by Enid Blyton
‘If only Bill would come!’ said Philip. ‘He might be able to fit this jigsaw together.’
‘Or if we could get hold of that chap Lucy-Ann saw,’ said Philip. ‘He could tell us a lot.’
‘We may see him again,’ said Dinah. ‘We’ll watch out for him.’
They did see him again, that very evening – but alas, he didn’t answer any of their questions!
14
Plenty of things happen
They decided to go for a walk that evening. They would leave Dapple tied up to a tree by the stream, with a note on his harness to say they would soon be back – just in case Bill came when they were away.
‘Though he couldn’t possibly be here yet,’ said Jack. Still, you never knew with Bill. He had a remarkable way of doing impossible things extraordinarily quickly.
They went off together, Snowy capering about, and Kiki on Jack’s shoulder. They climbed up past the cave where they had slept the night before. Their sleeping-bags were still there, pulled into the cave out of the sun. They meant to sleep in them up on the rock again that night.
‘Let’s follow Snowy,’ suggested Dinah. ‘He always seems to know a way to go, thought I expect he only follows his silly little nose! But he usually chooses quite possible paths for us.’
So they followed Snowy. The little kid took it into his head to climb up the mountain, but at last they all came to such a steep cliff of rock, almost sheer, that they had to stop. Even Snowy was brought to a halt!
‘I’m frightfully hot,’ said Dinah, fanning herself. ‘Let’s sit down under those trees.’
The trees were waving about in the wind. Jack looked longingly up into the wind-blown branches. ‘It would be lovely and cool up there, in the windy boughs,’ he said. ‘What about climbing up? They look pretty easy to climb.’
‘A wizard idea!’ said Philip. ‘I love swinging in the branches at the top of a tree. Want a leg-up, Lucy-Ann?’
Lucy-Ann got a leg-up and soon they were all settled into forking branches, letting themselves be swung about in the wind, which was very strong just there.
‘This is lovely,’ said Dinah. ‘Heavenly!’
‘Super!’ said Jack. ‘Don’t clutch my shoulder so tightly, Kiki. You won’t fall off!’
Snowy was left down below, bleating. He tried his best to leap up into the tree but he couldn’t. He ran round and round Philip’s tree and then, in a rage, he tore up to a rock and leapt up it and down it without stopping. The children watched him, laughing at his antics.
Then, quite suddenly, a hullabaloo broke on their ears. It was the sound of excited barking and snarling, howling and yelping.
‘The dogs!’ said Jack, straining his eyes to see where the noise came from. ‘I say – they’re after that man!’
There came the crashing of bushes and twigs far below them on the mountain-side, accompanied by more howls and barks. Then the children caught sight of a man running across a bare stony part of the mountain-side below them – about half a mile away.
The dogs poured after him. Lucy-Ann almost fell out of her tree in fright at seeing a man chased by dogs. The children watched without a word, their hearts beating fast, anxious for the man to escape.
He came to a tree and flung himself up it just as the first dog reached him. He pulled himself up, and was lost to sight. The dogs surrounded the tree, clamouring loudly.
Lucy-Ann gulped. Tears ran down her face. She felt so sorry for the hunted man that she could hardly see through her tears. The others watched grimly. Philip debated whether to go down and see if he could call the dogs off.
Then another man appeared, walking leisurely across the mountain-side towards the tree and the dogs. He was too far away for the children to see what he was like, or to hear his voice.
But on the crisp air of the mountain came the shrill sound of a whistle. The dogs at once left the tree, and trotted back to the man. He stood not far off the tree, and evidently gave orders for the man to come down. But nobody came down from the tree.
The man waved his hand to the dogs and at once they streamed back to the tree again, clamouring and howling like mad. The man turned to go back the way he came.
‘Oh! He’s left the dogs to keep the poor man up the tree till he starves, or comes down to be set on!’ sobbed Lucy-Ann. ‘Philip, what shall we do?’
‘I’ll go down and call the dogs off,’ said Philip. ‘I’ll give the man a chance to get right out of sight, so that he won’t see me. Then I’ll see if I can get the dogs away and give that chap a chance to escape from the tree.’
