SQUELCHING THROUGH THE soft moss of the flats, stumbling, picking themselves up, and stumbling again as they struggled up the heather-covered slopes, Titty and Dorothea ran to join Susan and Peggy, who stood waiting while the Gaels closed in. The deserted valley was full of movement. Nancy’s red cap, Gaels, deer . . . wherever one looked something was astir.
‘The dogmudgeon’s coming after us,’ panted Titty, looking over her shoulder, ‘and John and Nancy’ll be too late to do any good.’
‘I can’t go any faster,’ gasped Dorothea.
‘Stick to it,’ said Titty.
By the time they came breathlessly up to the cart track on the hillside, Susan and Peggy were already prisoners. Half a dozen wild-looking Gaels were standing round them.
Susan was talking, rather loudly, like someone talking to the deaf.
‘I’m very sorry if we were trespassing,’ she was saying. ‘We didn’t see any notices. We haven’t done any harm really, only walking. If we have done any harm it was only by mistake . . .’ She faltered into silence and Titty and Dorothea knew that she had been talking for some time. The Gaels stared at her with grave faces but said never a word.
Peggy started the moment Susan stopped and the Gaels stared at her instead of at Susan.
‘Look here,’ she said. ‘It’s quite all right. We want to get to a place from which we can see the Atlantic. You know . . . The Atlantic Ocean . . . America . . . Over there . . .’ She pointed vaguely towards the hills and all the Gaels swung round but seeing only John and Nancy hurrying across the valley they turned again to Peggy as if they were listening hard and wanted to know what she was saying.
‘We’re here,’ said Titty.
‘I wish the others would come quick,’ said Susan.
‘They don’t understand a word of English,’ said Peggy desperately.
The prisoners and their captors waited in silence, watching John and Nancy who were already climbing up out of the valley. They had passed quite close to the dogmudgeon, who had not tried to stop them but was striding steadily after them, seeming not to hurry but moving nearly as fast.
‘It’s all right, Susan,’ said John, racing up to the cart track and slipping through the Gaels who made room for him to join the other prisoners.
‘Oh, John, John, have you hurt yourself?’ said Susan. ‘What have you done to your face?’
John, who had forgotten the burnt cork, wiped his face with a hand and made it worse. The Gaels stared at him. Two of them spoke urgently to each other.
‘They don’t know any English,’ said Peggy.
‘It’s all right,’ said John impatiently. ‘Only Dick’s spectacles. What’s happened?’
‘Let me do the talking,’ said Nancy, but even she for a moment found nothing to say to those silent Gaels who were looking now at their prisoners, and now up the ridge, as if they were waiting for somebody else.
The dogmudgeon, that old, grey-bearded giant, came striding up to them. He stood, leaning on his long staff, and glowered at the prisoners from under bushy eyebrows. He moved a little closer, to peer into John’s face. There was nothing in his blue eyes to show what he was thinking. He asked a question in a language the prisoners knew must be Gaelic. One of the other Gaels answered him, and all of them turned and looked up the hillside and back along the track.
‘How far do we have to go to see the Atlantic?’ asked Nancy.
The dogmudgeon frowned at her. ‘You will be seeing the inside of a gaol first,’ he said after a pause.
‘Oh good,’ said Nancy. ‘We were afraid none of you knew English.’
‘I do not need the English to see you driving our hinds.’
‘But we didn’t,’ said Susan. ‘We weren’t doing anything.’
‘Look here, this is all a mistake,’ said John.
‘Who sent you to do it?’
‘But we didn’t. We were just walking,’ said Susan.
The dogmudgeon turned his back on her. One of the younger Gaels spoke to another. They all turned. Titty plucked at Dorothea’s elbow. A boy in a kilt came leaping down the hillside towards them.
‘It’s the young chieftain,’ said Dorothea. ‘Now we’ll be all right.’
‘How do you do?’ said John, as the boy jumped down out of the heather on the track beside them.
‘Well,’ said Nancy cheerfully, ‘it’s been good fun while it lasted. You’ve caught us. One up to you. But now we’ve got to get back to our ship.’
