It was shaped like a short, fat, straight banana, but painted in red and orange stripes, and with rigging like an ordinary ship. Underneath a gas bag hung a sort of wickerwork houseboat, with a propeller at the back and big bay windows in the front. At one of these someone was sitting on a platform outside and cleaning the glass industriously, while singing the first two lines of ‘Rose of Dandoloone’ over and over again because she didn’t know the rest.fn1 Meanwhile the airship glided slowly to a halt about three metres above Doggins, and dropped anchor, which only just missed him.
The engine stopped. A hatch opened, and Doggins saw someone who appeared to be almost all beard and hat, wearing a captain’s uniform.
‘I say – excuse me a minute.’
Doggins raised his own hat – he had been well brought up. ‘Can I be of assistance?’ he said.
‘Thank you very much. Please tell me, where are we?’ asked the captain.
‘Well, these are the Dandoloone mountains, and this particular mountain you have landed on is called Tumbleover Hill. That’s the Lurkledoom forest over there, and my name is Doggins – though I’m not really a kind of small dog, for it’s an ancient and honourable name handed down by generations of noble Dogginses, and I live here except when I’m away from home, which is often, when I don’t.’ He went over the sentence again in his mind to see if it sounded right, decided it didn’t, and added, ‘If you catch my meaning.’
‘Oh,’ said the captain. ‘Perhaps you could point it out on my map. Come aboard.’
He threw down a rope ladder and, after deciding that it was safe, Doggins climbed up into the airship. It was quite big inside, with a stove and bunks, and a big gilt wheel for steering.
‘Very nice thing you have here,’ he said respectfully. ‘What’s it for?’
‘It’s my airship,’ said the captain, ‘for sailing in the air. I built it. We’re on the way to the Hall-Doom Islands at the moment. Care to come? We could do with some more crew. Here today, then up and off again tomorrow. A sky ahead that is always changing.’
Doggins said he would think about it – it sounded like an Awfully Big Adventure. Then the captain showed him everything that he had invented, while Ella, the girl who had been cleaning the windows, came back in and went over to check some very complicated dials, twiddling a lever or two to make some adjustments.
Outside the sun went down and the wind got up, and it seemed to Doggins that the airship was moving to and fro.
Well, he finally told the captain exactly where he had lost his way and got up to go. But when he opened the hatch, he was lost too. Where the grass of Tumbleover Hill should have been there was only black water, shining in the moonlight. The anchor rope had broken!
Doggins sat contentedly behind the captain as the airship chugged over the sea. It had been like that for days. Sometimes they would go down a bit and open the hatch in the floor, so they could drop down the rope ladder and have a swim or go fishing. But mainly it was just sea, and sea, and more sea. ‘Hallo,’ said the captain suddenly. ‘Look.’
On the horizon was a dark smudge, with a snow-capped mountain in the middle of it. The captain spun the wheel so that the airship headed for it. The island was getting nearer and nearer and they could see a line of white breakers round the reef.
‘Get the anchor ready,’ the captain said.
‘We lost it. Don’t you remember?’ said Ella.
‘Hand me that shark-fishing line,’ said Doggins, and he opened the hatch. He waited until a likely-looking tree came past, and dropped the end of the line into it. The fishing line was a thick one with three hooks at the end, so it held them fast.
Cautiously they slid down the line. First came the captain, with a long knife clenched between his teeth (you never know, on unexplored islands), then Doggins, and finally Ella. They crept along in single file, listening. There was a cool breeze blowing through the woods, and a soft jingling noise started as the trees moved. And there were twinkles, and chimes, as if the whole wood was made of glass and silver. Soon, above the heads of our bold explorers, the trees were clanging and clanking away like a thousand church bells.
‘I wonder— Ow!’ said Doggins, and he rubbed his head.
‘Sssh!’ hissed the captain.
‘I will not!’ cried Doggins. ‘Someone just threw something at me!’ Something hit the ground by his foot, and bounced away. It was round and silver, and looked very much like a coin . . .
