The question of supplies had now to be gone into. Everybody wanted to
take something different, and nobody thought the other people's things
would be the slightest use. It is sometimes thus even with grown-up
expeditions. So then Oswald, who is equal to the hardest emergency that
ever emerged yet, said:
"Let's each get what we like. The secret storehouse can be the shed in
the corner of the stable-yard where we got the door for the raft. Then
the captain can decide who's to take what."
This was done. You may think it but the work of a moment to fit out an
expedition, but this is not so, especially when you know not whether
your exploring party is speeding to Central Africa or merely to the
world of icebergs and the polar bear.
Dicky wished to take the wood-axe, the coal hammer, a blanket, and a
mackintosh.
H. O. brought a large faggot in case we had to light fires, and a pair
of old skates he had happened to notice in the box-room, in case the
expedition turned out icy.
Noel had nicked a dozen boxes of matches, a spade, and a trowel, and had
also obtained--I know not by what means--a jar of pickled onions.
Denny had a walking-stick--we can't break him of walking with it--a book
to read in case he got tired of being a discoverer, a butterfly net and
a box with cork in it, a tennis-ball, if we happened to want to play
rounders in the pauses of exploring, two towels and an umbrella in the
event of camping or if the river got big enough to bathe in or to be
fallen into.
Alice had a comforter for Noel in case we got late, a pair of scissors
and needle and cotton, two whole candles in case of caves. And she had
thoughtfully brought the table-cloth off the small table in the
dining-room, so that we could make all the things up into one bundle and
take it in turns to carry it.
Oswald had fastened his master mind entirely on grub. Nor had the others
neglected this.
All the stores for the expedition were put down on the table-cloth and
the corners tied up. Then it was more than even Oswald's muscley arms
could raise from the ground, so we decided not to take it, but only the
best-selected grub. The rest we hid in the straw loft, for there are
many ups and downs in life, and grub _is_ grub at any time, and so are
stores of all kinds. The pickled onions we had to leave, but not
forever.
Then Dora and Daisy came along with their arms round each other's necks
as usual, like a picture on a grocer's almanac, and said they weren't
coming.
It was, as I have said, a blazing hot day, and there were differences of
opinion among the explorers about what eatables we ought to have taken,
and H. O. had lost one of his garters and wouldn't let Alice tie it up
with her handkerchief, which the gentle sister was quite willing to do.
So it was a rather gloomy expedition that set off that bright sunny day
to seek the source of the river where Cleopatra sailed in Shakespeare
(or the frozen plains Mr. Nansen wrote that big book about).
But the balmy calm of peaceful nature soon made the others less
cross--Oswald had not been cross exactly, but only disinclined to do
anything the others wanted--and by the time we had followed the stream a
little way, and had seen a water-rat and shied a stone or two at him,
harmony was restored. We did not hit the rat.
You will understand that we were not the sort of people to have lived so
long near a stream without plumbing its depths. Indeed, it was the same
stream the sheep took its daring jump into the day we had the circus.
And of course we had often paddled in it--in the shallower parts. But
now our hearts were set on exploring. At least they ought to have been,
but when we got to the place where the stream goes under a wooden
sheep-bridge, Dicky cried, "A camp! a camp!" and we were all glad to sit
down at once. Not at all like real explorers, who know no rest, day or
night, till they have got there (whether it's the north pole, or the
central point of the part marked "_Desert of Sahara_" on old-fashioned
maps).
The food supplies obtained by various members were good, and plenty of
it. Cake, hard eggs, sausage-rolls, currants, lemon cheese-cakes,
raisins, and cold apple dumplings. It was all very decent, but Oswald
could not help feeling that the source of the Nile (or north pole) was a
long way off, and perhaps nothing much when you got there.
So he was not wholly displeased when Denny said, as he lay kicking into
the bank when the things to eat were all gone:
"I believe this is clay: did you ever make huge platters and bowls out
of clay and dry them in the sun? Some people did in a book called _Foul
Play_, and I believe they baked turtles, or oysters, or something, at
the same time."
