Pigeon Post. Arthur Ransome
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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 birdbath.”
“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 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 …”
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