The Little Grey Men

by BB

  ‘What a bother!’ exclaimed Dodder. ‘I thought there was nothing but wild country above Crow Wood. We don’t want to be seen, you know—it would never do.’

  The wagtail could tell him nothing about the Folly above Clobber Park, and after Dodder had admired her family she excused herself, for the babies were getting hungry and clamouring for food.

  Dodder awakened the others and told them what the wagtail had said.

  ‘It’s a nuisance, but it can’t be helped. We shall have to risk being seen. I don’t fancy going up the lake in the dark, and if we wait for the moon to rise it will mean we can’t make a start before morning. The best thing we can do is to have some supper and then start.’

  Evening had come and the rain had stopped. The lowering sun shone right in their eyes, making the water a blaze of gold which dazzled them. The mayflies no longer danced. Everything smelt beautifully fresh and raindrops still fell from the thick masses of the overhanging chestnut just beyond the bridge.

  ‘I’m jolly hungry,’ said Dodder; ‘I don’t know about you fellows, but some fried minnows would go down rather well.’

  ‘Don’t you think it’s risky to light a fire?’ asked the wary Sneezewort; ‘you never know who might be about.’

  ‘Pooh! let’s chance it.’ The truth was that since Dodder had disposed of Giant Grum he had become rather cocksure, and quite indifferent as to whether anyone saw them or not. He was tired of skulking about, hiding, and living in fear of the mortals; why, they could be killed by a tiny oak leaf !

  So they landed on the bank close to the bridge and Baldmoney and Sneezewort hunted around for firewood. Dodder busied himself with preparing supper, cleaning the fish and arranging them head and tail in his frying-pan. This frying-pan was really rather ingeniously made. You will remember they had saved all the copper cartridge caps they found lying about in Crow Wood and by hammering out three or four of these and combining them they made splendid little frying-pans. True, they only held a few minnows at a time, but when the little fish were cut up they went in the pan easily. The mussel shells were never satisfactory (though they held more) for the heat of the fire split them.

  In a few moments the gnomes returned with some dry firing, stalks of gix (wild hemlock), dried leaves, and grass, and it was not long before a thread of blue smoke arose on the evening air and the delicious smell of cooking fish was wafted to their minute noses.

  Dodder was so hungry that little dribbles ran down his beard. Sneezewort went off again into the trees and returned in a short time with his hat full of wild strawberries. What a feast they had!

  Everything seemed rosy that evening; the Giant had been disposed of, the weather had cleared up, they had their beloved Dragonfly back again, and now it only remained to find Cloudberry.

  Gnomes do not eat with knives and forks, but in the good old primitive way, that is, with the fingers. The fish were taken up and held by head and tail and the backs were bitten out, the way Otter ate his fish. No bones troubled them, and, after all, this is a very good method of eating a fish, piping hot from the pan. If you don’t believe me, try it for yourself !

  ‘My! I feel better,’ said Dodder at last, wiping his greasy fingers on his beard and popping the last strawberry into his mouth. ‘I’m ready to start at any time. We can’t wait until the sun goes down—it will be hours yet.’

  Baldmoney got up and walked forward to where the boat was tied. He jumped ashore and was fumbling with the grass rope when his eye, wandering carelessly over the stonework of the bridge under the ivy creeper caught sight of some scratches among the grey lichen. He looked more carefully and this is what he saw:

  These scratches would have conveyed nothing to us, but in gnome language it meant this: ‘Cloudberry, cuckoo time.’

  Do not imagine that the gnomes wrote as we do, they have their own ciphers and alphabets. The cloud and bunch of berries was Cloudberry’s way of signing his name, and the bird with the inverted V in front of its beak meant April (cuckoo time).

  ‘Dodder! Sneezewort!’ . . . The others were by his side in an instant, for they had seen him looking intently at the stone under the ivy.

  ‘Look! Look what’s written here! It’s Cloudberry! He must have scratched that!’ Sure enough, though the scratches were very faint, they were just decipherable.

  ‘We’re on the right track,’ said Baldmoney excitedly, ‘we shall find him. What a piece of luck we just happened to tie up by the bridge!’ They danced about and hugged each other, and Dodder very nearly fell backwards down the bank in his excitement. Then, all at once, he subsided like a pricked bubble. The colour drained from his face and his eyes were staring, staring upwards to the stone balustrade above them.

