"He's going to work on the cage-house," said Homily.
They saw with a kind of distant curiosity the whole layout of Mr. Platter's model village and the river twisting away beyond it to the three distant poplars that marked what Pod now referred to as their L.Z.1
During the last few days he had taken to using abbreviations of ballooning terms, referring to the musical box as the T.O.P.2 They were now, with the gleaming slates of the roof just below them, feeling their way toward a convenient C.A.3
Strangely enough, after their many trial trips up and down from the ceiling, the basket felt quite homelike and familiar. Arrietty, whose job was "ballast," glanced at her father who stood looking rapt and interested—but not too preoccupied—with his hand on the lever of the cut-off fountain pen. Homily, although a little pale, was matter-of-factly adjusting the coiled line of the grapnel, one spike of which had slid below the level of the basket. "Might just catch in something," she murmured. The grapnel consisted of two large open safety pins, securely wired back to back. Pod, who for days had been studying the trend of the ilex leaves, remarked, "Wind's all right but not enough of it..." as very gently, as though waltzing, they twisted above the roof. Pod, looking ahead, had his eye on the ilex.
"A couple of tickets now, Arrietty," he said. "Takes a few minutes to feel the effect..."
She tore them off and dropped them overboard. They fluttered gently and ran a little on the slates of the roof and then lay still.
"Let's give her two more," said Pod. And within a few seconds, staring at the ilex tree as slowly it loomed nearer, he added, "Better make it three..."
"We've had six shillings' worth already," Arrietty protested.
"All right," said Pod, as the balloon began to lift, "let's leave it at that."
"But I've done it now," she said.
They sailed over the ilex tree with plenty of height to spare, and the balloon still went on rising. Homily gazed down as the ground receded.
"Careful, Pod..." she said.
"It's all right," he told them. "I'm bringing her down." And in spite of the upturned tube, they smelled a slight smell of gas.
Even from this height the noises were quite distinct. They heard Mr. Platter hammering at the cage-house and—although the railway looked so distant—the sound of a shunting train. As they swept down rather faster than Pod had bargained for, they found themselves carried beyond the confines of Mr. Platter's garden and drifting—on a descending spiral—above the main road. A farm cart crawled slowly beneath them on the broad sunlit stretch, which, curving ribbon-like into the distance, looked frayed along one side by the shadows thrown from the hedges and from the spindly wayside woods. There was a woman on the shafts of the farm cart and a man asleep in the back.
"We're heading away from our L.Z.," said Pod. "Better give her three more tickets—there's less wind down here than above..."
As the balloon began to lift, they passed over one of Mr. Platter's lately built villas in which someone was practicing the piano. A stream of metallic notes flowed up and about them and a dog began to bark.
They began to rise quite swiftly—on the three legitimate tickets and an extra one-and-sixpenny's worth—thrown down by Arrietty. She did it on an impulse and knew at once that it was wrong. Their very lives depended on obedience to the pilot, and how could the pilot navigate if she cheated on commands? She felt very guilty as the balloon continued to rise. They were passing over a field of cows, which, second by second, as she stared down at them, were becoming steadily smaller; all the same, a tremulous 'Moo' surged up to them through the quiet air and eddied about their ears. She could hear a lark singing, and over a spreading cherry orchard she smelled the sticky scent of sun-warmed buds and blossoms. It's more like mid-April, Arrietty thought, than the twenty-eighth of March.
"Spiller would have liked this," she said aloud.
"Maybe," said Homily, rather grimly.
"When I grow up, I think I'll marry Spiller..."
"Spiller!" exclaimed Homily in an astounded voice.
"What's wrong with him?" asked Arrietty.
"There's nothing exactly wrong with him," admitted Homily grudgingly. "I mean if you tied him up a bit.... But where do you imagine you'd live? He's always on the move."
"I'd be on the move, too," said Arrietty.
Homily stared at her. "Whatever will you think of to say next? And what a place to choose to say it in. Marry Spiller! Did you hear that, Pod?"
"Yes, I heard," he said.
