The boat was there, draped end to end with seaweed. The glasses rested on it for a few moments. Then they swept the sea, but among the bobbing birds it was impossible to pick out the five wet heads.
The children kept as close to swimming birds as possible. Philip was all right because Huffin and Puffin perched on his head, and hid him beautifully. Lucy-Ann was near a big cormorant, who eyed her with interest but did not swim away from her. Dinah and Jack were among a crowd of bobbing, diving puffins, and Bill, fearful of his big, somewhat bald head being spotted, kept bobbing under the water, and holding his breath there as long as he could.
After what seemed an age the enemy’s motor-boat swung round and went away, going right round the island – or so Bill thought. They heard the sound of its engine growing fainter and fainter.
Not until it had completely died away did Bill let the children get back into the boat. Then, when he thought it was quite safe, they all clambered back, wet and hungry, but no longer sleepy.
‘How slippery the boat is, with all this seaweed!’ said Jack. ‘Dinah, your idea worked well. I don’t think the enemy even guessed there was anyone here – and there were five people and a boat within easy sight of their glasses.’
‘Yes, a very fine idea, Dinah,’ said Bill. ‘Now – what about breakfast? I’m starving!’
They sat down and opened a few tins. Kiki screeched with delight when she saw the chunks of pineapple in one of them. She tried to raise her crest, but as she had only one or two feathers left in it, it was not a very successful effort.
Jack suddenly thought of something. ‘Bill! Do I remember something – something about you and Horace’s radio – or did I dream it? Yes, perhaps I dreamt it.’
You certainly didn’t, said Bill. ‘I found Horace’s radio – most unexpectedly, I must say – and discovered to my joy that it was a transmitter as well as a receiver – so that I ought to be able to send messages as well as receive them.’
‘Oh, Bill! So you’ve radioed for help – and we shall be saved!’ said Lucy-Ann joyfully.
‘Unfortunately there’s something wrong with the thing,’ said Bill. ‘Couldn’t get a chirp out of it – and whether or not my messages have gone through I can’t tell. But probably not. It’s not a very good set, this one of Horace’s.’
‘Oh – so it’s not very likely it was of much use,’ said Dinah, disappointed.
‘Not very,’ said Bill. ‘By the way, did anyone feel a slight upward lift then? I have an idea the boat is coming off the rocks.’
He was right. It was soon afloat, and Bill took the oars. He rowed for some distance away from the island, and then a thought struck him.
‘Look here – Horace couldn’t possibly have come all the way up here – and hoped to get back again – without a store of petrol. Have you examined this boat thoroughly?’
‘No, not really thoroughly,’ said Jack. ‘It isn’t much of a boat.’
‘I grant you that – but there really should be some petrol somewhere,’ said Bill. ‘Philip, pull up those piles of rope and stuff. There would be room under the board there for tins of petrol.’
Philip and Jack did as they were told. They hauled up three loose boards – and there, neatly arranged below, was Horace’s store of petrol!
‘Gosh!’ said Jack. ‘What a find! Now we’ll be all right. We’ll be on the mainland in no time. Good old Horace!’
They handed Bill a tin. He emptied it into the petrol tank of the engine and then took another tin. That was emptied in too. Hurrah! Now they could really make headway.
Soon the engine was purring happily away and the little boat was speeding over the waves. No more rowing! Bill set his course for the south-east.
‘Hark! There’s an aeroplane about somewhere!’ said Lucy-Ann suddenly. ‘I can hear it.’
They all looked up into the sky. Soon they saw the plane, coming from the north-east. It was flying low.
‘Looks as if it’s trying to spot us,’ said Bill uneasily.
‘It belongs to the enemy then!’ said Jack. They all looked intently at the approaching plane. It seemed suddenly to see them, and veered in their direction. It flew down very low, circled round them, and then made off.
‘Blow!’ said Bill. ‘Now we’re for it! They’ll send out their most powerful motor-boat – or maybe one of the seaplanes they seem to use – and that’ll be that!’
‘Well, we’ve got plenty of petrol,’ said Jack, ‘so we can keep on quickly for miles. We’ll be well away from here before long.’
