The Selected Adventures of Bottersnikes and Gumbles

by S A Wakefield

  ‘Leave ’em alone,’ Chank said airily. ‘I already caught ’em. Single-handed.’ Chank was cockier than ever now. Besides the sieve, he wore a pair of sunglasses he had picked up; they gave him the appearance of a successful tourist wearing a lifebelt. ‘And them tins is full of dry water. It would all have been wasted if I hadn’t come along, caught the Gumbles and made them tin it.’

  The Bottersnikes blinked at the tins and sniffed them, and the Gumbles began to get anxious. But the ’snikes did not care to argue with Chank in this cocky mood for fear of being shown up ignorant.

  ‘Any idiot knows,’ Chank went on loudly, ‘that dry water don’t shrink anybody, or drown ’em, and it don’t have sharks in it. We are going to have a dry swimming pool so’s we can cool off in the heatwave.’ This made a lot of sense to the hot ’snikes. Why had no one thought of it before? ‘Dry swimming lessons,’ Chank added, ‘will be compulsory.’

  ‘What are we going to do with the Gumbles then, if we can’t put ’em in the tins?’ Glob growled sulkily. He would like to have discovered dry water himself, or something as good.

  ‘What we need,’ Chank said, ‘is a big tank to put the dry water in, then we’ll have the tins empty to put the Gumbles in.’

  The words were hardly out of Chank’s mouth when a large tank started rolling down the hill towards them, a circular tank of corrugated iron, built to hold a thousand gallons of wet water. It rumbled ponderously across the road, lurched down the bank and came to a stop against Snorg, who was having a doze there; being off balance it tipped sideways and fell with a thunderous crash — to the Gumbles it sounded like the bottom of the world dropping out — into a level position by the edge of the dry-water hole. All they had to do was pull Glob from beneath and the tank was ready to receive dry water or anything else they might like to put in.

  ‘Just what I wanted,’ said King Chank.

  The other Bottersnikes could not help being impressed by the way Chank got things moving. There no longer seemed much point in arguing whether or not he should be King.

  The Weathersnike came pounding down the hill, trying to overtake the tank, much as a running chicken flaps its wings in its haste to get along.

  ‘That’s my weather station,’ he shouted.

  ‘No it ain’t,’ said King Chank. ‘It’s my dry swimming pool.’

  ‘You said I should have a weather station with two flag-poles,’ the Weathersnike yelled.

  ‘But this ain’t it! It’s my swimming pool, and I got all this dry water ready to fill it.’

  When the Weathersnike saw that the whole band was against him and there was no chance of recovering the tank, he became quite spectacular with rage. His ears glowed deep scarlet from the heat of his temper and from the small sharp horns on his forehead two streams of blue smoke issued, as though he were burning too much oil. He had found the tank only ten minutes before.

  Knowing that Chank was unlikely to keep his promise of providing a weather station with two flagpoles, he had set out to look for one himself, and as soon as he saw the tank he knew it was just what he wanted — it would be the best and biggest station he had ever had. But for him it was the wrong way up; as the top of the tank was missing he needed the bottom for a roof, to make sure it would be a weatherproof station. So the Weathersnike set to work with blocks and props and levers and raised it on to its edge. One more shove and it would have been over; instead, it started rolling.

  ‘You could have killed someone with that swimming pool, rolling it down the hill like that,’ Snorg shouted. ‘You ought to have given a forecast.’

  ‘I’ll never forecast for you lot again,’ the Weathersnike screeched, ‘never till the snow comes down boiling! You can shrink to nothing in the next thunderstorm for all I care, you can get sucked up in a whirlwind! I wouldn’t warn you lot if the end of the world was coming! Which it is! And I hope you all drop off the edge.’

  He covered himself with his umbrella, holding it just high enough to avoid the scorch of his ears, and waddled away smoking. ‘And don’t expect me to throw you a rope,’ he shouted over his shoulder.

  ‘Idiot Weathersnike — who needs him?’ Chank snorted. ‘He couldn’t tell a thunderstorm from a tomahawk. I shall forecast the weather. Tonight will be dry and hot, with hordes of mosquitoes. In the dry swimming pool though, it will be cool and pleasant. We shall have an all night pool party. Come on, you Gumbles, get that pool filled with the dry water.’

