by Eva Ibbotson
’ But how?
They had come up to Blackscar in the warden’s car in a panic and in the night. Now they couldn’t believe they’d had the nerve to do it.
‘I’m worried about the clutch,’ said Mr Smith. ‘I don’t want to do any more damage.
’ But the matter was settled for them, because when they tried to start the engine nothing happened.
‘The battery’s flat,’ said Ned gloomily. ‘We’ll have to walk to the next village and get a bus, and then a train.’
Madlyn had taken some money from the Open Day tin before they left; there would probably be enough to take them some of the way at least, and when they were clear of the island they could phone Sir George.
There was a timetable tacked to the noticeboard in the church porch, and a map. There was one bus a day from a village called Seaforth three miles away, but they had missed it.
The ghosts were not sorry to have another night to rest. They had felt unwell and uncomfortable in the hotel. Perhaps it was the central heating, or Dr Manners’s toilet water, but Brenda said she had a headache and Ranulf’s rat was off his food. Not that Ranulf wanted to have his heart chewed exactly, but when you are used to something you are used to it.
But the real nuisance was The Feet. They had had to pick up The Feet by force and carry them to the island, and as soon as they got back they had run off to the tombstone labelled ISH again and dug their toes into the moss and refused to move.
They would have been angry at such bad behaviour except that The Feet were so worried and distressed. Every time they were told to come away from the tombstone, drops of sweat broke out all over their skin.
‘If it is sweat,’ said Rollo. ‘Perhaps it’s tears.’
The thought that The Feet were crying was of course very upsetting. ‘But we can’t just leave them here,’ said Sunita.
So all in all the ghosts were very glad to rest for another night.
And while they slept a boat chugged quietly into Blackscar bay and tied up at the jetty.
It was a forty-foot trawler, scruffy and battered, with knotted pine planking. It could have been any fishing boat, but fixed to the forward deck was a large harpoon gun.
The boat was a whaler and it was flying the Norwegian flag.
No one was up yet; it would be dark for at least another two hours. The sailors – rough-looking men – turned in to their bunks. Presently they would unload the cargo they had brought, but now they slept.
The Feet felt the slight vibration of the trawler’s engine as they lay under the tombstone, but they did not move. But Rollo heard the noise of the engine and woke... and crept out of the church and climbed up the grassy hill that gave a view over the whole island. The boat had come in, just as Dr Manners had said, to take the cattle to the promised land. He watched for a while; then, as the light grew stronger, he took out Uncle George’s binoculars.
It was a very small boat to transport a whole herd of cattle. It was really very small.
And something nagged at the back of his mind. Something about one of the men he had seen out of the window in Dr Manners’s room – a man he thought he had seen before...
The Mundanians were in their wooden hut, eating their breakfast of beans and fermented goat curd.
There were eight of them: a very old woman with a single gold tooth, a younger, buxom one, and six men, all living in a space the size of a caravan. The huts on either side of them housed chickens.
They looked tired, and the day that faced them would be as hard as all the others. Cleaning out the animal houses, incinerating the waste matter, humping heavy loads to and from the workshops... and other things that they tried not to think about.
Today there was an extra job – unloading the cargo which the whaler had brought.
The hut was bare and cold; the Mundanians could not afford proper heating and their food was what they could scrape from the soil. They were so poor that they could buy nothing, and in any case they were forbidden to go to the mainland.
Dr Manners had not been lying when he said that the Mundanians came from a very beautiful country high in the mountains of central Europe, and that they were of proud and ancient stock. But the Mundanians had not come to Blackscar because they had heard of Manners’s missionary work; they had never even heard of Blackscar. What had happened was that two years earlier a cruel dictator from a neighbouring country had conquered Mundania and started a reign of terror. He had forbidden the Mundanians to speak their language or have their own schools or practise their own religion, and when anyone protested they were imprisoned or killed.
So the two brothers, Slavek and Izaak had taken their family – their old mother, Slavek’s wife and four male cousins – and trekked across Europe to look for a place where they could live in peace. And after months of hardship they had reached Great Britain, thinking they would find a welcome there and a home and a chance to work.
They were horribly wrong. The whole family was shut up in a squalid and overcrowded camp surrounded by barbed wire and told they had no right to work and no permits and no papers and would be sent back to Mundania.
Twice they had been shifted to other camps that were even more crowded and wretched than the first. Then the third time they were moved they managed to escape, and it was as they were trudging the roads that a man had come and offered them work at Blackscar. Not paid work of course (they were not allowed to be paid) and work that was harder than any that was ever done even by the humblest peasant in Mundania, but they knew that if they complained they would be sent back to the camp. They were really prisoners at Blackscar and each day they woke up so wretched and sad and homesick that they did not know how they would bear it. But they did bear it. They had no choice.
So now they finished their goat curd and while Slavek and Izaak went out to fetch the cargo from the whaling ship, the old woman with the gold tooth piled up the dirty dishes.
But before she started on the washing up, she turned on the ancient transistor radio which one of the workmen had given them.