He took up a bit of clay and began to mess it about, like you do putty
when you get hold of a bit. And at once the heavy gloom that had hung
over the explorers became expelled, and we all got under the shadow of
the bridge and messed about with clay.
"It will be jolly!" Alice said, "and we can give the huge platters to
poor cottagers who are short of the usual sorts of crockery. That would
really be a very golden deed."
It is harder than you would think when you read about it, to make huge
platters with clay. It flops about as soon as you get it any size,
unless you keep it much too thick, and then when you turn up the edges
they crack. Yet we did not mind the trouble. And we had all got our
shoes and stockings off. It is impossible to go on being cross when your
feet are in cold water; and there is something in the smooth messiness
of clay, and not minding how dirty you get, that would soothe the
savagest breast that ever beat.
After a bit, though, we gave up the idea of the huge platter and tried
little things. We made some platters--they were like flower-pot saucers;
and Alice made a bowl by doubling up her fists and getting Noel to slab
the clay on outside. Then they smoothed the thing inside and out with
wet fingers, and it was a bowl--at least they said it was. When we'd
made a lot of things we set them in the sun to dry, and then it seemed a
pity not to do the thing thoroughly. So we made a bonfire, and when it
had burned down we put our pots on the soft, white, hot ashes among the
little red sparks, and kicked the ashes over them and heaped more fuel
over the top. It was a fine fire.
Then tea-time seemed as if it ought to be near, and we decided to come
back next day and get our pots.
As we went home across the fields Dicky looked back and said:
"The bonfire's going pretty strong."
We looked. It was. Great flames were rising to heaven against the
evening sky. And we had left it a smouldering, flat heap.
"The clay must have caught alight," H. O. said. "Perhaps it's the kind
that burns. I know I've heard of fire-clay. And there's another sort you
can eat."
"Oh, shut up!" Dicky said, with anxious scorn.
With one accord we turned back. We all felt _the_ feeling--the one that
means something fatal being up and it being your fault.
"Perhaps," Alice said, "a beautiful young lady in a muslin dress was
passing by, and a spark flew on to her, and now she is rolling in agony
enveloped in flames."
We could not see the fire now, because of the corner of the wood, but we
hoped Alice was mistaken.
But when we got in sight of the scene of our pottering industry we saw
it was as bad nearly as Alice's wild dream. For the wooden fence leading
up to the bridge had caught fire, and it was burning like billyo.
Oswald started to run; so did the others. As he ran he said to himself,
"This is no time to think about your clothes. Oswald, be bold!"
And he was.
Arrived at the site of the conflagration, he saw that caps or straw hats
full of water, however quickly and perseveringly given, would never put
the bridge out, and his eventful past life made him know exactly the
sort of wigging you get for an accident like this.
So he said, "Dicky, soak your jacket and mine in the stream and chuck
them along. Alice, stand clear, or your silly girl's clothes'll catch as
sure as fate."
Dicky and Oswald tore off their jackets, so did Denny, but we would not
let him and H. O. wet theirs. Then the brave Oswald advanced warily to
the end of the burning rails and put his wet jacket over the end bit,
like a linseed poultice on the throat of a suffering invalid who has got
bronchitis. The burning wood hissed and smouldered, and Oswald fell
back, almost choked with the smoke. But at once he caught up the other
wet jacket and put it on another place, and of course it did the trick,
as he had known it would do. But it was a long job, and the smoke in his
eyes made the young hero obliged to let Dicky and Denny take a turn as
they had bothered to do from the first. At last all was safe; the
devouring element was conquered. We covered up the beastly bonfire with
clay to keep it from getting into mischief again, and then Alice said:
"Now we must go and tell."
"Of course," Oswald said, shortly. He had meant to tell all the time.
