*
Outside, in the garden, the huntsmen were licking their wounds.
“My word, she is a tartar, that old lady,” said the sergeant of police.
“Flattened us out one after another,” said Colonel Jolys. “Down with one and ready for the next.” He turned to Timothy. “She had her knife into you properly. What did she call you? A burglar and what not? Did you do any burgling?”
“It’s a long story,” said Timothy.
“If you ask me,” said the doctor, “we’ve that young rip, Nancy, to thank for everything. And we’re lucky it’s not worse. There’s …”
Timothy winked at the doctor. “By the way,” he said, “did you see where those two strangers went?”
“Well, I’m off,” said the sergeant.
“Half a minute,” said Colonel Jolys. “We’ll be the laughing stock of the whole place if we just troop back with our tails between our legs.”
“What can we do, Colonel?” said the sergeant.
“Give her a cheer when she comes out,” said Colonel Jolys.
CHAPTER XXX
REWARD OF VIRTUE
DICK looked at Dorothea. Dorothea looked at Dick. The same idea had come to both of them.
Dick was holding Scarab close to the bank with a tight grip on a clump of grass. Dorothea was still clutching the tiller. Minute by minute, both had been waiting for somebody to say the careless word that would mean disaster. No one had said it. From the moment the Great Aunt had stepped ashore, to deal so firmly with her would-be rescuers, no one had had eyes to spare for the little boat in which she had come. As the Great Aunt, with dignity, walked up the lawn towards the house, the crowd made way for her and closed in behind her. Not one single face was turned towards the river. Dick let go his tuft of grass and pushed off from the bank. There was a chance yet.
Scarab drifted silently away from the lawn and down the river. The high ridge of the promontory sheltered them from the wind. The sail hung idle. Dorothea touched the slack main-sheet, but saw the warning in Dick’s eyes and let it lie. Foot by foot they drifted away from the lawn and downstream towards the boathouse. And still nobody turned to look at them. Dick dared not use those new and squeaking oars. He had no need. For one nervous moment he thought he might have to fend off from the wall of the boathouse, but Scarab drifted clear. A moment later and they were out of sight from the lawn.
“We’ve done it,” whispered Dorothea.
Scarab drifted on along the reedy shore. In among the reeds, only a foot or two away, was the stern of Amazon, where she had been left the day before. Dick grabbed an oar, was just able to reach her, and brought Scarab in beside her.
“Is it safe?” said Dorothea.
“Better than going outside,” said Dick. “On the lake we could be seen from anywhere.”
He took Scarab’s painter, scrambled from one boat to the other, made the painter fast, scrambled back again and lowered sail.
“Never mind about a stow,” he said. “Come on.”
“Where?” said Dorothea. “We can’t get back to the hut with all those people about.”
“Look-out post,” said Dick. “We simply must know what’s happening.”
They got ashore by way of Amazon, after letting Scarab out to the end of her painter so that she lay downstream against the reeds.
Quickly, quietly, they climbed to the top of the ridge, snaking the last few yards till, from among the rocks and heather, they could look down on the Beckfoot lawn.
The crowd had moved nearer to the house. They caught sight of Cook hurrying towards the garden door. The Great Aunt was talking to a policeman. The white frocks of Nancy and Peggy were close beside her.
“Has she found out or hasn’t she?” said Dorothea.
“She’s going indoors,” said Dick. “What’s Peggy carrying?”
“Nancy’s gone in, too.”
“Timothy’s talking to Colonel Jolys,” said Dick.
“And the doctor,” said Dorothea. “If she asked him questions he’ll have told her everything. He said he would.”
Dick looked at his watch.
“What time is it?” asked Dorothea.
“Fourteen and a half minutes to one.”
*
No fourteen and a half minutes ever went so slowly.
The crowd on the lawn was thinning. Firefighters and their helpers were pouring back towards the road. Groups lingered talking, but all kept moving in the same direction. Presently there was no one left. The new-cut grass looked like a football field after the players have all gone home. But the watchers on the ridge knew that the players had not gone far. They could hear the noise of many people talking.