The boat sped on, Bill giving her her top speed. When he reckoned that her petrol would soon be running out he called to Jack, ‘Get out the other tins, Jack. I’ll put some more in before she’s empty.’
But what a shock for the boys! All the other tins were empty! Bill stared in dismay.
‘Gosh! Somebody has swindled Horace properly! He probably gave orders for all the tins to be filled – and somebody took the money for the lot, and only filled half. What a dirty trick!’
‘But just the sort that would be played on poor silly Horace!’ said Philip. ‘Oh, Bill – we’re out on the open sea now, miles away from any island. What will we do if the petrol gives out before we’ve reached anywhere?’
Bill wiped his forehead. ‘I don’t like this,’ he said. ‘There’s not much left in the tank now. Once we run out, we can’t get far with oars, and we shall be at the mercy of any fast motor-boat sent out to catch us. I think perhaps one of the bullets must have glanced off the petrol tank and made it leak a bit.’
Nobody said anything. ‘Oh dear,’ thought Lucy-Ann, ‘just as we think things are all right, they turn out all wrong again.’
After a while the engine stopped with a series of coughs and splutters. ‘No more petrol,’ said Jack gloomily.
‘Send for the doctor,’ said Kiki.
‘Wish we could,’ said Philip.
‘Arrrrr!’ said Huffin from the deck-rail. Both Huffin and Puffin were still with the little company. Lucy-Ann had begun to hope that they would travel right home with them. What excitement they would cause!
‘This is really disgusting,’ said Bill. ‘So near and yet so far!’
There was a dead silence, and only the plish-plash of the sea against the sides of the boat could be heard. Philip’s rats, surprised at the quiet, ran out of the various hiding-places in his clothes, and sniffed the air. Bill hadn’t seen them since he had been captured from Puffin Island, and he stared in surprise.
‘My word – how they’ve grown! Well, well, who knows, we may have to eat them in the end!’
He meant this as a joke, but both Lucy-Ann and Dinah squealed in horror.
‘Ugh! Bill! How could you say such a horrible thing! Eat a rat! I’d rather die!’
‘Shall we row, just for something to do?’ said Jack. ‘Or have a meal? Or what?’
‘Oh, have a meal,’ said Philip. Then a thought struck him. ‘I say, Bill – I suppose we oughtn’t to start rationing ourselves, ought we? I mean – do you think we may be marooned out here on this lonely sea for days on end?’
‘No,’ said Bill, who privately thought that before the day was up they would all be back on the island in the hands of the enemy, now that their plane had spotted them. ‘No. We really don’t need to think of things like that at the moment. All the same – I wouldn’t have headed out for the open sea as we have done, if I’d thought the petrol was going to give out – I’d have kept near the islands.’
It was a boring and anxious day. The four children were still very tired, but refused to try and sleep. No motor-boat appeared in chase of them. The sun began to sink in the west, and it looked as if the little company was going to spend a night out on the open sea.
‘Well, thank goodness it isn’t cold, anyway,’ said Dinah. ‘Even the wind is warm tonight. Don’t we seem a long long way from home – and from school – and from all the ordinary things we know?’
Lucy-Ann gazed round her at the vast open sea, green near
the boat, but a deep blue beyond. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘we’re far away from everywhere – lost on the Sea of Adventure.’
The sun slid down further still. Then, on the evening air, came a familiar sound – the throb-throb-throb of a powerful engine.
Everyone sat up straight at once. Motor-boat? Aeroplane? Seaplane? What was it?
‘There it is!’ cried Jack, making everyone jump. ‘Look, over there! Golly, what a big one! It’s a seaplane.’
‘It must be the one we saw on the lagoon the other day,’ said Dinah. ‘They’ve sent it after us. Oh, Bill – what can we do?’
‘All lie down flat,’ said Bill at once. ‘You’ve got to remember that if it’s the enemy they don’t know I’ve got children with me – they probably think there are three or four men in the boat – and they may shoot, as they did before. So lie down flat and don’t move. Don’t show your heads at all.’
Lucy-Ann’s knees began their familiar wobbly feeling. She lay down flat at once, glad that Bill had not suggested that the boys should squash on top of them again. Bill put his arm over her.
‘Don’t you worry, Lucy-Ann,’ he said. ‘You’ll be all right. They won’t hurt children.’
