The Wind on the Moon (35 page)

‘You realise, of course, that we have no rations for the journey?'

‘Perhaps you would like a piece of cake?' said Mr. Stevens, and opening his sack—he and Notchy still carried all their tools—he took out an enormous iced cake which weighed at least ten pounds.

‘The christening cake!' said Mr. Corvo. ‘How did you obtain it?'

‘It was on a table just inside the room where the baby was screaming,' said Mr. Stevens. ‘I chanced to look in, and seeing it there I thought it might come in useful.'

‘We're very good at foraging,' said Notchy complacently.

At that moment, with his usual rushing noise and swift descent, the Falcon appeared. ‘I am very glad you have arrived,' he said. ‘I think the train will be leaving to-night. There is an engine coming now, on this line, from Gliedermannheim station. Where is the Puma?'

Dinah and Dorinda, their eyes still red with weeping, told him the story. He listened gravely, and then said, ‘She was a good friend, she had a great heart. It brings more sorrow than I had thought possible to hear of her death, and I shall miss her sadly. But it is better, for us who are the great birds and beasts of the world, to die in fight than to grow weary of life and feel strength wasting in a slow disease.'

Notchy Knight, who had been walking in the wood, now came hurrying back and exclaimed, ‘Mr. Stevens, Mr. Stevens! Come and see what I have found!'

‘What is it, Notchy?'

‘A hole! A beautiful deep hole! Do come and see it.'

The hole, no more than thirty yards away, was like a boring for a well. ‘It is one of those that I told you about,' said Mr. Corvo to Dinah and Dorinda. ‘It must have been dug when people all over Bombardy were digging for treasure.'

Mr. Stevens lay on his stomach and peered down. ‘It seems to be
very
deep,' he said. ‘This is indeed a welcome find. Make the rope fast to that tree, Notchy. I'm going down.'

‘You've no time for that sort of thing now,' said Major Palfrey. ‘It will be dark in a few minutes—dark enough to get into the van—and the train may leave at any moment. If you want to come back to England with us, you can't go down that hole.'

‘England!' said Mr. Stevens. ‘It would be very pleasant to see England again. I dare say there have been many changes there since we left for the Crimea.'

‘I never cared very much for the climate,' said Notchy thoughtfully, ‘and I don't suppose that has changed.'

‘I still owe my tailor a bill,' said Mr. Stevens. ‘That might give rise to some unpleasantness.'

‘This hole,' said Notchy, ‘is one of the most promising holes I have seen for a long time. It would be a most interesting experiment to drive a sap from the bottom of it.'

‘I don't suppose we should know many people in England now,' said Mr. Stevens.

‘Very few indeed,' said Notchy.

‘And it's quite improbable that we should find a better hole than this.'

‘Most unlikely,' said Notchy.

‘I think we shall stay here,' said Mr. Stevens, ‘and just go on sapping, which is the profession we have been practising for so long and to which we have now grown thoroughly accustomed. But if you should happen to meet His Majesty King George the Sixth, I hope you will assure him that we are now as loyal to him as we have been, for so many years, to her late Glorious Majesty Queen Victoria.'

‘And do not forget to offer our respectful devotion to the two Princesses,' said Notchy.

Then, taking hold of the rope which Notchy had made fast to a near-by tree, Mr. Stevens swung his legs into the hole and began to go down hand over hand. ‘Good-bye!' he said, just as his head was disappearing.

Notchy followed him. ‘Good-bye!' he exclaimed, and vanished from sight.

Dorinda leaned over the edge and shouted, ‘You've left the christening cake. What shall we do with it?'

‘Take it with you,' said a voice from far down the hole. ‘We can look after ourselves. We're
very
good at foraging.'

A moment later they heard the thud and clink of spade and pick. The old men were already at work. And then their voices rose, small and muffled. They were singing:

A long shrill whistle followed the song. It came from some distance away.

‘The engine!' Major Palfrey rose quickly, the others following, and returned to the edge of the wood. In the gathering darkness they saw an engine backing down the line towards the stationary train.

‘It's scarcely dark enough yet to get in without being seen. Which is the van that we must travel in?'

Dinah spoke to the Falcon, and answered, ‘The one with the trap-door in the roof is the farthest from the engine.'

The engine was coupled to the train.

‘No, it isn't dark enough yet,' said Mr. Corvo anxiously, ‘but we shall have to risk it.'

‘I have an idea,' said Dinah, and spoke again to the Falcon.

‘Keea, keea!' he said laughing. ‘Yes, I can do that.'

He rose swiftly and flew towards the front of the train. Then from a height of three hundred feet, with a rushing noise of his wings, he swooped down upon the engine, screaming harshly.

The engine-driver and the fireman and the man from the signal-box, who had come to couple the train, looked up in great surprise.

‘Now,' said Dinah. ‘Now is our chance. They won't look at anything else.'

They hurried down to the line, Dorinda carrying the christening cake, and came to the van. The Falcon, rising and stooping again and again, held all the attention of the engine-driver, the fireman, and the man from the signal-box. They grew angry and began to throw pieces of coal at him, but the Falcon easily avoided them.

Major Palfrey, Dinah and Dorinda, and Mr. Corvo climbed to the roof of the van, opened the trap-door, and got inside. Nobody saw them. The Falcon made a last screaming attack, and then flew high into the gathering darkness of the night.

Five minutes later the train started.

‘It's not as comfortable as it was before,' said Dorinda.

‘No,' said Mr. Corvo. ‘They were good rooms that Bultek made for us among the furniture. This time we shall not travel in luxury.'