‘A fifty-pence piece,’ said the captain. ‘That’s ridiculous, because money does not grow on trees.’fn2
A particularly strong gust blew through the wood, and they were pelted with more falling coins.
‘I’ll believe it just this once,’ said the captain, ‘but I won’t ever again.’ He rubbed his ear where a ripe ten-p piece had caught it. But the thrill of exploration was on them! In a crack in some rocks Ella found a little branch with dark green leaves, sprouting a nice crop of old-fashioned bronze three-penny-bits; the captain, being interested in everything unexplained and scientific, was examining a tiny speckled five-p piece with a large magnifying glass; and Doggins was lying full-length on the ground watching a small brown bud swell and pop until it became a shiny pound coin. They were busy with their nature study when the captain heard a soft voice far away in the wood.
‘Careful, now. Mind you pick only the ripe ones. No bruised or speckled ones, and leave the sacred sixpenny groves alone.’
And there was also the sound of many voices singing, far off between the trees:
‘Hi-ho! Hi-ho!’ they sang. ‘We are the penny-pickers!’
‘I’ve a strong suspicion that we’re somewhere we shouldn’t be,’ said Doggins nervously. The three of them crept away into the bushes, and watched as the penny-pickers came into the glade.
Picking money looked quite easy. Men in green baize aprons put ladders up into some of the trees, and soon there was the sound of baskets being filled. All the time they sang their penny-picking song, while the jangling of the money in the breeze made a tinkling, thin sort of music.
‘Want to have a look round?’ said a voice behind them. Doggins turned round suddenly, and saw a small man in a white smock, holding a trowel in one hand and a seed basket in the other.
They said yes, and followed him out of the wood. He told them that he was one of the money cultivators, and they had landed in the middle of plucking time, when the ripe money was sent away to the Mint. As they walked between well-tended fields the captain and Ella wandered off to do some exploring on their own, after promising not to walk on any young plants.
Doggins was allowed into one of the large greenhouses that occupied the southern half of the island. There, more exotic specimens were grown. He watched fascinated as men watered the rare, beautiful fifty-pound notes, which had to be grown in special rich soil and pruned regularly, or else they just became the common five-pound notes. And there were clumps of real golden coins, and seed-boxes of silver shillings and Maundy money, and so on.
‘If you let your money grow wild,’ said the cultivator, whose name was Henry, ‘you soon get square threepenny bits and suchlike. To say nothing of weeds – many of them being plants we used to value but no longer do. They don’t like to die out, you know.’ He pointed some out to Doggins. There was the hardy perennial farthing, and the old groat, and things that weren’t even really weeds, but real plants in inconvenient places – like a Scottish ten-pound note and the creeping stinging, slinging old Australian penny (known scientifically as Copperus Antipoedius).
And so it went on for the rest of the day. The captain came in muddy and overjoyed because, after great digging and climbing, he had discovered a perfect specimen of Fivus Bobbilius, or an elusive, and very collectible, five-shilling piece. Henry very kindly let him keep it for his pressed plants collection, and he also gave Ella a sprig off a special sixpenny bush.
Then he looked hard at Doggins. ‘The captain likes scientific things, and Ella likes small delicate things, but I won’t know
what you could find a use for,’ he said. Finally he went off into a back room and returned holding a threepenny bit. ‘This is a favourite old British piece of money,’ he said, ‘and what, I wonder, will you be able to grow with it?’fn3
Later, they climbed back up the rope ladder, cast off and floated away from the island.
‘We never asked them where we were,’ said the captain.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Doggins contentedly. ‘Let’s just go on and on.’
One evening in July, when the airship was floating over an uninteresting piece of land, a distant thunderclap made the captain drop what he was doing (he was trying to build an airship in a bottle).
He looked at the barometer: it was very low. Then he took out his watch with the luminous dial, and it was glowing brightly. There was a strong smell of electricity, and the captain could feel tiny shocks in the soles of his feet.