But Lucy-Ann didn’t want ‘them’ to hurt Bill either, and she was very much afraid they would. With her pale face pressed into the rugs, she lay as still as a mouse.
The roar of the seaplane came much nearer. It circled just overhead. Then its engine cut out and it landed not far off. Waves from it rippled under the boat and sent it up and down.
Nobody dared to look overboard and see the great seaplane. Bill was afraid of a bullet if he did.
Then a colossal voice came booming over the sea, the voice of a giant: AHOY THERE! SHOW YOURSELVES!’
‘Don’t move,’ said Bill urgently. ‘Don’t move. Don’t be frightened, Lucy-Ann. They’re using a megaphone, that’s why the voice sounds so loud.’
The giant voice came again: ‘WE’VE GOT OUR GUNS ON YOU. ANY FUNNY BUSINESS AND YOU’LL BE BLOWN TO SMITHEREENS. SHOW YOURSELVES!’
31
Over the Sea of Adventure
‘It’s no good,’ said Bill, in a low voice. ‘I must stand up. I don’t want them to machine-gun the boat.’
He stood up and waved, then put both hands up to show that he surrendered. A boat put off from the seaplane and came rapidly towards Bill’s boat. In it were three men, one of them holding a revolver in his hand.
The children waited, panic-stricken, fearing to hear a shot at Bill. They had none of them raised their heads, but they could picture all too plainly what was happening.
The boat came near – and then there came a loud cry of amazement from it.
‘BILL! By all that’s wonderful, it’s BILL! Why on earth didn’t you welcome us, instead of making us think you were part of the gang!’
‘Good heavens! It’s you, Joe!’ yelled Bill, and the relief in his voice brought all the children to their feet at once. ‘Look here, kids – it’s Joe – my colleague. Hey, Joe, you got my message then, all right?’
The boat came alongside with a gentle bump. Joe put away his revolver, grinning. ‘Yes, I got your radio message all right – but I guess you didn’t get ours. We kept asking you questions, and all you did was to go on repeating the same old thing. So this seaplane was sent out and we were just cruising along looking for the lagoon you told us about, when we spotted your boat here. So down we came to investigate.’
‘Thank goodness,’ said Bill. ‘We’d run out of petrol. We were expecting the enemy to send a plane or a boat out after us at any moment!’
‘Come along to the seaplane,’ said Joe, who had bright blue eyes and a very wide grin. ‘Will the kids mind flying?’
‘Oh no. We’re used to it,’ said Jack, and helped the girls into the boat where Joe stood.
‘Are we rescued?’ said Lucy-Ann, hardly believing it could be true, after all their alarms and fears.
‘You are,’ said Joe, and grinned at her. ‘Sent one of our biggest seaplanes after you, to take you home! Have to do that for Bill here, you know. He’s a V.I.P.’
‘What’s that?’ asked Lucy-Ann, as they sped towards the seaplane.
‘Very Important Person, of course,’ said Joe. ‘Didn’t you know he was?’
‘Yes,’ said Lucy-Ann, beaming. ‘Oh yes. I always knew he was.’
‘We’ve left Huffin and Puffin behind,’ suddenly wailed Dinah.
‘Good heavens! Was there somebody else in your boat then?’ said Joe in alarm. ‘Never saw them!’
‘Oh, they’re only puffins,’ said Jack. ‘But awfully nice ones, quite tame. Oh, there they are, flying after the boat.’
‘Can we take them with us?’ begged Lucy-Ann. But Bill shook his head.
‘No, Lucy-Ann. They’d be miserable away from their home here in the islands. Soon they will nest again and lay an egg. Then they will forget all about us.’
‘I shall never, never forget them,’ said Lucy-Ann. ‘They kept with us all the time!’
‘Here we are,’ said Joe, as they came to the enormous seaplane. They were helped into it, and then the plane took off smoothly and sweetly, circling into the air like a broad-winged gull. Horace’s boat was left bobbing alone, waiting for one of the police boats to collect it.
‘What about that lagoon?’ said Joe suddenly. ‘I’d like to spot it, and plot it on our maps. I think we can find it. Will these kids know it if they see it?’