  The fun was over now, most of the Gumbles felt. Once the dry water was in the pool it would be tins for them all through a hot night. ‘Any chance of a new tink?’ some of them wanted to know. Tink wouldn’t say much.

  Getting the water in the pool was quite a problem because the sides of the tank were so high, and with darkness coming on there wasn’t time to build a ladder. Tink suggested that King Chank get his people to make a staircase of themselves, five ’snikes lying one on top of the other next to the tank, then four, three, two and one. The Gumbles stood two on each step and passed the dry water tins one to another along the line. ‘Keep your heads down please,’ Tink sang out. ‘We don’t want to get our feet scorched on your ears.’ In this way the Bottersnikes were prevented from looking too closely at the tins, and by singing as they worked the Gumbles concealed the fact that dry water made no noise or splash at all when it was poured.

  When the last tin had been poured Tinkingumble measured the depth with a stick and pronounced the pool to be nearly half full. ‘And when you’re all in there swimming it’ll be deeper still and — oh-oh! Lucky I noticed! This pool’s going to have to be mended. Look.’

  Looking closely, it could be seen that the sides of the tank were pitted with rust holes and in places the metal was so thin you could poke a finger through. King Chank inspected the holes and his ears went red. It was his first setback since becoming King — just as the all night pool party was about to begin, too. He was angry with the Weathersnike for choosing such a poor tank.

  ‘Not to worry. We’ll plug the holes for you,’ Tink said. ‘That’s something we’re rather good at.’ When the Gumbles placed themselves with their backs to the tank the Bottersnikes found it very simple to squeeze them like putty and work them into the corrugations, all over the rust holes. This sort of thing can be done to Gumbles without hurting, and though it wasn’t exactly a picnic for them it was a great deal better than being squashed into tins. In fact being pressed into the wavy lines of the tank tended to make them giggly and gave Burpngumble the hiccups.

  Glob and Snorg were doubtful and sniffy about mending with Gumbleputty. The proper place for Gumbles when not working was in jam tins, they said, squashed in hard; this is assuredly what would have happened if the old King had been in charge. ‘What’s to stop ’em wriggling off in the night and running away?’ Snorg wanted to know. ‘Then the dry water would leak out and leave us swimming in nothing at all. We should look perfect idiots.’

  ‘As if we’d do a thing like that!’ Tink said. ‘There’ll be as much dry water in the tank tomorrow as there is now.’

  ‘Is that a promise?’ Chank demanded.

  ‘Definitely! Definitely!’ they chorused. ‘If you don’t waste it by splashing, that is.’

  ‘That’s good enough for me,’ Chank said. ‘Gumbles are sneakin’, treacherous, good-for-nothing nuisances, but they don’t break promises. If they do,’ he added, ‘I’ll bite their ears off. Stairs!’

  The ’snike-staircase remade itself. Chank mounted and peered into the pool. It was nearly dark now, making the depth of the dry water as mysterious as Loch Ness. Chank called for a tyre to be thrown in, in case he dived too deep. Then, holding his nose, he jumped. Gubbo followed with a bang. The rest were eager to join them when they saw it was safe, and the last steps of the staircase had to be hauled in by their tails.

  So the Bottersnikes’ first ever all night pool party began. ‘And this is only a beginning,’ said Chank. ‘There will be all sorts of new things now you is ruled by a King with a brai
nful of ideas. We shall swim twenty laps of the pool! Hold that dry water in, you Gumbles, we’re going to make some waves.’

  And with the bangs, thumps and scrapes that came as the dry swimming began it seemed the pool might burst asunder, swimmers, putty and all. The Gumbles had the breath knocked out of them nearly, and some became loose from too much giggling.

  ‘Steady, everyone! Stick on a bit longer,’ a worried Happigumble started to say.

  Burpngumble had a gigantic hiccup, brought on by too much giggling. He fired himself off the tank as if from a catapult. All wavy as he was, he managed to pull Willi down, then it was only a minute’s work to scrape off the rest of the putty. They squeezed each other to their proper Gumbleshapes.

