Just then there was a loud raucous squawking close in front of them and a tremendous flapping among the leaves, and a pair of jays flashed through the tops of the trees, showing for a moment white and black and pinky-grey and the bright blue bands on their wings.
“There are the parrots,” said Roger. “Talking ones. Listen to them saying ‘Pretty Polly,’ only it’s in savage language, not ours.”
At last they came to a track in the wood. It seemed to lead upwards towards the noise of the wood-chopping.
“Now we must make a blaze,” said Captain John, “to show the place where we came into this track. Then we’ll know where to turn off on our way down.”
Titty pulled out her knife and cut a blaze on the side of a hazel. It was not a very big one.
“We might easily miss that,” said the captain. “We must have something easier to see.” He bent down two branches of the hazel and tied the ends of them to the tree, so that they made two big hoops at the side of the track.
“We’re sure to see those,” said Roger.
“We’ll have a patteran as well,” said Captain John.
“What’s that?” asked Titty.
“It’s what gipsies make to show each other which way they have gone. You take a long stick and a short one and put them in the road across each other, so that the long stick shows the way.”
He cut two sticks and put the long one in the middle of the track pointing towards the hazel with the two bent boughs. The short stick he laid on the other, so that they made a cross.