So we went to the farmer who has the Moat House Farm, and we went at
once, because if you have any news like that to tell it only makes it
worse if you wait about. When we had told him he said:
"You little----" I shall not say what he said besides that, because I am
sure he must have been sorry for it next Sunday when he went to church,
if not before.
We did not take any notice of what he said, but just kept on saying how
sorry we were; and he did not take our apology like a man, but only said
he dare said, just like a woman does. Then he went to look at his
bridge, and we went in to our tea. The jackets were never quite the same
again.
Really great explorers would never be discouraged by the dare saying of
a farmer, still less by his calling them names he ought not to. Albert's
uncle was away, so we got no double slating; and next day we started
again to discover the source of the river of cataracts (or the region of
mountain-like icebergs).
We set out heavily provisioned with a large cake Daisy and Dora had
made themselves and six bottles of ginger-beer. I think real explorers
most likely have their ginger-beer in something lighter to carry than
stone bottles. Perhaps they have it by the cask, which would come
cheaper; and you could make the girls carry it on their back, like in
pictures of the daughters of regiments.
We passed the scene of the devouring conflagration, and the thought of
the fire made us so thirsty we decided to drink the ginger-beer and
leave the bottles in a place of concealment. Then we went on, determined
to reach our destination, tropic or polar, that day.
Denny and H. O. wanted to stop and try to make a fashionable
watering-place at that part where the stream spreads out like a
small-sized sea, but Noel said, "No." We did not like fashionableness.
"_You_ ought to, at any rate," Denny said. "A Mr. Collins wrote an 'Ode
to the Fashions,' and he was a great poet."
"The poet Milton wrote a long book about Satan," Noel said, "but I'm not
bound to like _him_." I think it was smart of Noel.
"People aren't obliged to like everything they write about even, let
alone read," Alice said. "Look at 'Ruin seize thee, ruthless king!' and
all the pieces of poetry about war and tyrants and slaughtered
saints--and the one you made yourself about the black beetle, Noel."
By this time we had got by the pondy place and the danger of delay was
past; but the others went on talking about poetry for quite a field and
a half, as we walked along by the banks of the stream. The stream was
broad and shallow at this part, and you could see the stones and gravel
at the bottom, and millions of baby fishes, and a sort of
skating-spiders walking about on the top of the water. Denny said the
water must be ice for them to be able to walk on it, and this showed we
were getting near the north pole. But Oswald had seen a kingfisher by
the wood, and he said it was an ibis, so this was even.
When Oswald had had as much poetry as he could bear, he said, "Let's be
beavers and make a dam."
And everybody was so hot they agreed joyously, and soon our clothes were
tucked up as far as they could go and our legs looked green through the
water, though they were pink out of it.
Making a dam is jolly good fun, though laborious, as books about beavers
take care to let you know.
Dicky said it must be Canada if we were beavers, and so it was on the
way to the polar system, but Oswald pointed to his heated brow, and
Dicky owned it was warm for polar regions. He had brought the ice-axe
(it is called the wood-chopper sometimes), and Oswald, ever ready and
able to command, set him and Denny to cut turfs from the bank while we
heaped stones across the stream. It was clayey here, or of course
dam-making would have been vain, even for the best-trained beaver.
When we had made a ridge of stones we laid turfs against them--nearly
across the stream, leaving about two feet for the water to go
through--then more stones, and then lumps of clay stamped down as hard
as we could. The industrious beavers spent hours over it, with only one
easy to eat cake in. And at last the dam rose to the level of the bank.
Then the beavers collected a great heap of clay, and four of them lifted
it and dumped it down in the opening where the water was running. It did
splash a little, but a true-hearted beaver knows better than to mind a
bit of a wetting, as Oswald told Alice at the time. Then with more clay
the work was completed. We must have used tons of clay; there was quite
a big long hole in the bank above the dam where we had taken it out.
When our beaver task was performed we went on, and Dicky was so hot he
had to take his jacket off and shut up about icebergs.
