The Selected Adventures of Bottersnikes and Gumbles

by S A Wakefield

  At last the King made his voice heard above the uproar: ‘Them Gumbles ain’t doing any good! Put ’em in their jam tins and squash ’em down hard!’ So the Bottersnikes grabbed the Gumblefiremen and groped through the smoke for the tins. They popped them in and squashed them down most savagely but instead of flattening out like lumps of dough as they were supposed to, the Gumbles came shooting out of their tins as if on springs. This was not so surprising. They were on springs. Willigumble and Kookaburra had put a mattress spring in each tin while everyone was busy with the fire.

  The Gumbles held on to the springs with their toes and went zoinng! zoinng! over the heads of the startled Bottersnikes like rubber kangaroos. The Bottersnikes were too amazed to do anything except rub their smoke-filled eyes and watch the Gumbles zoinnging down the hill into the bush.

  Willigumble was bouncing along on a spring of his own.

  ‘Sorry we can’t —’ zoinng! — ‘stay for the King’s Party —’ zoinng! — he shouted, ‘But we have to —’ zoinng! — ‘go now. Spring’s in the air, you know!’ and he bounced after the others as fast as he could zoinng.

  THE KING’S PARTY

  Bottersnikes eat pictures of food in papers and magazines. There are plenty of these in rubbish heaps — that’s partly why they are so fat. Also they eat the stuffing out of mattresses. This they like fried. For sweets they are fond of rusty nails, though their favourites are milk-bottle tops, which they chew like chewing gum. They will eat earwigs and cardboard too, but only if they are hungry.

  So the Gumbles had to go through all the rubbishy papers carefully cutting out the food pictures. They had to search the junk heaps from end to end for bottle tops and rusty nails and, worst of all, they had to carry in the stuffing from four mattresses and pile it ready for frying. The Bottersnikes yelled at them all day long.

  By evening everything was nearly ready. The Gumbles had built a large table from sheets of iron propped on bricks, and a stone fireplace too, to do the cooking on.

  From the roof of his palace the King bawled: ‘Light the fire and fry the stuffing!’

  Firelighting was the one job the Bottersnikes did themselves. As no one happened to be angry at the time, they grabbed a snoozing ’snike, thrust his head into the fireplace and kicked him and twisted his tail until he was thoroughly enraged. The kindling quickly caught from his red-hot ears and the fire blazed in no time.

  In great excitement, Smiggles woke from a little nap he happened to be taking. ‘Look what I done!’ he shouted. ‘Look what I gone and dreamed!’

  ‘You wasn’t ordered to dream anything, Smiggles,’ the King roared. ‘Sit on his head!’

  ‘But it’s tomato soup!’ Smiggles protested. It was too, a large tureen of it, rich, red and steaming, fresh from the depths of Smig’s sleep. ‘I dreamed it special,’ he added craftily, ‘as a birthday present.’

  The King could not be angry. Everyone loves tomato soup. Yet care had to be taken lest the present vanished before it could be used; so Smiggles was hung up by his tail to stop him going to sleep. From time to time he was given a kick to make certain of his wakefulness, then a pat on the head to show there were no hard feelings.

  Quite pleased with the gift of soup, the King announced, loudly: ‘I will receive the rest of my birthday presents.’

  The Bottersnikes blinked.

  ‘Now,’ the King said. And sat there waiting.

  Once more the tired Gumbles had to comb the rubbish heaps, with the Bottersnikes waddling behind, this time for suitable presents for the King. His Majesty received a whistle, a water pistol, a mousetrap and a quantity of fruit, mostly rotten — the best that could be found at short notice.

  Presently the King stood atop his car and blew a shrill blast on his new whistle. In the grand manner, the King said: ‘Bottersnikes! I declare my Birthday Party open!’ He took a flying leap from the roof of his palace and landed on the table, which tipped under his weight. Most of the Party food slid his way and he grabbed all he could and sat on it. The others rushed in from the sidelines and yelled and fought for what was left — the idea being to grab all that could be grabbed and sit on it, then to try to steal from someone else’s grabbing without getting caught.

  With nothing left to grab, they pounded the iron table with their spoons, scratched their backs with their forks and shouted at each other in a ’snike-like way.

