“We won’t take the kettle or the knapsack with us,” said Mate Susan. “It’s always better to make a fire on the shore than among the trees. We’ll make a fire here when we come back, and we’ll have dinner before getting the firewood, so that we shan’t have to think about getting at the kettle and things while we are loading the ship.”
“Oughtn’t we to leave someone to keep guard?” asked Able-seaman Titty.
“You can stay if you want to,” said Captain John, “but when we are high up on the hill we shall be able to see right up the lake. If we see the Amazons coming we can get back here quicker than they could get here rowing.”
Titty, thinking of the savages she had come to see, hurriedly agreed that there was no need for a guard.
Then the whole party began scrambling up through the trees. They had not gone very far before they came to a road. They crossed that and then the forest became much steeper. Sometimes it was a wonder how the little trees themselves clung on among the rocks. There were all sorts of trees. Here and there was a tall pine, but most of the trees were oaks and beeches and hazels and mountain ash. There was no path and the brambles on the ground and the long strings of honeysuckle twisting from branch to branch made it hard work pushing through the undergrowth.
“We’d better keep together,” said Mate Susan, when Titty tried to take a line of her own.
“It’s a real forest,” said Roger.
“A jungle almost,” said Titty.
“We ought to have an axe to blaze the trees so that we can be sure of finding our way back,” said John, “but we can’t go far wrong if we keep going straight down on the way back. That will bring us to the lake, anyhow, and once we’re on the shore it’ll be easy.”
“What if we don’t find the charcoal-burners?” asked Titty.
“Listen,” said Captain John. They listened and could hear the steady plunk, plunk of an axe somewhere far above them. “We can’t very well miss them, so long as they are making a noise like that.”
They climbed on and on through the wood. Captain John went first, then Roger and Titty, then Mate Susan, to see that there were no stragglers. Rabbits showed their white scuts as they scampered away among the bushes. A squirrel chattered at them out of a pine tree. Roger chattered back at it.
“It’s almost as good as a monkey,” said Titty. “If only there were some parrots.”
Just then there was a loud raucous squawking close in front of them and a tremendous flapping among the leaves, and a pair of jays flashed through the tops of the trees, showing for a moment white and black and pinky-grey and the bright blue bands on their wings.
“There are the parrots,” said Roger. “Talking ones. Listen to them saying ‘Pretty Polly’, only it’s in savage language, not ours.”
At last they came to a track in the wood. It seemed to lead upwards towards the noise of the wood-chopping.
“Now we must make a blaze,” said Captain John, “to show the place where we came into this track. Then we’ll know where to turn off on our way down.”
Titty pulled out her knife and cut a blaze on the side of a hazel. It was not a very big one.
“We might easily miss that,” said the captain. “We must have something easier to see.” He bent down two branches of the hazel and tied the ends of them to the tree, so that they made two big hoops at the side of the track.
“We’re sure to see those,” said Roger.
“We’ll have a patteran as well,” said Captain John.
“What’s that?” asked Titty.
“It’s what gipsies make to show each other which way they have gone. You take a long stick and a short one and put them in the road across each other, so that the long stick shows the way.”
He cut two sticks and put the long one in the middle of the track pointing towards the hazel with the two bent boughs. The short stick he laid on the other, so that they made a cross.
“That’s a patteran,” he said.
“But suppose somebody kicks them away?” said Roger.
“Nobody would do it on purpose,” said Susan.
“And if they did, there would still be John’s hoops and my blaze,” said Titty.
They got on much faster when they were walking along the track which wound up the side of the hill than they had when they were clambering through the bushes and trees. Presently the track came out into a clearing at a patch of flat ground. In the middle of the clearing was a big circle of black burnt earth.
“This is where the savages have had a corroboree,” said Titty. “They cooked their prisoners on the fire and danced round them.”
“Yelling like mad,” said Roger.
On the other side of the clearing they found the track again. The noise of the chopping was now close at hand. A keen smell of smouldering wood tickled their nostrils. Suddenly they came out of the trees again on the open hillside. There were still plenty of larger trees, but the smaller ones and the undergrowth had been cut away. There were long piles of branches cut all of a length and neatly stacked, ready for the fire. There was one pile that made a complete circle with a hole in the middle of it. Forty or fifty yards away there was a great mound of earth with little jets of blue wood smoke spirting from it. A man with a spade was patting the mound and putting a spadeful of earth wherever the smoke showed. Sometimes he climbed on the mound itself to smother a jet of smoke near the top of it. As soon as he closed one hole another jet of smoke would show itself somewhere else. The noise of chopping had stopped just before the explorers came into the open.
“Look, look,” cried Titty.
At the edge of the wood, not far from the smoking mound, there was a hut shaped like a round tent, but made not of canvas but of larch poles set up on end and all sloping together so that the longer poles crossed each other at the top. On the side of it nearest to the mound there was a doorway covered with a hanging flap made of an old sack. The sack was pulled aside from within and a little, bent old man, as wrinkled as a walnut and as brown, with long, bare arms covered with muscles, came out. He blinked at the explorers in the sunlight.
Roger took Titty’s hand.