I cannot tell you about all the windings of the stream; it went through
fields and woods and meadows, and at last the banks got steeper and
higher, and the trees overhead darkly arched their mysterious branches,
and we felt like the princes in a fairy tale who go out to seek their
fortunes.
And then we saw a thing that was well worth coming all that way for; the
stream suddenly disappeared under a dark stone archway, and however much
you stood in the water and stuck your head down between your knees you
could not see any light at the other end.
The stream was much smaller than where we had been beavers.
Gentle reader, you will guess in a moment who it was that said:
"Alice, you've got a candle. Let's explore."
This gallant proposal met but a cold response.
The others said they didn't care much about it, and what about tea?
I often think the way people try to hide their cowardliness behind their
teas is simply beastly.
Oswald took no notice. He just said, with that dignified manner, not at
all like sulking, which he knows so well how to put on:
"All right. _I'm_ going. If you funk it you'd better cut along home and
ask your nurses to put you to bed."
So then, of course, they agreed to go. Oswald went first with the
candle. It was not comfortable; the architect of that dark, subterranean
passage had not imagined any one would ever be brave enough to lead a
band of beavers into its inky recesses, or he would have built it high
enough to stand upright in. As it was, we were bent almost at a right
angle, and this is very awkward if for long.
But the leader pressed dauntlessly on, and paid no attention to the
groans of his faithful followers, nor to what they said about their
backs.
It really was a very long tunnel, though, and even Oswald was not sorry
to say, "I see daylight." The followers cheered as well as they could as
they splashed after him. The floor was stone as well as the roof, so it
was easy to walk on. I think the followers would have turned back if it
had been sharp stones or gravel.
And now the spot of daylight at the end of the tunnel grew larger and
larger, and presently the intrepid leader found himself blinking in the
full sun, and the candle he carried looked simply silly. He emerged, and
the others too, and they stretched their backs, and the word "Krikey"
fell from more than one lip. It had indeed been a cramping adventure.
Bushes grew close to the mouth of the tunnel, so we could not see much
landscape, and when we had stretched our backs we went on up stream, and
nobody said they'd had jolly well enough of it, though in more than one
young heart this was thought.
It was jolly to be in the sunshine again. I never knew before how cold
it was underground. The stream was getting smaller and smaller.
Dicky said, "This can't be the way. I expect there was a turning to the
north pole inside the tunnel, only we missed it. It was cold enough
there."
But here a twist in the stream brought us out from the bushes, and
Oswald said:
"Here is strange, wild, tropical vegetation in the richest profusion.
Such blossoms as these never opened in a frigid what's-its-name."
It was indeed true. We had come out into a sort of marshy, swampy place
like, I think, a jungle is, that the stream ran through, and it was
simply crammed with queer plants and flowers we never saw before or
since. And the stream was quite thin. It was torridly hot and softish to
walk on. There were rushes and reeds and small willows, and it was all
tangled over with different sorts of grasses--and pools here and there.
We saw no wild beasts, but there were more different kinds of wild flies
and beetles than you could believe anybody could bear, and dragon-flies
and gnats. The girls picked a lot of flowers. I know the names of some
of them, but I will not tell you them because this is not meant to be
instructing. So I will only name meadow-sweet, yarrow, loose-strife,
lady's bed-straw, and willow herb--both the larger and the lesser.
Every one now wished to go home. It was much hotter there than in
natural fields. It made you want to tear all your clothes off and play
at savages, instead of keeping respectable in your boots.
But we had to bear the boots because it was so brambly.
It was Oswald who showed the others how flat it would be to go home the
same way we came; and he pointed out the telegraph wires in the distance
and said:
"There must be a road there, let's make for it," which was quite a
simple and ordinary thing to say, and he does not ask for any credit for
it.
So we sloshed along, scratching our legs with the brambles, and the
water squelched in our boots, and Alice's blue muslin frock was torn
all over in these criss-cross tears which are considered so hard to
darn.
