Pigeon Post. Arthur Ransome

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СКАЧАТЬ can promise to send a pigeon home every day with a letter, and arrange for it to ring a bell that nobody can help hearing …”

      “Dick’ll do it,” said Nancy. “That’ll be a pigeon a day for three days, and then one of us’ll come home to bring them back. Well done, mother. A pigeon a day keeps the natives away … We don’t want to keep you away, of course. It’s only to save you having to come.”

      “Well, if Dick really can do it,” said Mrs Blackett doubtfully. “And if you can get milk at Atkinson’s, and find a nice place with good water …”

      “She’s agreed,” shouted Nancy. “Barbecued billygoats, mother, but I thought you were never going to.”

      “I put all my trust in you, Susan,” said Mrs Blackett. “And you, too, John,” she added. John grinned. It was kind of her to say it, but he knew she did not mean it. On questions of milk and drinking-water and getting able-seamen to bed in proper time, Susan was the one the natives trusted.

      “We’ll start the trek first thing in the morning,” said Nancy.

      “No. No. No,” said her mother. “You can’t do that. Send out your pioneers and find the right place. Make sure about the milk from Atkinson’s. They may be selling every drop they have with so many visitors about. And make sure of good water. You know what the becks are like and the Atkinsons may be short themselves. I can’t have you simply setting out with nothing arranged. And Dick’s got to turn your pigeons into bell-ringers or you can’t go at all.”

      “Oh well,” said Nancy. “It won’t really be a waste of time. John and Susan’ll come and see for themselves and the others can be getting things ready. Someone’s got to go to Rio to buy hammers. Torches, too, and a tremendous lot of stores.”

      The rest of the evening passed quickly in feasting and planning.

      “Not all mining camps have such good cooks,” said Mrs Blackett, sitting by the camp-fire after supper.

      “The pemmican would have been better with a little chopped onion,” said Susan, “but I didn’t think of it in time.”

      “I do hope I’m not doing wrong,” said Mrs Blackett, as at last she left them, and they walked with her across the lawn in the dusk and said their good nights at the garden door.

      “You’re doing exactly right,” said Nancy.

      “I mean what I say about those pigeons,” said Mrs Blackett, almost hopefully. “They’ll have to ring bells if I’m to agree to your going.”

      “They shall,” said Nancy.

      “Don’t sit up late.”

      “Just till the flames die down.”

      They walked slowly back to where the embers of the campfire were glowing behind the bushes.

      “You really think you can do it, Dick?” said Nancy.

      Dick pulled his torch from his pocket and turned it on. “I’ll just go and make sure,” he said.

      Very quietly they went into the stableyard. Dick climbed the ladder to the pigeon-loft, leaned across and laid his torch on the pigeons’ landing-place, and felt the swinging wires. There was a sudden fluttering in the loft.

      “Phiu … phiu … phiu …” Peggy and Titty were making noises to reassure the pigeons.

      “I think it’s all right,” said Dick. “The wires are all separate, aren’t they? We’ll have to fasten three or four of them together.”

      “What are you doing?” Mrs Blackett called from an upper window.

      “Just making sure about something,” said Nancy. “Good night, mother. We’ll all go to bed right away.”

CHAPTER V

      PIONEERS AND STAY-AT-HOMES

      LONG BEFORE Beckfoot was awake people were stirring in the camp. Nancy moved on tiptoe from tent to tent. Orders were given in whispers as if the old grey house itself had ears. Susan boiled a kettle at the fireplace among the bushes. Peggy laid wait in the road for the boy who brought the morning’s milk from Low Farm. Dick and Dorothea, Titty and Roger woke to find smoke from the fire climbing through the morning mist, and Susan, John and Nancy beginning an early breakfast of tea and eggs and bread and butter. Another lot of eggs were being boiled hard and Peggy was cutting bread and butter sandwiches for the pioneers to carry in their packs. “Don’t make a noise,” whispered Nancy. “Don’t wake the house. Second thoughts are always worse, and you can’t count on natives not to have them. Not even mother. The sooner we’re off the better. Before she has time to change her mind. Hi, Peggy, you’re the best hand with the pigeons. You go and catch them while we’re getting the food down.”

      The others hurried into their clothes.

      “Look here, Dick,” said Nancy. “The whole thing depends on you. It was only what you said about the pigeons that made her say she’d let us go. She’d ever so much rather have us roosting in the garden every night. We’ll find a camp easily enough, but if you don’t manage the pigeons’ bell-ringing, it won’t be any good.”

      “And you know the things to buy in Rio,” said John. “Hammers and new torches.”

      “And goggles,” said Susan. “Motor goggles will do. But you must have something if you’re going to go chipping at rocks.”

      “Don’t send off the first pigeon too soon,” said Dick. “Not till after twelve.”

      “Are you going to send messages?” asked Titty.

      “Of course,” said Nancy. “It’s a splendid chance.”

      “Mother’s moving about,” said Peggy, coming back with the pigeons in their basket. “And cook’s stoking up. You won’t have long to wait now, Roger.”

      “Shiver my timbers,” said Nancy. “We ought to be stirring our stumps. We’ve ten thousand miles to go.”

      They did not take the risk of going out by the stableyard and the gate, but slipped away in single file along the path through the wood and climbed the wall to get into the road. The others watched them out of sight.

      The pioneers were well on their way when a gong sounded in the house. Peggy and Titty were tidying up in the camp, putting rugs and sleeping-bags to air. Roger was helping them, pointing out the things they had left undone. They hurried in to find Mrs Blackett already dealing out plates full of bacon and mushrooms along the bare trestle table in the dismantled dining-room.

      “Good morning,” she said cheerfully. “And where are the others?”

      “Dick’s gone to the stable,” said Dorothea, “to look at the electric bell.”

      “Oh dear, oh dear,” said Mrs Blackett. “He isn’t really going to try to do anything with it, is he? But where are John and Susan and Nancy?”

      “They’ve СКАЧАТЬ