23

Jack-In-The-Box

ROGER WOKE EARLY. It had been too late the night before to make a really good heather bed and, though he was by now well accustomed to sleeping in his tent, sleeping in the open was a little different, and the sun on his face and an ache in his hip-bone worked better than any alarm clock. He looked at John, but John was sleeping with his head in the crook of his arm. He tried to go to sleep again and failed, and so lay there, planning his day. More crushing and panning. Well, he supposed it couldn’t be helped, but it was almost a pity there wasn’t something else to find. At last he crawled out of his sleeping-bag and had a look round the gulch. There had been no visitors in the night. There were none in sight this morning. Only on the long slope of the Screes there were the white splashes marking how Squashy Hat had been coming nearer and nearer. He looked across towards Tyson’s wood. No. Yes. A wisp of pale smoke, and then a steady stream poured straight up into the air above the trees.

‘Hi! John,’ shouted Roger. ‘Time to get up. Susan’s started making breakfast.’

John yawned and stretched himself, sat up, kicked free from his bag, and then, turning it inside out, spread it in the sun. Roger, watching him, did the same. Yawning and sleepy-eyed they set out across the Topps.

‘No one came,’ said Roger.

‘He might have if we hadn’t been there,’ said John.

‘What do we do today?’

‘Crush and pan.’

‘All of us?’

‘Nancy’s going to Beckfoot for the pigeons. And we’ll want scouts out, of course.’

‘I’ll scout,’ said Roger.

‘Hullo! Swallows ahoy!’ Nancy was hailing them from the top of the Great Wall.

‘Hullo!’

‘News!’ shouted Nancy.

She came to meet them with a letter in her hand.

‘It’s from Mother. Susan got it when she went down for the milk. Mother’s sent the pigeons back, so no one need go to Beckfoot today.’

‘Oh, good,’ said Roger. ‘So Homer did dodge the hawk and get home.’

‘Jolly late, she says. But that’s not the news. A huge crate of stuff has come for Uncle Jim. No Timothy. … But he may turn up any day if he was sent off at the same time. And Mother says she thinks Uncle Jim must be nearly home. We haven’t a minute to lose.’

‘If we go it all day we’ll have panned enough by tonight,’ said John. ‘We’ll take it to Slater Bob tomorrow to get it made into an ingot.’

Breakfast was eaten in a hurry. John and Nancy took turns in keeping a look-out from the tree, but today, at least, Squashy Hat was not getting up early. After breakfast everybody went to the gulch. Yesterday’s work did not more than half fill a small tin that had once held cocoa.

‘Isn’t it enough?’ said Dick, dipping a finger in the golden dust and watching it sparkle in the sunlight. ‘What about taking it to Slater Bob now, to let him test it and make sure.’

But John and Nancy had made up their minds. They wanted to take the old man enough gold dust to make a respectable ingot. They meant to fill the cocoa tin to the brim.

The day’s work began. John, Nancy, Susan and Peggy were mining, crushing and panning. Dick, Dorothea, Roger and Titty were posted in good lurking places to give warning if Squashy Hat came anywhere near. It would never do to have him sneaking up to the gulch and finding the miners actually busy with the gold. For some time the work went steadily on, and then Squashy Hat was sighted, coming up from the Dundale road. A signal was passed to the gulch. Just in case, work stopped, and everything was hidden in the mine. The scouts, lying in the bracken, watched the enemy go by. Today, instead of going up the Screes to his white spots, he marched straight across the Topps to Ling Scar, the long ridge that came down from Kanchenjunga towards the valley of the Amazon. The scouts watched him climbing up and up until at last he disappeared over the sky line. They signalled ‘All clear.’ A hand waved from the heather at the edge of the gulch. A minute or two later they heard the dull thud, thud, thud of the crushing mill begin once more.

‘They’re all right for a bit, anyhow,’ said Roger, who had plans of his own. ‘What about looking for diamonds? In one of the other workings.’

‘Better report at headquarters first,’ said Dorothea, and the four scouts went dutifully back.

‘Good,’ said Captain Nancy, resting from the crushing for a moment as she listened to what they had to say. ‘Walking? Was he going somewhere or just mooching about?’

‘He walked straight ahead,’ said Dick.

‘And jolly fast,’ said Roger.

‘Just as if he was keeping an appointment,’ said Dorothea.

‘Oh well,’ said Nancy. ‘He won’t get anything out of Slater Bob.’

The scouts waited a moment. Were they wanted for anything else? Nancy started again banging away with the pestle. Susan came out of the mine with a new lot of quartz.

‘Come on,’ said Roger.

‘Where are you off to?’ asked Susan.

‘Going diamond-mining,’ said Roger.

‘Who is?’

‘I’ve got a letter to finish,’ said Titty.

‘Dick and Dot are coming, anyhow,’ said Roger.

‘All right,’ said Nancy. ‘Scout at the same time. Keep an eye lifting for him when he comes back. We may have to head him off.’

‘Aye, aye, sir,’ said Roger, joyfully.