  ‘My pile’s bigger’n Glob’s!’ crowed Chank.

  ‘But I got more stuffin’!’ shouted Glob, and to prove it he hurled his table knife. His aim was bad and the knife stuck quivering in the Weathersnike’s tummy. The weather expert folded his umbrella (he had brought it with him because, he said, you can’t take chances at a Party) and coshed Chank on the head, whereupon Chank groped under the table for a dead fish he’d hidden there and slapped Snorg in the face with it twice. So the Party got going.

  All this time Smiggles was howling to be let down so that he could join in. With a shrill whistle blast the King announced that the soup would be served.

  He served it in his water pistol. Dangerous jets of tomato soup shot everywhere. No one but the Weathersnike had an umbrella. The Bottersnikes found the safest place was under the table with their Gumbles held in front of them, rolled thin.

  When all the soup had been served, or spilled, and Smiggles released, the King thought the Party needed livening up. Most of the Bottersnikes under the table were asleep. So the King started throwing things. The rest of his presents, the rotten fruit, were excellent for livening up the Party. Against a water pistol the Bottersnikes were helpless, but when the King threw rotten fruit they scraped it up and threw it back. The Party went fast and very furious. When the fruit became squashed to pulp they threw Gumbles instead — Gumbles could be thrown again and again.

  Quite soon the King became tired of throwing the Party — he was being hit too often. Blowing a fierce blast on his whistle he yelled: ‘Half time!’

  Smiggles, who was very sore at missing so much of the fun, especially about the tail, took no notice. He hurled his last Gumble — it happened to be Tinkingumble — and scored a direct hit on the King’s nose. This made Smiggles feel much better; less fortunately, it made the King swallow his whistle. It went on whistling inside him each time he took a deep breath.

  The King was exceedingly angry. His ears glowed, his tummy whistled. He unwrapped Tinkingumble from his nose and rolled him in a tight ball to throw back. As he was about to throw, a loud tink sounded, clear as the call of a bellbird.

  ‘Hooray!’ shouted Tinkingumble. ‘It wasn’t lost after all. It only got stuck.’

  ‘Quiet!’ yelled the King. ‘Feep!’ went his tummy.

  Tinkingumble couldn’t help it. The King was squeezing very hard and it made him tink madly, like a cash register in Woolworths — every one a good idea.

  ‘That’s the one what causes all the bother,’ said Chank airily.

  ‘Cleversnike!’ the King snarled, and threw Tinkingumble at him. The tinker bounced and rolled under a bush, where he sat down to sort out all the good ideas that had come unstuck.

  ‘Ar, it don’t matter,’ said Glob, helping himself to Chank’s bottle tops. ‘Clunks are better’n tinks any day.’

  Before this could be proved the King said: ‘I will make a speech. Then we’ll have a sleep. Then we’ll throw some more Party. Grab them Gumbles and pop ’em in the jam tins.’

  During the throwing the jam tins had been scattered far and wide, so to save themselves bother the Bottersnikes squashed the Gumbles together in one big mass in the empty soup tureen, saying they’d sort ’em out in the morning. This was worse for the Gumbles than jam tinning because those beneath could hardly breathe, but there was no help for it and there they had to stay while the King made his birthday speech.

  The speech was long and dull. At first the Bottersnikes sat on the table and listened, pounding with their spoons at the important places, then one by one they dozed off and at last the King put himself to sleep with his own
speech. Only Smiggles was awake — he had been hung up again to prevent the disappearance of the soup tureen. Old Smig wasn’t having much of a Party yet, but there was still two and a half days to go.

  The Gumbles knew this too. Inside the soup tureen they were struggling and wriggling to escape, and they had found that they were not stuck to the bottom of the tureen as it was still slippery with thick red soup; but they were stuck fast to each other because the Bottersnikes had jammed them in so tightly.

  ‘If we could only get unstuck from each other,’ they thought, ‘we’d be free!’

  Push and wriggle as they might, they could not pull themselves apart. What they did manage to do was make themselves into one big Gumble — a clumsy creature, but it could walk and move its arms and waggle its huge head, and it could talk in a deep boomy voice … it was a Giant Gumble! Little Willi was stuck on behind, like a tail. He wagged.