“Hullo, you!” said the little old man. “Come to have a look, have you? Glad to see you.”
“Good morning,” said Captain John.
“It is that,” said the little old man, “it’s a grand day.”
“Good morning,” said the rest of the Swallows.
“Same to you,” said the old man. He seemed a very friendly savage. Roger let go of Titty’s hand.
All the Swallows were staring at the hut.
“It’s a Red Indian wigwam,” said Titty.
“Like to look inside?” said the old man. “Folk generally what do,” he added, almost to himself.
“May we?” said Titty, partly to the old man and partly to Mate Susan.
“Aye,” said the old man, and as for Susan, she was as keen as Titty to see inside.
The old man took a corner of the flap of sacking and hooked it up on a nail on the outside of the wigwam.
“Come in,” he said. “You’ll get used to the dark in a minute.”
The doorway was so low that Captain John had to bend. It was so low that in spite of the sunlight outside it was very dark in the hut. The Swallows went in one by one and stood together inside the doorway. The old man had gone in first, but they could hardly see him. They heard him chuckle.
“You’ll see better than bats in a minute. Sit you down on yon bed.”
Gradually their eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, and they saw that on each side of the hut a stout log divided off a place where there were rugs and blankets. Between the two logs there was an open space, where it looked as if there had been a small fire. The only light came through the doorhole. Not a speck of light came from between the poles of which the wigwam was made. Every chink had been well stuffed with moss. Overhead there hung a lantern, like their own camp lantern, from a hook at the end of a bit of wire. But it was not lit. High above
them was pitch darkness, where the poles met each other at the pointed top of the hut. The old man was squatting on the log that shut off one of the bed-places. The Swallows sat in a row along the other.
“Do you live here always?” asked Susan.
“While we’re burning,” replied the old man.
“While you’re burning the charcoal,” said Susan.
“Aye,” said the old man. “Someone has to be with the fire night and day, to keep him down like.”
“Have you really got a serpent?” asked Titty.
“An adder? Aye,” said the old man. “Like to see him?”
“Oh yes, please,” said all the Swallows.
“Well, you’re sitting on him,” said the old man.
All the Swallows, even Captain John, jumped up as if they had sat on a pin. The old man laughed. He came across the hut and rummaged under the blankets and pulled out an old cigar-box.
“It’s young Billy’s adder,” he said, “we’ll take it out to him. Hi, Billy,” he shouted from the doorhole, “let them have a look at your adder.”
He carried the little box out of the hut and the Swallows followed. Young Billy gave a last pat or two to the smoking mound, and came to them. He was another old man, but not quite so old as the first.
“Dad been showing you round?” he said to the Swallows.
“Is he your son?” Roger asked the first old man.
“He is that, and got sons and grandsons of his own, too. You wouldn’t think I was as old as all that. But I’m Old Billy and he’s Young Billy.”
THE SERPENT
“He doesn’t look like a son,” said Roger.
Young Billy laughed. “Let’s have the box, Dad,” he said, and Old Billy gave him the cigar-box. He put the box on the ground and knelt beside it. He undid the catch and lifted the lid. There was nothing to be seen but a lump of greenish moss. He took a twig and gently stirred the lump. There was a loud hiss, and the brown head of a snake shot out of the moss and over the side of the box. Its forked tongue darted in and out. Young Billy touched it gently with his twig. It hissed again and suddenly seemed to pour itself in a long, brown stream over the edge of the box. Young Billy dropped his twig and took a stick and picked the snake up on the stick and lifted it off the ground. Its tail hung down on one side of the stick and its head on the other. Its head swayed from side to side as it swung there, hissing and darting out its tongue. The Swallows shrank back from it but could not look away. Suddenly it began sliding over the stick. Young Billy was ready for it, and before it dropped on the ground he caught it on another stick.
“Is it safe to touch it?” asked Susan.
“Look,” said Young Billy. He lowered the snake to the ground and put the stick in front of it. Instantly the snake struck at it open-mouthed.
“Never you go near an adder,” said Young Billy. “There’s plenty of them about. And you mind where you’re stepping in the woods or up on the fell. They’ll get out of your way if they see you, but if you happen to step on one, he’ll bite, just as he did that stick. A bad bite it is too. There’s many a one has died of it.”
“What do you keep him for?” asked John.
“Luck,” said Young Billy. “Always had one in the hut, ever since I can remember, and Dad, that’s Old Billy here, can remember longer than me.”
“Aye, we’ve always had an adder,” said Old Billy, “and so had my Dad, when he was at the burning, and he was burning on these fells a hundred years ago.”
Young Billy neatly dropped the snake in its box and shut the lid on it. He held the box for the children to listen. They could hear the snake hissing inside. Then he gave the box back to Old Billy, who went off with it back into the hut.
A big puff of smoke rolled from the burning mound.
“Look there,” said Young Billy. “Can’t leave him a minute but he’s out. Like the adder is fire. Just a bit of a hole and out he comes.” He picked up his spade and went to the mound, where a small tongue of flame was licking a hole from inside. He put a spadeful of earth on the hole and patted it down.
