The Borrowers Aloft (9 page)

Chapter Nineteen

In no time at all, they had the musical box open, and Pod, standing on an upturned matchbox, was staring down at the works. "We've got a problem," he said, as they scrambled up beside him. "I'll solve it, mind, but I've got to find the right tool. It's those teeth," he pointed out.

Gazing into the works, they saw he meant a row of metal points suspended downward from a bar. These were the strikers, which, brushing the cylinder as it turned, rang from each prickle one tinkling note of the tune. "You've got to have those teeth out, or they'd mess up the towline. If they're welded in, it's going to be difficult, but looks to me as though they're all in a piece held in by those screws."

"It looks to me like that, too," said Arrietty, leaning forward to see better.

"Well, we'll soon have those screws out," said Pod.

While he climbed once again to the tool drawer, Homily and Arrietty played one last tune. "Pity we never heard the others," said Arrietty, "and we never shall hear them now."

"If we get out of here alive," said Homily, "I don't care if I never see or hear any kind of musical box again in the whole of the rest of my life!"

"Well, you are going to get out of here alive," remarked Pod in a grimly determined voice. He had come back amongst them with the smallest screw driver he could find; even then it was as tall as himself. He walked out on the bar, and feet apart, holding the handle at chest level, took his position above the screw and set the edge into the slot. After a short resistance, the screw turned easily as Pod revolved the handle. "Light as watch screws," he remarked as he loosened the others. "It's well made, this musical box."

Soon they could lift out the row of spiked teeth and make fast the towline to the cylinder. It swayed loosely as the balloon above it surged against the ceiling. "Now," said Pod, "I'll take the first turn and we'll see how it goes..."

Arrietty and Homily held their breaths as he grasped the handle of the musical box and slowly began to turn. The line tautened and became dead straight. Slowly and steadily as Pod put more effort into his turning, the balloon started down toward them. They watched it anxiously,

with upturned faces and aching necks, until at last—swaying and pulling slightly at its moorings—it was brought within their reach.

"What about that?" said Pod in a satisfied voice. But he looked very white and tired.

"What do we do now?" asked Homily.

"We deflate it," he said.

"Let the gas out," explained Arrietty as Homily still looked blank.

"We've to find some kind of platform," announced Pod "to set across the top of this musical box, something we can walk about on..." He looked about the room. Under the gas ring, on which stood the empty gluepot, was a small oblong of scorched tin, used to protect the floor boards. "That'll do us," said Pod.

All three were very tired by now, but they managed to slide the strip of tin from below the gas ring and hoist it across the opened top of the musical box. From this platform, Pod could handle the neck of the balloon and begin to untie the knot. "You and Arrietty keep your distance," he advised Homily. "Better go under the table. No knowing what this balloon might do—"

What it did, when released from the knotted twine, was to sail off sideways into the air and, descending slowly, to bump along the floor. With each bump the smell of gas became stronger. It seemed to Arrietty, as she watched it from under the table, that the balloon was dying in jerks. At last the envelope lay still and empty, and Arrietty and Homily emerged from under the table and stood looking down at it with Pod.

"What a day!" said Homily. "And we've still got to close the window—"

"It's been a worthwhile day," said Pod.

But by the time they had gone through the elaborate process of closing up the window and had hidden all traces of the recent experiment below the floor board, they were utterly worn out. It was not yet dusk before they crept wearily into their blanket-lined box and stretched their aching limbs.

By the time Mr. and Mrs. Platter brought their supper, all three were lost to the world in a deep, exhausted sleep. They did not hear Mrs. Platter exclaim because the fire was out. Nor did they see Mr. Platter, sniffing delicately and peering about the room and complaining that "You ought to be more careful, Mabel—there's a wicked smell of gas."

Mrs. Platter, very indignant, protested her innocence. "It was you who lit the gas fire this morning, Sidney."

"No, that was yesterday," he said. And as each knew the other (when caught out in misdoing) to have little regard for truth, they disbelieved each other and came to no conclusion.

"Anyhow," Mrs. Platter summed up at last, "the weather's too mild now for gas fires..." And they never lit it again.

Chapter Twenty

The next ten days were confined to serious experiment, controlled and directed by Pod. "We want to go at it steady now," he explained. "Keep to a program, like, and not try too much at a time. It's a big undertaking, Homily—you don't want to rush it. 'Step by step climbs the hill!'"

