‘There is,’ said Jack triumphantly. ‘I found it on a map.’
Bill began to laugh. ‘I don’t know how it is that you children always seem to happen on something extraordinary,’ he said. ‘Just when I thought we were in for a lovely, peaceful trip I shall have to go hunting about for an expert on old documents, and get him to translate Greek so old that it’s probably impossible to read correctly. And if there’s anything in it I suppose we’ll have to see this island called Thamis.’
‘Bill! Will you really?’ cried Jack in delight, and Philip bounced up and down on the bed, nearly upsetting everybody. Dinah clutched Lucy-Ann, her eyes shining. They were all so pleased because Bill had not pooh-poohed the whole idea.
‘We’d better get to bed now, ’ said Bill. ‘It’s very late. We’ll talk about all this in the morning – but don’t get excited! We can’t possibly do more than give this map to an expert, and then maybe run over to Thamis and back if it’s near enough, just to give it a look over. After all – we’re on a cruise, you know.’
The children got up reluctantly. Bill went with them to their cabins. ‘I’m going up on deck to smoke my pipe,’ he said. ‘Happy dreams!’
In the early morning Jack and Philip woke up with a jump. They sat up in bed. Light was just filtering through their porthole, and a curious noise was coming from far below them.
‘It’s the engines of the ship,’ said Jack in relief. ‘I wondered whatever in the world it was. What a weird noise they’re making! What’s happening?’
‘They’ve stopped,’ said Philip, after listening for a minute or two. ‘No – there they go again – clank-clank-clank. They don’t sound a bit right. They don’t purr like they usually do. I hope nothing’s wrong.’
‘Now they’ve stopped again,’ said Jack. ‘Well – if there’s any danger we shall hear the ship’s siren hooting and hooting and the steward will come along and bang on our door.’
‘Yes. And our life jackets are ready in the cupboard, so we’ve nothing to worry about,’ said Philip, feeling sleepy again. ‘It’s nothing. Let’s go to sleep.’
But in the morning they found that the ship was still not using her engines. She lay there on the purple-blue sea, rocking a little, with the airport island lying not more than a mile or two off.
‘Funny!’ said Jack, and dressed quickly. He banged on the girls’ door as he went by with Philip. The two boys tore up on deck and found their friend, the second officer.
‘What’s up?’ they asked him. ‘Why have we stopped?’
‘Mac’s got trouble with his engines,’ said the officer. ‘Soon be all right, I expect.’
They saw Bill coming along. He had been up for some time, walking round the deck for exercise. They rushed to him, and he grinned. ‘Hello! Ready for breakfast? I’m ravenous. Hello, Micky, hello, Kiki.’
‘Micky-Kiki-Micky-Kiki, Micky-Ki . . .’ began Kiki. Jack tapped her on the beak.
‘That’s enough. Ta ke a bit of exercise. Go and chase the gulls!’ But Kiki did not want to. She was bored with the gulls now. Besides, she wanted breakfast. Breakfast was nice on board ship because there was always grapefruit, and Kiki liked that. She loved the cherries on top of the grapefruit halves, and the children took it in turn to give her one.
When breakfast was over they took Bill all over the ship. They were not allowed down in the engine room because of the trouble with the engines. Mac was in a fearful temper, and had been up all night long working on them.
A message was put up on the ship’s noticeboard that morning.
Owing to engine trouble, the Viking Star is putting back to port. Passengers will be notified further at six o’clock this evening.
With a curious clanking and labouring the Viking Star made her way slowly to the island with the airport. Motor boats came roaring out to meet her and find out what was wrong. In one of them was Bill’s friend Tim. He was soon on board, and Bill introduced him to the children.
‘Tim, here are the four children I’ve told you about. Be careful of them, or they’ll pull you into a perilous adventure. That’s the kind of children they are. Put them in the middle of an iceberg and they’ll find an adventure somehow!’
