The E. Nesbit Megapack: 26 Classic Novels and Stories (164 page)

It was jolly to be in the sunshine again. I never knew before how cold it was underground. The stream was getting smaller and smaller.

Dicky said, ‘This can’t be the way. I expect there was a turning to the North Pole inside the tunnel, only we missed it. It was cold enough there.’

But here a twist in the stream brought us out from the bushes, and Oswald said—

‘Here is strange, wild, tropical vegetation in the richest profusion. Such blossoms as these never opened in a frigid what’s-its-name.’

It was indeed true. We had come out into a sort of marshy, swampy place like I think, a jungle is, that the stream ran through, and it was simply crammed with queer plants, and flowers we never saw before or since. And the stream was quite thin. It was torridly hot, and softish to walk on. There were rushes and reeds and small willows, and it was all tangled over with different sorts of grasses—and pools here and there. We saw no wild beasts, but there were more different kinds of wild flies and beetles than you could believe anybody could bear, and dragon-flies and gnats. The girls picked a lot of flowers. I know the names of some of them, but I will not tell you them because this is not meant to be instructing. So I will only name meadow-sweet, yarrow, loose-strife, lady’s bed-straw and willow herb—both the larger and the lesser.

Everyone now wished to go home. It was much hotter there than in natural fields. It made you want to tear all your clothes off and play at savages, instead of keeping respectable in your boots.

But we had to bear the boots because it was so brambly.

It was Oswald who showed the others how flat it would be to go home the same way we came; and he pointed out the telegraph wires in the distance and said—

‘There must be a road there, let’s make for it,’ which was quite a simple and ordinary thing to say, and he does not ask for any credit for it. So we sloshed along, scratching our legs with the brambles, and the water squelched in our boots, and Alice’s blue muslin frock was torn all over in those crisscross tears which are considered so hard to darn.

We did not follow the stream any more. It was only a trickle now, so we knew we had tracked it to its source. And we got hotter and hotter and hotter, and the dews of agony stood in beads on our brows and rolled down our noses and off our chins. And the flies buzzed, and the gnats stung, and Oswald bravely sought to keep up Dicky’s courage, when he tripped on a snag and came down on a bramble bush, by saying—

‘You see it
is
the source of the Nile we’ve discovered. What price North Poles now?’

Alice said, ‘Ah, but think of ices! I expect Oswald wishes it
had
been the Pole, anyway.’

Oswald is naturally the leader, especially when following up what is his own idea, but he knows that leaders have other duties besides just leading. One is to assist weak or wounded members of the expedition, whether Polar or Equatorish.

So the others had got a bit ahead through Oswald lending the tottering Denny a hand over the rough places. Denny’s feet hurt him, because when he was a beaver his stockings had dropped out of his pocket, and boots without stockings are not a bed of luxuriousness. And he is often unlucky with his feet.

Presently we came to a pond, and Denny said—

‘Let’s paddle.’

Oswald likes Denny to have ideas; he knows it is healthy for the boy, and generally he backs him up, but just now it was getting late and the others were ahead, so he said—

‘Oh, rot! come on.’

Generally the Dentist would have; but even worms will turn if they are hot enough, and if their feet are hurting them. ‘I don’t care, I shall!’ he said.

Oswald overlooked the mutiny and did not say who was leader. He just said—

‘Well don’t be all day about it,’ for he is a kind-hearted boy and can make allowances. So Denny took off his boots and went into the pool. ‘Oh, it’s ripping!’ he said. ‘You ought to come in.’

‘It looks beastly muddy,’ said his tolerating leader.

‘It is a bit,’ Denny said, ‘but the mud’s just as cool as the water, and so soft, it squeezes between your toes quite different to boots.’

And so he splashed about, and kept asking Oswald to come along in.

But some unseen influence prevented Oswald doing this; or it may have been because both his bootlaces were in hard knots.

Oswald had cause to bless the unseen influence, or the bootlaces, or whatever it was.

Denny had got to the middle of the pool, and he was splashing about, and getting his clothes very wet indeed, and altogether you would have thought his was a most envious and happy state. But alas! the brightest cloud had a waterproof lining. He was just saying—

‘You are a silly, Oswald. You’d much better—’ when he gave a blood-piercing scream, and began to kick about.

‘What’s up?’ cried the ready Oswald; he feared the worst from the way Denny screamed, but he knew it could not be an old meat tin in this quiet and jungular spot, like it was in the moat when the shark bit Dora.