  The others sensed something was wrong and they followed his gaze. There above, looking down directly at them, was a small boy with red hair. His hands were clasped over his ears, his elbows rested on the parapet, and he was smiling all over his freckled face.

  What happened next you can guess. Plop! Plop! Plop! and the gnomes shot over the side like corks. They came up under the arch and hung on to the stonework. They were too frightened to say a thing, they just dumbly stared at one another in horror.

  At last Dodder found his voice, though it was nothing but a husky whisper. ‘Now we’ve gone and done it!’

  ‘It’s all your fault,’ hissed Baldmoney; ‘we should never have lit the fire!’

  As luck would have it, the Dragonfly was under the creeper and well hidden. There was just a chance the boy would not see it. How long they remained there I do not know. It seemed ages to them. Unfortunately their fire was still smouldering and the copper frying-pan still among the embers. At last they felt the bank jarring. Two stout legs appeared under the arch, very scratched legs, without socks, the feet in grubby tennis shoes. The boy was bending down, looking at the fire. He took up the little copper pan and dropped it quickly for it was still hot. It rolled down the bank and fell into the stream. This was a piece of luck for the gnomes.

  Then he came and peered under the arch. But the gnomes only had their heads above water and in the shadow the boy could not see them; besides, the light was going.

  ‘I wish he’d go away,’ whispered Sneezewort. ‘I’m getting cramp!’

  They hung on to the brickwork until their fingers began to ache dreadfully, but still they clung. Dodder’s teeth were chattering.

  ‘It’s the last t-t-t-time I light a f-f-f-fire in the d-d-daytime,’ he stuttered. ‘I’ll be glad when we’re c-c-clear of this place. This is what c-c-comes of being over c-c-confident.’

  Boys on the whole are not very patient, and Robin Clobber was no exception. It was not long before he tired of looking for them; soon a voice was heard calling ‘Robin! Robin!’ and he ran off across the grass. It didn’t seem very amazing to him that he had seen three little men, cooking their supper by the old bridge. After all, he was only seven years old, and he took everything as a matter of course. He had always thought that the old bridge was the sort of place where one might see gnomes, though his idea of the little people was based on the absurd creatures pictured in his story books, ridiculous beings in tinsel frocks with gold stars in their hands and with gauzy wings sticking out of their backs, pictures which of course are very pretty but are not like fairies at all.

  That night, when his father came to say goodnight to him as he always did, Robin decided that he would say nothing about what he had seen. But after his father had kissed him goodnight and was just going out of the door he changed his mind.

  ‘Daddy!’

  ‘Yes, Robin?’

  ‘Fairies don’t have wings, do they?’

  ‘All the ones I’ve seen hadn’t, Robin.’

  ‘Oh! so you’ve seen fairies too, have you, Daddy?’

  ‘Yes, quite a number. But they are fickle creatures, Robin; when you grow up don’t have anything to do with them.’

  ‘Oh! . . . where did you see your fairies, Daddy?’

  ‘I can’t reme
mber now—in all sorts of places, abroad mostly; why, have you seen a fairy?’

  ‘Well, I saw three little goms—and goms are fairies, aren’t they?—down by the bridge.’

  ‘Goms?’ queried his father, puzzled.

  ‘Yes, goms.’

  ‘Oh! You mean gnomes, Robin.’ (Robin’s father could not help laughing.)

  ‘No . . . I mean goms,’ maintained Robin stoutly.

  ‘All right, goms, then; and what were your goms doing, may I ask?’

  ‘Cooking their supper on the bank of the Folly.’

  ‘Oh, they sound rather jolly goms, much better fairies than mine. What were they cooking, Robin?’

  ‘Little fishes.’

  ‘I hope they weren’t cooking my trout,’ said his father seriously. ‘I’ve only just restocked the lake.’

  ‘Oh no, the fish were too small for trout; I don’t know what they were. When the little goms saw me they dived into the water and went under the bridge. Don’t tell Purkis, will you, Daddy—he might shoot them.’

