The Little Grey Men

by BB

  The ripples chirped merrily under the bows as the ship slipped steadily through the water. The dark mass of Poplar Island dropped astern, and soon they were out on the shining expanse of the moonlit lake. Dodder puffed happily at his pipe, intensely excited at the thrill of the wonderful ship. This was a bit better than sweating at the rough home-made paddles of the Dragonfly! A jolly sight better! Over him rose the funnel and the tapering masts and far above he saw the expanse of glittering stars.

  Every ten minutes or so it was necessary to wind the engine up again, but even after it had stopped she had considerable ‘way’ on her, so they did not lose much distance.

  The gnomes made up a sea shanty to sing whilst they wound the key. It is difficult to translate into English from gnome language, but the gist of it was this:

  The stalwart three,

  Stout gnomes are we,

  See how we pull together;

  So heave the key around, me boys,

  And never mind the weather;

  Sing happy ho, the Jeanie Deans,

  Our skipper’s lucky find,

  So heave the key around, me boys,

  And wind, wind, wind.

  It went to a good tune and helped the work along wonderfully.

  Dodder, manning the wheel, was faced with a problem which suddenly presented itself. Should he turn the nose of the Jeanie Deans downstream or should he steer north! Now that Poplar Island was left behind it was easier to think more clearly.

  With this beautiful boat the whole problem had been altered. It was certainly worth exploring the Folly a little higher. They still had a week or two before winter came. Yes, the fate, not only of the Jeanie Deans, but of the gnomes themselves, lay in his hands. It was a tremendous decision to take.

  From below came the delicious smell of stewed blackberries, Sneezewort was whistling at his work. Baldmoney, chewing a peppermint cream, was drawing something on his map with a hot skewer, on the top of the cabin skylight. How they trusted him, implicitly! It was rather pathetic, and he suddenly felt very old and wise.

  Then, with a silent prayer to Pan, Dodder twiddled the spokes of the wheel. The bows of the Jeanie Deans crept round until they pointed northwards. Dodder had made up his mind. They would go ON! They sailed all night, making steady progress, and when Dodder became tired, Baldmoney took a turn at the wheel.

  Slowly the moon sank lower, to the east the horizon began to grey, and the starlings left the reed beds where they had been roosting.

  On either side the shore began to close in, and very soon they came to the Folly brook again, where it ran into the lake. The same old Folly! It was good to see it, as bright and jolly as ever!

  When at last the sun began to climb the sky over the rounded elm trees on the shore, they had left the lake far behind. The engines were still purring sweetly and the gnomes felt exultantly happy.

  It was not until they had progressed a long way that Dodder suggested that they should find a quiet place to tie up for the day. The Jeanie Deans was a conspicuous object with her shining paintwork, and might attract attention.

  At last they rounded a bend in the stream and saw a dense reed bed under some alder bushes. Dodder stopped the propellers by pulling up the checking lever and the Jeanie Deans glided as gracefully as a swan among the rusty sedge swords.

  Baldmoney and Sneezewort ran forrard and let go the anchor, which went tumbling down with a loud splash into the water, sending terrified minnows darting in all directions. All around were the friendly reeds and rushes; it was good to smell the land again and to know that all chances of starvation were gone. The bushes were thick with berries; as soon as they found some horsehair they could fish again (the Folly was alive with fry—the gnomes had noticed them darting before them upstream). They were back once more in the land of plenty, and all their perils seemed to lie behind them.

  After seeing that the ship was securely anchored and safe from prying eyes they went below and turned into their bunks. Worn out with excitement, they slept the sun round, safe in the green sanctuary of the thick reeds.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Hallowe’en

  ave you ever lain out of doors by a camp fire, on an autumn night, far away from anywhere? It is rather a wonderful experience.

  The three gnomes are sitting round their little camp fire now, watching the wavering sparks going up and up to lose themselves among the trees. Do you remember the way the light from the fire illuminated the leaves overhead, making them so mysterious and lovely, like some sort of theatrical setting, and the creepy feeling you experienced when you looked beyond the warm circle of the fire into the blue-black outer world? The darkness, full of mystery and adventure, crowds around and hems you in.

