The Box of Delights (15 page)

‘But that’s what they always say,’ Peter said. They talked among themselves about how lovely it would have been if they could have caught the burglars at
work, and held them up with pistols till the Police came.

Kay was very much worried about Maria being still absent, but Maria’s brother and sisters said that she would be all right. ‘She always falls on her feet,’ they said.
‘Don’t you worry about Maria.’ But Kay did worry. As soon as breakfast was over he went across to see the Inspector of Police.

‘And so, you haven’t seen Miss Maria,’ the Inspector said. ‘Ha, that doesn’t look so well, but you leave the matter in my hands, Master Kay, and I’ll make
what inquiries are called for. And your guardian, I hear, hasn’t come back.’

‘No,’ Kay said, ‘that’s another point. She ought to have been back: she started out yesterday to catch a certain train and she didn’t come by the train. We have had
no word from her since.’

‘So I understand,’ the Inspector said.

‘How did you know?’ Kay said.

‘Well, in the Law, Master Kay,’ the Inspector said, ‘it’s our duty to hear all things: “Information Received” we call it. But I will put through the necessary
inquiries, Master Kay. You leave the matter to the bloodhounds of the Law, and, depend upon it, information will be received.’

Kay was cheered by his confident manner and by his repeating, ‘The simple explanation is always the last thing thought of.’

When he reached Seekings Ellen said, ‘Oh, Master Kay, your guardian’s brother has rung up. There was so much fog and such a crowd at the station yesterday that she didn’t
start, but went back to her brother, and one or two other little things have sprung up since, so she won’t be back today, but she may be back tomorrow. And she sends her love and tells you
not to worry, and she hopes you are having a good holiday.’

‘Well, that’s a jolly good thing,’ Kay said, and being much cheered by the news, he went upstairs to get his catapult and some bullets. He kept these in a little secret
hiding-place underneath his bed. After he had put them in his pocket he looked out of the window towards King Arthur’s Camp, and there in the fields below the Camp he saw the gleam of water.
He ran down at once to the others. ‘I say,’ he said, ‘it’s splendid. The floods are out. We’ll go for a mud-lark. We’ll get out all our ships and sail them on
the floods.’

Both Peter and he had received ships from the Bishop’s Christmas Tree. Kay had a ship called the
Hero
which went by methylated spirit, Peter had a ship which he called the pirate
ship, the
Royal Fortune
, which went by clockwork, and Kay, in addition to these, had an old cutter which he called
Captain Kidd’s Fancy.
‘We’ll launch these and
christen them properly,’ they said.

‘It’s perfectly lovely,’ Kay said, ‘that the floods are out. We’ll pretend that these ships are real ships, and we’ll provision them with almonds, raisins and
chocolates and we’ll all take long sticks so as to poke them off if they get stuck anywhere. And we’ll take sandwiches, cakes and hard-boiled eggs and we won’t come back till
teatime.’

‘I’ve got some lovely little things that would do for the ships,’ said Susan. ‘In the stocking which they gave me from the tree there were those little tiny wooden
barrels filled with Hundreds and Thousands. They were just the sort of barrels to go in the ships.’

She fetched the little barrels and they divided them up among the three ships, and they put raisins and currants and bits of biscuits in each barrel.

‘I vote,’ Jemima said, ‘that the other barrels shall be filled with ham, which we will pretend is salt pork.’

‘They don’t take salt pork any more,’ Peter said. ‘They take pemmican, which is beef chopped up with fat and raisins and chocolate and beer and almonds and ginger and
stuff. It must be a sickening mess, but it’s very nourishing. It’s supposed to be what the ancient Britons had. They could take a piece as big as a currant and live on it for a
week.’

As there weren’t enough barrels to provision the ships, Kay got some matchboxes and egg-collector’s pillboxes, which they filled with food. Jemima produced some drapers’
patterns of woollen goods. ‘The ships ought to have these,’ she said. ‘They’d be exactly the size of thick blankets for the little sailors.’

‘I tell you what we might do,’ Susan said. ‘When we get to the water we might take a little plank and make a landing-stage of it, and take some of those little flags that
we’ve got, and we’ll pretend that these ships are Christopher Columbus’s ships going out to discover. We’ll tie the ships to the landing-stage and then Jemima shall be the
Queen of Spain and Kay had better be the King of Spain, and we will all be monks and nuns and people and sing to Columbus, and then we’ll push him out into the Atlantic.’

