Explosive Adventures (13 page)

“Tiger,” he whispered. “Right below us.”

Billy looked down. There on the path below them was the beautiful, sinewy
figure of the tiger, padding slowly along, its nose raised to sniff the breeze for the scent of its enemies.

“Oh dear,” said Mr Gopal. “It looks very cross.”

“Well, it’s not going to find us,” said Billy quietly. “So you don’t have to –”

He was about to say “worry”, but before he had time to do so a terrible thing happened. Mr Gopal had taken a handkerchief out of his pocket to mop his brow and had unfortunately dropped it. Down through the leaves drifted the large white square of cloth, right down to the path, to land exactly in front of the great, angry tiger.

Of course the tiger looked up in surprise and saw, directly above it, four frightened human beings sitting on a very high branch. At the sight of this, it let out a great growl, which seemed to fill the forest with sound before it died away.

“Oh my goodness!” wailed Mr Gopal. “We are going to be entirely eaten up. This terrible beast will shin up our tree and eat us up – one, two, three, four. Every one of us.”

But Mr Gopal was wrong. The tiger looked at the trunk of the tree, stretched its claws in and out, and then yawned.

“He’s too lazy,” said Mr Bhalla. “That’s a typical tiger for you! He knows that he
doesn’t even have to try to climb the tree. All he has to do is lie there until we come down.”

The tiger looked up again, gave another growl, and then lay down at the foot of the tree. There was no need for him to waste his energy – his lunch was up the tree, hanging on to a branch, but sooner or later it would have to come down, and by then he hoped he would have an even sharper appetite!

9

Bubblegum to the Rescue

They sat on their high branches, looking down at the patient tiger and wondering how long it would be before one of them was overcome by sleep and fell off. It could be a day or two, if they were lucky, or it could be before that.
Whenever it would be, it was not a nice thought.

Then, after about an hour, Mr Bhalla suddenly let out a cry.

“I’ve had a wonderful idea,” he said. “Why didn’t I think of it before?”

“What is it?” asked Mr Gopal. “Could it possibly help us?”

“Yes,” said Mr Bhalla. “Do you know what sort of tree this is?”

“A bubblegum tree,” said Billy. “Or at least it looks like one.”

“Precisely,” said Mr Bhalla. “And it’s a very nice juicy one at that. If I cut a little hole here, sap will come out by the bucketful.”

“But what use would that be?” asked Nicola. “It won’t do us any good to sit up here and chew bubblegum!”

Mr Bhalla laughed. “Indeed it would not,” he agreed. “What I propose is that we make a bungee rope out of the gum and then one of us can bounce down, give that tiger a bit of a fright, and then bounce back!”

Everybody was silent. It was a most peculiar plan, but then the Bubblegummies were most peculiar people.

Then Billy broke the silence. “But who will jump?” he asked.

Mr Bhalla smiled. “I was thinking you might like to do it, Billy,” he said with a
smile. “I hear that you were bungee jumping last night in the village, and you did it very well.”

Billy swallowed hard. He really had no choice. They had to do something about the tiger and he might as well be the one to do it. But a bungee jump on to a tiger’s back? That sounded even worse than biting a tiger’s tail!

Mr Bhalla made a hole in the bark of the bubblegum tree and had soon extracted a large lump of soft pink sap in his cupped hands. He passed this to Nicola, showing her how to twist it into a rope. Then he made another hole and collected more
sap and passed that on to Billy. Soon everybody had twisted a long piece of gummy rope, which Mr Bhalla tied together to make one long bungee jumping rope.

“Now,” he said, tying one end of the rope to their branch. “Let’s attach the other end round you, Billy, and then you’ll be ready.”

“But what do I do once I get down there?” asked Billy, his voice unsteady with fear.

“Pull its whiskers,” said Mr Bhalla. “That’s one thing which a tiger can’t stand. If you pull its whiskers it will go away soon enough.”

Billy looked down through the leaves to the waiting tiger. He closed his eyes and counted. One, two, three … now! Taking a deep breath, he cast himself off the branch, shooting down through the leaves, straight towards the tiger. Then, with a sudden lurch, he felt the bubblegum rope tighten and slow down his fall.

Mr Bhalla had calculated the length of the rope to perfection. Billy found himself just above the rather astonished tiger, and he was able to reach out and give the tiger’s whiskers a good tweak. The tiger roared out in fury and slashed at Billy with his great claws, but he was too late – the bubblegum rope had yanked Billy up again
and the next thing the tiger saw was the boy disappearing through the leaves!

Down went Billy for the second time, and again he was able to give the tiger’s whiskers a good pull before he shot up into the leaves. The tiger was even more furious this time, and by the time it had happened for a third time, the animal’s patience was exhausted. With a great roar of disgust, it turned on its tail and shot off down the path, to vanish in the undergrowth.