  So it was for the gnomes, and it was Hallowe’en!

  Close by ran the Folly, talking to itself in all manner of different keys; one little waterfall tinkled, another tonkled, it chuckled and chinkled, playing little hidden tunes all to itself as if it didn’t care whether anybody was listening or not, any more than the rustling trees and the grass; which always looks so bright a green in the firelight.

  Five feet away was the hull of the Jeanie Deans; the flicker of the fire’s light showed up her name wonderfully clearly, and winked on her portholes. How trim she seemed, with her pillar-boxred Plimsoll line, her black hull and creamy white upperworks, her brasswork twinkling in the light of the flames! What a ship indeed to own!

  A view of the ‘Jeanie Deans’ as she ploughs on her way

  They had anchored there for the very good reason they could go no farther that night. A little way upstream was a mass of sticks and rubbish—flood rubbish—which effectually barred the Folly. The stream had become more and more difficult lately and they had to keep on cutting a passage for the boat. But the gnomes were not sorry; it was a good place to camp, with not a house within miles. They would have some work to do on the morrow to clear the stream, but the ship could be moved.

  Dodder was frying eight fat minnows over the embers, and Sneezewort was sitting on an upturned barrel (from the hold of the ship) picking chestnuts out of their hairy casings in readiness for roasting. A most appetizing smell came from the pan as Dodder bent over it, the red light from the flames lighting up his face.

  Over a month has passed since we last saw them tucked in their bed of reeds, and now it is All-Hallows Eve, the greatest night in the gnomes’ calendar! In far-off days good people stayed indoors on this night for fear of spirits and the Little People. They sat round their fires telling ghost stories, until the tiniest scratching mouse made them jump and gibber. The made up silly tales about churchyards giving up their dead, and sheeted figures walking among the graves. Silly nonsense, all of it. But this I must say, that on Hallowe’en you had a better chance of seeing the Little People than at any other time, and for this reason mortals kept indoors.

  •

  The journey up had been strangely uneventful. Only one adventure had happened to them. A boy, hunting for rats up the brook, had passed close to the Jeanie Deans and her trembling crew, but so cleverly was the ship hidden under the bank, and so unobservant are most boys, he had not seen them and had passed on, whistling and throwing stones into the water, quite unaware he had missed what would have been the most wonderful experience of his life!

  ‘Here you are, gnomes,’ said Dodder at last, lifting each piping hot fish on the point of his hunting knife and flicking them on the expectantly proffered plates. ‘Fine fat minnows, done to a turn. It’s your job to be chef tomorrow, Sneezewort, and if you cook ’em as well as these, I shan’t grumble. Remember, you burnt the last lot. Come on, Baldmoney, you can finish the map afterwards; the fish will get cold.’

  Baldmoney, who had been lying full length on his stomach, putting some finishing touches to the map of the journey, obediently put on his waistcoat and climbed on to his barrel. He had found a name for each stopping-place on their journey; this should be called Rampike Dam.

  They ate in silence, neatly biti
ng the backs out of the little fish. When they had finished the minnows they had one big crayfish each, fried in the fish fat, and to finish up, stewed crab-apple, sweetened with peppermint cream.

  By the time the last mouthful had been eaten each gnome was as tight as a little drum. They helped Dodder wash up the plates, stowing everything neatly away in the cabin cupboard, and then Baldmoney and Dodder lit their pipes. Sneezewort did not smoke because the others considered him too young (he was born long before Julius Caesar landed in Britain, but that is awfully young for a gnome).

  ‘Ah, that’s better,’ grunted Dodder, loosening his belt and settling himself comfortably in front of the dying embers; ‘there’s nothing like a good meal at the end of a long day, and nothing like a good fire to sit by! The only thing lacking is a sip of my Elderberry 1905 to go with the nuts. But that must wait until we get back to the Oak Pool. Hallowe’en doesn’t seem the same without my wine.’

  For some time nobody spoke; it was too perfect a night for talking, and the fire made them drowsy. Sneezewort and Dodder hotched nearer to the embers, they felt the bitter cold of night on their backs. The rushing of the Folly was such a soothing sound that Sneezewort began to nod.