‘What do you want Titty’s string for?’ said Susan.

‘To find our way out,’ said Roger.

‘But you mustn’t go into the old workings,’ said Susan.

‘Oh, I say,’ said Roger. ‘Then how can we find the diamonds?’

‘Well, you mustn’t go into any John and I haven’t been in. Even Nancy says that lots of them aren’t safe.’

‘There are those two caves we were in the other day,’ said John, coming out of the mine. ‘They’re safe enough. You can explore them as much as you like. I say, Nancy, what about this bit? Pretty good, isn’t it?’

‘The best yet,’ said Nancy.

‘I can take the string then,’ said Roger. ‘And look here, Titty, do let me have your torch, I used mine right up finding the gold.’

The morning slipped away. Susan and Peggy had tossed up who should make dinner. The winner was to be the cook. Susan had called ‘Heads’ and so it had been, and she had left the others still working away in the gulch and gone back to the camp, where she found Titty, who had finished one letter, to Daddy in China, and was busy on another to Mother and the whooping Bridget. Susan put the kettle on. That morning in going down for the milk she had borrowed a saucepan secretly from Mrs Tyson. The others, thinking that all the cooking things were being used for panning in the gulch were expecting the poorest kind of dinner, and Susan was going to give them a surprise. She was hotting up two tinned steak and kidney puddings, and a lot of new potatoes and some French beans. Titty wrote slowly on. She had already told the best of natives that they were all very well and that they had found gold and that Captain Flint was going to be most awfully pleased. … ‘But the armadillo’s never come, and Dorothea thinks he was probably buried at sea. Roger was the one who found the gold. I found water with a forked stick. It was horrid at first but I didn’t mind it the second time. Did you ever try doing it? How is Bridget? Do come quick. Now we’ve found the gold we’re going to let a real miner make it into an ingot. We’ll be ready to go to Wild Cat Island as soon as Captain Flint comes. But we can’t till he does because we have to guard the mine. Much love. Your loving Titty. Roger would send his love but he is diamond-mining. Much love. I mean it. Titty.’

‘Dinner’s nearly ready,’ said Susan at last. ‘Better go and signal to Roger and the D’s and between us we’ll carry it across to the gulch. …’

Diamond-mining had not been a great success.

Roger, Dick and Dorothea, a little tired of exploring caves that had been explored already, were resting in the heather on the northern side of the Topps, where Ling Scar, that steep spur of Kanchenjunga, rose above them like a wall.

Roger was winding the end of the string round the ball which had slipped and unrolled a few yards of itself. It had not been of much use after all. Exploring those old caves could have been done without a string. Not one of them was more than a few yards deep.

‘It isn’t really fair,’ said Roger. ‘I’d never have found the gold if I hadn’t gone into that mine in the gulch without waiting for anybody else.’

Dick said nothing. He was lying on his back, with his hands over his spectacled eyes, looking up through his fingers into the blazing sky. He had tried using goggles but found them too uncomfortable when he had to wear spectacles as well. Somewhere up there was a hawk, perhaps the same hawk that had stooped at Homer … a black speck … there it was again … or had it gone? … the sky was so bright that his eyes watered and he closed them, and it was as if a warm red curtain shut out everything … he remembered the circulation of the blood and began wondering if each drop of blood ran the whole way round and how long it took. …

Dorothea agreed with Roger. Coming along the edge of the Topps under Ling Scar, they had seen hole after hole in the side of the ridge, and each one had looked more promising than the last. And it was such waste to leave them unexplored when you had a ball of string waiting to be unrolled and far better than any trail of crumbs like those dropped by Hansel and Gretel. And what if the three of them should really find something. If gold, why not diamonds? In any case it seemed a pity not to look. At the same time she understood Susan’s feelings.

‘She can’t do the cooking and keep an eye on us. … And she knows the others are all too busy.’

‘If only I hadn’t found the gold we’d still be looking for it,’ said Roger.

‘Wouldn’t it be awful?’ said Dorothea. ‘Nancy says there’s no time to spare as it is. And there isn’t. He’ll be coming any day. …’

‘So’ll Mother and Bridget,’ said Roger, seeing a new light. ‘And then there’ll be blasting … and we’ll go to the island … and have a battle with the houseboat. I’ll swim you round the island. Or from the island to the shore. That’s further. Can you swim?’

‘Of course he can,’ said Dorothea. ‘Why, last holidays when he fell overboard …’

The words faded into silence.

‘Dick,’ she whispered.

Roger had seen what she had seen and was lying flat as a snake against a rock. Dick opened one spectacled eye and found Dorothea’s face close to his own. The look on it was enough to keep him quiet. In a moment, he too had seen.

Not thirty yards away from them, where the dried mosses of the Topps ended like a sea against the barrier of the ridge, Squashy Hat stood blinking in the sunlight beside some rocks. He took off his squashy hat and brushed it with his sleeve. Then he took off his coat and looked at it, dusting away some dirt that he saw there. It was clear that he had not the slightest suspicion that he was not alone. But how had he come there? There had been no one there a moment before. They had themselves seen him go over the ridge early in the day. Even during their hunting for diamonds they had never forgotten that they were scouts as well.

