by Enid Blyton
‘Quite all right. He’s down on the mountain-side with Johns, the fellow who came with me, waiting for us. Get into the helicopter, all of you, and we’ll go while the going’s good.’ Bill switched his torch round to see where the girls were, and in a moment all three were being helped up into the machine.
‘I couldn’t quite see where to land,’ said Bill. ‘I must have hit something coming down. I felt a good old jolt, and the helicopter swung round like mad. I hope she’s all right!’
‘You went into part of the rocky parapet, I think,’ said Jack, helping the girls in. ‘Oh Bill! This is grand! How did you . . .’
‘All explanations later!’ said Bill, and began to fiddle about with something in front of him. ‘Now – here we go!’
The helicopter rose a foot or two in the air and then swung round in a peculiar way. Bill put her back to earth again at once. ‘Now what’s wrong? She shouldn’t do that.’
Lucy-Ann was so longing to be off that she could hardly bear this. ‘Let’s go, let’s go,’ she kept saying, till Dinah nudged her to stop. Snowy was on Lucy-Ann’s knee, as good as gold. She held on to him tightly, tense with excitement.
Bill tried again. Once more the machine rose into the air, and then did its peculiar swing-round. ‘Something’s wrong with the steering,’ said Bill, in an exasperated voice. ‘Why did I leave Johns down there? He might have been able to put it right. But I didn’t think this machine would hold him as well as you three!’
In deepening dismay the children sat whilst poor Bill tried his best to get the helicopter to rise and fly properly. But each time it swung round violently, and Bill could do nothing with it. He was secretly rather afraid that it would get completely out of control and swing right off the mountain-top. He could not risk an accident with the three children on board.
For at least an hour Bill experimented with the steering of the helicopter, but it would not answer to the controls at all. He made the children get out to see if lightening the load made any difference, but it didn’t.
‘It must have got damaged when you struck the parapet,’ said Jack. ‘Oh, Bill – what are we going to do now?’
‘What about the way out by the wall?’ said Bill. ‘Philip told me all about it – something about a rope-ladder and so on. As a matter of fact, I did go to find the entrance there, when I came to look for you the other day – you spoke of it in your note, you remember – and I went behind the green curtain, found the crack in the rock and went in. But I couldn’t go any further than that curious cave with no roof and the black pool at the bottom.’
‘No. Nobody would find how to get out of that cave except by accident,’ said Jack. ‘We discovered how to get the rope-ladder down from above – by turning a wheel under the water in the pool. Down came the ladder!’
‘Well – it seems to me we’ll have to try to get out that way,’ said Bill. ‘This pest of a helicopter won’t answer to her controls now. I daren’t try and take off. We’d crash – and we haven’t any wonderful wings to save us, either!’
‘Oh, Bill – can’t we really fly off in the helicopter?’ said Lucy-Ann, her heart sinking like lead. ‘Oh, I don’t want to go down into that horrid mountain again! We might lose our way. We might get caught!’
‘We’ll have to try, I’m afraid, Lucy-Ann,’ said Bill. ‘Never mind – I’m here to protect you now. And, after all, it’s the middle of the night, and nobody is likely to be about.’
‘If only that helicopter would go properly!’ said Jack. ‘It’s a piece of real bad luck that it won’t. It’s such a giveaway too. As soon as anyone sees it, they’ll know something’s up and will come to look for us.’
‘All the more reason why we should get a move on now,’ said Bill. ‘Come on. Gosh, what’s this banging against me? Oh, it’s you, Snowy. Well, if you come too, you’ll have to keep at our heels or you’ll give the game away! By the way – where’s Kiki? I haven’t seen or heard her tonight.’
‘We don’t know where she is,’ said Jack miserably. ‘We haven’t seen her for days – not since we were captured. She may be caged somewhere – or hiding in the mountain – or even killed!’
‘Oh, no!’ said Lucy-Ann. ‘Don’t say that. Kiki’s too clever to let herself be captured. Perhaps we’ll find her tonight!’