  ‘Listen!’ Dodder was sitting bolt upright. His eyes were lifted and his mouth was slightly open as he gazed skywards. The others were wide awake in an instant, their long ears twitching, the firelight glinting on their eyeballs. From far away among the stars and the cold night sky a very faint baying, like a pack of hounds in full cry, came down to them. It grew nearer and nearer, passed right overhead (the gnomes’ ears turning with the sound), then dwindled away down the course of the Folly.

  ‘The Heaven Hounds!’ exclaimed Dodder; ‘that means a bad winter. They are steering by the stream; I expect they will pass right over the Oak Pool on their way to the sea.’ And he remembered the goose feathers he had found on Poplar Island.

  ‘What are the Heaven Hounds?’ asked Sneezewort, hooking a hot chestnut out of the embers and tossing it across to Baldmoney.

  ‘Why, the wild geese of course, silly,’ said Dodder; ‘they live far away in the land of Northern Lights, the land of the Snow Queen.’

  ‘Tell us about them, Dodder—please, please, Dodder—before we go to bed; after all, it is Hallowe’en!’ begged Sneezewort.

  ‘It’s time you were in your bunk,’ said Dodder severely (they usually sent Sneezewort to bed early because of his age); ‘but as it’s All-Hallows Eve you can stay up a little longer.’

  •

  ‘Many cuckoo summers ago,’ began Dodder, ‘we had a terrible winter on the Folly. You must know the country was very different then, no railways, cars, and no roads to speak of and only a few fields round the villages. Moss Mill hadn’t even been built. Quite a number of gnomes lived up the Folly in those days, and the country was full of them, Elves, Goblins and Hobgoblins, Pixies, Nixies, Sprites, Brownies, and Jack-o’-Lanterns or the Lantern Men. These Lantern Men were marsh goblins, who always carried a little light with them to see their way over the marshy ground. If any of our people are left, they would be the Lantern Men. The last I heard of were at Fenny Compton, away to the west of us, and they nearly drove a signalman out of his wits.

  ‘Well, we’d had a lean summer, few berries and nuts and no mushrooms. The consequence was, the first frosts caught us unawares with empty larders. In those far-off times there were not many cornfields, and we had to go a long way for our gleanings. How the hobgoblins used to play the poor farmers up too, on Hallowe’en, chasing their horses until they were covered in sweat, milking their cows and stealing things out of their wattle huts just out of pure mischief. But that’s by the way.

  ‘We had the first heavy fall of snow early in November and after it the frost set in. The Folly froze solid, even in the rapids, and you could walk dry shod all the way up to where Moss Mill now stands.

  ‘With the bad season I saw we hadn’t nearly enough food to carry us through the winter, so Cloudberry and I volunteered to go upstream and try to catch some fish. They bite well in cold weather, if you can find a deep pool which isn’t frozen, and I thought that if we went up to the rapids we might have some luck. We borrowed two extra skin coats from some gnomes who lived at Joppa and made ourselves some snow-shoes.

  ‘We had got nearly as far as Lucking’s meadows when the snow began to fall, and we half thought of turning back. But as we were so desperate we decided to go on and trust to the snow easing up. But not a bit of it, it came on harder than ever, and we took shelter in a hollow tree. It snowed all day, and the wind got up and blew the stuff into great drifts. All the snow seemed to come down into the valley and the tops of the hills were blown bare, until the grass began to show.

  ‘Just as it got dark we heard the Heaven Hounds. They came out of the north, a long line of them, gaunt grey birds, ravenously hungry. They saw the grass showing on the hill and came bugling over our heads. It was a wonderful sight.’

  Dodder tossed another stick on the fire, and a sheaf of sparks shot upwards to lose themselves among the trees.

  ‘As soon as they settled they began to feed, plucking at the short grass. As we don’t often see these birds in this part of the world, we got out of our tree and climbed the hill towards them. There was a sentry on guard on the brow of the hill and he challenged us. You see he couldn’t quite make us out, coming through the snow, he thought we were wood dogs. But when he saw us he was quite friendly. “Why,” he said, “if it isn’t the Little People!”

  ‘We asked him all sorts of questions, where they came from and where they were going. They had been flying for two days and a night, so he told us, all the way from a place called Spitzbergen, and had lost their way. I told him that we’d never had a snow like this before and he seemed quite amused.

