Pigeon Post by Arthur Ransome
“Swim them out,” Titty heard Roger murmur to himself. “Or trot them, whichever’s quickest.”
Peggy had gone to the store under the elderberry bush where all the tinned things were kept in a hole in the ground for the sake of the coolness.
“Nine tins,” she said.
“It’s no good keeping just one,” said Roger. “There are sixteen sardines in each tin, so there’ll be a tin for each of us, and then two extra sardines each to finish off.”
“All right,” said Susan. “We’ll give you hot minced pemmican for supper and boiled potatoes. I’m awfully sorry about dinner.”
CHARCOAL PUDDING
Nobody really minded. The charcoal mound, smoking like a gigantic pudding, was itself a kind of cooking. Nobody had had time to think of cooking dinners as well. People wandered round it, using spoons to eat sardines out of the tins, and licking up the last drops of the oil. It was no good thinking of making tea until the water in Titty’s well had settled down again. The quick dipping up of water for the damping of the turfs had made it very muddy.
“I ought to have put a kettleful aside,” said Susan. “We could have managed with the saucepan for watering the crust.”
“We needed the kettle as well,” said Dorothea.
“And lots of miners die from hunger and thirst,” said Titty. “It’s perfectly all right to go without tea for one day.”
“Plenty of grog,” said Roger.
“We’ll share out what’s left of the milk,” said Susan. “And somebody’ll have to go down for a fresh lot this evening.”
“Let me,” said Dorothea.
“We’ll both go,” said Titty.
Meanwhile the charcoal pudding could not be left for a moment. They had to let the moisture escape, and at the same time not to give the fire too much air. It was late in the afternoon before the smoke changed colour, and the greenish, tawny fumes drifting from the holes in the crust turned to the clear blue smoke that comes from dry wood.
“It’s begun to cook,” said Peggy.
“Been cooking all the time,” said Nancy. “Nothing to do now but to keep it well under. Let’s have some more water on the clods.”
“Use the saucepan this time,” said Susan. “And half a minute while I fill the kettle. We must have tea for supper. And the water is fairly clear again.”
Now and then somebody went to the Great Wall, or up the tree, to look out, but there was no sign of Squashy Hat either on the Topps or at Atkinson’s.
They sent off Homer with a cheerful message:
“EVERYTHING GOING VERY WELL INDEED.”
It was not until evening that they had news of the enemy. Titty and Dorothea had gone down to Tyson’s with the milk-can, and had run on as far as the little bridge to cool their feet in what was left of the river. They were sitting on stones with their feet in the water when steps sounded on the road above them.
“Lurk! Lurk!” whispered Dorothea.
But it was too late for lurking. And Squashy Hat, with his coat over his arm, came up the road and went by.
“He’s been with Slater Bob all day,” said Titty.
They hurried up the wood to the camp and told what they had seen.
“Who cares?” said Nancy. “The more they chatter the better. We’re well ahead of him now. Dick’s got a grand lot of stones for the blast furnace. And we’ll have charcoal tomorrow and an ingot the day after.”
Susan was making up for their sardine dinner by cooking a tremendous supper. Potatoes were simmering in the pot. Pemmican had been put through the mincing machine and was hotting in the frying-pan that was no longer needed for gold. And, in the middle of the old pitstead, the mound was quietly steaming. They put their hands on its earthy crust to feel the warmth coming through.
“Who’s going to stop up all night with it?” asked Roger after supper.
“Not you,” said Susan. “Aren’t you going to the gulch?”
“No one’s going to the gulch,” said John. “We’ll have to watch the fire all night. Squashy won’t try anything in the dark, and we’ll be on the look out again as soon as it’s light.”
“The able-seamen will have to go to bed at the proper time,” said Susan.
“What if I keep awake,” said Roger.