The children liked Tim. He was younger than Bill, had a mop of unruly curly hair which the wind did what it liked with, and eyes as green as Lucy-Ann’s . He had as many freckles as she and Jack had, and a most infectious laugh.
‘You’d better come off in the motor boat with me, hadn’t you?’ he said to Bill. ‘Come back to the island. It’s interesting.’
‘Right,’ said Bill. ‘We’ll have the day together. Come on, you four – down the ladder with you!’
16
Bill makes a few enquiries
They had a wonderful day on the island. Tim hired a car and away they went to explore. They had lunch in a big town set in the centre of the island, a proper town with shops and buses and cinemas.
After lunch Bill disappeared. ‘I’ve heard of an old chap who’s a real expert at old documents,’ he told the children. ‘One of the greatest experts there are. It’s a bit of luck. I’ll go and see him. You’ve got the four bits of the map with you, haven’t you, Jack?’
Jack nodded. The children had decided that it would be safer to bring them than leave them behind. He gave them to Bill in an envelope. ‘I do hope the expert will say it’s genuine,’ he said earnestly. ‘I say – shall we tell Tim?’
‘You’d be quite safe to,’ said Bill. ‘Tim is all right! Whether he’ll believe you or not is another matter!’
So, while Bill was gone, the children told Tim their secret. He was inclined to grin at first and laugh it all off as a tale. But they were so serious that he saw that they, at least, believed in it all. He tried to be serious too.
‘Well, it’s marvellous,’ he said. ‘I believed in all these treasure tales when I was a kid too. Jolly nice of Bill to take it seriously and go off to have your map explained.’
The children saw that he did not really take their tale seriously, and they dropped the subject, polite but disappointed. A little doubt crept into Lucy-Ann’s mind. Was it all a tale? No – surely Mr Eppy wouldn’t have behaved so oddly if there had been nothing in it.
Bill was a long time gone. The children were tired of waiting, and Tim was just suggesting they should take a run in the car to a strange-shaped hill in the distance when he came back.
‘Sorry to have been so long,’ he said. ‘I found the old boy – looks as if he’d come out of the fifteenth century, he’s so old and dusty – and so slow I could have screamed. But he knew his stuff all right.’
‘What did he say?’ asked Jack, crimson with anticipation.
‘It’s genuine. No doubt of that at all,’ said Bill, and everyone breathed loudly in relief. ‘He doesn’t know if it’s a copy of any older map, or a fresh one made by a Greek sailor a hundred or so years ago – probably a mixture, he says. The island is Thamis. It is shown clearly on the map, and even if the name had not been there it could have been recognized by its shape – it’s curiously formed at one end.’
‘Yes. I noticed that,’ said Philip. ‘Go on, Bill!’
‘The map is in two distinct parts,’ went on Bill. ‘One shows the island, and on it is marked a city or a port. He doesn’t know the island himself so he can’t tell. The other part shows this same city or port, and is apparently a guide or directions to some spot in the city where something valuable is placed. He says it isn’t clear if this valuable thing is treasure or a temple or even a tomb – he only knows it was something of value to the person who first drew the map.’
The children were listening, all eyes and ears. This was marvellous!
‘But – doesn’t he think it’s the Andra treasure?’ asked Jack.
‘He apparently doesn’t know that tale very well – he says there are hundreds of old legends of pirates and treasure ships and kidnapping and so on – most of them untrue. He hadn’t much to say about that. He is inclined to think it’s
a temple.’
‘I think it’s the Andra treasure,’ said Lucy-Ann, her eyes shining. ‘I really do!’
‘I got him to re-draw the whole map for us with the Greek words in English – he speaks English extraordinarily well,’ said Bill, and he spread out a nice new sheet of paper on his lap, drawn with fine lines and marked with words. The children pored over it, too thrilled to speak.
Yes – there was the old map re-drawn – put into English – the faded marks shown clearly. How simply wonderful! Even Tim was intensely interested, and almost began to believe in it.
