‘Cheer up, Lucy-Ann,’ said Philip. ‘We’ve been in worse scrapes before, whatever Dinah says. We’ll get out of this one all right.’
‘How?’ asked Lucy-Ann. ‘I don’t see how we can! You don’t either.’
Philip didn’t. He scratched his head and looked at Jack.
‘Well – we’ve got to make some kind of plan,’ said Jack. ‘I mean – we must make up our minds what we are going to do to try and escape – and what we are going to do till we escape.’
‘Won’t Bill’s friends come and look for us when they don’t get Bill’s messages through?’ asked Dinah suddenly.
‘Pooh! What would be the good of that?’ said Philip at once. ‘There are hundreds of these little bird-islands here. It might take years visiting and exploring every single one to find us!’
‘We could light a fire on the cliff and keep it burning so that any searcher could see the smoke in the daytime and the flames at night,’ said Dinah excitedly. ‘You know – like ship-wrecked sailors do.’
‘Yes, we could,’ said Jack. ‘Only – the enemy might see it too – and come along and find us before anyone else does.’
There was a silence. Nobody knew who the enemy were. They seemed mysterious and powerful and frightening.
‘Well, I can’t help it – I think we ought to follow Dinah’s plan and light a fire,’ said Philip at last. ‘We’ve got to run the risk of the enemy seeing it and coming to find us. But we simply must do something to help anyone searching for us. We can keep a look-out for the enemy, and hide if they come.’
‘Hide! Where can we hide?’ asked Dinah scornfully. ‘There isn’t a single place on this island for anyone to hide!’
‘No, that’s true,’ said Jack. ‘No caves, no trees, except for those few little birches – and the cliffs too steep to explore. We really are in a fix!’
‘Can’t we do anything to help Bill?’ asked Lucy-Ann dolefully. ‘I keep on and on thinking of him.’
‘So do I,’ said Jack. ‘But I don’t see that we can do much to help ourselves, let alone Bill. Now – if we could escape from here – or radio for help and get some of Bill’s friends along – it would be something. But there doesn’t seem anything at all to do except stay here and wait.’
‘There’s plenty of food, anyway,’ said Dinah. ‘Stacks of tinned stuff, and biscuits and potted meat, and Nestlés milk and sardines . . .’
‘I think we’d better strip the boat of them,’ said Jack. ‘I’m surprised the enemy didn’t take what they could with them. Maybe they’ll come back for them – so we’ll take them first. We can hide them down some of the puffin burrows.’
‘Let’s have a bit of breakfast now,’ said Philip, feeling better now that they had all talked the matter over and made a few plans. ‘Open some tins and get some ginger-beer. Come on.’
They all felt better still when they had had something to eat and drink. They had put a cover over the poor smashed radio. They couldn’t bear to look at it.
Jack went up on deck when they had finished their meal. It was very close again, and even the wind seemed warm. The sun shone through a thin veiling of cloud, and had a reddish hue. ‘That storm is still about,’ said Jack. ‘Come on, everyone. Let’s get to work before it comes.’
It was decided that Philip and Dinah should hunt for driftwood to make a fire up on the cliff. ‘We don’t know that those aeroplanes we sometimes see belong to the enemy,’ said Philip. ‘If they don’t, they may see our signal and come to circle round. Then they will send help. One might come today, even. So we’ll get a fire alight. We’ll bank it with dry seaweed. That will smoulder well and send up plenty of smoke.’
Jack and Lucy-Ann were to carry things from the boat to the tents in Sleepy Hollow. ‘Take all the tins and food you can,’ said Philip. ‘If the enemy happened to come back at night and take it we’d be done. We should starve! As it is, we’ve got heaps to last us for weeks.’
The four children worked very hard indeed. Jack and Lucy carried sacks of tins from the boat to Sleepy Hollow. For the time being they bundled them in a heap by the tents. Kiki examined them with interest, and pecked at one or two.
‘It’s a good thing your beak isn’t a tin-opener, Kiki,’ said Jack, making the first little joke that day, to try and make Lucy-Ann smile. ‘We shouldn’t have much food left if it was.’
