Pigeon Post. Arthur Ransome

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      Dick, who meant pigeons to ring bells no matter how melancholy were the messages they carried, knew now exactly what he had to do. Homer had shouldered through those swinging wires in the most encouraging way. There was going to be no difficulty about that. What he had to do was to make a little swinging trigger that would move with the wires as the pigeon pushed through and make contact between two strips of copper springy enough to grip and hold it till someone came to let it go. He did it, after two or three false starts, with the help of some stiff wire, a cork, a scrap of lead and the copper Dorothea had brought from Rio, which he cut with a pair of scissors borrowed from the unsuspecting cook. He worked as hard as he could to have it ready for the next pigeon, but by the time he had finished his pigeon bell-push and joined it up to the old wires across the stableyard, the afternoon was over and the workmen had gone for the day.

      It was funny that second pigeon had not come. Good thing, though. He might yet have time to get the bell itself fixed up at the other end.

      There was a sudden shouting in the yard.

      “Ahoy!”

      “How are you getting on?”

      “Hasn’t another pigeon come yet?”

      The carpenters from the camp, their work done, were at the foot of the steps. Dick looked down, but hardly saw the finished sleeping-box for the armadillo, with a door to open and shut, and Timothy’s name painted upon it. There wasn’t a second to lose.

      “Nearly done,” he said, and ran down the steps, picked up the bell and the coil of flex and bolted into the house. Lucky the batteries for the house bells were close to the kitchen door. He had not any too much flex to spare. With trembling fingers, he connected up his bell and put it on a chair in the passage. Better than nothing. He was ready now, but in the stable he had seen a discarded, rusty tea-tray. That would be wanted too, before everything was quite as he had planned.

      “No more news?” That was Mrs Blackett in the yard. “Surely they’ll have sent off another pigeon before now. Isn’t it a blessing to have the place to ourselves and the workmen gone? Well, I must say, you’ve made a very handsome hutch, and those leather hinges to the door … Peggy, you awful child, you haven’t been cutting bits off your blue belt?”

      Dick started to cross the yard. There might yet be time to fix that tea-tray.

      “That belt was miles too long,” Peggy was saying.

      Mrs Blackett flapped her hands in despair, and turned to Roger, who had taken Titty’s place on the ladder and was finding his sun-goggles very useful in searching the sky for a pigeon. She was just going to say something to him, when Roger shouted, “Here he is,” and nearly fell off the ladder, pulling the goggles hurriedly off in order to see better as a pigeon swooped down into the yard.

      “Don’t frighten him,” said Peggy.

      But Sophocles was startled only for a moment. He flew to the loft, waited on the ledge, looking down at the crowd of people in the yard, and then plunged in as if the swinging wires had not been there.

      “Trrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr …”

      Dick, who had stopped short as the pigeon flew down, smiled a slow, happy smile. The thing had worked. Sophocles had rung the bell.

      “Trrrrrrrrrrrrrr …”

      “Well done, Dick!” “What about that, mother?” “He’s done it.” Every one was talking at once.

      “Well, Dick, I must say it’s very clever of you,” said Mrs Blackett.

      “It’ll go on ringing till you go to the loft and switch it off when you take the pigeon’s message,” said Dick, watching the bell dithering as it lay loose on the chair.

      “But do you think we’ll hear it?” said Mrs Blackett, “when we’re racketing about and busy with other things.”

      “It’s going to be a lot louder than that,” said Dick

      “So we’ll be able to go,” said Roger eagerly.

      “Not if they can’t get milk …”

      “Come on, Dick,” said Peggy. “And shut off the bell while I’m catching Sophocles.”

      A moment later she was reading the second message:-

      “CRAWLING HOME MORE DEAD THAN ALIVE. BELLIES PINCHED. THROATS PARCHED. PLEASE PUT THE KETTLE ON.”

      “Doesn’t sound as if they had found a good water supply either,” said Mrs Blackett.

      “It’s just Nancy making it more exciting,” said Peggy. “Come on. Let’s get tea ready for them.”

      “Can I borrow the step-ladder?” asked Dick, looking up at a beam that crossed the passage in a most convenient place.

      “Anything you like,” said Mrs Blackett, and went off with the others to the camp in the garden, while Roger, much interested now that the bell was really working, stayed behind to help Dick.

      It was a huge old tea-tray, and noisy if you only touched it. Dick punched a hole in the middle of it with a hammer and nail, and fastened the bell there. He punched two more holes, good big ones, and then, with Roger to help, put two screws through these holes and into the beam above the passage, not screwing them tight, but leaving them loose so that the whole tea-tray was free to rattle. Then he connected up the bell once more, put the step-ladder back in the hall where СКАЧАТЬ