“He’s had enough,” shouted Mr Bhalla triumphantly. “I knew he wouldn’t like that! I knew it!”

They waited a few minutes to make sure that the tiger did not come back.
Then, once they were sure it was safe to do so, they climbed back down the tree and began the journey back to the village.

“I feel rather sorry for that poor tiger,” said Billy to Mr Bhalla as they walked home. “I’m sure we made him feel rather miserable.”

“Yes,” said Mr Bhalla. “But you must remember that we also did him a big favour. By saving the forest, we’ve preserved a home for him. If the loggers had cut down all the trees, he would have had nowhere to go.”

“So even if he is rather cross with us, we’ve still saved his life,” said Billy.

“Exactly,” said Mr Bhalla. “Just so.”

*

When everybody in the village heard about what had happened, they were overjoyed.

“Our trees are saved!” they cried. “And we owe it all to your plan, Billy.”

Billy, of course, was very modest. “I was only one of the tigers,” he said. “Everybody was brave.”

They were too tired to celebrate that night, and decided that they would have a village party the next day. So they all went to bed in their rooms high up in Mr Bhalla’s tree house, and they all, in their different ways, dreamed about what had happened that day. In Billy’s dream he was prowling around in a tiger skin, growling through his
teeth. In Nicola’s dream there was a snake blowing bubbles through its tightly-clamped jaws. Mr Bhalla dreamed of bubblegum trees, safe again. And Mr Gopal – well, he dreamed that he was biting a tiger’s tail while his grandfather, Sikrit Pal Praviwallah Gopal, looked on with pride.

The next morning, the entire village was up early, getting ready for the party. Great dishes of food were prepared in the high tree-kitchens, sending delicious odours wafting through the branches. The school was closed for the day – to mark the occasion – and everybody was in a festive mood.

Mr Bhalla was particularly excited. He dressed in his finest outfit – a gold and white tunic which had belonged to his father, who had been an official elephant driver, a mahout, to the Maharajah of Chandipore. Billy, who had not brought any special clothes with him, was lent a party tunic by one of the Bubblegummie boys, and Nicola was given a green and gold sari to wear. Everybody looked very smart indeed.

The party began with a feast. This was a magnificent affair, with all sorts of delicious foods set out on broad green leaves freshly picked from banana trees. There were curries and pickles and large dishes
of dried coconut. There were poppadoms stacked one hundred high, and great mounds of bananas fried in sugared yoghurt!

But most delicious of all was a dish which had been made by Mr Gopal’s aunt. She had not wasted her time while the others were away being chased by tigers. She had been learning recipes from her new friends and, with a little help, she had cooked the most wonderful bubblegum pudding anybody had ever tasted. It was an extraordinary dish – a pudding you could chew on for as long as you liked and then blow into great big bubbles before you swallowed. The
Bubblegummie children were used to this sort of thing, of course, but for Billy and Nicola it was quite unlike anything they had ever eaten before, and twice as nice.

After the feast there were competitions, including a most exciting game of tree hide-and-seek. This was far more thrilling – and dangerous – than an ordinary game of hide-and-seek, as you had to hide in the branches, which was not always easy. There was also a bungee jumping competition – which Nicola won – and, finally, a bubblegum-blowing contest. Billy entered this, and did quite well, but not as well as Mr Gopal himself, who
blew a bubble so large that even the Bubblegummies were impressed.

“We are so very grateful to you,” said Mr Bhalla, as the party came to an end. “It would have been a tragedy if those men had destroyed our bubblegum trees. Now, thanks to you, the trees will survive. And of course we shall be able to send Mr Gopal his supplies again.”

“It was no trouble at all,” said Billy. “I’m glad to have helped.”

He knew, of course, that it could all have turned out quite differently. The snake could have bitten Nicola. The men could have guessed that the tigers weren’t real. The real tiger could have eaten Mr Bhalla.
But none of these things had happened, and so there was no point in worrying about it.

They left the following morning. Mr Bhalla helped them into the flying boat, and then he and just about everybody from the village stood at the edge of the river and waved as the ancient plane taxied out to start its take-off.

“Goodbye!” shouted Mr Bhalla, as the plane began to skim over the water. “Come back and see us soon!”

“We shall!” cried Billy, waving from his window.

Then the plane was in the air, and the river and the jungle fell away beneath
them. They had a long flight ahead of them, but Mr Bhalla had given them plenty of bubblegum for the trip. So that would keep them busy enough.

As the plane gained height, Billy craned his neck to get a last glimpse of the ground below them. There was the village, with its walkways and swinging bridges; there was Mr Bhalla’s house in its tall tree. And there, of course, were the bubblegum trees themselves, towering higher than all the other trees, and safe now – Billy hoped – for at least another hundred years.