‘You do want to come back with us, don't you?' said Dinah to Mr. Corvo. ‘I mean, Bombardy is your own country, and you haven't seen very much of it, and if you have any relations—'

‘All my relations went abroad when Count Hulagu became the Tyrant,' said Mr. Corvo. ‘Some went to South America, some to South Africa, and some to Southend. I went to Mid-meddlecum, and there I have my many pupils, whom I wish to instruct. Bombardy is beautiful, but England is more convenient, and I am very glad to be returning. But I wish they had left some sofas and chairs in the van.'

‘It might be worse,' said Major Palfrey.

‘It might be much worse,' said Dinah. ‘We might still be in the dungeon. If the Puma hadn't saved us, we should have had to go back to it.'

‘Come,' said Major Palfrey, ‘and help me to make the beds.'

There was a good deal of sacking in the van, that the furniture had been wrapped in, and some loose straw. They gathered everything together and made couches on the floor. They were not very soft but nobody complained, and after the long excitement of the day they were soon asleep.

The train ran slowly, often stopping, and they had a long journey back. They finished the christening cake before they got into France, but that night Mr. Corvo found, in the cart-shed of a little farm near the railway, a hen sitting on eleven eggs, and carried them off in his hat. Three of them were bad, but they ate the others raw. They had two each and felt a lot better.

It was on the following night that they went aboard the train-ferry, and then at last they felt perfectly safe. Then they knew for certain that they had really and finally escaped, and would soon be home again. As the ship put out they suddenly became wildly happy. They were hungry and dirty and tired, but that no longer seemed to matter. They were free, they were going home, and nothing else counted.

The Channel was calm as an inland lake, and when Mr. Corvo climbed on to Major Palfrey's back to open the trap-door—that was how they had to get out now, Dinah and Dorinda going next, and then Mr. Corvo would lean down and catch Major Palfrey's outstretched hands and pull him up—when they were all outside and sitting in the shadow of the van where no one could see them, the moon rose over a cloud and shone with a clear silver light. The clouds fell lower, and soon the whole sky was empty but for the radiant circle of the moon. It was very pale, and perfectly calm, and beautiful.

‘Do you remember,' said Major Palfrey, ‘the night in Midmeddlecum when I was packing and you climbed the apple-tree and tied bells on the branches? It was just twelve months ago, and the moon—do you remember?—had a stormy ring round it, and I told you that when there was an ill wind blowing on the moon it might blow into your hearts, if you were naughty, and keep you naughty for a year.'

‘I suppose we haven't always behaved really well,' said Dinah, ‘but we have learnt a lot of things that we wouldn't have learnt if we had behaved in a perfectly ordinary way.'

‘And we have had a lot of fun,' said Dorinda.

‘And we have rescued you,' said Dinah.

‘Yes, yes,' said Major Palfrey. ‘Except for the worry you have caused your poor mother, and the waste of so much time that you might have spent with Miss Serendip, I find it difficult to blame you.'

‘It would be very foolish indeed to blame them for coming to save you from Count Hulagu's dungeon,' said Mr. Corvo.

‘When I was a boy,' said Major Palfrey, ‘I had to obey my parents in everything.'

‘I like to think for myself,' said Dinah.

‘So do I,' said Dorinda. ‘Well, sometimes it's a nuisance, of course, but when it isn't a nuisance I do.'

‘The moon is quite calm now,' said Major Palfrey doubtfully. ‘Thinking for yourselves, perhaps, won't always have such unusual results as it has had in the past year.'

Presently they went back into the van and tried to sleep. But now they were too excited for that, so Mr. Corvo gave them a dancing lesson. He made them dance a Foursome Reel till they were quite exhausted, and then, when they lay down, they fell asleep immediately. And when they woke up they were in the railway yard at Dover.

‘And now,' said Major Palfrey in a very brisk and businesslike way, ‘we shall go to a hotel, and have a bath and get some breakfast. I shall telephone to the War Office to report my arrival, and telephone to your mother to let her know that we are safe and shall be home this evening.'

So they climbed out of the van and then, when they looked at each other in the morning sunlight, they began to laugh. For they were all as dirty and shabby and wildly untidy as scarecrows. Major Palfrey had a fully grown beard, and Mr. Corvo a half-grown beard, and both had straw in their beards, and Dinah and Dorinda had straw in their tangled hair. Their faces were filthy, their clothes were dusty and torn, and the longer they looked at each other, the louder they laughed. And while they were laughing they heard a stern voice saying, ‘Now, what's the meaning of all this? Who are you, and where do you come from?'

They looked round and saw a tall policeman frowning at them. Major Palfrey began to explain, but the policeman interrupted him and said, ‘You come along with me and tell that story to the Inspector. Now don't start any trouble, because I don't like trouble, and I'm horrified by people who make trouble, and consequently I become irate and spiteful. So you'll come quietly, won't you?'

They said they would, and were marched off to a police station not far away. But after Major Palfrey had spoken for a few minutes to the Inspector they were treated very kindly, and while Major Palfrey was telephoning, a policeman gave Dinah and Dorinda and Mr. Corvo enormous cups of cocoa and bread and jam.

Then Major Palfrey called the Inspector to the telephone, and the Inspector spoke for several minutes, very respectfully because he was talking to someone at the War Office, and after that he rang up another number, and in twenty minutes' time a smartly dressed man in a bowler hat, a black jacket, and striped trousers appeared at the police station. This was the cashier of a bank in Dover, and though he was very surprised at Major Palfrey's appearance he gave him £50, and Major Palfrey gave him a receipt for it.