“Why don’t you let it burn, if you’re burning?” said Titty. “We always want our fires to burn and sometimes they won’t.”
“We want ours to burn good and slow,” said Young Billy. “If he burns fast he leaves nowt but ash. The slower the fire the better the charcoal.”
Susan was watching carefully.
“Why doesn’t it go out?” she asked.
“Got too good a hold,” said Young Billy. “Once he’s got a good hold you can cover a fire up and the better you cover him the hotter he is and the slower he burns. But if you let him have plenty of air there’s no holding him.”
“Could we do it with a little fire?” asked Susan. “If I cover it with earth will my camp fire burn all night?”
“Aye,” said Young Billy, “if you want a fire to last, cover him with clods of earth and pour some water on them to damp them. He’ll be alight in the morning, and he’ll boil your kettle for you when you take the clods off him.”
“I’ll try it tonight,” said Susan.
“Let me have the telescope,” said Roger.
Captain John was looking through the telescope at the lake which lay far below them. From those high woods where the charcoal-burners had their fire and their wigwam of larch poles, the whole length of the lake could be seen. Far beyond Rio and its islands, the blue lake under the clear summer sky stretched away into the big hills. Away to the south the lake narrowed and narrowed until it became a winding river through green lowlands. A little cloud of white steam where the lake ended and river began showed where one of the lake steamers was resting by the pier there. Another steamer was moving down the lake by Darien. On this windless day the water was smooth and blue but astern of the steamer were two long, spreading waves, like a huge V moving down the lake and stretching from one shore to the other.
“Let me have the telescope,” said Roger again, “I want to see our island.”
“Wait a minute,” said Captain John, “there’s a boat close to it.”
“It’s not the Amazons, is it,” said Titty, “coming to make a surprise attack?”
“No,” said Captain John, “there’s only a man in it. One of the natives probably, fishing. But we ought to be going down all the same. We’ve left Swallow all alone.”
He gave Roger the telescope.
“You can’t see the whole of our island,” he said. “Part of it is hidden by the trees down there. But watch where that man goes to.”
“Are you the children camping on the island below?” asked Young Billy. “I thought you were. You had those Blackett lasses with you yesterday, hadn’t you? We saw their little boat. Hi! Dad!”
Old Billy came back from the wigwam.
“Dad,” said Young Billy, “they’re the young ones that have been camping on the island. Blackett’s lasses were with them yesterday.”
“Aye,” said Old Billy, “I mind well when Mrs. Blackett, little Miss Turner she was then, came to see my fire and my hut when she was no bigger than what you are now, miss.” He looked at Susan measuringly. “She and Master Jim. Eh! Eh! And now she’s a grown woman with two lasses of her own.”
“It’s Master Jim I’m thinking of,” said Young Billy. “It ’ud be a good thing to let him know what folk are saying.”
“It would that,” said Old Billy.
Young Billy turned again to John and Susan.
“Shall you be seeing those lasses again?” he asked.
“Yes,” said John, “as soon as ever there’s a wind for sailing. But we can’t do anything in a calm like this.”
“Well, you tell them to tell their Uncle Jim …”
“They can’t,” Titty broke in, “they’re at war with him.”
“They’ll tell him right enough,” said Young Billy. “You tell them to tell their Uncle Jim that Young Billy, that’s me, sent him word to put a good padlock on that houseboat of his if he leaves it at nights. Down in the pub at B
igland yonder there was a deal too much talk going about that houseboat and what he has in it. Nobody in these parts would touch it, but when talk gets going as far as Bigland, you never know who hears it. There’s more than plenty of wild young lads that are up to anything without thinking twice.
“Maybe nowt’ll come of it,” he went on, “but if anything did happen, I wouldn’t like to think we hadn’t told him. I was going down to see him myself, but I can’t leave the fire for a day or two yet, and if you’ll tell the lasses, that’s as good.”
“We’ll tell them,” said John.
“You won’t forget?” said Young Billy.
“No,” said Susan, pulling out her handkerchief. “Not with this.” She tied a big knot in one corner of it.
“I can’t see the boat with the man in it any more, because of the trees,” said Roger.
John took the telescope. “We ought to be going down, anyway,” he said.
Susan turned politely to the old men. “Thank you very much for letting us come to see you. We have enjoyed ourselves very much.”
“And thank you for showing us the serpent,” said Titty.
They said “Goodbye,” and the Billies, the two old men, one very old and the other older still, said, “Goodbye to you all.”
The Swallows started on their way back into the steep woods.
“Don’t forget to tell them lasses about their Uncle Jim,” Young Billy called after them.
“We won’t forget,” shouted Susan, and waved her handkerchief with the knot on the end of it.
CHAPTER XIV
THE LETTER FROM CAPTAIN FLINT
THE SWALLOWS WERE back in real life, almost before they were out of sight of the charcoal-burners.
“They’re the finest savages we ever met,” said Titty. “I expect the serpent is for witchcraft. Medicine men, I should think they are. They’re so old. Medicine men from a wandering tribe from beyond the ranges.”
For a minute or two she was silent. Then suddenly she exclaimed, “Bother the Amazons!”