“What are they waiting for?” said Dorothea. “They know now she isn’t lost. Why don’t they go away?”
Minute after minute went by. The Picts, lying on the top of the ridge, looked down on the trodden, deserted lawn, and on the silent grey house. No one showed at any of the windows they could see. Somewhere inside the house were Nancy, Peggy and the Great Aunt … not a Great Aunt who did not know the Picts existed, but a Great Aunt who had been in the boat with them, who had talked with them, whom they themselves had brought back to Beckfoot.
“I believe the theory’s exploded already,” said Dick, half getting to his feet. “Somebody must have said something, and they’re getting in a row now. We’d better go down and tell her it was our fault, too.”
“We don’t know,” said Dorothea. “Her having seen us doesn’t matter so long as she doesn’t know who we are. If she doesn’t know we’re Picts, we still are. Wait till one o’clock and see if she goes. What time is it now?”
“A quarter of a minute to one.”
“There’s a car coming now,” said Dorothea, only just stopping herself from jumping up.
“Firefighters going away,” said Dick.
“It’s coming from the head of the lake,” said Dorothea.
They heard it coming nearer and nearer, hooting at the bends in the narrow road.
“It’s stopped,” said Dorothea.
A coach horn sounded for a second, but stopped short as if its owner had been ordered to shut up. The noise of talking grew louder. But there was no sound of cars moving off.
“Why don’t they go?” said Dorothea.
The noise of talking grew louder yet and then came suddenly to an end.
“What is happening?” said Dorothea.
A minute went by without sound.
Then, from behind the house came Colonel Jolys’s voice, shouting, “Now lads! Miss Turner! Hip, hip, hurray!”, the last words drowned in a burst of cheering, and a tremendous fanfare of trumpets. Coach calls and hunting calls fought with each other. Every man who had a horn was blowing it as hard as he could.
There was silence once again, then a single hoot from a motor horn.
“She’s going,” whispered Dorothea. “She must be going. She must be going now. That was her car hooting as it went out of the gate.”
They heard it again, further away.
Behind the house there was talking and shouting again, and the noise of engines being started and cars moving off.
“She’s gone,” said Dorothea, “I do believe she has,” and at that moment Nancy and Peggy came racing across the lawn towards the boathouse.
“They’re somewhere quite near. Bound to be. SCARAB AHOY! AHOY! Come out, you Picts!”
It was the first time for ten days that they had heard Nancy let herself go with a proper yell.
“Ahoy!” shouted Dick and Dorothea, and jumping over rocks and clumps of heather raced down the steep side of the ridge just as Timothy came slowly round the corner of the house, reading a letter as he came.
“Well done, the Picts!” cried Nancy. “Well done! Well done! If you hadn’t had the sense to bolt we’d have failed after all.”
“Has she gone?” asked Dorothea.
“Of course she has. Didn’t you hear them giving her a send off?”
??
?Did she find out about us?”
“She didn’t find out about anything. We thought she was bound to. The doctor and the postman and everybody were on the very edge of blurting it out but she didn’t give anyone a chance. We thought it was all up again and again. But luckily there was Colonel Jolys and Timothy and the police, and she was pretty busy squashing them. The worst moment of all was when she wanted to thank you for bringing her home. And when she looked round for you you were gone and it turned into the best moment instead.”
Nancy turned to Timothy who had come up to them but was still looking at the letter. “I say, it was jolly good of you to sit tight and say nothing when she said such unfair things about the burglary.”
“I couldn’t do anything else,” said Timothy. “Worse for all of us if she’d known they were in it. And anyhow it was my burglary in a way and my fault they ran into her. Good thing they did as it happened. I told them to go to the houseboat. What I can’t make out is how on earth she got there.”