The balloon was still rising.
"He likes the out-of-doors, you see," said Arrietty, "and I like it, too."
"Marry Spiller ..." Homily repeated to herself—she could not get over it.
"And if we were always on the move, we'd be freer to come and see you more often..."
"So it's got to 'we'!" said Homily.
"...and I couldn't do that," Arrietty went on, "if I married into a family with a set house the other side of Bedfordshire..."
"But you're only sixteen!" exclaimed Homily.
"Seventeen—nearly," said Arrietty. She was silent a moment and then she said, "I think I ought to tell him..."
"Pod!" exclaimed Homily. "Do you hear? It must be the height or something, but this child's gone out of her senses!"
"I'm trying to find the wind," said Pod, staring steadily upward to where a slight film of mist appeared to drift toward the sun.
"You see," Arrietty went on quietly (she had been thinking of her talks with Miss Menzies and of those blue eyes full of tears), "he's so shy and he goes about so much, he might never think of asking me. And one day he might get tired of being lonely and marry some—" Arrietty hesitated. "—some terribly nice kind of borrower with very fat legs..."
"There isn't such a thing as a borrower with fat legs," exclaimed Homily, "except perhaps your aunt Lupy. Not that I've actually ever seen her legs..." she added thoughtfully, gazing upward as though following the direction of Pod's eyes. Then she snapped back again to the subject. "What nonsense you do talk, Arrietty," she said. "I can't imagine what sort of rubbish you must have been reading in that Illustrated London News. Why, you and Spiller are more like brother and sister!"
Arrietty was just about going to say—but she couldn't quite find the words—that this seemed quite a good kind of trial run for what was after all a lifelong companionship, when something came between them and the sun, and a sudden chill struck the basket. The top of the envelope had melted into mist, and the earth below them disappeared from sight.
They stared at each other. Nothing else existed now except the familiar juice-stained basket, hung in a limbo of whiteness, and their three rather frightened selves.
"It's all right," said Pod. "We're in a cloud. I'll let out a little gas..."
They were silent while he did so, staring intently at his steady hand on the lever—it hardly seemed to move.
"Not too much," he explained in a quiet conversational voice. "The condensation on the net will help us: there's a lot of weight in water. And I think we've found the wind!"
Chapter Twenty-two
They were in sunshine again quite suddenly and cruising smoothly and softly on a gentle breeze toward their still distant L.Z.
"Shouldn't wonder," remarked Pod cheerfully, "if we hadn't hit on our right C.A. at last."
Homily shivered. "I didn't like that at all."
"Nor did I," agreed Arrietty. There was no sense of wind in the basket, and she turned up her face to the sun, basking gratefully in the suddenly restored warmth.
They passed over a group of cottages set about a small, squat church. Three people with baskets were grouped about a shop, and they heard a sudden peal of very hearty laughter. In a back garden they saw a woman with her back to them, hanging washing on a line; it hung quite limply.
"Not much wind down there," remarked Pod.
"Nor all that much up here," retorted Homily.
They stared down in silence for a while.
"I won
der why no one ever looks up," Arrietty exclaimed suddenly.
"Human beings don't look up much," said Pod. "Too full of their own concerns." He thought a moment. "Unless, maybe, they hear a sudden loud noise ... or see a flash or something. They don't have to keep their eyes open like borrowers do."
"Or birds," said Arrietty, "or mice..."
"Or anything that's hunted," said Pod.
"Isn't there anything that hunts human beings?" Arrietty asked.
"Not that I know of," said Pod. "Might do 'em a bit of good if there were. Show 'em what it feels like, for once." He was silent a moment and then he said, "Some say they hunt each other..."
"Oh, no!" exclaimed Homily, shocked. (Strictly brought up in the borrowers' code of one-for-all and all-for-one, it was as though he had accused the human race of cannibalism.) "You shouldn't say such things, Pod—no kind of creature could be as bad as that!"
"I've heard it said!" he persisted stolidly. "Sometimes singly and sometimes one lot against another lot!"