But as dusk fell and darkness closed in on the camp, and owls called far below, and the churr of the nightjar sounded in the wood, Roger, like the other able-seamen, found his eyes closing. They went to bed, though not at once to sleep. For some time they lay in their tents, watching the glow of the camp-fire. John and Nancy, Susan and Peggy were taking turns with the charcoal-burning. The able-seamen lay there listening as now and then a clod of turf was thumped into place to stop a leak in the mound where the smoke was coming out. They slept, but even while asleep, knew that people were stirring in the camp. Titty half waked as the flash of a torch passed across her tent. She heard John whisper, “Where’s that thermos flask?” She heard Nancy whisper back, “I’ve poured it out. Don’t step on the mug. What’s the time?” The torch flashed again, and she heard John’s voice … “Another hour before we wake Susan.” Titty pulled her sleeping-bag over her ears. All was well.
CHAPTER XXIX
BLAST FURNACE
TITTY woke with the smell of wood smoke tickling her nostrils.
Was that Dorothea whispering at the door of her tent?
“Don’t wake Nancy. Let Titty see them first …”
“Captains and mates, indeed!” That was Roger’s voice.
“Hullo, Dot!” said Titty.
“’Sh!” said Dorothea and beckoned.
Titty crawled out into the camp. Charcoal-burning was still going on, but what had happened to the charcoal-burners? Dick and Roger, of all unlikely people, were sprinkling water and quietly patting down clods of earth on the smoking mound, and Dorothea pointed silently at the tent that was shared by Nancy and Peggy. There, with her head on her arm, lay Captain Nancy as fast asleep as any one could be. Peggy was asleep, too, and so were John and Susan.
“Lucky we woke,” said Roger.
“Dick heard the fire crackle,” said Dorothea.
“We were just in time,” said Roger. “One small flame had licked its way through, but we soon stopped it. They’re all four sleeping like logs. It just shows. They ought to have let us sit up.”
“Let’s put the kettle on,” said Dorothea.
“Let’s.”
“What about dressing?”
“Afterwards,” said Titty. “Let them wake and find everything ready.”
But just then Nancy’s head moved with a sudden jerk. Her eyes opened. She began to yawn and, in the middle of her yawn, remembered.
“Bobstays and jib-booms,” she cried. “Hey! Susan. Your watch. Yours and Peggy’s.” She tugged hard at one of Peggy’s feet, sleeping-bag and all. “Wake up. I’ve given you longer than I ought to have done. I must have been asleep the last few minutes.”
“Ho, ho,” laughed Roger.
“What are you doing out of bed?” said Nancy, blinking, and then, seeing Dorothea and Titty looking at her, and the bright sunlight, she laughed.
“Barbecued billygoats,” she exclaimed. “All asleep. Well done the able-seamen! You haven’t let the charcoal burn?”
“It wanted to,” said Dorothea.
John and Susan came sleepily out of their tents.
“This is awful,” said Nancy. “I ought to have routed Susan out hours ago. It was only just beginning to get light … Look here, you’ll have to brew a lot of tea to keep us awake tonight …”
“Tonight?” said Susan.
“Blast furnace,” said Nancy.
John stretched himself.
“I’m off for the milk, anyway,” he said, and a moment later was running down the path through the wood.
*
By the time the others had done as much washing as they could afford, and breakfast was ready, he came panting back again.
“Your hair’s all wet,” said Susan.<
“I just had an in and out while she was filling the milkcan,” said John.
“Lucky beast,” said Roger.
“One more day,” said Nancy. “We must hang on dirty till tomorrow. Then we’ll take the ingot to mother and have a swim in the lake. Some in the morning and some in the afternoon. We’ll have nothing more to do then except to keep watch and see that Squashy does no jumping. By the way, he isn’t on the prowl yet?”
“Not yet,” said Titty, who had already had a look out over the Topps.
“When are we going to cut the pudding?” said Roger, looking at the brown earth-covered mound from which little wisps of blue smoke trickled here and there.