  ‘Purkis has gone away on a long holiday, Robin, and I . . . well, I don’t think he will be coming back.’

  ‘I’m glad, Daddy; I didn’t like him.’

  ‘Well, Robin, you must go to sleep; goodnight, and sweet repose!’

  ‘Slam the door on the doctor’s nose,’ answered Robin, and fell fast asleep.

  Like all grown-ups, his father didn’t believe Robin had seen the ‘goms’, which, under the circumstances, was perhaps a good thing, and he was glad of the opportunity of breaking the news that the keeper had gone.

  •

  When all was quiet the gnomes came out from under the bridge and took off their clothes. It was lucky for them they had a change of dry things in the boat.

  ‘Come on, let’s go,’ said Baldmoney; ‘the sooner we’re away from here the better, and we’ve lost a perfectly good frying-pan. I’m not going to dive for it.’

  ‘Nor I,’ said Sneezewort.‘I think Dodder ought to, it’s all his fault; he’ll have to make another now! A nice mess we should have been in if that boy had found the boat.’

  Sneezewort untied the grass rope and they pushed off. The sun had gone and the evening hinted at a storm. Black clouds came hurrying over and the rain began to fall again. They hoisted the sail and soon the bridge was hidden by a bend in the stream. They glided past the shaven lawns and terraces of Clobber Court.

  ‘There’s the lake!’ called Baldmoney from his lookout forrard. In the grey dusk they saw a sheet of water which seemed like a vast inland sea.

  You must bear in mind that the gnomes were very small and their surroundings consequently much bigger than they would have appeared to a grown-up person. Not only that, a day to a gnome is like a week to us; not only scale but time as well was magnified to them. That is why the older one becomes, the bigger one grows, time seems to fly by more quickly, and it is also why one’s old home seems so much smaller if you visit it again in later years, when you have grown up. Though it was only two months since they started on their adventure, it seemed to be two years to them.

  As they drew towards the open water the breeze freshened. In a very short time they lost sight of land; it was only a blur in the fading light, and soon even that vanished and they were all alone, right out on the open water.

  There was no need to steer with the paddles, indeed, after a while, on Dodder’s orders, they detached the paddles and lashed the sail to the two paddle uprights as it was more secure and ‘drew’ better. But the Dragonfly began to rock alarmingly.

  Dodder was the first to feel a queer sensation in the pit of his diminutive stomach.

  ‘Oh dear! I do feel queer. I hope those fish were all right,’ he groaned. This reminded the others that they too were feeling rather uncomfortable inside.

  Splash! A wave broke over the side of the Dragonfly. Splosh! another broke over the bows.

  ‘Down with the sail,’ shouted Baldmoney. And indeed their situation was becoming terrifying. For the further they got out into the middle of the lake the bigger the waves became and the worse they felt. The whole truth of the matter was that they were seasick, and that is a dreadful malady.

  On all sides were the tossing grey ripples crested with foam, there was no trace of land, and the Dragonfly was shipping more and more water. Unfortunately all the gnomes were now feeling so ill that they could not stir a finger to reef the sail, and the harder the wind blew, the faster the boat went along, and more and more water came over the side.

  ‘Bail! bail! for Pan’s sake,’ groaned Dodder, ‘or we shall be shipwrecked.’ He threw them some of the empty cartridge cases which made excellent bailers and, ill as they were, they began to bail for all they were worth. Water was now swilling about on the bottom of the boat almost to their knees, and the Dragonfly quivered drunkenly, water-logged and unmanageable. As fast as they threw the water out, more came in, and the wind, charged with spray, tore at the sail.

  I don’t know what would have happened had not the sail carried away. The binding to the cross spar broke, and sail and spar went overboard; she was driving under ‘bare poles’, as the old mariners used to say. Utterly exhausted, the gnomes had to give up. They rolled about on the bottom of the boat, soaked through, with the water breaking over them. They felt so ill that they didn’t mind if they were drowned. In the darkness and the howling wind the Dragonfly tipped and ducked. Then a faint grating sound came from under her keel, the forward movement stopped abruptly; she was aground.

