “Well, it’s no good just batting at it,” said John. “Waste of time. We want chisels … And what about the crushing and panning?”

  “We’ll want a bucket for water,” said Dick. “And something shallow for the panning.”

  “Frying-pan’s the very thing,” said Nancy.

  “I’ll go to Tyson’s for chisels,” said John.

  “A bucket for water … the crushing mill … frying-pan … Don’t let’s waste another minute,” said Nancy.