Swallowdale. Arthur Ransome

going wrong with their plans, they had set out to-day to explore the stream that ran into the lake at Horseshoe Cove, and there was nothing to stop them from doing that.

      “Where are you going to explore?” asked Nancy.

      “We’re going up the beck,” said Titty.

      “You’ll only come to the road,” said Peggy.

      It very soon became clear that there would be no exploring that day if it depended on Nancy and Peggy. What they wanted to do was to talk about the great-aunt and about schools and about all sorts of things that had been happening since Christmas. They were both tired of having only each other as listener. And you had only to look at John and Susan to see that they were quite content to sit by their fire in the cove and listen for just as long as Nancy and Peggy cared to talk.

      The able-seaman and the boy listened for a long time and sometimes even asked questions. But at last Roger began trying to keep two little stones in the air at once, and one of his stones fell in his mug and might have broken it if there had not been a little tea left in the bottom. He had stopped listening. And the able-seaman, remembering all those blank spaces on the map got up and beckoned to him.

      “Where are you going?” asked Susan.

      “Exploring,” said Titty.

      “Don’t go far from the stream,” said Susan, “and don’t be away too long . . . What was that you were saying, Peggy?”

      The able-seaman and the boy pushed their way into the bushes and disappeared behind a green curtain of leaves.

      CHAPTER IV

      THE ABLE-SEAMAN AND THE BOY EXPLORE

      “By mutual confidence and mutual aid

      Great deeds are dune, and great discoveries made.”

      Pope’s Homer

      FOR SOME TIME, as the able-seaman and the boy pushed their way through the bushes and small trees by the side of the stream, they could hear the talking of the others, Nancy and Peggy very loud and clear, John and Susan not so loud. Then they could hear only the voices of Nancy and Peggy. Then Nancy’s voice alone was stronger than the rippling of the stream at the explorers’ feet. Then they heard even Nancy’s talk no more, though now and then, faint and far away as it was, there was no mistaking her cheerful laugh. After that, they could hear nothing but the noise of the water toppling over six-inch waterfalls and down pebbly rapids. The stream was too wide to jump across, but there were places where it was possible to hop from stone to stone and to get across with dry feet if you were lucky. The trees grew close to the stream, and in some places the water had hollowed out a way for itself almost under their roots. There were little pools, foaming at the top where the stream ran in, and smooth and shallow and fast at the hang before it galloped away again down a tiny cataract.

      “There’s a fish,” said Roger.

      “Where?”

      “There isn’t one now. But there was. Look! Look! There’s another!” But that fish too was gone before the able-seaman had seen just where the ship’s boy was pointing.

      “They needn’t be frightened,” said the able-seaman. “It isn’t as if we were herons. Keep still when you see the next one. Don’t point at it.”

      The boy hurried on with his eyes on the water close ahead of him. Suddenly he stopped dead, like a dog that smells partridges in a field of stubble. Titty crept up, stooping low, till she was close beside him.

      “There,” said Roger. “By the stone with the moss on it. Look! He’s sticking his nose out.”

      A widening ripple was washed away with the stream, but it had been enough to show Titty where to look. There, in the clear water, she could see a small speckled fish which stayed almost in one place as if it were hung in the stream. As she looked it suddenly slanted up and broke the water again.

      “He isn’t a bit like the perch we caught in the lake,” said Roger.

      “It’s probably a trout,” said Titty.

      “I wish we had our fishing-rods,” said Roger. “We’d catch dozens and dozens and take them back to feed the camp.”

      “We couldn’t fish in all these trees,” said Titty.

      “Well, there are lots of fish,” said Roger.

      “Anyway, we can’t fish now. We are explorers, sent out into the jungle by the rest of the expedition. We mustn’t think of anything else. At the very moment when we were looking at a fish there might be a yell. . .”

      “A blood-curdling kind of yell?”

      “Of course blood-curdling. Boomerangs and arrows might come whizzing through the air. And even if we weren’t killed at once the savages would tie us up and take us away, and then when the others came to look for us they would walk into the very same trap.”

      “What’s that noise?” said the ship’s boy suddenly.

      It was the noise of a motor horn. They both knew what it was, but it was far too good a noise to waste.

      “The trumpets of the savages,” said Titty. “There’s probably a causeway through the forest. We must be near the edge of the jungle.”

      Another horn sounded, on a different note, and they could hear the fierce throbbing roar of a motor bicycle.

      “Trumpets and tom-toms,” said Titty. “The savages have their scouts on the road trumpeting to each other. We shan’t be able to go much farther. Peggy said we couldn’t.”

      “Well, let’s go as far as we can,” said Roger.

      This part of the wood was all smallish trees, growing thickly together. There were hazels, oaks, birches, and here and there an ash, and here and there a stout prickly bush of holly, or a lonely feathery pine waving high above the rest. There was honeysuckle, too, tangling bough with bough. It was as good a jungle as anyone could want. And through this jungle ran the little stream hurrying on its way to the lake.

      The able-seaman and the boy pressed on. Suddenly they saw what looked like an opening in the trees away to the left. They crossed the stream and pushed through the bushes towards the opening, and found a cart-track, which led through the trees to a gap in the stone wall along the edge of the wood. Perhaps there had been a gate in the gap once upon a time, but there was no gate now, and the ends of the wall had fallen down. Beyond the wall lay the road, and on the other side of the road was another wall of loose stones covered with moss. Beyond that was another kind of wood, larches and pines and a few firs climbing steeply up into the sky.

      The able-seaman saw the road first. She dropped flat at once on the ground by the side of the cart-track. The boy waited for half a second and then dropped beside her.

      “We don’t know whether they’re friendlies or not,” said the able-seaman.

      “The only people we know on this side of the lake are the Amazons,” said the boy.

      “Well, we know where they are, so anyone on the road must be someone else.”

      A motor car flashed across the gap in the wall. For a moment they caught through the trees the glint of sunlight on something bright; then they saw it in the gap; then it was gone. Then three natives on bicycles passed the gap, going the other way. Then came a noise which promised something better. It was the noise of horses’ hoofs clumping on the hard road.

      “Trotting or walking?” said Roger.

      “Probably walking,” said Titty. “It usually is when it sounds like the other. A lot of them, anyhow.”

      The horses were a