"But when do they open, Pod?"

"Riverside Teas? April the first, if the cage-house is finished."

"I'll wager it's finished now. And we're getting well into March..."

"You're wrong, Homily. They've not delivered the plateglass nor the handle to lift it up with. And something went wrong with drainage. They had a flood, remember? Didn't you listen when they were talking?"

"Not if they're talking about the cage-house I don't listen," said Homily. "It gives me the creeps to hear them. Once they start on about the cage-house, I go right under the blanket."

During these busy ten days, Pod and Arrietty walked about so much on the open pages of the
Illustrated London News
that the print became quite blurred. They had to discard the idea of a valve at the top of the canopy to be controlled from below by a line that passed through the open neck into the basket because, as Pod explained to Arrietty, of the nature of the canopy. He touched the diagram with his foot. "With this kind of fabric balloon, you
can
have the valve line through the neck.... But rubber's like elastic; squeezes the gas out.... We'd all be gassed in less than ten minutes if we left the neck open like they do."

He was disappointed about this because he had already invented a way to insert a control valve where it should be—in the top of the canopy—and had practiced on the smaller balloons of which they had an endless supply.

In the meantime, as Homily with a needle ground down by Pod worked on the shaping of the net, he and Arrietty studied "equilibrium and weight disposal." A series of loops was made in the towline on which—once the balloon was inflated—they would hang up various objects: a strawberry basket, the half-shaped net, a couple of keys, a hollow curtain ring, a tear-off roll of one-and-sixpenny entrance tickets to Ballyhoggin, and lastly they would swing on the line themselves. There came a day when they achieved a perfect balance. Half a dozen one-and-sixpenny entrance tickets, torn off by Arrietty, would raise the balloon two feet; and one small luggage key, hooked on by Pod, would bring it down with a bump.

Still, they could find no way of controlling the gas through the neck. They could go up, but not down. Untying what he called "the guard knot" at the neck—or even loosening the guard knot—would, Pod thought, be a little too risky. The gas might rush out in a burst (as they had seen it do so often by now), and the whole contraption—balloon, basket, ballast, and aeronauts—would drop like a stone to the earth. "We can't risk that, you know," Pod said to Arrietty. "What we need is some sort of valve or lever..." and, for the tenth time that day, he climbed back into the tool drawer.

Arrietty joined Homily in her corner by the box to help her with the load ring. The net was shaping up nicely, and Homily, instructed by Pod and Arrietty, had threaded in and made secure the piece of slightly heavier cord, which, as it encircled the balloon around its fullest circumference, was suitably called "the equator." She was now attaching the load ring, which, when the balloon was netted, would encircle the neck and from which they would hang the basket. They had used the hollow curtain ring, whose weight was now known and tested. "It's lovely, Mama! You are clever..."

"It's easy," said Homily, "once you've got the hang of it. It's no harder than tatting."

"You've shaped it so beautifully."

"Well, your father did the calculations ..."

"I've got it!" cried Pod from the tool drawer. He had been very quiet for a very long while and now emerged slowly with a long cylindrical object almost as tall as himself, which he carefuly stowed on the table. "... or so I believe," he added, as he climbed up after it by means of the repair kit. In his hand was a small length of fret-saw blade.

Arrietty ran excitedly across the room and swiftly climbed up to join him. The long object turned out to be a topless fountain pen, with an ink-encrusted point, one prong of which was broken. Pod already had unscrewed the pen, and the point now lay on the table attached to its wormlike rubber tube, with the empty shaft beside it.

"I cut the shaft off here," said Pod, "about an inch and a half from the top, just above the filling lever; then I'll cut off the closed end of this inner tube—but right at the end, like—so it sticks out a good inch and a half beyond the cut-off end of the pen casing. Maybe more. Now—" He went on speaking cheerfully but rather ponderously, as though giving a lesson (a "do-it-yourself" lesson, thought Arrietty, remembering the Household Hints section in her Diary and Proverb Book). "We screw the whole thing together again and what do we get? We get a capless fountain pen with the top of its shaft cut off and an extra bit of tube. Do you follow me?"

"So far," said Arrietty.

"Then," said Pod, "we unscrew the point..."

"Can you?" asked Arrietty.