‘I don’t know, it’s biting me. Oh, it’s biting me all over my legs! Oh, what shall I do? Oh, it does hurt! Oh! oh! oh!’ remarked Denny, among his screams, and he splashed towards the bank. Oswald went into the water and caught hold of him and helped him out. It is true that Oswald had his boots on, but I trust he would not have funked the unknown terrors of the deep, even without his boots, I am almost sure he would not have.

When Denny had scrambled and been hauled ashore, we saw with horror and amaze that his legs were stuck all over with large black, slug-looking things. Denny turned green in the face—and even Oswald felt a bit queer, for he knew in a moment what the black dreadfulnesses were. He had read about them in a book called Magnet Stories, where there was a girl called Theodosia, and she could play brilliant trebles on the piano in duets, but the other girl knew all about leeches which is much more useful and golden deedy. Oswald tried to pull the leeches off, but they wouldn’t, and Denny howled so he had to stop trying. He remembered from the Magnet Stories how to make the leeches begin biting—the girl did it with cream—but he could not remember how to stop them, and they had not wanted any showing how to begin.

‘Oh, what shall I do? What shall I do? Oh, it does hurt! Oh, oh!’ Denny observed, and Oswald said—

‘Be a man! Buck up! If you won’t let me take them off you’ll just have to walk home in them.’

At this thought the unfortunate youth’s tears fell fast. But Oswald gave him an arm, and carried his boots for him, and he consented to buck up, and the two struggled on towards the others, who were coming back, attracted by Denny’s yells. He did not stop howling for a moment, except to breathe. No one ought to blame him till they have had eleven leeches on their right leg and six on their left, making seventeen in all, as Dicky said, at once.

It was lucky he did yell, as it turned out, because a man on the road—where the telegraph wires were—was interested by his howls, and came across the marsh to us as hard as he could. When he saw Denny’s legs he said—

‘Blest if I didn’t think so,’ and he picked Denny up and carried him under one arm, where Denny went on saying ‘Oh!’ and ‘It does hurt’ as hard as ever.

Our rescuer, who proved to be a fine big young man in the bloom of youth, and a farm-labourer by trade, in corduroys, carried the wretched sufferer to the cottage where he lived with his aged mother; and then Oswald found that what he had forgotten about the leeches was
salt
. The young man in the bloom of youth’s mother put salt on the leeches, and they squirmed off, and fell with sickening, slug-like flops on the brick floor.

Then the young man in corduroys and the bloom, etc., carried Denny home on his back, after his legs had been bandaged up, so that he looked like ‘wounded warriors returning.’

It was not far by the road, though such a long distance by the way the young explorers had come.

He was a good young man, and though, of course, acts of goodness are their own reward, still I was glad he had the two half-crowns Albert’s uncle gave him, as well as his own good act. But I am not sure Alice ought to have put him in the Golden Deed book which was supposed to be reserved for Us.

Perhaps you will think this was the end of the source of the Nile (or North Pole). If you do, it only shows how mistaken the gentlest reader may be.

The wounded explorer was lying with his wounds and bandages on the sofa, and we were all having our tea, with raspberries and white currants, which we richly needed after our torrid adventures, when Mrs Pettigrew, the housekeeper, put her head in at the door and said—

‘Please could I speak to you half a moment, sir?’ to Albert’s uncle. And her voice was the kind that makes you look at each other when the grown-up has gone out, and you are silent, with your bread-and-butter halfway to the next bite, or your teacup in mid flight to your lips.

It was as we suppose. Albert’s uncle did not come back for a long while. We did not keep the bread-and-butter on the wing all that time, of course, and we thought we might as well finish the raspberries and white currants. We kept some for Albert’s uncle, of course, and they were the best ones too but when he came back he did not notice our thoughtful unselfishness.

He came in, and his face wore the look that means bed, and very likely no supper.

He spoke, and it was the calmness of white-hot iron, which is something like the calmness of despair. He said—

‘You have done it again. What on earth possessed you to make a dam?’

‘We were being beavers,’ said H. O., in proud tones. He did not see as we did where Albert’s uncle’s tone pointed to.

‘No doubt,’ said Albert’s uncle, rubbing his hands through his hair. ‘No doubt! no doubt! Well, my beavers, you may go and build dams with your bolsters. Your dam stopped the stream; the clay you took for it left a channel through which it has run down and ruined about seven pounds’ worth of freshly-reaped barley. Luckily the farmer found it out in time or you might have spoiled seventy pounds’ worth. And you burned a bridge yesterday.’

We said we were sorry. There was nothing else to say, only Alice added, ‘We didn’t
mean
to be naughty.’

‘Of course not,’ said Albert’s uncle, ‘you never do. Oh, yes, I’ll kiss you—but it’s bed and it’s two hundred lines tomorrow, and the line is—“Beware of Being Beavers and Burning Bridges. Dread Dams.” It will be a capital exercise in capital B’s and D’s.’