‘Where’s the way out of this place?’ asked Bill, switching on his torch. ‘Over there? Are there steps that go down into the mountain? Well, come on then. Every minute is precious now.’
They left the damaged helicopter in the yard and went towards the stone steps that led down into the mountain. Lucy-Ann shivered.
‘I hoped I’d not go down there again! Take my hand, Bill, I don’t like this!’
26
Flight through the mountain
Soon they were right down inside the mountain. They had passed Philip’s cave, passed by the stores, and gone down the steep spiral stairway, cut in the rock.
It was very difficult to choose the right way to go, because all the dim lamps that lighted the passages were out. It was quite dark everywhere. Bill’s powerful torch sent a bright ray in front of them, but he had to use it cautiously in case someone saw the light, and was warned of their coming.
There was a lot of standing still and listening, a good deal of argument on Jack’s part and Dinah’s about the right way to go. Bill was very patient, but his voice was urgent as he told them to think hard and choose the right way.
‘If we followed Snowy, we’d probably go right,’ said Lucy-Ann at last. ‘He would know the way.’
‘Well – but he doesn’t know where we want to go,’ said Jack. ‘I mean, if he knew we wanted to go to the rope-ladder cave, he could lead us there all right – but we can’t make him understand that.’
They ended up being completely lost. They found themselves in a dark tunnel, with a very high roof that none of the children recognized at all.
Bill began to feel desperate. If only he had been able to land without damage, this long trek through dark, unknown passages wouldn’t have been necessary.
They went down very deep, and, quite suddenly, came out on to the high gallery that overlooked the pit. Bill drew in his breath sharply when he saw the mass of brilliance suddenly showing when the curious floor slid back for a moment. He and the children felt the strange feeling of lightness at once, but it passed immediately the floor slid over the glowing mass again.
There was nobody in the pit. Apparently the floor worked automatically by machinery of some kind, though there was none to be seen. That was the curious thing about the works in the mountain – there was no heavy machinery anywhere. Whatever power was used was not conveyed by iron or steel machines, and there was little noise except for the heavy rumbling that sounded before the shaking of the earth.
‘There’s obviously some metal in this mountain that can be used for that fellow’s experiments,’ said Bill. ‘Some rare metal or other – like uranium, which is used for splitting the atom. There are a few mountains in the world which contain various rare metals – but usually they are mined for it and the stuff is taken out. In this case they haven’t mined it – they are using it where it is! It’s possible that they have to do that – in order to use the enormous thickness of the rocks in the mountain to protect the outer world from whatever rays they are experimenting with. Very ingenious!’
‘I think we know the way back now,’ said Jack, quite thankful at having found some place they recognized, even though it was the frightening pit!
He pointed behind them, up the wide, uphill passage that he knew went up and up for a long way. Bill switched his torch on it. ‘Is that the way?’ he said. ‘Well, come along then.’
They went up the wide, steep passage. They came to the narrow, twisty little tunnel they had been in before and walked along till they came to the fork.
‘Left-hand fork,’ said Jack, and they took that. Bill was amazed to see the beautiful silken hangings that decorated the walls further on, and hung across the entra
nce to a cave.
Jack put his hand on Bill’s arm. ‘That’s the king’s bedroom, beyond,’ he whispered. ‘Dinah, have you got Snowy? Don’t let him rush on in front.’
Bill tiptoed to the curtains and parted them. A dim light shone beyond. Bill looked with interest into the king’s bedroom – and then closed the curtains quickly. He tiptoed back to the children.
‘There’s somebody lying on the couch there,’ he whispered. ‘An old fellow with a colossal forehead.’
‘That’s the king of the mountain!’ whispered back Jack. ‘The Great Brain behind all these inventions. I think he is an absolute genius, but quite mad.’
‘He seems to be asleep,’ said Bill. ‘Is there any way we can go round this cave without waking him up?’
‘No. I don’t know of any,’ said Jack. ‘We’ve got to go through it, and then through a cave where he eats his meals, and then into the throne-room.’