“Not till the last minute,” said Nancy. “We’ll give it as long as we can. The furnace isn’t built yet …”
“The stones are all ready,” said Dick.
“Let’s have a look at that plan.”
Dick pulled out his pocket-book and showed a drawing to Nancy.
“It’s a section really. Not awfully clear. There ought to be a plan as well. It’ll be round, not square. And I haven’t put in any sizes. There ought to be just room to have the crucible in the middle, with charcoal all round it, and the bellows coming in at the side and underneath the crucible.”
No one would have thought, to listen to Dick, that he was an able-seaman telling captains and mates just what they ought to do.
“We can’t have a door to open and shut,” he was saying. “But that won’t matter. We’ll have to build the crucible in at the last minute, and pour the bits of charcoal in at the top. I don’t see how we can manage a chimney, but with the bellows going all the time, we ought to get a good enough draught without, don’t you think?”
PAGE FROM DICK’S POCKET-BOOK
“Can’t make head or tail of it, Professor,” said Captain Nancy. “But I expect it’s all right.” She passed the notebook to John.
“How are you going to fix the bellows?” asked John.
“They won’t really have to be fixed, will they?” said Dick. “Just a hole for the nose of the bellows. The rest of the bellows will all be outside. Of course it isn’t like the ones in the book, but the principle is the same.”
“It looks the right shape,” said Nancy.
The building of the furnace began even before the breakfast things were washed up. It took a good deal longer than any one had expected. In one way only was it different from the furnace of Dick’s sketch. They found that there was no good way of holding the crucible in the middle of the fire if they tried to balance it on stones. Crucibles are an awkward shape, like teacups with lids but no handles, and narrower at the bottom than at the top. What was wanted was iron bars, and Peggy remembered a bit of old railing rusting away behind the Tysons’ orchard wall. John galloped down the wood for the second time and brought it back. He filed three deep nicks in it with the file that was one of the most useful tools in the knife he had been given at Christmas. Then, bending the rusty rail this way and that he broke it at the nicks into four pieces. These four iron bars were built into the furnace, two one way and two the other, so that the crucible would be held in the middle.
The furnace was only half done when Susan, who had opened the tinned tongue to save cooking (“This is a special occasion,” Peggy had said), called builders and charcoal burners to their dinner. Even while they ate, people had to be getting up every other minute to pat a clod on the charcoal mound, and to do a little watering of places on the crust that looked too dry. The furnace-builders went back to their work after eating their share of the tongue, and put stones in place with one hand while holding plum cake with the other.
All was going well when Roger, who had taken his cake up the look-out tree, came slithering down in a hurry to say that Squashy Hat was on the Topps below Grey Screes and not very far from the gulch.
“Oh, bother him,” said Nancy. “Just when everybody’s busy.”
“Dick and I could go,” said Roger, who thought scouting was more important than fitting stones together and damping clods of earth.
“Not the Professor, anyhow,” said Nancy.
“Let me go,” said Dorothea. “Dick’s got to be here.”
“There’d better be two of you,” said John.
With a telescope and The Outlaw of the Broads, Roger and Dorothea went off together.
*
A couple of hours later, or maybe three, Dorothea, wide-eyed and white-faced, came breathlessly into camp.
“What’s happened?” cried Titty.
“It’s the heat,” cried Susan. “You’d better lie down.”
“He tried to jump,” said Dorothea.
John almost dropped the stone that he was fitting into place. Nancy started up.
“Where is he now?” she cried.
“Gone,” said Dorothea. “Roger’s snaking after him.”
“What happened?” said Titty.
“We were in the gulch,” said Dorothea, “and I was reading to Roger and all of a sudden I looked up and there he was, looking down over the edge.”
“What did he say?” asked Nancy.
“He said, ‘I beg your pardon. I didn’t know anyone was here.’”
“I bet he didn’t,” said Nancy, “or he wouldn’t have been trying to jump. Gosh, it’s a good thing we didn’t show our gold to Slater Bob. What did you say?”