We knew by that that, though annoyed, he was not furious; we went to bed.

I got jolly sick of capital B’s and D’s before sunset on the morrow. That night, just as the others were falling asleep, Oswald said—

‘I say.’

‘Well,’ retorted his brother.

‘There is one thing about it,’ Oswald went on, ‘it does show it was a rattling good dam anyhow.’

And filled with this agreeable thought, the weary beavers (or explorers, Polar or otherwise) fell asleep.

CHAPTER 8

THE HIG
H-BORN BABE

It really was not such a bad baby—for a baby. Its face was round and quite clean, which babies’ faces are not always, as I daresay you know by your own youthful relatives; and Dora said its cape was trimmed with real lace, whatever that may be—I don’t see myself how one kind of lace can be realler than another. It was in a very swagger sort of perambulator when we saw it; and the perambulator was standing quite by itself in the lane that leads to the mill.

‘I wonder whose baby it is,’ Dora said. ‘Isn’t it a darling, Alice?’

Alice agreed to its being one, and said she thought it was most likely the child of noble parents stolen by gypsies.

‘These two, as likely as not,’ Noël said. ‘Can’t you see something crime-like in the very way they’re lying?’

They were two tramps, and they were lying on the grass at the edge of the lane on the shady side fast asleep, only a very little further on than where the Baby was. They were very ragged, and their snores did have a sinister sound.

‘I expect they stole the titled heir at dead of night, and they’ve been travelling hot-foot ever since, so now they’re sleeping the sleep of exhaustedness,’ Alice said. ‘What a heart-rending scene when the patrician mother wakes in the morning and finds the infant aristocrat isn’t in bed with his mamma.’

The Baby was fast asleep or else the girls would have kissed it. They are strangely fond of kissing. The author never could see anything in it himself.

‘If the gypsies
did
steal it,’ Dora said ‘perhaps they’d sell it to us. I wonder what they’d take for it.’

‘What could you do with it if you’d got it?’ H. O. asked.

‘Why, adopt it, of course,’ Dora said. ‘I’ve often thought I should enjoy adopting a baby. It would be a golden deed, too. We’ve hardly got any in the book yet.’

‘I should have thought there were enough of us,’ Dicky said.

‘Ah, but you’re none of you babies,’ said Dora.

‘Unless you count H. O. as a baby: he behaves jolly like one sometimes.’

This was because of what had happened that morning when Dicky found H. O. going fishing with a box of worms, and the box was the one Dicky keeps his silver studs in, and the medal he got at school, and what is left of his watch and chain. The box is lined with red velvet and it was not nice afterwards. And then H. O. said Dicky had hurt him, and he was a beastly bully, and he cried. We thought all this had been made up, and were sorry to see it threaten to break out again. So Oswald said—

‘Oh, bother the Baby! Come along, do!’

And the others came.

We were going to the miller’s with a message about some flour that hadn’t come, and about a sack of sharps for the pigs.

After you go down the lane you come to a clover-field, and then a cornfield, and then another lane, and then it is the mill. It is a jolly fine mill: in fact it is two—water and wind ones—one of each kind—with a house and farm buildings as well. I never saw a mill like it, and I don’t believe you have either.

If we had been in a story-book the miller’s wife would have taken us into the neat sanded kitchen where the old oak settle was black with time and rubbing, and dusted chairs for us—old brown Windsor chairs—and given us each a glass of sweet-scented cowslip wine and a thick slice of rich home-made cake. And there would have been fresh roses in an old china bowl on the table. As it was, she asked us all into the parlour and gave us Eiffel Tower lemonade and Marie biscuits. The chairs in her parlour were ‘bent wood,’ and no flowers, except some wax ones under a glass shade, but she was very kind, and we were very much obliged to her. We got out to the miller, though, as soon as we could; only Dora and Daisy stayed with her, and she talked to them about her lodgers and about her relations in London.

The miller is a
man
. He showed us all over the mills—both kinds—and let us go right up into the very top of the wind-mill, and showed us how the top moved round so that the sails could catch the wind, and the great heaps of corn, some red and some yellow (the red is English wheat), and the heaps slice down a little bit at a time into a square hole and go down to the mill-stones. The corn makes a rustling soft noise that is very jolly—something like the noise of the sea—and you can hear it through all the other mill noises.

Then the miller let us go all over the water-mill. It is fairy palaces inside a mill. Everything is powdered over white, like sugar on pancakes when you are allowed to help yourself. And he opened a door and showed us the great water-wheel working on slow and sure, like some great, round, dripping giant, Noël said, and then he asked us if we fished.