The sight of Squashy Hat or anyone else walking on the Topps would have caught their attention at once. And here he was, close to them. If he had come down the ridge they must have seen him, and he must have seen them, but anybody could tell that he did not know they were there. They crouched behind a rock and watched.

Squashy Hat looked round over the Topps, as if to choose his direction, and then set off at his usual steady long-legged march.

‘Oughtn’t we to head him off?’ said Dorothea.

‘He isn’t going near the gulch,’ said Roger.

‘But how did he get here?’ said Dick.

They watched the tall, lanky figure striding over the mosses and then, like Indians, wormed their way towards the place where they had first seen him.

There, among the rocks, they found a hole hardly higher than one of themselves. They stared through it into the darkness but could see nothing because of the bright sunshine outside.

‘It’s a mine,’ said Roger.

‘He must have been hiding in it,’ said Dorothea.

‘But we saw him go over the ridge,’ said Roger.

‘We’d have seen him if he went in here,’ said Dick. ‘There must be another way in.’

‘Jolly good snake work,’ said Roger. ‘If he got here without us spotting him. … I say, it’s quite a decent tunnel inside.’

He had pulled out the torch Titty had lent him and was flashing it into the hole. Dick and Dorothea peered past him.

‘It must have had a bigger opening once,’ said Dick.

‘Half a minute,’ said Roger, backing hurriedly. ‘I’d better fasten the end of the string.’

‘Oh! but look here, Roger, ought we?’ said Dorothea. ‘Susan said …’

‘Squashy’s lots older than John or Susan,’ said Roger. ‘Susan said we weren’t to explore any hole where she and John hadn’t been, so as to be sure it was safe. Well, he’s older than both of them put together, and he’s a native, too. It’s perfectly absolutely certain this one’s all right. … And here’s a bit of heather that’ll just do. …’

SQUASHY HAT COMES OUT OF THE HILL

He squatted on the ground and tied the end of his string to the brown stringy stem of the heather. Then, letting the ball unroll as he moved, he went back into the tunnel.

‘Come on, Dick,’ he said. ‘Somebody else must hold a torch. It takes two hands to look after this string.’

‘It must be all right,’ said Dick. ‘We’ve only just seen him come out.’

‘Just a little way,’ said Dorothea.

A moment later all three of them had disappeared into the side of the hill. Once inside, they stopped to look out from the darkness of the tunnel across the sunlit Topps. Squashy Hat was walking steadily away.

‘Oughtn’t somebody to watch him?’ said Dorothea.

‘He isn’t going anywhere near the gulch,’ said Roger. ‘Come on. This is a bigger cave than ours. We might find anything.’

‘How did you find the gold in ours?’ said Dorothea.

‘Oh, just banging about with a hammer,’ said Roger. ‘Come on. Let’s go a bit further in. Look out for the string.’

‘It isn’t as dry as ours,’ said Dick, who was looking carefully at a damp, shiny place on one wall. … ‘Probably because ours is only shallow and this one goes into the hill itself.’

‘Well, we mustn’t go very far, anyway,’ said Dorothea, ‘but do let’s find something.’ Already she saw their proud return, opening their hands to show the treasure they had found. Probably not gold … but something else. … Silver would hardly be worth while. … Diamonds? Why not? Underground, in a place like this, they might find anything.

‘Do look out for the string,’ said Roger. ‘If you tread on it and bust it we won’t find our way back.’

‘But we can see the light at the opening,’ said Dick.

‘I can’t now,’ said Roger. ‘The tunnel twists a bit. … Where’s your torch? I say, this is real exploring. …’

‘Not too far,’ said Dorothea.

‘Hullo,’ said Dick, who was tapping with his hammer. ‘Wood. They’ve been propping it up a bit. …’

‘Or a hiding place,’ said Dorothea. ‘They may have hid all sorts of things behind the wood.’

‘Propping it up,’ said Dick. ‘It’s been a bit crumbly. You can see here. There’s only just room to squeeze past. …’

‘Perhaps that’s the end,’ said Dorothea hopefully.

‘It isn’t,’ said Dick. ‘It gets bigger and goes on again.’

‘You wriggle through, Dot,’ said Roger. ‘Or I will, and you take the string for a moment. Don’t go and tread on it again.’

They climbed over the loose stuff that had half choked the passage and threw the light from their torches this way and that over the solid stone walls.

‘Hooo … Hoooo,’ said Roger, making his voice hollow to match the tunnel. ‘I say, we’re going to come to the end of the string pretty soon.’

‘We’ll have to turn back then, anyhow,’ said Dorothea.

It was just about now that Titty, who had seen them lurking in the heather far away, and had herself taken cover to watch Squashy Hat, looked for them again and could not see them. She had her message for them, from Susan, and had to find them. And now they had vanished altogether. Good scout-work, of course, but, at this moment, rather a nuisance.