“I didn’t say anything,” said Dorothea. “And Roger didn’t either. And Squashy turned round and went away. He didn’t go back to his white spots. He went straight home.”
“Foiled,” said Titty. “I wish I’d been there.” She looked at Nancy. Surely she would call the whole camp to arms and march down to Atkinson’s at once.
But Nancy did nothing of the sort. She looked at the charcoal mound, steaming all over because Peggy and Susan had just been sprinkling water on it. She looked at the furnace, now all but finished, a round stone pillar, hollow inside and tapering towards the top. She looked at the mouth of her tent where the cocoa-tin, full to the brim with gold dust, was waiting to be emptied into the crucible.
“Oh well,” she said, “we can’t do everything at once. Making the ingot matters most of all, and we’re just ready to start. So long as he doesn’t actually jump … Come on, Dick, where’s the crucible? We’d better have everything right before we open up the charcoal.”
Dick brought the crucible from his tent, where it had been put for safety’s sake, with so many charcoal-burners and miners stamping about the camp. Solemnly Nancy poured in the gold dust. Dick put the lid on.
“What’ll it look like when we see it again?” said Titty.
“All scummy on the top,” said Dick. “The pure gold’ll be underneath.”
“Put it in your tent till we get the furnace lit. Now for the charcoal. Come on. All hands to cut the pudding. Slosh some more water on it first and get another lot of wet clods ready.”
“And the fire-brooms,” said John. He unstacked them and laid them handy in case of need.
“Slosh some more water on it first,” said Nancy again.
“We’d better wet the ground all round it,” said Susan.
The charcoal pile was no longer the round smooth pudding it had been. Here and there it had fallen in. Here and there it was swollen with clods of turf that had been plastered on it to stop a leak of smoke. Susan with the kettle, John with the saucepan, sprinkled water over the crust, and a great mass of steam poured up above the camp. Kettle and saucepan were filled again. Everybody had a damp clod ready.
“Here goes,” cried Nancy. She pulled a big clod of earth from the side of the pile and dumped it on the top. “That’s the way,” she said, “it’ll be hottest in the middle, and the earth’ll keep it under.”
Unburnt ends of sticks showed. There was a sudden crackling inside the mound. Nancy pulled out a stick. The end of it was red-hot and dripping sparks. She put it on the wet ground and dumped a clod on it. The stick broke into bits.
“It’s charcoal all right,”
“Three cheers,” said Titty.
“Three million,” said Nancy, pulling out another bit. “Ouch! my fingers!”
The crackling inside grew louder, and smoke began to pour out and mingle with the steam.
“Look out! It’ll flare up in a minute,” said Susan.
“It shan’t,” said Nancy. “More water! Stand by. Don’t get too near. John and I’ll open it up.”
John and Nancy, working round the mound, pulled away clods of earth, dumped them in the middle, and hauled out stick after stick, letting each lie separately on the wetted ground. Peggy and Dick pressed wet clods on the red-hot ends. Titty and Dorothea raced backwards and forwards between the camp and the well, damping clods that had gone dry. Susan, with kettle and saucepan, poured water over any bits that looked like flaring. In a very few minutes there was nothing left of the charcoal mound but a small heap of violently steaming clods of earth.
‘It hasn’t all turned into charcoal,” said Dick, looking at the blackened sticks lying all round it.
“We’ve got a whacking good lot,” said Nancy. “Giminy, I was afraid it was going to blaze up after all.”
“It’s still red hot in the middle under that earth,” said Susan.
“We’ll want that,” said John.
Roger came into the camp while they were still busy watering the charcoal to cool it and breaking it into bits small enough for use.
“Why didn’t anybody come?” he said. “Didn’t Dot tell you? Oh, I say, what pigs, opening the pudding without waiting for me.”
“You’re just in time for the furnace,” said Nancy. “What’s Squashy doing?”