‘Oh yes,’ said Jack. ‘You can’t mistake it. It’s a most extraordinary sea-lake, and much bluer than the sea. I shouldn’t be surprised if you can see some of the packages under the water, if you go down low. The water’s so clear there.’
The seaplane roared through the sky. The children were thrilled. Down below was the blue sea, looking smooth and still. Then, as they looked, they saw little islands coming into view. What hosts of them there were!
Then Jack caught sight of the lagoon. ‘There it is, there it is!’ he shouted. ‘Look down there! You can’t mistake it, lying between those two islands, shut in by a reef of rocks all the way round.’
The seaplane circled round the surprising lagoon. It dropped lower. The children watched to see if they could make out any of the underwater packages – and sure enough, through the clear water glimmered the silvery-grey wrapping that covered the hidden guns.
‘That’s where the guns are,’ said Philip. ‘Look, Bill – you can see the waterproof wrappings! They had already begun to lift the packages from the water and load them on to seaplanes. We watched them loading one.’
Bill and Joe exchanged glances. ‘We’ve got some pretty good witnesses then,’ said Joe. ‘Good bunch of kids, this, Bill. Are they the ones you’ve gone adventuring with before?’
‘They are,’ said Bill. ‘You can’t keep them out of adventures, you know. And they will drag me into them too!’
They left the lagoon with its sinister secret behind them and flew over the island where Bill had been a prisoner. ‘There’s the little jetty,’ said Jack, as they flew low. ‘And look, there are two motor-boats there now! I say, Bill – what about Horace?’
‘Horace will be rescued when we clean up these scoundrels,’ said Bill. ‘They’re the men who make fortunes when one country goes to war with another, or when civil war is fought – because they get the guns and sell them to each side. We try to stop it by all kinds of international treaties – but these men are against the law, and scorn it. That’s where I come in – to stop them!’
‘How will you stop them now?’ asked Jack. ‘Will you raid the island – and capture the men? And destroy all the hidden guns? Suppose they escape by motor-boat or plane?’
‘Don’t you worry about that,’ said Joe, with his wide grin stretching across his brown face. ‘We’ve got messages through already. There’ll be a fleet of our seaplanes up here in a few hours – and armed boats patrolling all round. There’s no hope for any of the gang now.’
Except for the little jetty, which wo
uld hardly have been noticed if the children and Bill hadn’t known it was there, there was nothing to see on the enemy’s island at all.
‘Everything well camouflaged,’ said Bill. A clever lot, and I’ve been after them for a long time. They sent me off on all kinds of false trails and I’d almost given up hope of finding their lair. But there it is.’
‘They must have been surprised to see you up here, Bill!’ said Lucy-Ann, as the seaplane left the enemy’s island behind.
‘Oh, look – there’s the island where we landed with Bill!’ cried Dinah. ‘Puffin Island! Do look! There’s the bird-cliff – and you can just see the little narrow channel going into the cliff – only you have to look hard to see it. And there’s where we had our signal fire.’
‘And there’s where we had our tents that blew away in the storm – by those few trees,’ said Jack. And look, there’s the puffin colony!’
The seaplane flew down as low as it dared. It flew low enough for the children to see a moving mass of birds, scared of the enormous noise made by the seaplane’s powerful engines.
‘I can see Huffin and Puffin!’ cried Lucy-Ann. The others roared with laughter.
‘You can’t, you fibber!’ said Dinah.
‘No, I can’t really. I’m pretending to,’ said Lucy-Ann. ‘I want them to be there always. I want them to have their own burrow, and a nest – and an egg! I want them to have a lovely baby puffin that would be tame too. Goodbye, dear Huffin and Puffin! We did so love having you for pets.’
‘Arrrrrrrr!’ suddenly said Kiki, for all the world as if she understood what Lucy-Ann was saying.
‘Kiki’s saying “goodbye” in puffin language,’ said Lucy-Ann. ‘Arrrrr, Huffin and Puffin! I’m saying goodbye too.’
And from the scared puffin colony rose a medley of deep guttural arrrrrrrs as the birds settled down once more. Those that had run down burrows popped up again and added their arrrrr to the chorus.
‘What a lot we shall have to tell Mother,’ said Philip. ‘I wonder how she is?’