it, we were half drowned in tears. While away from it, as children and as grown-ups, we dreamt about it. No matter where I was, wandering about the world, I used at night to look for the North Star and, in my mind’s eye, could see the beloved skyline of great hills beneath it. Swallows and Amazons grew out of those old memories. I could not help writing it. It almost wrote itself.
A.R.
Haverthwaite
May 19th, 1958
CHAPTER 1
STRANGERS
STEPS SOUNDED on the wooden stairs, and counting, “Seven and eight and nine and ten and eleven and twelve and that’s the dozen.” Mrs Dixon was coming to tell the Callum children that it was time to get up. They had come to Dixon’s Farm only the night before. Mrs Dixon had been their mother’s nurse when she was a little girl, and Dorothea and Dick had come to stay at the farm for the last week of the winter holidays.
For some time already they had been lying half asleep, listening to the strange noises down in the yard, so very different from the roar of the traffic in the streets at home. They heard the grunting of the pigs, the clucking of hens, the anxious quacking of ducks, the hiss of an angry gander, the mooing of cows and the regular trilling of the milk spirting into a bucket. Now, waked properly by Mrs Dixon, they were out of bed and into each other’s rooms, to find that the two windows looked out on exactly the same view, a corner of the farmyard, a low stone wall, a gate, and beyond it a frosty field sloping down to the lake, an island covered with trees, and away on the farther shore, the wooded side of the fells and farther still the snow-covered tops of the big hills sparkling in the first of the morning sun. “There’ll be ice in the jugs this morning,” Mrs Dixon had said, “and I’ve brought you up a can of hot water apiece. No need to start the day freezing.”
A few minutes later they were hurrying downstairs. (“There are twelve steps,” said Dick, “she was quite right.”) They came down into the big farm kitchen, where Mrs Dixon had their breakfast ready for them, two bowls of hot porridge on the kitchen table, that was covered with a red-and-white chequered table-cloth, and some rashers of bacon sizzling in the frying-pan that she was holding over the fire. “I’m not going to make visitors of you,” she said.
Mr Dixon, who had had his breakfast long ago, looked in at the door but, on seeing the children, said, “Good morning to you,” and shyly slipped away. Mrs Dixon laughed. “He’s not one for talking, isn’t Dixon,” she said, and then asked what they meant to do with themselves that day.
Dick, who had brought with him a telescope, a microscope and a book about astronomy, wiped away the mist that kept settling on his spectacles every time he took a drink from his big mug of tea. “I’ve got to find a good place for an observatory,” he said.
“Eh?”
“For looking at stars.”
“And there are a million other things we want to look at, too,” said Dorothea. “We want to look at everything.”
“That’s your mother all over,” said Mrs Dixon. “Well, look as much as you like, but dinner’ll be ready at half-past twelve, and you’d best be here if you want any.”
After breakfast they put on their coats and went out into the yard and made a round of it, visiting all the things they had listened to, lying in bed. Milking was over, but they met old Silas, the farm hand, crossing the yard with a great truss of red bracken for the cowshed. And Roy, the dog, rushed barking out at them, but stopped at once and wagged his tail.
“Just showing what he would do if we didn’t belong,” said Dorothea.
“It’s a fine frosty morning,” said Silas. “You’ll be having some skating if it goes on.”
Dick looked through the yard gate towards the lake.
“Nay, it’ll be a while yet before the lake freezes. It’s not often it does, but it’s been a grand year for hollyberry, and that’s a sign. But you’ll be skating on the tarn up above yonder if we have another night or two like last.”
“Where is it?” asked Dick. “We’ve got our skates packed.”
Old Silas pointed up the fell behind the house.
“Let’s go down to the lake first,” said Dorothea.
From the yard gate a narrow footpath went down the sloping field to the edge of the lake. Dick and Dorothea went down it for the first time. They did not even know the name of the island that lay there, with its leafless winter trees, and the tall pine tree above the little cliff at the northern end of it. It had been dark when they arrived, and everything was new to them.
“I wish we’d thought of asking if they had a boat,” said Dick.
“They probably have,” said Dorothea. “What’s that, down by the water?”
Dick stopped. His telescope was meant for stars, but it was good practice to use it for other things.
“Upside down,” he said.
“It’s a boat, anyhow,” said Dorothea.
Down at the bottom of the field there were reeds, some on land and some growing in the water. There was a small landing-place. A narrow belt of dried bits of reed, sticks and other jetsam marked the point to which the lake had risen during the autumn floods. Half a dozen yards above this there was an old brown rowing boat, upside down, resting on trestles, a couple of feet clear of the ground.
“They must have put it like that for the winter,” said Dick, walking round it, “to keep rain and snow out of it.”
“What a pity,” said Dorothea, who, as usual, was making up a story. She tried a sentence or two on Dick. “They launched their trusty vessel, put out their oars, and rowed towards the mysterious island. No human foot had ever trod . . . ”
“Well, look,” said Dick. “There’s somebody coming now.”
A rowing boat was coming down the lake, the only thing moving on the water under the pale, winter fields, the dark woods, and the distant snow-topped hills. It was moving fast. There seemed to be four rowers, two to a thwart, each pulling on a single oar.
“Where’s your telescope?” said Dorothea.
She watched the boat cutting its way through the reflections of the hills. The story she had begun to plan was gone. Instead, she was finding another to explain this solitary boat, with its four rowers, and the two passengers seated in the stern. Carrying a sick man to the doctor, perhaps. A matter of life and death. Or were they racing some other boat not yet in sight?
Dick pulled out his telescope again. He rested it on the keel of the overturned boat and with a little difficulty focussed it on that other boat that was coming so swiftly down the lake.
“Hullo,” he said. “Dot! They aren’t grown up.”
“Let’s see.”
But she gave him back the telescope at once. “Bother the thing,” she said. “I can see just as well without it.”