Jack read some of the words out in a whisper. ‘Labyrinth – Catacombs – Two-Fingers – Goddess – Bird – Bell – gosh, what does it all mean? Are the labyrinths and catacombs in this city or port? Was the treasure taken down them?’
‘We don’t know. All we know is that a way is shown here to a certain place in the city where a certain valuable thing can be found – if it hasn’t already been found and taken away or destroyed,’ said Bill. ‘But you must remember that the original of this map is probably hundreds of years old – the way shown on this map possibly no longer exists. In fact, the probabilities are that it doesn’t.’
‘Oh, Bill – do you really believe that?’ asked Dinah reproachfully.
‘Well – to be perfectly honest, I do,’ said Bill disappointingly. ‘I think the map is genuine – no doubt about that at all – but I also think that as all this happened so long ago there’s no hope of finding the secret way shown here. It would either have been built over, or destroyed, or even completely forgotten, so that there may not even be an entrance to the labyrinths or catacombs, whatever they are.’
‘But Mr Eppy obviously thinks there’s some hope,’ said Philip.
‘Oh, that reminds me – this old chap, the one I’ve been to see, knows Mr Eppy. He says he’s a real crank about these things – quite dippy about them – and goes off on all sorts of hare-brained schemes,’ said Bill. ‘Buys and sells islands as if they were books or carpets or pictures! He admits that Mr Eppy knows a lot about the islands, and about the antiques that can be found in them – but he doesn’t think that because he believes in the map, for instance, that necessarily means there is anything to get excited about. Rather the other way about, I gathered.’
‘Blow!’ said Jack. ‘So there may be nothing in it after all. In fact, probably not.’
‘In fact, probably not, as you say,’ agreed Bill. ‘All the same, if we had the chance, which we shan’t have, of course, I wouldn’t mind hiring a motor boat and chugging off to have a look at Thamis, wherever it is.’
‘Oh, I do wish we could,’ said Lucy-Ann. ‘It would be lovely just to see it.’
‘I could run you over there,’ said Tim unexpectedly. ‘That is, if it’s not too far away.’
‘No time,’ said Bill, folding up the map. ‘We’ve got to be back by six, as you know. Thanks all the same, Tim. Now, we’d better be off, I think.’
By the time they got to the port it was half-past five. The Viking Star had been piloted right in to the pier, and was lying there looking very white and beautiful, but with no sign of the bustle about her that usually meant she was soon sailing.
The gangway was down, and passengers were trooping along it. Lucian was among them with his aunt. They had not seen him all day, except in the distance, and then they had taken no notice of him, not wanting him to tag himself on to them now they had Bill. He waved to them and shouted.
‘Oh, I say! Where have you been all day? My aunt wanted you to come with us and have lunch with one of my relations on the island.’
‘Sorry! We had other plans!’ called back Jack. ‘See you some time.’
‘Who’s the boy?’ enquired Bill. ‘Oh – it’s Lucian, I suppose, the nephew of your Mr Eppy. He must be a bit of a nuisance to you!’
‘We can manage him all right,’ said Philip. ‘Look – here’s the noticeboard. There’s a big notice up. What does it say?’
The notice was printed in chalk on the big black noticeboard.
Passengers are regretfully informed that the Viking Star will have to remain in port for a day or two until damage to her engines is repaired. Passengers may remain on board if they wish, or stay in a hotel provided by the Company, or may use the motor boats which the said Company will provide for the use of any passengers wishing to explore this romantic part of the Aegean Sea.
(Signed) L. Petersen, Captain
The same thought struck all four children at once. They turned to one another, their eyes shining.
‘We could, couldn’t we?’ said Lucy-Ann, and the others understood at once. Jack nodded, his eyes bright. He slipped his arm through Bill’s .
Bill looked round at the children. He smiled broadly, and then laughed out loud to see the four eager faces looking at him, all with the same question in them.
