8

High Topps

‘HERE WE ARE,’ said Nancy. ‘That’s Tyson’s.’

A narrow lane turned to the right out of the road, crossed the almost dry bed of the river by a small hump-backed stone bridge, and ended in the cobbled yard of a whitewashed farmhouse. On one side of the yard was the house itself, with low windows and a porch with clematis climbing over it, a big cow-house with a barn above it, and an old pump with a shallow drinking-trough. On the other side was a wall of loose stones with a gate in it shutting in an orchard. Behind orchard and buildings a wood of oaks and birches and hazels, with here and there a pine, rose steeply up into the sky. Somewhere above the wood was High Topps, the workings of the old miners of long ago, and the precious metal they had come to find.

The handcart rattled over the bridge and across the hard cobbles of the yard. The dromedaries followed more quietly, though Roger felt it was only right that the journey should end on the run, and that the leading donkey should announce the arrival of the caravan with a loud triumphant bray.

Mrs Tyson came out of the porch just as Nancy was leaning her dromedary up against the orchard wall. Her arms were white to the elbows with flour, for she was busy baking, and she did not seem too pleased to find the farmyard full of prospectors with their handcart and their laden dromedaries.

‘And here you are,’ she said. ‘And where’s Mrs Blackett? Goodness, there’s a lot of you. There was only three yesterday. I don’t know where we’re going to put you all.’

‘Mother’s coming along.’

‘You’ll have told her what I said about fires,’ said Mrs Tyson. ‘And about there being no water up in the wood, with the beck run dry.’

‘We told her everything,’ said Nancy. ‘It’s all right. It’s no good lighting fires where there isn’t any water. And we’re not going to unpack tents or anything till Mother’s been. Oh, hullo, Robin. …’ A young man came out from behind the barn with a long pole and a bundle of brushwood at the top of it. He set it to lean against the wall of the barn with half a dozen others.

‘That’s Robin Tyson, Mrs Tyson’s son,’ Peggy explained to Dorothea.

‘More fire-brooms,’ said Roger.

‘We’ll likely need ’em,’ said Robin.

‘Have you joined Colonel Jolys’ volunteers?’ asked Nancy.

‘No good to us,’ said Mrs Tyson. ‘However can we let them know if there’s a fire? If owt catches here, we mun fight it ourselves. Before we’d get the word to the Colonel at head of the lake there’d be nowt left of our valley but ash and smoke.’

‘If there’s a fire we’ll all help,’ said Nancy.

‘So long as you don’t light it I’ll be well pleased,’ said Mrs Tyson.

‘We won’t do that,’ said Roger indignantly.

‘If I could be sure,’ said Mrs Tyson. She looked up at the blue sky over the high wood behind the farm. ‘Never a sign of rain,’ she said. ‘And it’s weeks now the ground is cracking for it. Oh well,’ she added, ‘I’ve my baking to do whatever … and Mrs Blackett coming.’

‘She won’t be here just yet,’ said Nancy. ‘At least I shouldn’t think so … not until the painters and paperers have gone. May we just leave our things here while we go up the wood to have a look at the Topps?’

‘There’s no carts stirring today,’ said Mrs Tyson. ‘Your things’ll be out of the road again yon barn wall.’

‘You’ll want the pigeons out of the sun,’ said Robin Tyson. ‘Best wheel them into the barn.’

‘Thank you very much,’ said Titty, who had been trying to make a shady place for the pigeons by draping a bit of a groundsheet over their cage.

‘Dump everything,’ cried Nancy. ‘Travel light. It’s a bit of a pull to the top.’

The handcart was run into the barn, with the pigeons’ cage upon it. Dromedaries leaned against the orchard wall. Knapsacks were slung off and piled in a heap.

‘No need to carry anything,’ said Peggy. ‘Just a dash up the wood to have a squint at the goldfields.’

‘Compass,’ said John, digging one out of the outer pocket of his knapsack.

‘And we’d better have the telescope,’ said Titty.

‘We might jolly well want it,’ said Nancy. Already she was leaving the farmyard, and opening the gate into the wood.

The others crowded through.

‘Shut the gate, someone,’ said Nancy.

‘Aye, aye, sir,’ said Roger.

It was pleasant to come into the shade of the woods after the long trek in blazing sunshine along the valley road. There seemed to be less dust in the air, and there was a clean smell of resin from the scattered pines, with their tall rough-scaled trunks, that towered among the short bushy hazels, the rowans, and the little oaks. A track wound upwards through the trees. Anybody could have told that it was very little used. Here and there were stony patches in it, where dried moss covered the stones. Here and there were little drifts of last year’s leaves. Here and there under and near the big pine trees the path was soft and brown with fallen pine needles. The track was not wide enough for a cart, and probably it had been used only by sleds bringing bracken from the fells above.

‘Is it wide enough for the handcart?’ Peggy asked Susan. ‘There won’t be much room to spare.’

‘We won’t be taking it up there,’ said Susan.

‘Unless it rains and the beck fills,’ said Nancy over her shoulder.