‘That would be a good idea,’ Kay said. ‘And then, presently, we could be Sir Francis Drake, and some of us could be Indians and some of us could be Spaniards. And then one of
us will be going to be burnt by the Inquisition, and, just at the end, we’ll rush in and kill all the Spaniards, and take all their treasure and sail away to Plymouth. And we could fire
red-hot shot, to tell the truth, if we didn’t get the cannon too wet. You see, we can’t fire gunpowder, but we could get the caps from toy pistols and load the guns with those, and
then, if you put a match to the touch-hole they sometimes go off with quite a bang.’

‘You’d better have some anchors,’ Jemima said. ‘All ships have anchors, otherwise they wouldn’t be able to stop.’

‘You’ve got to be jolly careful with anchors, with ships so little as these,’ Kay said. ‘Very often, if you try anchoring little ships like these, the anchor will pull
them right underneath the water.’

They made ready the ships. Peter found a plank and rigged up some flags upon it for the landing-stage. Ellen brought sandwiches, cake, boiled eggs, fruit and ginger-beer. Kay had a bottle of
methylated spirit for the engine. Then they went out to the woodshed to Joe, who gave each one of them a long wand or stick for poking off the ships if they got stuck. Then away they went in
bright, sunny, clearing weather, with the noise of running water everywhere. When they came to the meadows there were pools in all the hollows and many of the molehills were bubbling up water like
running springs. When they came to a suitable place on the mill stream they fixed the landing-stage and the children poked about among the banks with their sticks, while Kay and Peter got the
methylated spirit furnace to make steam in the boiler.

Kay had the Box of Delights in his inner pocket and sometimes poked his hand inside to be sure that it was there.

Presently all was ready. The King and Queen of Spain, with the monks and nuns and people, sent off Christopher Columbus on his voyage, and away the ships went downstream with the children
following, shouting and cheering and poking them clear of the banks with their sticks.

When they had gone about half a mile down the stream, Susan, who was looking up at the sky, said, ‘There’s an aeroplane: no; two.’ The others didn’t see the aeroplanes at
first but then saw them like two bright specks against a dark cloud. ‘It’s odd we didn’t hear them,’ Susan said. They hadn’t heard them.

They went on with their ships, paddling in the water, getting very wet and enjoying themselves so much that they forgot about all other things, till Kay suddenly saw a shadow running across the
field in front of him, and, looking up, saw two aeroplanes circling silently overhead. ‘I say,’ he said, ‘look at the aeroplanes, absolutely silent.’

He didn’t say so, but the thought flashed through his mind that the aeroplanes were there after them, but the other thought also flashed that no aeroplane would dare to land on ground so
rotten with springs as that low-lying field. ‘They’d stick in the mud if they tried that,’ he thought.

‘They’re going to land,’ Susan said. ‘They’re coming down by the copse there.’

‘I’ll bet they’re after us,’ Kay said to himself. ‘Bring the ships in to the banks.’

They saw the two aeroplanes come down on to the big dry open field near the copse on the other side of the stream. There were some old willow trees where Kay was standing. He climbed up one of
them. ‘There are four men getting out of the aeroplanes,’ he said. ‘They’ve got pistols and ropes and they’re coming this way. I think it would be wise to get out of
the way.’

‘Do you think they’re after us?’ Susan said.

‘I shouldn’t wonder,’ Kay said.

‘But it’s all tommy-rot,’ Jemima said. ‘Who’d be coming after us with pistols and ropes? They’re probably mole-catchers coming to set traps over these fields
now that the moles are working in the soft earth.’

‘That’s a champion remark,’ Peter said. ‘When did you ever hear of mole-catchers coming in aeroplanes with pistols?’

‘They’re the men who kidnapped the Punch and Judy man,’ Kay said. ‘That’s the man who was in the front of that attack: the tall one with the white splash of paint
on his leggings. I’ll bet they’re after us.’

‘What shall we do?’ said Susan. ‘Shall we run to the mill or the farm?’

‘They’d beat us to either of those,’ Kay said.

‘Could we get down into the gully there?’ Susan said.

‘The gully’s full of water in this flood,’ Kay said.

‘Well, what can we do?’ Susan asked.

‘Well, I’ve got here,’ Kay said, ‘a sort of magic dodge. If we all hold hands while I touch a button on it, we shall all shrink into little tiny creatures, and then
we’ll pop on board our ships and go down the stream.’

They held hands, and he twiddled the little button, and, instantly, each one of them felt lighter and brighter than ever before. The earth seemed to shoot up and to become enormous, and there
they were, clambering on board their gigantic ships. They cast loose the strings which tied them to the bank and away they sailed downstream, round a bend and on. ‘All very well,’ Kay
thought, ‘as long as we can keep in mid-stream, but in a flood like this if we jam against some wreckage or fallen tree we shall be sucked right under.’