He climbed down his tree, after he had waited for twenty minutes, to give the second man a chance to go back to wherever he had come from. He made his way cautiously through the tall bushes.
And then something happened. A rough hand pounced down on his shoulder and he was held in a grip like iron. He was swung round – and came face to face with the man who had ordered the runaway to come down from the tree!
Philip wriggled, but he couldn’t possibly get away. He didn’t dare to yell for the others in case they got caught too. Blow! Why hadn’t he waited longer before going off to the black man’s rescue!
‘What are you doing here?’ said the man, in a strange, foreign accent. ‘Who are you, boy?’
‘I’ve only come to look for butterflies,’ stammered Philip, trying to look as if he knew nothing about anything but butterflies. He didn’t like the look of the man at all. He had a fierce hawk-like face, overhanging eyebrows, and such a sharp look in his black eyes that Philip felt sure he would be difficult to deceive.
‘Who are you with?’ asked the man, digging his steel-like fingers into Philip and making him squirm.
‘I’m alone, as you can see,’ said Philip, hoping the man would believe him. The man looked at him searchingly.
‘My dogs would have got you if you had been here for long,’ he said. ‘And all your friends too!’
‘What friends?’ asked Philip innocently. ‘Oh, you mean Snowy, my kid? He always comes with me.’
Snowy had bounded up at that moment, to the obvious surprise of the man. ‘He’s like a dog – never leaves me. Let me go, sir. I’m looking for butterflies. I’ll be gone tonight.’
‘Where did you come from?’ asked the man. ‘Do your parents know where you are?’
‘No,’ said Philip truthfully. ‘I just went away to hunt for butterflies. I came from over there.’
He nodded his head vaguely behind him, hoping that the man would think he was a harmless nature-lover, and let him go. But the man didn’t.
Instead he tightened his fingers on Philip’s shoulders, and turned towards the tree where the black man was still hiding, surrounded by the dogs.
‘You’ll come with me now,’ he said. ‘You’ve seen too much.’
Just then there came a yelling and shouting from the tree. Evidently the runaway had given in. The man, still clutching Philip by the shoulder, and followed by a puzzled Snowy, went towards the tree. He took a whistle from his pocket and blew on it shrilly. As before, the dogs at once left the tree and came to him. The man shouted for the runaway to come down.
The poor man came down in such a hurry that he half fell. The dogs made no attempt to go for him. Philip saw that they had been extremely well trained.
The man fell on his knees and began to jabber something. He was terrified. The man told him to get up, in cold contemptuous tones. Surrounded by the dogs, the prisoner walked stumblingly in front of the man, who still held Philip firmly by the shoulder.
Up in their trees the children watched in horror, hardly believing their eyes when they saw Philip held by the man. ‘Sh! Don’t make a sound,’ commanded Jack. ‘It’s no good us being captured too. If the dogs go with Philip, he’ll be all right. He’ll have ten friends he can call on at any time!’
The little procession of men, boy, dogs and kid passed almost beneath the trees the children were in. Philip did not glance up, though he longed to. He was not going to give aw
ay the hiding-place of the others.
Jack parted the branches of his tree and followed the procession anxiously with his eyes. They were going in the direction of the steep wall of unclimbable rock. Jack took up his field-glasses, which were slung round his neck as usual, and glued them to his eyes, following the company closely. Where exactly were they going? If he knew, he might be able to go and rescue Philip and Snowy.
He saw Philip taken right up to the steep wall. Then, before his eyes, the whole company seemed to vanish! One moment they were there – the next they were gone! Jack took his glasses from his eyes and rubbed the lenses, thinking something must have gone wrong with them. But no – he saw exactly the same thing – a steep wall of sheer rock – and nobody there at all, not even a dog!
‘Jack! Can you see what’s happened to Philip?’ came Lucy-Ann’s anxious voice. ‘Oh, Jack – he’s caught!’
‘Yes, and he’s been taken into that mountain,’ said Jack. ‘Though how, I don’t know. One moment they were all there, the next they were gone! I can’t understand it.’