The boy stared first at John, then at Nancy, but did not answer. He looked at the faces of the prisoners one after another.
‘One missing,’ he said in English. ‘There’s another boy, smaller.’
‘Don’t tell him,’ Dorothea almost squeaked, thinking of Dick.
‘It’s Roger he means,’ said Titty.
The boy spoke urgently and privately to the dogmudgeon. Then he swung round and went racing homewards along the cart track.
‘Hullo! Hey! You! Stop!’ cried Nancy angrily.
The boy turned.
‘Half a minute,’ said John.
‘My father will be talking with you,’ said the boy, and was off again at a steady trot.
‘Marrch!’ said the dogmudgeon.
‘What do we do?’ said Susan, but there was no need to ask, for the Gaels were on the move at once and the prisoners found themselves moving with them.
‘Didn’t you hear?’ said Nancy. ‘March. That’s what he said. And so we will. Simply grand. Nothing to worry about. That boy talks English. So will his father. We’ll get it all cleared up later on. Dick’s had lots of time to get his pictures, thanks to you. Nothing else matters.’
They spoke to each other in whispers, though the old dogmudgeon, who had shown that he knew English, was walking at the rear of the party, not close enough to the prisoners to hear what they were saying.
‘How thanks to us?’ said Dorothea.
‘Well, look at them,’ said Nancy, glancing round at the Gaels marching beside them, in front of them and behind them. ‘If you hadn’t brought the whole savage clan up here one of them would have been sure to spot Dick on the lake and then there’d have been a hullabaloo and in two seconds the egg-collector would have known just what he wanted.’
‘We haven’t heard the foghorn,’ said Titty.
‘Neither have we, but that’s only because we’ve come so far. Dick’ll be in the Sea Bear by now, and Uncle Jim’ll be getting sails ready and cursing because he’s got to wait for us.’
‘Did the egg-collector come after you?’ asked Dorothea, almost running at Nancy’s side.
Nancy chuckled. ‘Better than that,’ she said. ‘John blacked first-rate goggles round his eyes, and the old Dactyl thought he was Dick and sent a sailor chasing after us, thinking he’d see Dick going to his birds. He’s been safe in his motor boat all the time with no dinghy to take him ashore.’
‘Where is the sailor now?’ asked Dorothea, glancing across the valley.
‘Caught us up at last,’ said Nancy. ‘And had a good view of John’s face. He’s gone bolting back, miles too late. Every bit of the plan has worked out like we thought it would.’
‘It’s only Roger I’m bothered about,’ said Susan.
‘Where is Roger?’ said John.
‘We lost him right at the beginning,’ said Susan.
‘I think he went back to the Pict-house,’ said Titty. ‘Anyhow, the Gaels haven’t got him. That boy said there was one missing.’
‘Probably back in the Sea Bear,’ said Peggy, ‘having tea with Dick and Uncle Jim.’
‘I wish we were,’ said Susan. ‘These people are furious about something and I don’t know what.’
‘Jiminy,’ said Nancy presently. ‘If they’re going to move as fast as this, it’s lucky we’re not in chains.’
‘They’re taking us straight to the castle,’ said Dorothea.
‘Good,’ said Nancy. ‘That boy looks quite decent. Rather waste really. We might have kidnapped him if we’d known and turned him into an ally. Barbecued billygoats! We could have kept him prisoner in the Sea Bear. Pity it’s all over. But it doesn’t matter. We’ve done what we wanted to do.’
They were walking too fast to have breath to spare for argument. Presently even Nancy stopped talking. The prisoners trudged silently back along the track that climbed slowly up the ridge on the northern side of the valley, while the Gaels leaped through the heather above and below them and the tall, grey-bearded man, Roger’s dogmudgeon, strode along the track behind them, like a shepherd driving sheep.