We did not follow the stream any more. It was only a trickle now, so we
knew we had tracked it to its source. And we got hotter and hotter and
hotter, and the dews of agony stood in beads on our brows and rolled
down our noses and off our chins. And the flies buzzed and the gnats
stung, and Oswald bravely sought to keep up Dicky's courage, when he
tripped on a snag and came down on a bramble-bush, by saying:
"_You_ see it _is_ the source of the Nile we've discovered. What price
north poles now?"
Alice said, "Ah, but think of ices! I expect Oswald wishes it _had_ been
the pole, anyway--"
Oswald is naturally the leader, especially when following up what is his
own idea, but he knows that leaders have other duties besides just
leading. One is to assist weak or wounded members of the expedition,
whether polar or equatorish.
So the others had got a bit ahead through Oswald lending the tottering
Denny a hand over the rough places. Denny's feet hurt him, because when
he was a beaver his stockings had dropped out of his pocket, and boots
without stockings are not a bed of luxuriousness. And he is often
unlucky with his feet.
Presently we came to a pond, and Denny said:
"Let's paddle."
Oswald likes Denny to have ideas; he knows it is healthy for the boy,
and generally he backs him up, but just now it was getting late and the
others were ahead, so he said:
"Oh, rot! come on."
Generally the Dentist would have; but even worms will turn if they are
hot enough, and if their feet are hurting them.
"I don't care, I shall!" he said.
Oswald overlooked the mutiny and did not say who was leader. He just
said:
"Well, don't be all day about it," for he is a kind-hearted boy and can
make allowances.
So Denny took off his boots and went into the pool.
"Oh, it's ripping!" he said. "You ought to come in."
"It looks beastly muddy," said his tolerating leader.
"It is a bit," Denny said, "but the mud's just as cool as the water, and
so soft it squeezes between your toes quite different to boots."
And so he splashed about, and kept asking Oswald to come along in.
But some unseen influence prevented Oswald doing this; or it may have
been because both his bootlaces were in hard knots.
Oswald had cause to bless the unseen influence, or the bootlaces, or
whatever it was.
Denny had got to the middle of the pool, and he was splashing about and
getting his clothes very wet indeed, and altogether you would have
thought his was a most envious and happy state. But alas! the brightest
cloud has a waterproof lining. He was just saying:
"You _are_ a silly, Oswald. You'd much better--" when he gave a
blood-piercing scream, and began to kick about.
"What's up?" cried the ready Oswald; he feared the worst from the way
Denny screamed, but he knew it could not be an old meat tin in this
quiet and jungular spot, like it was in the moat when the shark bit
Dora.
"I don't know, it's biting me. Oh, it's biting me all over my legs! Oh,
what shall I do? Oh, it does hurt! Oh! oh! oh!" remarked Denny, among
his screams, and he splashed towards the bank. Oswald went into the
water and caught hold of him and helped him out. It is true that Oswald
had his boots on, but I trust he would not have funked the unknown
terrors of the deep, even without his boots. I am almost sure he would
not have.
When Denny had scrambled and been hauled ashore, we saw with horror and
amaze that his legs were stuck all over with large black slug-looking
things. Denny turned green in the face--and even Oswald felt a bit
queer, for he knew in a moment what the black dreadfulnesses were. He
had read about them in a book called _Magnet Stories_, where there was a
girl called Theodosia, and she could play brilliant trebles on the piano
in duets, but the other girl knew all about leeches, which is much more
useful and golden deedy. Oswald tried to pull the leeches off, but they
wouldn't, and Denny howled so he had to stop trying. He remembered from
the _Magnet Stories_ how to make the leeches begin biting--the girl did
it with cream--but he could not remember how to stop them, and they had
not wanted any showing how to begin.
"Oh, what shall I do? What shall I do? Oh, it does hurt! Oh, oh!" Denny
observed, and Oswald said:
"Be a man! Buck up! If you won't let me take them off you'll just have
to walk home in them."