He looked through his glasses again but there was nothing to be seen. He suddenly realized that the sun had gone down and it was getting dark. ‘Girls! It’ll be dark soon. We must get down and go to the cave, whilst we can still see our way!’ said Jack. They all climbed down quickly. Lucy-Ann was trying to blink back tears.
‘I want Philip to come back,’ she said. ‘What’s happened to him?’
‘Don’t cry,’ said Dinah. ‘Crying won’t help him! You always burst into tears when anything happens!’
Dinah spoke crossly because she was very near tears herself. Jack put his arm round both of them. ‘Don’t let’s quarrel. That won’t help Philip. Come on, let’s get back quickly. I’ll fetch Dapple from the stream, and bring her up to the rock.’
They made their way back to the cave they had left their sleeping-bags in. Jack fetched the patient Dapple. Kiki sat silently on his shoulder. She always knew when things had gone wrong with the children. She nipped Jack’s ear gently to tell him she was sorry.
It was almost dark when they reached the cave. There was no need to make a fire tonight – they did not fear wolves any more. Indeed they would have been very glad indeed to see dark figures come slinking up to the cave. They would have welcomed the dogs eagerly.
‘I miss Snowy,’ said Dinah. ‘It’s queer without him leaping about everywhere. I’m glad he’s gone with Philip. I’m glad the slow-worm’s gone too!’
They didn’t want to get into the sleeping-bags and go to sleep. They wanted to talk. A lot of things seemed to be happening very suddenly. Oh dear – when would Bill come? They could manage quite well without grown-ups in many ways – but just at the moment all three would have welcomed even David!
‘Well – let’s get into our bags,’ said Jack. ‘Isn’t the moon lovely tonight?’
‘Nothing seems very nice when I think of Philip being captured,’ said Lucy-Ann dismally. All the same, the moon was glorious, swinging up over the mountains, and making everywhere as light as day.
They were just about to slide into their bags when Lucy-Ann’s sharp ears caught an unfamiliar sound.
‘Listen!’ she said. ‘What’s that? No, not a noise underground this time – somewhere up in the sky!’
They went out and stood on the flat rock, listening, their faces upturned to the moonlit sky.
‘What a peculiar noise!’ said Jack. ‘A bit like an aeroplane – but not an aeroplane. What can it be?’
15
Behind the green curtain
The noise came nearer. ‘Like a motor-bike in the sky,’ said Jack.
‘Or a sewing-machine,’ said Dinah. ‘Jack, look! What’s that? That tiny speck up there?’
Jack fumbled for his glasses, which were still round his neck. He put them to his eyes, straining to focus the little black speck up in the moonlight. It came nearer.
‘Well – whatever it is I do believe it’s going to land on this mountain!’ said Dinah. ‘Isn’t it going slowly? Is it an aeroplane, Jack?’
‘No,’ said Jack. ‘Gosh – it’s a helicopter! You know – they are just the thing for travelling in mountains. They don’t fly fast but they can land in a very small space – on a lawn, or a roof even!’
‘A helicopter!’ cried Dinah, and took the glasses from Jack. ‘Let me see.’
It was now near enough for Dinah to be able to see it clearly with the glasses. Jack and Lucy-Ann watched it with screwed-up eyes. It hovered over the mountain-top, and then flew slowly round it, appearing in sight again after a few minutes.
It then flew up a little higher, and descended slowly, almost vertically, its engine making a curious sound in the night. Then there was silence.
‘It’s landed,’ said Jack. ‘But where? Gosh, I wouldn’t like to land on a mountain as steep as this one.’
‘Perhaps there is a proper landing-place,’ said Lucy-Ann. ‘Right on the very top!’
‘Yes. There may be,’ said Jack. ‘What a thing to do, though – land a helicopter on the very summit of a mountain like this! What for?’
Nobody knew the answer to that.
‘Well,’ said Jack, at last, ‘if that helicopter did land up on top, that would be one way of bringing food and stuff to the men who are at work inside the mountain – they’d have to have food, and there’s no way of getting it round about here!’
‘I feel as if all this must be a dream,’ said Lucy-Ann, in a small voice. ‘I don’t like it at all. I wish I could wake up.’