Philip and Dinah were also very busy. They took a sack each from the boat and wandered along the shore to pick up bits of wood. They found plenty at the tide-line and filled their sacks. Then they dragged them to the top of the cliff. Huffin and Puffin went with them, solemn as ever, sometimes walking, sometimes flying.
Philip emptied his sack of wood on a good spot. He began to build a fire. Dinah went off to fill her sack with dry seaweed. There was plenty.
Soon Jack and Lucy-Ann, emptying their own sacks in Sleepy Hollow, saw a spiral of smoke rising up from the cliff-top. ‘Look!’ said Jack. ‘They’ve got it going already! Good work!’
The wind bent the smoke over towards the east. It was good thick smoke, and the children felt sure that it could be seen from quite a distance.
‘One of us had always better be up here, feeding the fire, and keeping watch for enemies or friends,’ said Philip.
‘How shall we know which they are?’ asked Dinah, throwing a stick on the fire.
‘Well – I suppose we shan’t know,’ said Philip. ‘What we’d better do if we see any boat coming is to hide – that is, if we can find anywhere to hide – and then try and discover if the searchers are enemies or friends. We are sure to hear them talking. We’d better get lots more wood, Di – this fire will simply eat it up!’
Lucy-Ann and Jack helped them when they had finished their own job. ‘We’ve taken every single tin and every scrap of food out of the boat,’ said Lucy-Ann. ‘We really have got plenty to eat – and that rock-pool to drink from when we’ve finished the ginger-beer. There aren’t an awful lot of bottles left now. Wouldn’t you like to have dinner soon?’
‘Yes. I’m jolly hungry,’ said Philip. ‘Let’s have it up here, shall we? Or is it too much bother to fetch a meal here, Lucy-Ann? You see, one of us must keep the fire going all the time.’
‘Well, it won’t go out for a while, anyhow,’ said Lucy-Ann. ‘Bank it up with some more seaweed. Honestly, we feel fagged out, carrying all that stuff. Let’s go to Sleepy Hollow and have a good rest and a jolly good meal.’
So they all returned to Sleepy Hollow, where the two tents flapped in the little breeze. They sat down and Lucy-Ann opened tins, and ladled the contents on to plates.
‘You’ve got tinned salmon, biscuits and butter, tinned tomatoes and tinned pears,’ she said.
Even Huffin and Puffin came closer than usual, to share such a nice meal. They would have eaten every scrap of the salmon if they could. Kiki preferred the tinned pears, but the children would only allow her one.
‘Well, things would be a lot worse if we hadn’t got all this nice food,’ said Jack, leaning back in the warm sun, after a big meal. ‘An adventure without good food would be awful! Kiki, take your head out of that tin. You’ve had more than any of us, you greedy glutton of a parrot!’
15
A really terrible storm
The wind got up about five o’clock. It whipped the waves round the island until they towered into big white horses that raced up the beaches and broke with a sound of thunder. The sea-birds deserted the coves, and flew into the air, crying loudly. The wind took them and they soared for miles without beating a wing, enjoying themselves throughly.
Kiki didn’t like so much wind. She could not glide or soar like the gulls and guillemots. It offended her dignity to be blown about too much. So she stayed close to the tents, which flapped like live things in the wind and strained at the tent-pegs violently.
‘Look here, we can’t possibly watch the fire all night!’ said Philip. ‘We’ll have to bank it up and hope for the best. Maybe it will send out a glow, anyway. Doesn’t th
at seaweed keep it in nicely? My goodness, the wind tears the smoke to rags now!’
The sun went down in a bank of angry purple clouds that gathered themselves together in the west. Jack and Philip stared at them.
‘That’s the storm coming up all right,’ said Jack. ‘Well, we’ve felt one coming for days – this hot weather was bound to end up like that. I hope the wind won’t blow our tents away in the night.’
‘So do I,’ said Philip anxiously. ‘Honestly, there’s a perfect gale blowing up now! Look at those awful clouds! They look really wicked!’
The boys watched the clouds covering the sky, making the evening dark much sooner than usual. Philip put his hand into one of his pockets. ‘My rats know there is a storm coming,’ he said. ‘They’re all huddled up in a heap together right at the very bottom of my pocket. Funny how animals know things like that.’
‘Jack!’ called Lucy-Ann anxiously. ‘Do you think the tents are safe? The wind is blowing them like anything!’