  ‘Let’s look in,’ Willi said. ‘I want to see how you dry swim.’

  ‘No! Back to our own pool quick! If they catch us again it’ll be jam tins all night.’ So the Gumbles never saw how it was done. They had to be content with hearing Chank say, ‘Dry swimming ain’t difficult! It’s much like waddling and you wave your arms as well.’

  Back at their own pool the Gumbles were delighted to find the wall intact, indeed looking larger than before, and holding enough water for quite a good splash and paddle. They gave Tink three cheers and a ducking for his dry-water tink, then ducked Burpngumble to try and cure his hiccups. ‘Dry water’s terrific stuff, Tink,’ Happigumble said when they had all jumped in. ‘But when it comes to cooling off after a hot day I like my water wet.’

  ‘The wetter the better,’ shouted Willigumble, splashing.

  CASTING THE VOTES

  ‘If we’d had a proper King this sort of thing would never happen,’ the Bottersnikes shouted furiously.

  They were squatting on a dry rock, their ears red as berries. Leaves and twigs chopped off by the hail lay thick about them and the hailstones were quickly melting into the dry ground. It was sultry and hot, with sullen clouds threatening and thunder muttering from end to end of the sky. They were still clutching the captured Gumbles, or sitting on them, because they had no tins to put them in, no one to tell them what to do. They argued crossly about not having a King. It might have been another think-tank, the way the angry ideas flashed from head to head.

  ‘We ain’t going to be made fools of again, it’s not dignified, we’ve got to have a proper King what’ll teach these rotten Gumbles a lesson they won’t forget.’

  ‘And tell us how to keep dry.’

  ‘And make the Weathersnike give proper forecasts.’

  ‘It’s time things was run proper round here.’

  ‘So we’ll vote for a King, that’s what we’ll do.’

  ‘We’ll vote for a proper King what’ll give us what we want, no messing about.’

  ‘Hoo, hoo, hoo!’

  They worked out the way to vote too, the ideas flashing like sparks. The ballot box, which would hold the votes before counting, would be the same dustbin that Snorg had wanted as a summer palace. It had a hole in the lid through which the votes could be dropped, so was perfect for the purpose. Along the sides of the track lay large numbers of white pebbles about the size of marbles. These would be the votes. Each Bottersnike was to pick up as many of these as he liked and drop them (with his eyes shut) through the hole in the lid of the ballot box. When this was done each voter would take a guess at the total number of pebbles. Next, the ballot box would be opened and the votes counted, and the ’snike whose guess was closest to the total would be King and rule the band. An absolutely fair and democratic system, the Bottersnikes felt; there could be no electioneering, no broken promises, the strongest or the cunningest or the brainiest wouldn’t necessarily win; every single ’snike had an equal chance.

  The election was begun at once. The voters selected their white pebbles with as much care and secrecy as if they were gouging opals. Some of them put in two or more handfuls, there was no rule against this. ‘But no one must chuck in sand or dirt,’ it was laid down. ‘That’s informal voting.’ Likewise, when it came to the guessing, no one was to use mind-reading, telepathy, ESP or any kind of magic. ‘That would be cheating,’ they said indignantly. ‘It’s got to be pure guesswork.’ Voting was compulsory, and everyone complied except the Weathersnike, who refused to come out of his weather station or even to put down his umbrella.

  The Bottersnikes thought so hard about their guesses that their brains started to gurgle. The guesses varied wildly from 317 to 1,000,006.

  ‘We’re sure to get a good King out of this,’ they said excitedly. Anyone who could guess that number of votes was a real smart ’snike.

  Now, the votes had been cast, the guesses made; who was to do the counting? No one had thought about this until the time came. Something had to be done quickly as the weather was unsettled and the Bottersnikes wanted their new King to tell them how to keep dry. But no one felt like counting perhaps a million votes.

  ‘Make the Gumbles do it,’ Chank said. He had dried out to half-size and was starting to get bossy again.

  ‘Couldn’t trust ’em,’ Glob said flatly. ‘You couldn’t trust Gumbles to do anything right. Put two pairs of Gumbles together, you couldn’t trust ’em to make four.’