"All of them human beings?" Homily exclaimed incredulously.
Pod nodded. "Yes," he said, "all of them human beings."
Horrified but fascinated, Homily stared down below at a man on a bicycle, as though unable to grasp such depravity. He looked quite ordinary—almost like a borrower from here—and wobbled slightly on the lower slopes of what appeared to be a hill. She stared incredulously until the rider turned in to the lower gate of the churchyard.
There was a sudden smell of Irish stew, followed by a whiff of coffee.
"Must be getting on for midday," said Pod, and as he spoke, the church clock struck twelve.
"I don't like these eddies," said Pod some time later, as the balloon, once again on a downward spiral, curved away from the river. "...something to do with the ground warming up and that bit of hill over there."
"Would anybody like something to eat?" suggested Homily suddenly. There were slivers of ham, a crumbly knob of cheese, a few grains of cold rice pudding, and a long segment of orange on which to quench their thirst.
"Better wait a while," said Pod, his hand on the valve. The balloon was moving downward.
"I don't see why," said Homily. "It must be long past one."
"I know," said Pod, "but it's better we hold off, if we can. We may have to jettison the rations, and you can't do that once you've eaten them."
"I don't know what you mean," complained Homily.
"Throw the food overboard," explained Arrietty who, on Pod's orders, had torn off several more tickets.
"You see," said Pod, "what with one thing and another, I've let out a good deal of gas."
Homily was silent. After a while she said, "I don't like the way we keep turning round. First the church is on our right; the next it's run round to the left. I mean, you don't know where you are, not for two minutes together."
"It'll be all right," said Pod, "once we've hit the wind. Let go another two," he added to Arrietty.
It was just enough; they rose gently, held on a steady current, and moved slowly toward the stream.
"Now," said Pod, "if we keep on this, we're all right." He stared ahead to where, speckled by the sunshine, the poplar trees loomed nearer. "We're going nicely now."
"You mean we might hit Little Fordham?"
"Not unlikely," said Pod.
"If you ask me," exclaimed Homily, screwing up her eyes against the afternoon sun, "the whole thing's hit or miss!"
"Not altogether," said Pod, and he let out a little more gas. "We bring her down slowly, gradually losing altitude. Once we're in reach of the ground, we steady her with the trail rope. Acts like a kind of brake. And directly I give her the word, Arrietty releases the grapnel."
Homily was silent again. Impressed but still rather anxious, she stared steadily ahead. The river swam gently toward them until and at last it came directly below. The light wind seemed to follow the river's course as it curved ahead into the distance. The poplars now seemed to beckon as they swayed and stirred in the breeze, and their long shadows—even longer by now—were stretching directly toward them. They sailed as though drawn on a string.
Pod let out more gas. "Better uncoil the trail rope," he said to Arrietty.
"Already?"
"Yes," said Pod, "you got to be prepared..."
The ground swayed slowly up toward them. A clump of oak trees seemed to move aside, and they saw just ahead and slightly tilted a birds'-eye view of their long-lost Little Fordham.
"You wouldn't credit it!" breathed Homily, as raptly they stared ahead.
They could see the railway lines glinting in the sunshine, the weathercock flashing on the church's steeple, the uneven roofs along the narrow High Street, and the crooked chimney of their own dear home. They saw the garden front of Mr. Pott's thatched cottage, and beyond the dark green of the holly hedge a stretch of sunlit lane. A tweed-clad figure strode along it in a loose-limbed, youthful way. They knew it was Miss Menzies—going home to tea. And Mr. Pott, thought Arrietty, would have gone inside for his.
The balloon was sinking fast.
"Careful, Pod!" urged Homily, "or you'll have us in the river!"
As swiftly the balloon sank down, a veil-like something suddenly appeared along the edge of the garden. As they swam down, they saw it to be a line of strong wire fencing girding the bank of the river. Mr. Pott had taken precautions, and his treasures were now caged in.
"Time, too!" said Homily grimly. Then, suddenly, she shrieked and clung to the sides of the basket as the stream rushed up toward them.