“I know that,” said Nancy. “She told us. She says she met Mary Swainson, and Mary took her across. I can’t think why. The G.A. was keeping something dark herself. It was something to do with her thinking the Swallows were here, when we’d told her they hadn’t yet come.”
“Is everything all right now?” asked Dorothea.
“All right? Much more than all right. You look at the letter she’s written to Mother. She left it open and told us we were to read it. Hi! Timothy! Let’s have it.” She took the letter from him and pushed it into Dorothea’s hands. “Read it! Read it! And then you’ll see.”
“But ought we?”
“Of course you ought. Timothy’s read it. It’s a sort of public testimonial.”
“She’s given you a pretty good character,” said Timothy. “She’s a bit hard on me, but I must say I did like the way she polished off the police and Colonel Jolys. If you ask me, I think your Great Aunt is remarkably like her Great Niece. And the way she dealt with Jolys’s notion of taking his whole gang to see her off at the station! … Did you hear her tell her man not to drive at more than ten miles an hour?” Timothy chuckled, threw himself on the slope of the lawn, and put his hands behind his tired head.
Dick and Dorothea were reading the letter together.
My dear Mary,
On hearing, by the merest accident, that you and James had thought fit to make a voyage for purposes of pleasure leaving your daughters, my great nieces, alone at Beckfoot, I felt it my duty to take charge of them in your absence. I have no doubt that you would yourself have suggested this arrangement if you had not been unwilling to inconvenience me. I should like to say that I have been pleasantly surprised by the notable improvement in both Ruth and Margaret. They were, I may say, most attentive and obedient, and in every way did all they could to make my visit pleasant. They have, besides keeping up their practice upon the pianoforte, made remarkable progress in their holiday tasks, so that they will be the better able to enjoy your companionship on your return. Ruth, in particular, at a moment when a slight misunderstanding on my part had brought about circumstances that might have been embarrassing to me, showed that she possesses much of the tact that was characteristic of your grandfather. I wish I could give as good a report of the person to whom, it seems, James had unwisely lent his houseboat. I hope James took the precaution of having an inventory made of his possessions before he left them in the hands of a man who is not above breaking into the house at night to obtain something that I suppose he thought I might otherwise have denied him.
I leave today to rejoin my dear old friend, Miss Huskisson, who, in accordance with her usual summer routine, is to take the waters at Harrogate. I should otherwise have been glad to prolong what I undertook as a duty but found to be a most delightful visit.
I hope that you and James had a pleasant voyage.
I am, my dear Mary,
Your affectionate Aunt,
Maria Turner
“What about that?” said Nancy. “I knew we’d bring it off. Mother’ll be most awfully pleased. And when you think that the G.A. came here all bristling and meaning to be piggish to Mother. And in spite of her being here, we’ve done everything we’d planned to do. And now it’s over, and you can stop being Picts and we haven’t got to be angels any more.”
“But you don’t know what she’s done,” said Dick. “She’s thrown overboard all the samples from the mine.”
“That’s all right,” said Timothy. “Very kind of her. Saved me the trouble. Those samples don’t matter now. We’ve done with them. What matters is the results we got, and they’re all in my pocket. The only samples we need now are the two we got yesterday and they’re safe in my knapsack. And if you like to come along tomorrow morning we’ll get those done and then we’ll have finished. Jim and Mrs Blackett can’t be here till the afternoon.”
The load was lifted that had been on Dick’s mind ever since he had known that the Great Aunt had been busy in the houseboat. He knew what tidying meant when people wrapped things round their heads and really went at it. He had thought that the burglary had been in vain and that Timothy and he had done their work for nothing.
“I’ll sail down first thing,” he said.
Cook was coming across the lawn.
“You’ll be stopping for lunch, Mr Stedding,” she said. “I’m laying for five. And you should NOT be lying on that damp grass even if the sun is shining. Eh, but I’m glad that’s over. And to think of Miss Turner spending the night in yon old boat, as comfortable as you please, with us thinking of inquests and all.”