  A bit soupy round the edges, the Giant Gumble stepped out of the tureen and loosened up, like a genie just out of a bottle.

  ‘Yikes!’ yelled Smiggles, who could not remember having dreamed a monster.

  The Giant lifted Smiggles down, finding he could do it easily, and when the Giant found how strong he was he laughed ‘Ho ho ho!’ in his deep boomy voice. He put Smiggles in the soup tureen and slapped a lid on; from there, for the dreamer, sleep would be the only escape.

  The Giant Gumble lumbered around, followed by his own huge shadow — for it was night now and the moon was up — and when the Giant saw how big his shadow was he laughed ‘Ho ho ho!’ in his booming giant’s voice. He looked at the snoring ’snikes and knew that he need not be afraid.

  ‘I am too big,’ said that Giant, ‘for a jam tin.’

  Rattling about in the Giant’s head was a bright idea that might once have been a tink. With a long piece of rope he joined the Bottersnikes together — knotted it tightly around each tail a bit above the tassel, and the two ends of the rope he joined on the tail of the King.

  ‘This Party,’ said the Giant, ‘needs livening up.’

  He overturned the table, Bottersnikes and all. They woke, hopping mad immediately. Someone’s head needed sitting on, that was plain; up they got to see whose head it would be.

  ‘Sit on it,’ yelled the furious King, ‘till the middle of next week.’

  ‘Foo!’ said the Giant. The King fell over in astonishment. No one had said Foo! to him in his whole reign.

  The Giant clambered to the roof of the King’s palace and stood there right against the moon. He looked huge. Much too big to do as he was told.

  ‘Waow!’ yelled the Bottersnikes.

  The King was not so easily scared. ‘It’s only Smiggles. He’s been dreaming again,’ he roared.

  ‘No I ain’t,’ came a muffled voice from the soup tureen, ‘I didn’t have nothin’ to do with it.’

  Now the tureen was talking! — or so it seemed to the frightened ’snikes. One or two scaredy-cats tried to run away, but could not get far because of the rope around their tails. ‘Lemme go!’ they yelled. ‘Stop pulling my tail!’ Feep feep! went the King’s tummy — the royal tail was being pulled too. Slowly at first, the Bottersnikes of the King’s band, and the King too, began to go round in a circle, some trying to run away, some trying to stop their tails being pulled off — round they went, faster, faster, whirling, glowing, sparks shooting from their red-hot ears, like a magnificent catherine wheel fit for a Giant to watch; and once it was spinning nothing in the world could stop it … until the rope snapped. The catherine wheel burst into glowing stars then, and the Giant clapped his hands.

  That was the end of the Party. He slid off the car and strode away to the bush, still filling the moonlit night with the boom of his Ho ho ho! The Giant shook and rocked with laughter. The Giant shook himself to pieces.

  Ordinary Gumbles came tumbling out of his arms and legs, his head and his tummy, and soon the Giant was lying in little Gumblebits and pieces on the ground. Very pleased to be their ordinary selves again, the bits and pieces scampered off to find some games to play in moonshine.

  ‘No more Parties! No more jam tins!’ they told each other, still giggling rather, ‘and we’ll never let ourselves get caught again — we’ll never be so silly!’

  They weren’t quite right about that. Bottersnikes are always having Parties, and the trouble with Gumbles is that when they go giggly they are silly enough for anything.

  SUPERGUMBLE

  ‘Lyrebird will not come,’ Happigumble said, ‘unless you stop giggling, Willigumble, and making such a noise.’

  It is hard for any Gumble to keep still and quiet, and for Willigumble hardest of all; but this is what they must do, Happigumble explained, if they wanted to see Lyrebird dance and display his tail. ‘Everything must be right for him or he will not come. Lyrebird is very fussy.’

  ‘I have heard him sing,’ Willigumble said. ‘He just copies other birds.’

  ‘Wait till you have seen him dance! There is nothing like it in the whole bush. Not in the whole of Australia.’

  ‘Well I hope he hurries,’ Willigumble said.