On the whaler they had started unloading. There were four long canvas bags – not a big load but valuable, incredibly valuable; the sailors expected to be paid an enormous amount of money, and they had earned it. The risks they had taken to get their booty had been great; if they had been caught they wouldn’t just have been fined, they could have been imprisoned.
Although the boat flew the Norwegian flag, the men were not Norwegians. They were crooks and riffraff from several countries, but they had one thing in common: they were hunters who knew the sea and cared nothing for the creatures that lived in it if they could make a profit by killing them. To get the booty they were now unloading, they had harpooned close on thirty whales – and not those whales that it was legal to hunt, but rare and protected ones.
The whales they had killed were narwhals, those shy and gentle beasts which live in the icy waters of the Arctic and are rarely seen by man.
Narwhals are not large as whales go, they are seldom more than five metres long. The Vikings called them ‘corpse whales’, not because they ate corpses – they wouldn’t dream of doing such a thing – but because of the blue-grey colour of their skins.
But though they are small, there is one thing about male narwhals that is extraordinary. Growing out of their foreheads is an enormous, single, spiral horn.
Because they are so rare and so amazing, narwhal horns have been prized throughout history. Medieval princes believed they could detect poison which had been put in someone’s food by an enemy. In Asian countries, doctors ground them up for potions and medicines. Carved narwhal horns adorned the palaces of kings.
And just as poachers will hunt elephants for their tusks and leave them to rot once the ivory has been removed, so the sailors who had come now to Blackscar had cut the horns from the narwhals they had slaughtered and thrown the carcasses back into the sea.
Dr Manners too prized narwhal horns – but not to detect poison or to use for potions.
He wanted them for quite a different reason. It was a reason that nobody but him and his assistant, Dr Fangster, knew anything about.
Slavek and Izaak had begun to wheel the canvas bags up to the office beside the main laboratory. The bags were padlocked; no one was allowed to open them; what was in them was a strict secret, but the Mundanians were used to shifting loads they knew nothing about. When they were safely stored, and Dr Manners had examined the contents, he would arrange for the sailors to be paid.
They stowed the bags and went back to the hut to fetch their tools for the day’s work.
‘Good heavens – what is it, what is the matter?’ asked Izaak as he threw open the door.
The old woman was sobbing in one corner; Slavek’s wife moaned in the other. The four cousins, who should already have been mucking out the animal houses, were huddled over the radio. Their faces too were streaked with tears.
‘What is it?’ repeated Izaak. ‘For goodness’ sake, what’s wrong?’
The cousins turned from the radio, and wiped their eyes.
‘It has happened,’ they cried, throwing their arms round the brothers. ‘Oh, Slavek, Izaak – it has happened at last! That we should live to see this day!’
On the hill opposite the island, Rollo watched the boat. The sailors had finished unloading; soon now the cattle would go on board. Dr Manners had said they would be washed clean first, restored to their whiteness. Only how would they all fit in? Dr Manners knew everything there was to know about animals; he would not let them travel in cramped or unsuitable conditions; but all the same, the boat was small.
And what about the man who had walked past the windows of the hotel? Of course, he might have been somebody quite different, but if not...
From the doorway of the church, Madlyn called up to him.
‘Come on, Rollo. It’s time to go.’
They had packed up; anything they could not carry was locked in the car. It was going to be a long trek to the village.
But if Rollo heard her, he took no notice. When she looked again, she saw that he had left the hill and was running down the beach towards the causeway.
‘Come back,’ she yelled. ‘Come back at once.’
But Rollo went on running.
‘We can’t let him go alone,’ said Ned.
‘One day I’m going to kill him,’ said Madlyn, as they set off in pursuit. ‘What’s more, I shall enjoy doing it. I shall enjoy killing him.’
They caught up with him as he crouched behind a boulder overlooking the bay and the jetty, and dropped down beside him. The boat was still tied up, there were no signs of any preparations for loading the cattle.
‘What on earth are you up to?’ said Madlyn angrily.
But before Rollo could explain, they heard a hissing noise – a noise like ‘Psst’ but not really an English ‘Psst’. Then a swarthy face with a curving black moustache appeared round the side of the boulder, followed by a second face like the first.
It was the two men who had caught them and taken them to Dr Manners, but they looked different. Not fierce now but almost smiling – and they carried no pitchforks or wooden sticks.
‘You come with us,’ said the first man. ‘We show you something. Quick! We not hurt you.’
‘We not hurt you,’ repeated the second man. ‘Please, you come. Now.’
The children came.
They were led into a low wooden hut. They had seen it when they were looking for the cattle, but it hadn’t seemed like the sort of place that people lived in; it looked more like a shed for animals, a chicken house or a pigsty.
But people certainly lived in it. They not only lived in it, they were having a party. There were candles on the table and a wooden platter piled with pancakes. Red and green and purple paper streamers were tacked to the walls. In one corner a man was playing a mouth harp, making music that was both reedy and exciting, and the men were dancing, their arms resting on each other’s shoulders, while the women twirled round and round, sending their heavy skirts spinning. From the crackly radio came the sound of an excited voice talking in a language the children had never heard. Then the voice stopped and a blaring military tune was played, and when it came on everybody stopped dancing and stood to attention and the women beat their chests.