‘We’re in for a storm,’ he said to himself. ‘Ella – mizzen the starboard clothes line and hoist the umbrella stand. Doggins – belay the gas bag.’
Suddenly, there was
a rumbling, smashing,
echoing, cracking,
thundering, hanging,
hammering, grinding,
scraping, blood-curdling
CRASH!
‘It’s right above us!’ shouted the captain. Blue sparks were flashing between Doggins’ ears.
The electric storm raged around the airship, sometimes spinning it round and standing it on end. Doggins clung to the steering wheel and wished that he was somewhere else. A brilliant flash of lightning zipped right by the gas bag, and the gold braid on the captain’s uniform began to shine with an eerie green light.
‘This is an emergency!’ declared the captain, ‘Doggins, pull the lever marked Up.’
He did, and for a moment nothing happened. Then every cylinder in the airship began to pump out gas at a furious rate. The ship shot up through the clouds like the fastest lift in the world, and the crew held on tightly as the air whizzed by.
‘I think I left my stomach behind,’ said Ella.
The captain took the wheel and turned the controls so that the ship hung steady. The storm was left far behind, and it was suddenly very quiet.
‘Now there’s something you don’t see twice in a lifetime,’ he said.
They clustered round the window. The world had changed. It was blue, and covered with clouds. The horizon was curved and misty, and behind it the sun was setting. But it was not yellow – it was big and gold, and around it the stars still shone in the deep purple sky.
‘Isn’t it silent?’ said Doggins. ‘No wind and rain or thunder?’
‘Not up here,’ said the captain. ‘Nothing ever happens here.’
Just then a shadow slid over the sun, and they heard a chilling noise.
SCREEEECHHHH!
‘My blood’s gone cold,’ said Doggins. ‘Just like it says in books!’
The shadow grew nearer and they could all see that it was a gigantic eagle, with huge wings, a dangerous-looking beak and even more dangerous-looking claws. The King Eagle flew down close to the window, and peered in at them. He looked twice as big as the airship.
‘If only we had some sort of harpoon—’ began Ella.
‘No! Leave him alone and he’ll go away,’ said the captain. ‘This is his territory, after all. He’s probably wondering what kind of bird we are.’
After dinner the eagle flew away, and the air turned cool as night set in.
‘I think we should go down a bit more now,’ said the captain, round about tea time. ‘It’s getting a bit chilly this high up.’
He was interrupted by a long blast from a foghorn and Doggins opened the window.
There, close to them, was another airship sailing through the night sky. It was all black, with a big skull and crossbones in white painted on the gas bag. As they watched, several hatches opened and the snouts of cannons poked out. The foghorn blasted again.
‘Stand and deliver!’ shouted someone. ‘Prepare for boarding! One false move and we’ll shoot yer down!’
‘Pirates!’ shouted Doggins.
‘Stand by to repel boarders,’ ordered the captain, seizing a broom. ‘If they puncture the gas bag we’re done for!’
The black airship drifted nearer, and they could see the pirates peering through the windows. Already they were throwing lines across, and singing triumphant pirate songs:
‘Fifteen men on a dead man’s chest –
Yo ho ho and a packet of crisps.’
‘Any gold or jools?’ asked the pirate captain, climbing in through the window.
And suddenly the pirates were everywhere, fighting like mad. The captain waved his broom about and battled the pirates and Ella seized a poker and stood ready to defend the controls of the airship. Doggins found himself out on the veranda, in mortal combat with the pirate chief. Back and forth they fought (Doggins was using a mop). Then the chief cut the mop handle in two and gave Doggins a good push.
Down . . .
down . . .
down . . .
The air went rushing by, and in the darkness he could just make out the two airships getting smaller and smaller above him, while the pirate chief’s laughter rang in his ears.
He was turning over and over slowly as he fell down through the clouds, mist all around him.