It had seemed a very long way up the valley while the red herrings had been luring all possible enemies away so that after he had taken his photographs Dick could escape from the island unseen. The distance seemed much shorter now, with the Gaels walking as if they did not know that walking could tire anyone, and the prisoners hurrying in the midst of them, determined not to be shamed by the Gaels. Also, though the red herrings were prisoners, they walked in triumph, sure that their work was done. Cheerful grins passed from face to face, puzzling the Gaels who, for their part, were just as triumphant as their prisoners. Only Susan was troubled. John and Nancy seemed to think that two words of English talk would put things right, but Susan was not so sure. The wild-looking men and lads were walking beside them without a smile, and when she glanced back at the dour face of their leader she began to feel guilty without knowing what was the crime. Whatever it was, these people thought it was serious and if that boy and his father thought the same, explaining was going to be difficult.
‘Cheer up, Susan,’ said Nancy. ‘It’s been a huge success.’
Susan tried to smile but could not. There was Roger to worry about as well as everything else.
Long ago they had lost sight of the young chieftain racing ahead of them to bring the news of their capture to the chief of the clan. Already they were nearing the foot of the valley and could see where the track turned through the gap in the top of the ridge. They could see Pict-house Hill and the lump on the top of it that had been a prehistoric dwelling. Below them in the valley were the two lochs with the little stream joining them. They had passed the upper loch. A rise in the ground hid much of the lower loch, but they could see the island of the birds.
Titty suddenly stopped short and was run into by Peggy at her heels.
‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I thought I saw something.’
‘What?’
‘Something moving by the Pict-house.’
‘What sort of thing?’
‘Roger,’ whispered Titty, glancing at Susan. ‘But I can’t see anything now.’
Suddenly Dorothea grabbed Nancy’s elbow.
‘Nancy, Nancy,’ she whispered. ‘Dick’s in sight . . . rowing . . . on this side of the loch, between the island and the shore.’
Nancy’s head jerked, but she did not look round. ‘Don’t look that way,’ she hissed. ‘Don’t take any notice at all. They may not spot him.’
‘He’s in full view,’ whispered Dorothea.
‘Quick,’ said Nancy sharply. ‘We’ve got to keep them all looking at us. Come on, all of you. Come on, John! I’ll race you to the gap!’
The prisoners broke into a weary gallop.
There was a chorus of shouts from the Gaels. In a moment some of them had closed in on the track in front of the prisoners, like sheep-dogs slowing down a runaway herd.
‘It’s no good,’ said John. ‘They’ve seen him already.’
The prisoners stopped. Some of the Gaels were looking down towards the loch, so that there was no point in the prisoners not looking too. There was no sign of Dick and the folding boat.
‘But I saw him,’ said Dorothea. ‘Rowing this way. He must be close under the shore, and we can’t see him now because of those rocks.’
‘Where’s the dogmudgeon?’ said Peggy.
The prisoners looked at their guards. They looked both ways along the track; they looked up the ridge and down into the valley. The tall old Gael had disappeared, and, from the direction in which the others were looking it was clear that he had gone just where the prisoners least wished that he should go.
Susan was the first to make up her mind what to do. ‘Don’t stop,’ she said. ‘The sooner the Gaels take us to their chief the better. Till we’ve got things explained, we can’t do anything to help Dick.’
Nancy pulled herself together.
‘Susan’s right,’ she said. ‘If we all go charging down there, with the Gaels after us, hallooing like mad, it’ll undo everything we’ve done. We’ve kept the coast clear all day for Dick to take his pictures. He’s been a bit long over taking them. Not our fault. But what we’ve got to do now is to get the valley clear again with as little hallooing as possible. Bolting’s no good. Only makes them break into full cry. Come on. Sedate and proper. Pretend we’ve been invited wherever they’re taking us.’
‘But Dick,’ said Dorothea. ‘If he’s going to be made prisoner too, hadn’t we better wait for him?’
‘No,’ said Nancy firmly but hardly above a whisper. ‘We’re a crowd here, for anybody to see. The sooner the valley’s empty the better. Keep on the march like a school crocodile. Pretend we haven’t noticed anything. Don’t look back.’