"Of course," said Pod, "they're always changing points. I'll show you." He took up the pen, and straddling the shaft, he gripped it firmly between his legs, and taking the point in both hands, he quickly unscrewed it at chest level. "Now," he said as he laid the point aside, "we have a circular hole where that point was—leading straight into the rubber tube. Take a look."

Arrietty peered down the shaft. "Yes," she said.

"Well, there you are," said Pod.

But where? Arrietty wanted to say; instead she said, more politely, "I don't think I quite—"

"Well," said Pt)d in a patient voice, as though slightly dashed by her slowness, "we insert the point into the neck of the balloon—after inflation, of course—just below the guard knot. We whip it around with a good firm lashing of twine. I take hold of the filling lever and pull it down sideways at right angles to the pen shaft. That's the working position, with the gas safely shut off. We then untie the guard knot. And there we are: with the cut-off pen shaft and rubber tube hanging down into the basket." He paused. "Are you with me? Never mind—" he went on confidently, "you'll see it as I do it. Now"—he drew a long satisfied breath—"standing in the basket, I reach up my hand to the filling lever, and I close it down slowly toward the shaft and the gas flows out through the tube. Feel," he went on happily. "The lever's quite loose," and with one foot on the pen to steady it, he worked the filling lever gently up and down. Arrietty tried it, too. Worn with use it slid easily.

"Then," said Pod, "I raise the lever back up so it stands out again at right angles—and the gas is now shut off."

"It's wonderful," said Arrietty, but suddenly she thought of something. "What about all that gas coming down straight into the basket?"

"We leave it behind!" cried Pod. "Don't you see, girl—the gas is rising all the time and rising faster than the balloon's descending? I thought of that; that's why I wanted that bit of extra tube; we can turn that tube end upwards, sideways—where we like; but whichever way we turn it, the gas'll be rushing upward and we'll be dropping away from it. See what I mean? Come to think of it, we could bend the tube upward to start with and clip it to the shaft of the pen. No reason why not."

He was silent a moment, thinking this over.

"And there won't be all that much gas—not once I've sorted out the lever. You only let it out by degrees..."

During the next few days, which were very exciting, Arrietty often thought of Spiller—how deft he would have been adjusting the net as the envelope filled at the gas jet. This was Homily and Arrietty's job, tiresome pullings with hand or bone crochet hook, while Pod controlled the intake of gas; the netted canopy would slowly swell above them until the letter "i" in "Riverside Teas" had achieved its right proportion. The "equator" of the net, as Pod told them, must bisect the envelope exactly for the load ring to hang straight and keep the basket level.

Arrietty wished Spiller could have seen the first attachment of the basket by raffia bridles to the load ring. This took place on the platform of the musical box with the basket at this stage weighted down with keys.

And on that first free flight up to the ceiling when Pod, all his attention on the fountain-pen lever, had brought them down so gently, Spiller—Arrietty knew—would have prevented Homily from making the fatal mistake of jumping out of the basket as soon as it touched the floor. At terrifying speed, Pod and Arrietty had shot aloft again, hitting the ceiling with a force that nearly threw them out of the basket, while Homily—in tears—wrung her hands below them. It took a long time to descend, even with the valve wide open, and Pod was very shaken.

"You must remember, Homily," he told her gravely when, anchored once more to the musical box, the balloon was slowly deflating, "you weigh as much as a couple of Gladstone bag keys and a roll and a half of tickets. No passenger must ever attempt to leave the car or basket until the envelope is completely collapsed." He looked very serious. "We were lucky to have a ceiling. Suppose we'd been out of doors—do you know what would have happened?"

"No," whispered Homily huskily, drying her cheeks with the back of her trembling hand and giving a final sniff.

"Arrietty and me would've shot up to 20,000 feet, and that would have been the end of us..."

"Oh dear ..." muttered Homily.

"At that great height," said Pod, "the gas would expand so quickly that it would burst the canopy." He stared at her accusingly. "Unless of course, we'd had the presence of mind to open the valve and keep it open on the whole rush up. Even then, when we did begin to descend, we'd descend too quickly. We'd have to throw everything overboard—ballast, equipment, clothes, food, perhaps even one of the passengers—"

"Oh no..." gasped Homily.

"—and in spite of all this," Pod concluded, "we'd probably crash all the same!"

Homily remained silent, and after watching her face for a moment, Pod said more gently, "This isn't a joy ride, Homily."

"I know that," she retorted with feeling.