Just as the ships went round the bend, Kay saw the four men coming in sight close to the bank. It was plain that each man had two long pistols stuck in his belt and they were coiling lassoes
ready for a throw. The ships went gaily down the mill stream into the mill-race. At the mill-race came a roaring and terrible torrent, down which the ships plunged so swiftly that they were through
it before they had time to be afraid. In an instant they were in quiet water out of all the currents, gently rubbing the ships’ sides against the roots of an elm tree, which grew in the high
bank. Kay and Peter hooked the anchors on to some of the roots of the tree. They secured all three ships alongside each other.

‘A
nd now,’ Kay said, ‘I vote we have our pemmican and decide what we’ll do next.’

At this moment a little voice sounded from up above. ‘Hullo, you people,’ it said. ‘Come indoors. There’s going to be a shower. You can have your feast in here.
I’ll let down a cage to hoist you up.’ Then they saw a little field mouse leaning over a platform which projected from the trunk of the elm. He had a little crane on the platform.
Evidently he hoisted all his stores from the water by means of it. Presently the little cage came dangling down from the crane and the field mouse said, ‘Not more than two of you at one
time.’

Peter and Jemima got in and the little mouse went to a winch and set the works going, and, instantly, the cage was up at the platform. Then the cage was sent down for Kay and Susan.

‘Well, here we are,’ the field mouse said. ‘Come in.’ He led the way from the platform into a corridor to a room with little windows which looked out upon the river. The
floor was covered with dry leaves and moss, and the wall had lockers all along it, labelled: ‘Beech-nuts’, ‘Corn’, ‘Pig-nuts’, ‘Best Berries’,
‘Second-best Berries’, ‘Berries’, ‘Assorted Seeds’, ‘Hazel-nuts’, ‘Honey’, ‘Dried Minnow’ etc., etc.

‘Well, now let’s lunch,’ he said. They all got out their provisions: pemmican, ham and the rest. The field mouse told them where to look for other things. He produced some
blackberry wine and some beech-nut loaves, which Susan toasted at the fire. While they were feasting in this happy way they heard a great clumping noise outside. ‘That’s men,’ the
field mouse said. ‘They might be elephants the noise they make.’ Almost at once the men began to talk.

‘Well,’ one man said, ‘they seem to have got away from us. They must have come downstream under cover of the banks somehow. We’d have seen them if they’d gone
upstream, because there aren’t any banks.’

‘Well,’ another said, ‘if they’ve gone into the stream the flood must have got them,’ and another said, ‘Well, if the floods have got them, we’ve got to
fish them out.’

‘Well,’ the first one said, ‘there’s nothing like little children for leading one a dance: little devils! I thought we were making a mistake bringing both the planes down
and losing sight of them. You see, those little creatures have popped away into almost nothing.’

‘How would it be to look under the bridge there?’ one of them said. ‘They’d time to get to the bridge.’

‘Yes, the bridge is a good idea,’ they said, and then the voices and footsteps moved away.

When they had gone the field mouse said, ‘Perhaps you’d like to see some of the wonders of this tree.’

‘We should love to see the tree,’ the children said. The field mouse threw up a shutter in the wall. In the hollow behind the shutter was a little cage like that in which he had
hoisted them from the ships. ‘You see,’ he said, ‘I have to have a good many places like this. Chaps like me sometimes have to leave the room in a hurry; if I hear someone coming
whom I don’t want, you understand. I name no names, but there are several round here; uncertain sort of chaps, and you never can tell in a place like this which door they will come in at. But
now that I’ve got the lifts fixed, if I hear anyone suspicious I nip into one of these places. Just step in here, will you? And I press a button and up we go.’

The cage shot upwards. When it stopped, the mouse opened the door. ‘See, it’s rather a bare loft here,’ he said. ‘If you will just come to the window here you’ll be
able to see down.’ They looked out of the little window. They were amazed to find that they were right at the very top of the great elm tree. Close to them was an old rook’s nest: it
looked like a mass of black timbers, big as a church. Just beyond it, on a twig, was a rook swaying in the sun: his back, which was towards them, glistened purple. ‘Dangerous chaps,
those,’ the field mouse said. ‘I keep out of their way as a rule. Now just come this way. Now here,’ he said, ‘is one of the slides. If you just let yourself go you
can’t hurt yourself. You just slither down on to moss.’