  ‘ “Oh,” said he, “you in Britain don’t know what snow is. You should see Spitzbergen!” And then he told us all about the icebergs and glaciers, and how for many months of the year the sun never troubles to get up at all so that all is as dark as it is tonight.’

  ‘What an awful place!’ remarked Baldmoney, with a shiver, looking beyond the circle of the firelight; ‘I don’t think I should like to go there!’

  ‘Well,’ said Dodder, ‘the wild geese don’t stay in Spitzbergen in the winter time; nearly all the birds fly away. They come to Britain, following the sun. But they breed in Spitzbergen, and the wood dogs are worse there than they are in this country, eating their young and stealing their eggs.

  ‘I said I should like to go to their country, and he said, “Well, why don’t you? I will come back in the spring and take you. You can climb on my shoulders and fly back with the skeins. Will you come?” Well, I didn’t know what to say . . . I was younger in those days . . . I can tell you I was very tempted, especially when he said he’d bring me back safe and sound in the autumn. Cloudberry got quite excited about it. You remember what a fellow he was for adventure.’

  ‘I should have gone if I’d been you,’ said Sneezewort; ‘it would have been a wonderful experience.’

  ‘Oh! I don’t know,’ said Dodder. ‘I couldn’t bear the thought of leaving the Folly and the other gnomes, and I should have missed the Stream People. Perhaps I was a bit of a coward.’

  ‘What happened then, Dodder?’ asked Baldmoney.

  ‘Oh, they grazed on the hill until the moon got up, and then they all flew away, and we were left alone on the bare hill. Cloudberry was mad with me for turning down the offer, and wouldn’t speak to me for days afterwards. If I’d have gone he would have gone too, but he somehow didn’t fancy going alone. He said it was the chance of a lifetime and one which would never come again. He always was a restless sort of person; I suppose that’s why he came up the stream. I even think that since our meeting with the Heaven Hounds he was more restless than ever, and I don’t think he ever quite forgave me for not asking the geese to come back for us in the spring.’

  •

  By now the fire had burnt low and the cold was in
creasing. The sound of the wild geese passing over had aroused strange emotions, a restlessness which was hard to explain. The thought of those great wide-winged birds flying over oceans and continents made them feel very earthbound and small, even discontented with their lot.

  ‘Well,’ said Dodder, ‘I don’t expect we shall ever get the chance again; it certainly would have been a great adventure.’ He shivered suddenly. ‘My! but it’s cold tonight. See how the leaves are falling!’ As he spoke, a flurry of dead leaves came wavering down in the firelight. Some fell into the red embers, hissing gently.

  Old Man Winter was on the prowl; life seemed to shrink into the earth at his approach, as a worm withdraws into the ground. Overhead a remote star showed for an instant and was hidden, and on one side of a blackened log lying in the grey ashes a line of sparks ran swiftly, puffed by a sudden breeze. Up in a thorn-tree a blackbird had rolled up into a ball. Once it withdrew its head to look sleepily at the red glow beneath, but it soon tucked it in again and went on dreaming.

  For a long time nobody spoke, each gazed into the red core of the fire, busy with his own thoughts. Far away they heard the howl of a wood dog. Dodder shivered again.

  ‘Gracious! Did you hear that?’

  ‘Yes . . . a wood dog . . . I’ve heard them before.’

  It was a strange thing that during the whole of their journey up the Folly they had never once seen a fox. But just as men in lion-infested countries can go for years without as much as catching sight of a lion, so it was with the gnomes.

  ‘You know,’ remarked Dodder at last, ‘we can’t go much higher. The source must be miles away yet, and there isn’t much point in finding it. We haven’t come across another trace of Cloudberry. If you ask me, a wood dog had him. This country must be full of them.’ Again came the long-drawn howl, farther away now, somewhere up the Folly.

  And suddenly, whether it was that distant cry in the night, or the wind in the half-bare trees, the three little gnomes felt suddenly dreadfully homesick. If only they could have begged a lift from the wild geese they would have been back at the Oak Pool by now. Instead of that, they were miles away in a country swarming with enemies.