‘Come on – let’s get into our bags,’ said Jack. ‘We can’t do anything. We’ll just have to wait for Bill. We can sleep out on the rock tonight, if you like. It’s got very warm again, and we’re snug enough in our bags.’
Nibbling bars of chocolate the three of them slipped into the bags. Kiki flew up into a near-by bush. She cleared her throat as David had often done. ‘Look you, whateffer, look you, whateffer,’ she began, meaning to have a little practice of the new words she had learnt.
‘Kiki! Shut up!’ said Jack.
‘Whateffer!’ said Kiki, and hiccuped very loudly. ‘Pardon!’ she gave a cackle of laughter and said no more for a moment. Then she took her head out from under her wing. ‘Pifflebunk,’ she said, delighted at having remembered it, and put her head back again.
Jack woke several times in the night, wondering about Philip. He also puzzled his head to think how the whole company of dogs, men and boy could possibly have vanished as they did, under his very eyes. He felt that he really would have to go and explore that steep wall of rock the next day. Perhaps he would find out where the company had gone – and how it had gone.
‘Do you think Bill will come today?’ asked Lucy-Ann, next morning. Jack reckoned up and shook his head. ‘No – perhaps he will tomorrow, though, if David got back quickly, and Bill came at once. Still – if we go far away from the stream, we’d better leave a note for Bill, in case he comes and we’re not there. Like we did yesterday.’
They had taken the note off Dapple’s harness the night before, when they had brought the donkey back from the stream, up to their sleeping-rock. Now Jack set to work to write another. In it he told the story of Philip’s disappearance by the wall of rock, and he also wrote about the helicopter he had seen. He had a feeling that he had better tell all he knew in case – just in case – something happened, and he and the girls were captured too. So many strange things had happened on this mountain. It was quite likely that if the man got out of Philip the fact that he had friends near by the mountain, they would send to capture them too.
He took Dapple back to the stream, putting him in the shade, in some long lush grass, and near enough to the stream to stand in it, or drink if he liked. Dapple liked this kind of life well enough, but he stared anxiously all around, missing Snowy. Where was his tiny friend?
‘Snowy will come back soon, Dapple,’ said Jack, rubbing his hand up and down the long grey nose. ‘You wait and see!’
‘What are we going to do today?’ asked Lucy-Ann, when Jack came back. ‘I don’t feel like doing anything now Philip’s gone!’
‘Well – would you like to come with me to the steep rocky wall the others went to last night?’ said Jack. ‘Just to see if we can find out how they disappeared so suddenly. But if you come we’ll have to keep a jolly good look-out in case we’re taken by surprise!’
Lucy-Ann looked as if she didn’t want to come at all, but nothing would stop her being with Jack if she thought there was any likelihood of danger. If they were going to be taken by surprise, then she would be there too!
So, taking some tins with them in case they didn’t feel inclined to go all the way back to the cave in the heat of the day for a meal, the three of them set off. Kiki flew over their heads, annoying the swallows, and crying ‘Feetafeetit, feetafeetit!’ just as they did. They took not the slightest notice of her, but went on with their fly-catching deftly and serenely.
The three came at last to the little copse of trees where they had swung in the wind the evening before. ‘Wait here a minute,’ said Jack, and he leapt up into a tree. ‘I’ll just have a look round to make sure the coast is clear.’
He balanced himself in branches near the top of the tree and swept the countryside around with his glasses. Not a sound was to be heard except the wind, the trees and the birds. There was no sign of any human being, or of any of the dogs.
‘It seems all right,’ said Jack when he got down to the foot of the tree again. ‘We’ll go. Come on.’
Kiki began to bray like Dapple, and Jack turned on her fiercely. ‘Kiki! Stop it! Just when we want to be quiet! Bad bird! Silly bird!’
Kiki raised her crest up and down, snapped her beak angrily, and flew up into a tree. It was almost as if she had said, ‘All right then – if you speak to me like that, I won’t come with you!’ She sat on a branch, sulking, keeping one eye on the three children walking towards the wall.