At this thought the unfortunate youth's tears fell fast. But Oswald gave
him an arm, and carried his boots for him, and he consented to buck up,
and the two struggled on towards the others, who were coming back,
attracted by Denny's yells. He did not stop howling for a moment, except
to breathe. No one ought to blame him till they have had eleven leeches
on their right leg and six on their left, making seventeen in all, as
Dicky said, at once.
It was lucky he did yell, as it turned out, because a man on the
road--where the telegraph wires were--was interested by his howls, and
came across the marsh to us as hard as he could.
When he saw Denny's legs he said:
"Blest if I didn't think so," and he picked Denny up and carried him
under one arm, where Denny went on saying "Oh!" and "It does hurt" as
hard as ever.
Our rescuer, who proved to be a fine big young man in the bloom of
youth, and a farm-laborer by trade, in corduroys, carried the wretched
sufferer to the cottage where he lived with his aged mother; and then
Oswald found that what he had forgotten about the leeches was _salt_.
The young man in the bloom of youth's mother put salt on the leeches,
and they squirmed off, and fell with sickening, slug-like flops on the
brick floor.
Then the young man in corduroys and the bloom, etc., carried Denny home
on his back, after his legs had been bandaged up, so that he looked like
"wounded warriors returning."
It was not far by the road, though such a long distance by the way the
young explorers had come.
He was a good young man, and though, of course, acts of goodness are
their own reward, still I was glad he had the two half-crowns Albert's
uncle gave him, as well as his own good act. But I am not sure Alice
ought to have put him in the Golden Deed book which was supposed to be
reserved for Us.
Perhaps you will think this was the end of the source of the Nile (or
north pole). If you do, it only shows how mistaken the gentlest reader
may be.
The wounded explorer was lying with his wounds and bandages on the sofa,
and we were all having our tea, with raspberries and white currants,
which we richly needed after our torrid adventures, when Mrs. Pettigrew,
the housekeeper, put her head in at the door and said:
"Please could I speak to you half a moment, sir," to Albert's uncle. And
her voice was the kind that makes you look at each other when the
grown-up has gone out, and you are silent, with your bread-and-butter
half way to the next bite, or your teacup in mid flight to your lips.
It was as we supposed. Albert's uncle did not come back for a long
while. We did not keep the bread-and-butter on the wing all that time,
of course, and we thought we might as well finish the raspberries and
white currants. We kept some for Albert's uncle, of course, and they
were the best ones too; but when he came back he did not notice our
thoughtful unselfishness.
He came in, and his face wore the look that means bed, and very likely
no supper.
He spoke, and it was the calmness of white-hot iron, which is something
like the calmness of despair. He said:
"You have done it again. What on earth possessed you to make a dam?"
"We were being beavers," said H. O., in proud tones. He did not see as
we did where Albert's uncle's tone pointed to.
"No doubt," said Albert's uncle, rubbing his hands through his hair. "No
doubt! no doubt! Well, my beavers, you may go and build dams with your
bolsters. Your dam stopped the stream; the clay you took for it left a
channel through which it has run down and ruined about seven pounds'
worth of freshly reaped barley. Luckily the farmer found it out in time
or you might have spoiled seventy pounds' worth. And you burned a bridge
yesterday."
We said we were sorry. There was nothing else to say, only Alice added,
"We didn't _mean_ to be naughty."
"Of course not," said Albert's uncle, "you never do. Oh, yes, I'll kiss
you--but it's bed and it's two hundred lines to-morrow, and the line
is--'Beware of Being Beavers and Burning Bridges. Dread Dams.' It will
be a capital exercise in capital B's and D's."
We knew by that that, though annoyed, he was not furious; we went to
bed.
I got jolly sick of capital B's and D's before sunset on the morrow.
That night, just as the others were falling asleep, Oswald said:
"I say."
"Well," retorted his brother.
"There is one thing about it," Oswald went on, "it does show it was a
rattling good dam anyhow."
And filled with this agreeable thought, the weary beavers (or explorers,
polar or otherwise) fell asleep.