"Get ready the grapnel!" shouted Pod. But even as he spoke, the basket had hit the water and tilted sideways in a flurry of spray. They were dragged along the surface. All three were thrown off balance, and knee-deep in rushing water, they clung to raffia bridles while thé envelope surged on ahead. Pod just managed to close the valve as Arrietty, clinging on with one hand, tried with the other to free the grapnel. But Homily, in a panic and before anyone could stop her, threw out the knob of cheese. The balloon shot violently upward, accompanied by Homily's screams, and then—just as violently—snapped back to a sickening halt. The roll of tickets shot up between them and sailed down into the water. Except for their grips on the bridles, the occupants would have followed. They were thrown up into the air, where they hung for a moment before tumbling back in the basket: a safety pin of the grapnel had caught in the wire of the fence. The tremblings, creakings, twistings, and strainings seemed enough to uproot the fence, and Pod, looking downward as he clung to the reopened valve lever, saw the barb of the safety pin slide.
"That won't hold for long," he gasped.
The quivering basket was held at a terrifying tilt—almost pulled apart, it seemed, between the force of the upward surge and the drag of the grapnel below. The gas was escaping too slowly—it was clearly a race against time.
There was a steady stream of water from the dripping basket. Their three backs were braced against the tilted floor and their feet against one side. As white-faced they all stared downward, they could hear each other's breathing. The angle of the opened pin was slowly growing wider.
Pod took a sudden resolve. "Get hold of the trail rope," he said to Arrietty, "and pass it over to me. I'm going down the grapnel line and taking the trail rope with me."
"Oh, Pod!" cried Homily miserably. "Suppose we shot up without you!"
He took no notice. "Quick!" he urged. And as Arrietty pulled up the length of dripping twine, he took one end in his hand and swung over the edge of the basket onto the line of the grapnel. He slid away below them in one swift downward run, his elbow encircling the trail rope. They watched him steady himself on the top of the fence and climb down a couple of meshes. They watched his swift one-handed movement as he passed the trail rope through the mesh and made fast with a double turn.
Then his small square face turned up toward them.
"Get a hold on the bridles," he called. "There's going to be a bit of a jerk—" He shifted himself a few meshes sidewa
ys from where he could watch the pin.
It slid free with a metallic ping, even sooner than they had expected, and was flung out in a quivering arch, which—whiplike—thrashed the air. The balloon shot up in a frenzied leap but was held by the knotted twine. It seemed frustrated as it strained above them, as though striving to tear itself free. Arrietty and Homily clung together, half laughing and half crying, in a wild access of relief. He had moored them just in time.
"You'll be all right now," Pod called up cheerfully. "Nothing to do but wait," and after staring a moment reflectively, he began to climb down the fence.
"Where are you going, Pod?" Homily cried out shrilly.
He paused and looked up again. "Thought I'd take a look at the house. Our chimney's smoking—seems like there's someone inside."
"But what about us?" cried Homily.
"You'll come down slowly as the envelope deflates, and then you can climb down the fence. I'll be back," he added.
"Of all the things—" exclaimed Homily. "To go away and leave us!"
"What do you want me to do?" asked Pod. "Just stand down below and watch? I won't be long and—say it's Spiller—he's likely to give us a hand. You're all right," he went on. "Take a pull on the trail rope as the balloon comes down; that'll bring you alongside."
"Of all the things!" exclaimed Homily again incredulously, as Pod went on climbing down.
Chapter Twenty-three
The door of Vine Cottage was unlocked, and Pod pushed it open. A fire was burning in an unfamiliar grate, and Spiller lay asleep on the floor. As Pod entered, he scrambled to his feet. They stared at each other. Spiller's pointed face looked tired and his eyes a little sunken.
Pod smiled slowly. "Hello," he said.
"Hello," said Spiller, and without any change of expression he stopped and picked some nutshells from the floor and threw them on the fire. It was a new floor, Pod noticed, of honey-colored wood, with a woven mat beside the fireplace.