‘Where is the beck?’ said Titty, remembering the pleasant little stream up which she and Roger had explored together last summer when they had discovered Swallowdale and the cave they had called after Peter Duck. But in this wood there was no tinkling of falling water.

‘Just crossing it,’ said John, and a moment later a strip of shingle across the path and a deep furrow beside it showed where the beck had been.

‘Stepping stones,’ said Roger, and walked gaily across, stepping on the big stones that had been left there so that when the beck was flowing people crossing it could keep their feet dry.

‘And no water,’ said Dorothea.

The track climbed steeply upwards through the trees, sometimes leaving the stream, sometimes close to it, and then swinging away to one side and back again, in wide zigzags, to make the climbing easier. But this August of the drought it was not a stream but the dry bed where a stream had been. The expedition had been climbing for a long time before coming on a drop of water, and then, below what had once been a waterfall, they saw a tiny pool.

‘Water! Water!’ shouted Roger.

‘Couldn’t we camp here?’ said Peggy.

‘No good,’ said John. ‘It’s only a bird-bath.’

‘It’s stagnant,’ said Susan, ‘or very nearly, and there isn’t enough for any washing or cooking.’

A chattering jay blundered noisily away through the trees, when Titty pushed through the hazels to have a closer look.

They climbed on.

‘How much further?’ said Roger, who had been growing less and less talkative as they climbed.

‘Probably another hundred miles or so,’ said Titty.

‘Stick to it, Roger,’ said Peggy. ‘We’re getting near the top.’

John and Nancy were hurrying ahead. Even Susan was walking faster than she had been. Dick, his eyes on the ground, and his hammer in his hand, was climbing doggedly away behind her.

‘Do tell us what the Topps are really like,’ said Dorothea.

‘You’ll see them in a minute or two,’ said Peggy. ‘It’s years since I’ve been there.’

‘Titty,’ said Dorothea privately, ‘about Squashy Hat. Is he really prospecting too, or is Nancy just thinking so, to make it more exciting?’

‘If he knows about the gold,’ panted Titty, ‘he’s sure to be prospecting. Anybody would be. …’

‘But if he doesn’t know? …’ said Dorothea.

‘Hurry up!’

‘We jolly well are,’ said Roger grimly.

Suddenly the track divided into two. One path turned sharply left through the bushes. The other went on. The trees were thinning. Close before them was a thicket of brambles at the foot of a wide steep face of rock with heather clinging to it here and there. A grassy gully, clear of brambles, led to the top of the rock. Nancy, John and Susan were up there already. Dick, hammer in hand, was close below them.

‘Come on,’ said Peggy, and the rest of the prospectors ran, panting, after her, hearts pounding in their chests after the long climb. They dodged round the bramble thicket, raced up the green gully, and, a moment later, from the top of the rock, were looking out over the wild, broken moorland of the Topps.

‘Well, what do you think of it?’ said Nancy, waving her arm as if she had somehow herself conjured the whole of High Topps into existence.

Titty at first could hardly speak. That last run to the rock after the long climb from the valley had left her altogether out of breath. Spots swam before her eyes, but in spite of them she knew she was looking at a Klondyke, an Alaska, better than anything she had dreamed when they were talking of the goldfields in the camp at Beckfoot. Over there rose the great mass of Kanchenjunga. A huge arm stretched down from him towards the valley they had left, hiding all the Beckfoot country and the hills towards the head of the lake. A range of hills swept away to the south from the peak they had climbed the year before. Half circled by the hills there lay a wide plateau, broken with gullies, scarred with ridges of rock that rose out of a sea of heather and bracken, and close-cropped sun-dried grass. Away to the left the plateau sloped down and was crossed by a ribbon of white road. Behind the prospectors were Tyson’s wood, and the deep valley of the Amazon out of which they had climbed.

‘What’s that native road?’ Titty asked, when she had got her breath again.

‘It goes over into Dundale,’ said Nancy over her shoulder. ‘It’s the same road we trekked on coming to Tyson’s.’

Roger was looking back down the smooth steep face of rock at the edge of the Topps.

‘What a place for a knickerbockerbreaker,’ he said.

‘Landing in the brambles,’ said Titty.

‘I could stop myself,’ said Roger.

‘Don’t try,’ said Susan hurriedly. ‘Who’s going to darn you? Mrs Tyson isn’t like Mary Swainson.’

‘Well, if I mayn’t slide down,’ said Roger, ‘isn’t it my turn for the telescope?’

‘Let him have the telescope,’ said Susan.

‘Here you are,’ said John. ‘Two minutes a turn. Everybody wants to have a look.’

‘Where are the old workings?’ asked Dick.

‘All over the place,’ said Nancy. ‘You see Ling Scar? The big lump coming down from Kanchenjunga. That’s the one we were inside when we went to see Slater Bob. The tunnel we were in is supposed to come out this side, but it isn’t safe any longer. There are lots more along the ridge at the bottom, where the Topps begin. And there’s a working in almost every bit of valley or rise all over High Topps. You know, just a hole, and a heap of scratchings outside it. You can see one from here. Over there. That black spot under those rocks. …’

‘Let’s begin looking right away.’