Wumph! It was like landing on a feather mattress! It is a feather mattress, thought Doggins cautiously, feeling around underneath him. What is a mattress doing up here? He crawled out of the feathers and looked around.
The King Eagle turned his head and squinted down at Doggins. ‘What are you doing on my back, earth-thing?’ he said.
‘Please, sire, I was pushed out of our airship,’ said Doggins. ‘There are pirates up there! I must get back up and help the captain.’
‘Pirates, you say? Hold on!’ The King Eagle flapped his wide wings and shot up through the air.
Doggins had thought that the airship had gone up faster than anything he had ever thought was possible, and he had fallen down even faster, but the flight of the King Eagle was like a rocket.
The captain was fighting for his life when he saw a tiny speck rising through the clouds. It grew and grew, and as the King Eagle swept past, the wind blew the airship round and round.
The pirates screamed as they saw the eagle, and raced back along the ropes to their own ship. The captain helped the last one out of the door with a kick, just as the King Eagle seized the pirate ship in his talons and flew off.
Doggins climbed down from the gas bag where the King Eagle had dropped him.
‘Well, I’m glad that’s over,’ he said, dusting himself down. ‘Everybody all right?’
They were. But they rapidly let some of the gas out of the airship so that they came back nearer the ground – they didn’t quite trust the King Eagle not to snatch them next.
‘I think we’ve had enough excitement for a while,’ said the captain. ‘Next time we see a peaceful spot, we’ll stop and have a rest. Agreed?’
They sailed on until morning, and then the air grew soft and still and the airship came to rest in a clump of brambles. After a little while Ella opened the door and dropped the fishing-line anchor, which caught round the roots of a hawthorn tree.
Doggins stuck his nose out of the window. ‘This looks like a nice place,’ he said.
They were on a very small island, which was covered in grass and brambles. Quite nearby were hundreds of other islands, all very small, some with houses on. On the roofs of the houses people sat in long rows, with their possessions gathered around them. They were all very quiet.
‘Hey!’ shouted the captain to a small boy who was floating by on a log, a bag of newspapers over his shoulder. ‘Where is this place?’
‘I’m not quite sure. It was a road last time I was here. Excuse me, but I’ve got to go and deliver my papers.’ The boy paddled off between the islands.
‘Do you know what I think?’ said Ella. �
�I think these islands were hills until just a little while ago.’
She was right. In the water, all sorts of things were floating – old hen coops, tables, tins, and anything else that could keep people up out of the water. As they watched, a large wicker shopping basket drifted by and got caught in an eddy. Round and round it went, while a small man in a big black hat sat on it and looked miserable.
‘Could you dish me out, please?’ he cried as he went round yet again.
The captain got a boat hook from the rack over the fireplace, climbed down his rope ladder and carefully lifted the man out of the groceries and helped him up the ladder and into the airship. A little while later the basket sank, and all that remained of it was a floating loaf.
‘Oh, it’s terrible, terrible,’ moaned the little man as they dried him out in front of the fire.
‘What on earth’s happened?’ asked Doggins.
‘The big dam up the river has broken. Everyone’s flooded out.’
He told them what had happened – how the flood wave had caught him just when he was leaving the library, and how he had floated all morning with nothing to eat but a tin of baked beans and a cold sausage.
All that day, the airship went from hilltop to hilltop, collecting people who had been flooded out of their homes. Soon the airship was full up, and the captain had to take it down very close to the water. Behind it bobbed a string of boats and receptacles.
‘It looks like we’ve got the entire population with us,’ whispered the captain to Doggins. ‘Have you any idea what we should do with them?’
Doggins stared out the window. ‘Now there’s a place that looks familiar,’ he said, pointing to a larger island than the rest of them. It looked very much like his home mountain, and as he got closer he could see his house on it. ‘You’d better steer for that,’ he sighed, ‘though what I shall feed them with I really don’t know.’
The Witch's Vacuum Cleaner: And Other Stories Page 9