  All around them, great trees towered towards the sun. In their shade smaller bushes grew and tangles of vines, and beneath these a forest of graceful fern, each frond like an umbrella for the Gumbles, who are only small. With his own claws Lyrebird had scratched a small clearing to dance on, and by the edge of this the Gumbles waited, hiding, almost drowning in the green of ferns.

  When at last he came, Lyrebird did not fly but came on foot, through a tunnel in the green. He was a brown bird about the size of a hen. Not handsome: his colours were drab, his feet huge, his tail an untidy draggle brushing the ground behind him. But he could sing! He knew all the songs of the bush birds and he could copy three or four kookaburras laughing together, or the squawks of a whole flock of parrots and the rustle of their wings as well. All from the throat of a plain brown bird standing cocked on his mound, like an actor centre-stage. Then he stopped singing and lowered his head, scratched earth, shook out his tail like a fan, and the plain brown bird vanished into a shower of feathers, shimmering and silvery and swaying; so magical that when the silverdance was over the Gumbles could not stop themselves bursting into claps and cheers.

  ‘I knew you were watching!’ Lyrebird said, though he looked startled.

  ‘More! More! Encore!’ the Gumbles cried.

  ‘That’s all very well,’ Lyrebird said rather pettishly. ‘I have to be in the mood. It takes a lot out of a chap.’

  ‘If I could sing and dance like that I’d do it all day long!’ Willigumble shouted. ‘Lyrebird …’ Then, in the presence of a genuine artist, he became shy.

  ‘What is it, Willigumble?’

  ‘Did it take you long to learn?’ he whispered.

  Everyone laughed, but Willi was quite serious about it. ‘You had to learn when you were little, didn’t you? Well, I’m little and I want to learn.’

  A bright clear tink came from somewhere in the fern. Lyrebird cocked his ear at once. ‘That’s an interesting sound! Who made it?’

  ‘Me,’ said Tinkingumble. ‘It pops out when I get a good idea. I can’t help it. I thought, if there is a lyrebird chick this year Willi could take dancing lessons with him. I only meant it as a joke.’

  ‘It’s a good idea!’ cried Willi, jumping. ‘Tink’s tinks are always good. Is there a chick this year?’ — for the mother lyrebird, Willi knew, laid only one egg a season.

  ‘Oh I expect so,’ Lyrebird said. ‘The wife has been fussing for some weeks. Nesting. Brooding. In the usual way.’

  ‘You never help her,’ Happigumble remarked. Most of the birds the Gumbles knew helped their mates at nesting time, either with the building or keeping the eggs warm, or finding food for the chicks. Lyrebird never did.

  ‘Nests! Eggs! That sort of thing is not for me. My tail,’ Lyrebird said, sweeping it over his head and shimmering grandly, ‘would never fit in any nest. Now would it?’

  ‘He’s a Superbird
!’ Willigumble squeaked, in admiration of that wonderful tail.

  ‘But he won’t help with the nesting. He could find worms for the chick without spoiling his precious tail,’ Happigumble whispered.

  ‘Winter’s my busy season!’ Lyrebird said. ‘Concerts to give, dances to do! And I have nine mounds to keep in order — kindly leave this one tidy when you go — now how can I find time for worms?’ He scratched fussily at his mound, which was already tilled well enough to grow beans, and ran briskly into the fern. ‘You’ll find the wife’s nest at the bottom of the cliff somewhere,’ he called back. ‘Unless she changed her mind.’

  In a moment or two, from his next mound, they heard his strong voice trying out the new sound he had picked up from Tinkingumble. ‘Tink. tink. Tink! Tink!’

  Tinkingumble held his hands over his ears. ‘I wish he wouldn’t! He is filling my head with ideas that aren’t there.’

  ‘He is a wonderful mimic and a wonderful dancer,’ Merrigumble said, ‘but he is not a good husband.’

  ‘I am going to learn to sing and dance like Lyrebird,’ Willigumble announced. ‘I am going to be a Supergumble.’ For a tail he plucked a frond of fern to hold behind him and managed a comical shuffle of a dance on Lyrebird’s mound, with the fern drooping over his head; but he was not as skilful as the Superbird and his voice was squeaky.