The children were completely bewildered. Why had they been brought here? Were they going to be frogmarched away, or beaten, or tied up as part of this strange feast? But instead they were handed glasses of a colourless fiery liquid and told to drink a toast.
‘Mundania – the Motherland!’ cried their hosts, and tossed their glasses over their shoulders, and the children did the same.
But at last there was a lull, the radio was turned down and packing cases were pulled out for the children to sit on while the Mundanians explained what had happened.
‘Is revolution in our country,’ said Slavek – and to make it clear he stuck out two fingers and said, ‘Bang, bang!’
‘Bad man has gone – dead,’ put in Izaak happily.
With all the Mundanians helping out with words and gestures, the children gathered that the dictator who had terrorized their country had been overthrown. It was news of the revolution that they had heard on the radio, and now they were free to go home.
‘Home,’ they repeated joyfully, nodding their heads and smiling. ‘We go home.’
But the children had not been called in just to hear the good news. There was something which the Mundanians wanted them to do and it was important.
‘We call you because you must see what is here happening. You must tell and you must make stop.’
‘Yes, yes,’ said the other Mundanians. ‘You must go quick from island and make it to stop.’
‘But what is it?’ asked Madlyn. ‘What is it we must stop?’
Slavek’s face was grim.
‘We show. Now. But you must very quiet be. You must cripp.’
‘Cripp?’
‘Cripp like mouses. And stay behind from me.’
He turned and took a bunch of keys from a shelf.
Then he led the children from the hut across a covered way and unlocked a door.
‘Zis,’ he said. ‘Zis you must stop.’
The children never forgot the sight that met their eyes. They were in an experimental chicken house but the birds, each in a separate cage, were not really like chickens. They were much larger, and a flap of skin had formed across their claws so that they had become web-footed. But the horrifying thing was their beaks. Their beaks had been stretched and on some of the birds a strange, shovel-like protrusion had been grafted on.
‘But what is it? Why are they like that?’ asked Madlyn.
Rollo was shivering.
‘I know why. I know what the experiment is for. They’re trying to turn the chickens into dodos.’
Slavek nodded. ‘Yes. Yes. Dr Manners he makes dodos because they are not any more.’
‘They’re extinct,’ put in Ned.
But the dodos were only the beginning. Slavek’s key now unlocked a steamy room in which a small alligator lay on the edge of a shallow pond. He was absolutely still and pressing down on his snout was a heavy weight. A clamp fixed it and it was connected to a pressure gauge.
Even Rollo did not know what was happening here.
‘They make heavier and then more heavy, so snout is flat. Make new animal.’
The creature lay still, unable to move; its yellow eyes were dull. It was completely helpless.
Rollo had connected now. ‘I know. A gavial. They’re becoming extinct. They have these long flattened snouts. Oh God, the poor beast can’t move.’
But that was not nearly the end.
They passed through two double doors into an aviary. The grey parrots who sat there were chained tightly to their perches. Their eyes were shut. One had fallen over sideways and could not right itself. And all the time, relentlessly, they were being squirted with jets of dye from a computerized spray: jets of crimson, of violet, of blue ...
&nbs
p; ‘Here he makes – how do you call it? – Imperial Parrot. Not any more in jungle, all gone. So people want and they come and buy. Buy for much, much money.’ Slavek shook his head. ‘Many die, but they get more.’
Now came the worst of all. A gorilla, lying slumped in the corner of his cage. One foot was bandaged, his eyes were glazed, his breath came in shallow gasps.
‘He’s going to die,’ said Rollo.
‘Yes. They try to take foot and move it so toes go other way. They try to make – how do you say? Abominable Man.’
‘An Abominable Snowman,’ said Ned. ‘A yeti. Their feet are supposed to be back to front.’
Slavek locked the door of the room and turned to the children.
‘There is more,’ he said. ‘It is for money, money, money ...’ He made a gesture rubbing his fingers together. ‘People come – they want what is not. They pay and they pay and they pay and Dr Manners he grow very rich.’
‘A centre for making extinct animals,’ said Ned. ‘It’s incredible.’
But they could believe it. People paid fortunes for rare and unusual animals. How much more would they pay for animals which were extinct – or mythical?
Back in the hut they saw that the Mundanians’ few possessions had been packed away. There were only three bags on the floor, which seemed to contain their worldly goods. The women wore their shawls, the men had buttoned up their jackets.
‘You must go quick and tell police,’ they said again. ‘We could not – we haf no money, no papers, we were as slaves, and now we go home. But you will tell.’
‘But how will you get home without money?’ asked Madlyn. ‘What will you do?’
The men smiled. ‘We haf plan,’ said Slavek, tapping the side of his nose, and the others nodded and said, ‘Yes, we haf plan.’
It was only now that Rollo was recovered enough to ask the question that burned him up.
‘But what about the cattle?’ said Rollo. ‘What will happen to them? Why have they brought the cattle here?’
Remembering what he had seen, he began to shiver again.
The Mundanians exchanged glances.
‘We do not know,’ said Slavek, ‘but it is big what will happen to the cows. It is very big, very important. It is big and it is soon. He waits for the boat to bring him what he needs, and now the boat has come.’