Bill thought for a moment. ‘We’ll have to risk it then,’ he said. ‘We’ll go through the room one by one, but for heaven’s sake don’t make a sound!’
They went through the king’s bedroom one at a time, hardly daring to breathe. Dinah had tight hold of Snowy, praying that he wouldn’t bleat when he went through the room!
Fortunately there were very thick carpets on the floor, so it was easy to make no sound. Lucy-Ann’s heart beat so loudly as she tiptoed across that she thought it must surely wake the king with a jump.
Then they were in the room where the long table had held so much lovely food. But now it was empty and there was not so much as a dish of fruit on it.
Then on to the throne-room – and outside this, behind the lovely hangings patterned with the red dragons, the little company paused. A curious noise came to their ears – was it snoring? What was it?
Bill peeped through the hangings very cautiously. He grinned. In the throne-room, sitting or lying, were the paratroopers. A very long table had been set down the middle, and on it were the remains of a lavish supply of food and drink. Not a single man was awake!
‘So that’s where those fellows have been the last day or two!’ whispered Jack. ‘I wondered where they were. Gosh, they’ve fallen asleep where they are – what a pretty sight!’
Bill fumbled about in the hangings they were looking through. He was looking for a switch. He found one and whispered to the children. ‘Now listen – I’m going to switch off the light so that we can get through the hall without being seen. Keep close to one side of it and get through as quietly as possible. Even if we do make a noise and some of those fellows wake up it won’t matter – because they won’t be able to see who it is!’
This was a good idea. The light went out with a slight click and the great hall was in darkness. The children, led by Bill, moved quietly along one side, their feet making no noise on the soft mats.
When they came to the immense laboratory Bill stood still in amazement. He knew a great deal more about these things than the children did, of course, and he could see what a brilliant, ingenious mind must be at the back of all the things at work there.
They stood in the gallery and looked down at the wires and wheels, the glass jars and the crystal boxes, and heard the quiet, purposeful humming going on.
‘What is it all doing, Bill?’ whispered Lucy-Ann.
‘It’s transmuting, or changing, one power or energy into another,’ said Bill soberly. ‘Making it into usable form, so that …’
‘So that it can be imprisoned in those “wings”, for instance?’ said Jack.
‘Something like that,’ said Bill. ‘It’s an amazing set-up altogether.’
There was nobody there. It did seem extraordinary that all these humming, spinning, whirring things should go on and on seemingly of their own accord, with just the king wandering round them occasionally.
Bill was so fascinated that for a few moments he forgot the urgency of finding the way out of the mountain. There was something dream-like about all this – it didn’t seem real.
He was brought back to reality again by feeling Snowy butting against him. He jumped a little. Then he took Lucy-Ann’s arm. ‘Come along! What am I thinking of, stopping like this!’
Jack had found the passage that led out of the laboratory. He led them down it and they came to the great cave they had seen before. Bill’s torch swept round it but there was nothing to see. Then they went into the passage that led to the roofless cave! The children felt they really were getting near freedom again – if only, only, only they could find out how to get that rope-ladder out of its place in the wall!
They passed the dim lamps, which, for some reason or other, were lighted here. They came to the roofless cave, and Bill’s torch picked out the pitchers of ice-cold water standing at the back to refresh those who had had the long and exhausting climb up the rope-ladder.
‘This is the place where the ladder’s kept,’ said Jack, and he took Bill’s torch and swung it to find the place in the rocky wall where they had seen it last.
But before he could spot it, Lucy-Ann tripped over something and fell with a thud. Bill picked her up. She had hurt her knees but she didn’t make a sound. Bill told Jack to flash his torch on Lucy-Ann to see what she had fallen over.
She had stumbled over the rope-ladder itself! There it lay, stretching from its place in the wall, over the floor and then disappearing downwards over the edge of the cave – down, down, down to the cave with the pool far below!
‘Look! The ladder’s out!’ cried Jack, forgetting to whisper in his excitement. ‘Oh, Bill – let’s come on down at once!’