“She’s written to Mother to say we’ve been awfully good,” said Nancy. “And so we jolly well have. But I say, Cooky, you aren’t really going to leave?”
“Oh that,” said Cook. “She asked me to take my notice back, and I was that pleased to see her alive I told her I didn’t mind if I did. And now, lunch’ll be ready as soon as I ring the gong, and you come in sharp. You’ve everything to bring down from that old ruin. We must have them in their bedrooms like Christians again, ready for Mrs Blackett coming home. We must have everything just right. And so it would have been all along if Miss Turner’d left well alone.”
Cook went off back to the house.
*
It was oddly peaceful on the Beckfoot lawn. Only a coach call now and again, far away by the head of the lake, told of the firefighters going home after the hunt.
“Thank goodness that’s over,” said Timothy, still lying on the grass in spite of what Cook had said.
“Yes,” said Nancy with a new look in her eyes. “And only ten days gone after all. An awful ten days, but worth it to save Mother. And now at last we’re free to start stirring things up. We’ll hoist the skull and crossbones again the moment we’ve had our grub. We’ll get things moving with out wasting a minute. …”
Timothy sat up suddenly. “Oh look here,” he said, “I’m all for a quiet life after this.”
“Well, you won’t exactly have one,” said Nancy. “Not yet. You can’t expect it. Not with the Swallows coming, and Uncle Jim, and five whole weeks of the holidays still to go.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Arthur Ransome was born in Leeds in 1884 and went to school at Rugby. He was in Russia in 1917, and witnessed the Revolution, which he reported for the Manchester Guardian. After escaping to Scandinavia, he settled in the Lake District with his Russian wife where, in 1929, he wrote Swallows and Amazons. And so began a writing career which has produced some of the real children’s treasures of all time. In 1936 he won the first ever Carnegie Medal for his book, Pigeon Post.
Other books by Arthur Ransome in Red Fox
Swallows and Amazons
Swallowdale
Peter Duck
Winter Holiday
Coot Club
Pigeon Post
We Didn’t Mean to Go to Sea
Secret Water
The Big Six
Missee Lee
Great Northern?
THE A
RTHUR RANSOME SOCIETY
The Arthur Ransome Society (‘TARS’) was formed in 1990 with the aim of celebrating Ransome’s life and works, and of encouraging both children and adults to take part in outdoor pursuits – especially sailing and camping. It also seeks to sponsor research, to spread Ransome’s ideas in the wider community and to bring together all those who share the values and the spirit that he fostered in his storytelling.
The Society is based at the Abbot Hall Museum of Lakeland Life and Industry in Kendal, where Ransome’s desk, favourite books and some of his personal possessions are kept. There are also close links with the Ruskin Museum at Coniston, where the original Amazon is now kept. The Society keeps in touch with its members through its journal, Mixed Moss, and its newsletter, Signals.
Regional branches of the Society have been formed by members in various parts of the country, including Scotland, the Lake District and North, East Anglia, the Midlands, the South and South West Coast, and contacts are maintained with overseas groups in America, Australia and Japan. Membership fees are modest, and fall into four groups – for those under 18, for single adults and for whole families, and for those over 65. If you are interested in knowing more about the Society or would like to join it please write for a membership leaflet to The Secretary, The Arthur Ransome Society Ltd, The Abbot Hall Gallery, Kendal, Cumbria LA9 5AL, or email to
[email protected].
THE ARTHUR RANSOME TRUST
“I seem to have lived not one life, but snatches from a dozen different lives.”
Arthur Ransome wrote twelve adventures about the Swallows and Amazons and their friends. He also wrote many other books and articles. He had a lot to write about, because in “real” life he was not only an author, but also a sailor, journalist, critic, story teller, illustrator, fisherman, editor, bohemian, and war reporter, who played chess with Lenin, married Trotsky’s secretary, helped Estonia gain independence and aroused the interest of both MI6 and MI5.