and bleached the grass under the groundsheets by hiding it from the sun. The Amazons’ tent stood alone and forlorn without its companions.
“Come on,” said Nancy. “We’ve got to take it down anyway—to strike it, I mean—so we may as well set about it.”
It was stiff work getting the poles out of the hems in the wet canvas, but everybody helped. The tent was loosely rolled up. The poles were taken to pieces, and made into a bundle, and wrapped in the groundsheet.
The Swallows and Amazons looked sadly round their camping ground. There was now nothing but the fireplace with its feebly burning fire, the square pale patches where the tents had been, the parrot’s cage in a patch of sunlight, and Susan’s kettle and a few mugs and the pemmican tin and the bunloaf and John’s tin box, to show that it had ever been the home of the explorers and their pirate friends.