The boys went to examine them. They were as well pegged as they could be, but in this gale who knew what might happen?
‘We just can’t do anything about it but hope for the best,’ said Jack rather gloomily. ‘Philip, have you got your torch? We’d better be prepared to be disturbed in the night, if this gale goes on – we might have to re-peg one of the tents.’
Both boys had torches with new batteries, so that was all right. They put them down beside their beds when they cuddled up into their rugs that night. They all went early because for one thing it was getting very dark, for another thing it had begun to rain heavily, and for a third thing they were all very tired with the day’s work. Kiki retired with the boys as usual, and Huffin and Puffin scuttled into their burrows nearby.
‘Wonder what poor old Bill is doing,’ said Jack to Philip, as they lay listening to the wind howling round them. ‘I bet he’s worried stiff about us.’
‘It’s a shame, just as we were all set for a glorious holiday,’ said Philip. ‘And now the weather’s broken too! What on earth shall we do with ourselves if it goes on like this for days? It will be frightful.’
‘Oh, it may clear up again when the storm is over,’ said Jack. ‘Golly, hark at the waves on the beaches round the island – and how they must be dashing against those steep cliffs! I bet the gannets and guillemots aren’t getting much sleep tonight!’
‘The wind’s pretty deafening too,’ said Philip. ‘Blow it! I feel so tired, and yet I can’t possibly sleep with all this din going on. And gosh – what’s that?’
‘Thunder,’ said Jack, sitting up. ‘The storm is on us now all right. Let’s go into the girls’ tent, Philip. Lucy-Ann will be pleased to see us if she’s awake. A storm over this exposed little island won’t be very funny.’
They crept into the other tent. The girls were wide awake and very glad to have them beside them. Dinah squeezed up into Lucy-Ann’s rugs, and the boys got into Dinah’s warm place. Jack flashed on his torch.
He saw that Lucy-Ann was very white. ‘There’s nothing to be frightened of, old thing,’ he said gently. ‘It’s only a storm, and you’re never frightened of those, Lucy-Ann, you know you aren’t.’
‘I know,’ gulped Lucy-Ann. ‘It’s only that – well, the storm seems so wild and – and spiteful, somehow. It tears at our tent, and bellows at us. It seems alive.’
Jack laughed. The thunder came again and crashed more loudly than the waves on the shore. Kiki crept close to Jack.
‘Pop, pop, pop!’ she said, and put her head under her wing.
‘Thunder doesn’t pop, Kiki,’ said Jack, trying to joke. But nobody smiled. The wind blew more wildly than ever and the children wished they had more rugs. It was very very draughty!
Then the lightning flashed. It made them all jump, for it was so vivid. For an instant the steep cliffs and the raging sea showed vividly. Then the picture was gone.
Crash! The thunder came again, this time sounding overhead. Then the lightning split the sky open again and once more the children saw the cliffs and the sea. They didn’t seem quite real, somehow.
‘Sort of unearthly,’ said Philip. ‘Gosh, hark at the rain! I’m getting spattered all over with it, though goodness knows how it’s getting in here.’
‘The wind’s getting worse,’ said Lucy-Ann fearfully. ‘Our tents will blow away. They will, they will!’
‘No, they won’t,’ said Jack stoutly, taking Lucy-Ann’s cold hand in his. ‘They can’t. They . . .’
But at that very moment there came a rending sound, a great flap-flap-flap, something hit Jack across the face – and their tent was gone.
The four children were struck dumb for a moment. The wind howled round them, the rain soaked them. They had nothing over them to protect them – their tent had vanished. Vanished with the wild wind in the darkness of the night.
Lucy-Ann screamed and clutched Jack. He put his torch on quickly.
‘Gosh – it’s gone! The gale has taken it away. Come into our tent, quickly!’
But before the children could even get up from their rugs, the gale had taken the other tent too. It rushed by Philip, as he stood trying to help the girls up, and when he turned his torch to where his tent should be, there was nothing.
‘Ours has gone too,’ he cried, trying to out-shout the wind. ‘Whatever are we to do?’
‘We’d better get down to the boat – if we possibly can,’ yelled Jack. ‘Or do you think we shall be blown over? Had we better roll ourselves up in the ground-sheets and rugs and wait till the storm has blown itself out?’