‘Somebody must have gone out of the mountain tonight,’ said Dinah, ‘and left the ladder down to come back by. I wonder who it was. We’d better be careful we don’t meet them!’
‘Jack, you go down first,’ said Bill, who had been examining with great interest the way the ladder was attached to the hole in the wall. It was extremely ingenious. Bill could see how wires must be run up from the wheel in the pool to a lever which released the ladder – whose weight then compelled it to run out over the floor to the edge of the cave, where it fell and then pulled itself undone until it had come to its last rung. What made it able to roll itself up again Bill could not imagine – but the brain that could devise all the amazing things inside that mountain would find that a very simple problem!
Jack went to the place where the ladder hung over the edge. He knelt down and put his feet one after another on a rung a little way down. The ladder felt as firm as before. It was very well made and strong.
‘Well, here I go,’ said Jack. ‘Send the girls next, Bill, and then you come. Snowy’s gone already, down whatever little hole he and the dogs use! I don’t know where that is. I only wish I knew where poor old Kiki was. I don’t like leaving her all alone in this beastly mountain.’
Bill shone his torch on him. The girls watched his head disappear as he climbed down.
‘You go now, Lucy-Ann,’ said Bill. ‘Jack must be a good way down. You won’t tread on his head. Then Dinah can go, and I’ll follow last of all. Don’t attempt to leave the cave below till I am down with you.’
Jack was going steadily down. What a long long way it was! And then a very peculiar thing happened. The ladder began to shake below him! Jack stopped climbing at once.
‘Gracious! Somebody’s climbing up! And I’m climbing down! Whoever can it be!’
27
Escape at last
No sooner had he felt certain that somebody was climbing up very steadily below him than Jack immediately stopped climbing down and began climbing back again at top speed. He didn’t want to meet Meier or Erlick on that ladder.
Some way up he bumped into Lucy-Ann’s feet. She gave a small squeal of surprise. ‘It’s all right, Lucy-Ann. It’s only me,’ said Jack in a low voice. ‘There’s somebody coming up the ladder. Go back again as quickly as you can!’
Lucy-Ann at once began to climb up as fast as possible, in a great fright. Gracious! How awful to feel that
somebody was coming up the ladder just as they were going down! She felt certain it was that horrid Meier!
She in turn bumped into Dinah’s feet and passed the urgent message on to the surprised girl. Dinah began to climb back again up to the cave at the top very quickly indeed. Lucy-Ann and Jack were immediately below her. Jack felt as if somebody might catch his ankles at any moment.
And, of course, the next thing was that Dinah nearly got her head trodden on by Bill’s big feet. He was descending at top speed to join the others, and was most amazed to find Dinah just below him.
‘What’s the matter? Didn’t I tell you to buck up?’ he said, and then caught Dinah’s agonized whisper.
‘Somebody’s coming up! Quick, before they get Jack. Quick, Bill!’
Muttering something under his breath, Bill climbed back quickly. He pulled Dinah up, then Lucy-Ann, then Jack. The ladder still shook. The climber, or climbers, were coming up steadily.
‘Back into the passages!’ commanded Bill. ‘We can’t afford to be caught now. We’ll wait till whoever it is has gone and then we’ll try again.’
They came to where the passage forked into three, and Bill pushed them all up into the darkest one – but coming towards them were footsteps, and somebody’s shadow at the far end! They all rushed back again.
But now the climber had reached the top of the ladder and was behind them. They tried the second passage and found themselves in a maze of funny little caves, all leading one out of another.
‘Wait here!’ said Bill. But they had been seen, and challenging voices now began to echo along the dark passages.
‘Who’s there? Come out at once!’
They didn’t stir. They were all crouched in a dark corner, overhung by a rocky ledge. Bill wondered if the beam of a torch would find them. He was afraid it would.
The feet passed by in another cave. Then came more voices. The hunt was on! Bill groaned. It sounded as if four or five searchers were about now. They would separate and search until they had found them. And they had been so near freedom!