  The ‘Dragonfly’ runs into heavy weather on the Big Sea: far across the tossing waves can be seen the trees of Poplar Island

  Baldmoney was the first to recover sufficiently to realize that they were no longer tossing on the open lake. He crawled to the side and was violently sick. Then he felt better. Overhead dark trees were whipping in the night wind, and the Dragonfly was bump, bumping on hard stones.

  He scrambled over the side and, feeling for the rope, feebly made her fast. In the darkness it was impossible to tell where they were. He helped the others out of the boat and they crawled up the shingle and lay under some bushes.

  •

  All night the roar of the surf sounded in their ears, and with teeth chattering violently they saw the east begin to grey.

  With the coming of the dawn the wind showed no signs of abating and the waves were as huge as ever. They saw the far bank; sloping fields dotted with pheasant coverts, round spinneys of fir, and pleasant parkland. All their fishing tackle had been swept away and their stores washed overboard, but their sleeping-bags were intact (with the exception of the third sleeping-bag, which had done duty for a sail) and these they carried up the shore.

  They were feeling far too ill to do anything more. What with the thrashing of the trees and the roaring of the surf on the shingle they were quite mazed. After a while, as the light increased, the effects of the night’s ordeal wore off and Sneezewort, who was a better sailor than the others and the first to recover, at last pulled himself together and ventured out from under the bushes.

  He soon made the surprising discovery that they had not, as he had first thought, been driven aground on the bank of the lake. They were on Poplar Island, and nearly half a mile of storm-tossed water separated them from the mainland. Unless the waves and winds subsided they would have to stay there for the rest of the day. So he went back to the others and fell fast asleep again, which, under the circumstances, was the best possible thing to do.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Castaways on Poplar Island

  he island was not very large, the gnomes could have walked all round it in half an hour. Ground ivy was everywhere and hid the earth, there was very little grass. Bushes of all kinds grew thickly, chiefly dogwood and red willow, and here and there thick holly clumps.

  Five big black poplars grew in the centre and high in the upper branches were the herons’ nests, seven of them, huge stick structures three times the size of rooks’ nests. The herons are early breeders, they lay t
heir eggs in late February and March, so that the young birds had flown. But there were signs of the departed fledglings; droppings splashed all over the place, broken egg shells (great blue-green shells, larger than ducks’ eggs), old fish-bones and dried frog-skins.

  Islands, however small, are fascinating places, as many people have found. There is a primitive sense of satisfaction in the knowledge one is surrounded by water. If you live on an island you know you are secure from wild beasts, for very few animals would dare to swim across from the mainland.

  The wind was still blowing hard from the nor’-east, driving the grey waves on to the shingle, where they broke in white foam. Storm-bound swallows hawked up and down on the lee side of Poplar Island, and some settled all a-row on a willow branch for a rest. Insects were to be found in the calmer air, and this is why the swallows had congregated at this spot.

  The graceful little birds sat out of the wind on the willow branch, which now and again dipped gently into the water as a gust found its way through the bushes, chattering in language unintelligible to gnomes, of Africa and hot lands by the Nile. Perhaps the stormy weather put them in mind of their coming journey and the joys of sunny Natal and Cape Colony, where most of them wintered. It was their chattering which awakened Dodder. The little gnome was stiff and cramped from the night’s ordeal, and for some time he could not move. He lay gazing out from the ground ivy at the grey ripples chasing past and the rough water beyond. In the lee of the island the ripples, though uneasy, were not unduly rough, though, looking left he could see, just off the point of Poplar Island, the main thrust of the storm driving the breakers on to each other’s backs. Three coots bobbed up and down like corks; he could only see them when a larger wave than the rest lifted them up—they appeared exactly like little fishing smacks riding at anchor.

  Dodder awakened the others and suggested breakfast. They bemoaned the loss of the provisions now at the bottom of the lake, and also of their fishing-lines and tackle. Fortunately Dodder always carried with him a spare line and hook (the real hook he had found by the Folly) and with this he tried to get some fish. Grubbing among the ground ivy he found the earth was dry and powdery, for the leaves had sucked up most of the rain of the night before, and soon all hands were turned to looking for worms. At last Dodder found two small brandlings under a stone. For some reason worms like lying under stones and can be often found there when other places are drawn blank.