‘Oh look here, Captain Nancy,’ said Susan. ‘We simply can’t. Mrs Blackett’s coming, and we’ve tents to pitch and grub to cook. We ought to start down again almost at once.’

‘First thing tomorrow then,’ said Nancy.

‘Where’s the enemy?’ said Titty.

‘Squashy Hat? He’s in the other farm. Where we ought to be getting our milk from really. It’s the other side of the road, just below where it turns down through the woods. You can’t quite see it from here. I wish you could. He’s probably there now.’

‘No, he isn’t,’ said Roger urgently. ‘I’m looking at him now. Do be quiet.’

Roger was lying flat on his stomach, with his elbows dug into the ground, while he steadied the little telescope with both hands. One of his feet was kicking in the air. Its kicking meant ‘Shut up, everybody!’ but nobody knew the code because Roger himself had only that minute invented it.

Everybody, however, could see which way the telescope was pointing.

‘Lurk!’ said John suddenly, and the three other Swallows flung themselves flat on the ground.

‘Lurk,’ cried Nancy, and she and Dorothea and Peggy dropped together.

‘Lurk! Lurk!’ said Dorothea. ‘Oh, Dick!’

Dick turned and saw that he alone was left standing. He understood, and crouched beside Dorothea.

‘Sure it’s him?’ said John.

‘Let’s have that telescope,’ said Nancy. ‘It’s him all right.’

About a mile away a grey figure was sitting on a rock.

‘Got his back to us,’ said Nancy. ‘That’s lucky. Look here, if he turns round he’s bound to see us. We must get down into cover. Go on, Peggy. Reversing snake. You know. Quick. Wriggle away. Never mind getting your frock dirty, Dot. It’ll get dirty anyway when we’re prospecting … and everything’s bone dry. It’ll dust off. Well done, John.’

John, who had practised the reversing snake wriggle before, had been moving backwards over the ground from the moment he had seen that seated figure far away. He had slipped over the edge of the rock face and was hanging on there quite comfortably, able to look out, and able also at any moment to drop another few inches and be out of sight altogether. In another two minutes the whole expedition was in cover, some of them hanging, like John, along the upper edge of the steep rock face, and others crouching in the narrow gully where the old track came down the rock from High Topps into the wood.

‘What’s he doing?’ said Roger.

‘Just resting,’ said Susan.

‘Safest to lurk, anyway,’ said Nancy. ‘But he isn’t just resting. Look. Look. He’s got a map.’

‘It may be only a newspaper.’

‘Can’t be,’ said John.

Even without the telescope they could all see a sheet of something white in the hands of the solitary man out there in the middle of High Topps. The man was standing up now, looking at the white sheet in his hands, and then up at the hills.

‘He’s looking at a compass,’ Nancy almost shouted. ‘Won’t you believe now? Go on. Take the telescope and see for yourself. Giminy. He’s in the very middle of prospecting.’

One after another they looked through the little telescope and saw first, that the man was indeed Squashy Hat, and second, that he had put something on a rock, and kept looking at the map, then at the hills, then at the thing on the rock, and then back at the hills again.

‘Well?’ said Nancy.

‘It looks jolly like it,’ said John.

‘I say,’ almost groaned Titty. ‘You don’t think he’s got the map Old Bob was talking about.’

Nancy thought for a moment.

‘No,’ she said at last. ‘He wouldn’t be looking so puzzled if he had. He’d simply be scooping the gold out. He’s been up here three days at least. He was coming down the other side of that ridge the day we saw him go into Slater Bob’s.’

‘He’s turned round,’ whispered Dorothea.

Squashy Hat had folded up the map or whatever it was he was looking at. He had picked up the thing he had set on the rock and had put it in his pocket. He stood for a moment looking towards Kanchenjunga, then turned, and set off walking over the uneven ground.

‘He’s coming this way,’ said Roger.

‘He’s seen us,’ whispered Dorothea.

‘Dead still, everybody,’ said Nancy.

The distant figure was moving fast, now across bare rock, now knee-deep in bracken, now working along the sheep tracks through the heather.

‘He hasn’t seen anything,’ said John.

‘He’s going down to the Dundale road,’ said Nancy.

‘Going home to Atkinson’s farm,’ said Peggy.

They watched him till he struck the road, turned left along it, and vanished where the road dipped towards the woods.

‘Let’s scout after him,’ said Titty.

‘We can’t,’ said Susan. ‘Mrs Blackett’ll be at Tyson’s before we get down there.’

‘Lucky beast he is,’ said Nancy. ‘Having his base camp right up here. … If only there was a drop of water in the beck. … You should just see the place I meant us to camp in. …’

‘Where is it?’ said Titty.

‘Here,’ said Nancy. ‘Close to the Topps. Better even than Atkinson’s. Come along and have a look at it.’

She hurried down from the rock, dodged round the bramble thicket at the bottom of it, and pushed her way through the bushes.