‘No. We’ll be soaked. Better try for the boat,’ said Philip. He dragged the girls up. Each of the children wrapped a rug round their shoulders to try and ward off the rain and the cold.
‘Take hands and keep together!’ yelled Philip. ‘I’ll go first.’
They took hands. Philip set off, staggering in the gale that was blowing in his face. Through the puffin colony he went, trying to keep on his feet.
Suddenly Dinah, who had hold of Philip’s hand, felt him drag it away. Then she heard a cry. She called in fright.
‘Philip! Philip! What’s happened?’
There was no answer. Jack and Lucy-Ann came close to Dinah. ‘What’s up? Where’s Philip?’
Jack’s torch shone out in front of them. There was no Philip there. He had vanished completely. The children, their hearts beating painfully, stayed absolutely still in dismay and astonishment. Surely the gale hadn’t blown him away!
‘PHILIP! PHILIP!’ yelled Jack. But only the wind answered him. Then all three yelled at the tops of their voices.
Jack thought he heard a faint answering cry. But where? It sounded at his feet! He swung his torch downwards, and to his immense surprise and fright he saw Philip’s head – but only his head, on a level with the ground.
Dinah shrieked in fright. Jack knelt down, too dumbfounded to say a word. Just Philip’s head – just Philip’s . . .
Then he saw in a flash what had happened. Philip had trodden on soil so undermined by the puffins that it had given way – and he had fallen right through to a hole below. Jack could have cried with relief.
‘Are you all right, Philip?’ he yelled.
‘Yes. Give me your torch. I’ve dropped mine. I’ve fallen through into a whopping big hole. There might be room for us all to shelter here for a bit,’ shouted back Philip, the words being whipped away by the wind almost before Jack could hear them.
Jack gave Philip his torch. The boy’s head disappeared. Then it came back again, looking very odd sticking up between some heather and a sea-pink cushion.
‘Yes. It’s an enormous hole. Can you all get down? We’d keep safe and dry here till the storm is over. Come on. It’s a bit smelly, but otherwise not bad.’
Dinah slid through the opening of the hole and found herself beside Philip. Then came Lucy-Ann and then Jack. Jack had found Philip’s torch and the two torches were now shone around the hole.
‘I suppose the rabbits
and the puffins together managed to burrow so much that they have made an enormous hole,’ said Jack. ‘Look, there’s a puffin burrow leading out of it over there – and one of the puffins staring in astonishment at us! Hallo, old son. Sorry to burst in on you like this.’
The relief of finding that Philip was safe, and of being out of the wild noise of the storm, made Jack feel quite light-headed. Lucy-Ann’s shivers stopped, and they all looked round them with interest.
‘I should think this was a natural cavity of some sort,’ said Philip, ‘with a layer of good soil, held together by roots and things, making a surface above – but all that burrowing by the puffins made it give way when I trod on it – and down I fell. Well, it’s just what we wanted, for the moment.’
Above them, deadened by tangled heather and sea-pinks, the storm raged on. No rain came into the cavity. The thunder sounded very far away. The lightning could not be seen.
‘I don’t see why we shouldn’t sleep here for the night,’ said Jack, spreading out the rug he had taken from his shoulders. ‘The soil is dry and soft – and the air must be good enough, because that puffin is still there, gazing at us. I say – I hope Huffin and Puffin are all right.’
They all spread out their rugs and lay down, cuddled up together. ‘Congratulations on finding us such a fine home for tonight, Philip,’ said Jack sleepily. ‘Very clever of you indeed! Good night, everybody!’
16
Next day
They all slept soundly in their unexpected shelter. They did not awake until late in the morning, because for one thing it was dark in the hole, and for another they had all been tired out.
Jack awoke first, feeling Kiki stirring against his neck. He could not think where he was. A little daylight filtered through the entrance of the hole, but not much. It was very warm.
‘Arrrrrr!’ said a guttural voice, and made Jack jump. ‘Arrrrrr!’
It was the puffin which had come down its burrow to see them the night before. Jack switched on his torch and grinned at it.
‘Good morning – if it is morning. Sorry to have disturbed you! I’ll get Huffin and Puffin to explain to you, when we see them again.’