  ‘They’re unreliable,’ Snorg said. ‘If you had a race with just two Gumbles in it, one of ’em would come third.’

  So the Bottersnikes blinked at the ballot box and at the angry sky. Faced with a problem like this, they would have liked to sleep on it if it weren’t for the threat of rain.

  All that voting had not been done for nothing, however. A strange reaction of some kind was taking place inside the ballot box. It rocked slightly, and some of the votes were heard to rattle.

  Then the ballot box more or less exploded.

  The figure of the King of the Bottersnikes — the real, the former, the unkillable King — rose from the wreckage, one red-hot ear poking through the voting slit. He was full-sized now, in excellent health, certainly no ghost. ‘Somebody has dropped 5,284 pebbles on me,’ the King roared. ‘Somebody is going to pay for it.’

  ‘They was our v-votes!’ the Bottersnikes said, appalled at what they had voted for.

  ‘Then have ’em back again!’ Scooping up handfuls of pebbles the King hurled them at the voters, peppering them worse than the hail had done. He was very fit after his long rest in the dustbin. He had been asleep in it all through the worst of the heat since the Gumbleking put him there in the early hours of the morning. Now he was ready for a little action. Watching his band scurry to avoid the stinging votes was just the sort of exercise he needed.

  ‘More votes! More votes!’ he bawled. ‘Gumbles! Bring me more votes, bigger votes, and I’ll cast ’em.’

  When there were no more votes to be found the King demanded, ‘Where’s all the tins then, to put these Gumbles in?’

  ‘They was buried,’ the Bottersnikes said nervously, from what they hoped was a safe distance.

  ‘Dig ’em up,’ the King said instantly.

  ‘That’s right!’ they said. ‘Come on, you Gumbles, you heard what the King ordered. Get those tins dug up.’ It was great to have a King to make the right decisions, even better to have the Gumbles to do the work. Things were returning to normal.

  The Weathersnike too decided to end his forecasting strike and issue some weather warnings. He startled everyone by banging on the weather station roof with his umbrella handle and flapping the bad-weather flag as if trying to stop a train. ‘Red-and-black for rain!’ he shouted. ‘There’s a southerly change coming with squally winds and storms.’

  He was dead right again. They could hear it coming. The Bottersnikes stood uneasily in the sultry stillness. Down by the dam the turpy tops were tossing and straining in a commotion of leaves, a great rushing of invisible air. It was the end of the world coming perhaps, or the beginning of a new one. The hail-chopped leaves whirled and dropped as it approached and loose paper rustled through the rubbish.

  Then a tidal wave of coolness flowed over them, and the earth seemed to breathe again.
The heatwave vanished, shoved up north by the cool southerly wind.

  ‘Ass of a Weathersnike,’ the King snorted, rather unfairly though. ‘He is supposed to make forecasts, not tell us what happened.’

  Spots of rain came with the change, with the threat of more to come. The cooler ’snikes had their King back, but they still had no shelter. ‘What are we going to do?’ they moaned.

  ‘In there,’ the King said, glaring at the weather station.

  ‘Meteorologists only!’ the Weathersnike shouted. ‘No admittance to the public.’

  But the King trampled straight over the barbed wire, waved away the Weathersnike’s rapier-umbrella and led his band inside. ‘Quite right too!’ said his relieved followers. ‘What’s the good of a weather station if you can’t get in it out of the rain?’

  ‘What about the Gumbles?’ someone yelled.

  ‘Go and catch ’em,’ the King ordered. ‘Bring ’em in here.’

  No one moved. The rain became heavier. Fat drops plopped over the doorway.

  ‘Catch those Gumbles!’ the King shouted. Though he did not lead the way. Soon even the King’s loudest bellow couldn’t be heard over the roar and pounding of the rain on the weather station roof.

  The Gumbles came and stood by the doorway, not too close. ‘Anyone for tennis?’ they said cheekily. ‘Come out and watch the drought breaking.’ The rain drenched them, filling their eyes and ears, and they loved it. The Weathersnike tried to hook Merrigumble with the handle of his umbrella but missed.