‘Can we go to Thamis, after all – that’s what you want to know, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘Well, I don’t see why not. It looks as if we’ll be here a few days, and if the Company provides us with a motor boat, well, we’ll agree to their kind proposal and off we’ll go in one!’
‘Bill! BILL! How marvellous!’ cried everyone, and Jack and Philip began to thump one another on the back, and the girls squeezed Bill’s arms till he yelled. Kiki and Micky flew off the boys’ shoulders in a hurry and retired in surprised annoyance to the top of the noticeboard.
‘Come on – stop this pantomime,’ said Bill, still laughing to see the children’s excitement. ‘Let’s get up on deck and make a few plans before we change into clean things for dinner. Get Micky, look – he’s beginning to rub out the top part of the notice with his tail.’
They went up to a favourite corner on the promenade deck and sat down. ‘It’s too good to be true,’ said Jack, delighted. ‘We keep on thinking things are no good, we’ll have to give them up – and then something happens and everything’s all right.’
‘Yes. We knew we couldn’t do anything without Bill, and he wasn’t here – and then he suddenly came,’ said Lucy-Ann.
‘And then we knew we still couldn’t do anything because we’d have to go with the ship on her cruise,’ said Dinah. ‘And now she’s held up, and we can go off by ourselves!’
‘Extraordinary how you children get what you want,’ said Bill. ‘Now about this motor boat tomorrow. I rather think we’ll hire one on our own. If we take one that the Company provides we’ll have to go with some of the other passengers – and they certainly won’t want to go to Thamis, wherever it is.’
‘And we wouldn’t want them to, either,’ said Jack. ‘No – let’s have a boat of our own. Can Tim come too?’
‘He’s got other plans,’ said Bill. ‘But we’ll tell him, just in case he’d like to come. Well – it certainly will be a thrill. I must find out this evening exactly where this Thamis is. I’ll get hold of the second officer and ask him if there’s a sailor on board who can tell me anything.
We’ll have to find out the precise route or we might go cruising among these islands for weeks!’
‘Oh, Bill – isn’t it grand?’ said Lucy-Ann. ‘I can’t wait for tomorrow. Jack, Philip – we’re really going to see the treasure island after all! We really are!’
17
To Thamis at last!
Bill soon got all the information he wanted. ‘That’s the best of being grown-up,’ said Dinah. ‘Grown-ups always seem to be able to find out anything, and get things cut and dried in no time.’
‘Yes – Bill’s found out where Thamis is, has ferreted out a map of the route, and has even got the name of a Greek sailor who owns a motor boat and knows the way!’ said Jack, in admiration.
‘How did he find all that out?’ asked Lucy-Ann.
‘Got hold of a Greek sailor below decks, and found he had a brother who runs one of the motor boats,’ said Philip.
It was the following morning. The children had had a big breakfast, and had been provided with enormous packets of food to take with them by the
steward who looked after them so well at table.
‘I’ve packed a whole grapefruit, two cherries and four bananas for Master Micky and Miss Kiki,’ he said with a twinkle in his eye. Lucy-Ann went off into giggles.
‘Oh – it does sound funny to call them that! Miss Kiki! Kiki, did you hear that? Miss Kiki!’
‘Misskiki, kickmissy, missmicky,’ said Kiki and cackled loudly.
They all walked down the gangway to the pier. They found Tim waiting for them. He had heard the news.
‘Hello, sir,’ he said to Bill. ‘Can I do anything for you today?’
‘Well, we’re going off to have a look at Thamis,’ said Bill. ‘I’ve hired a motor boat from a Greek who apparently knows the route. Like to come with us?’
‘Well, if you’ve made your own plans, sir, I won’t come today,’ said Tim. ‘I’ve got a chappy here who wants a spot of flying. Can I take the plane up?’
‘Yes, of course,’ said Bill.
‘And if you fly over Thamis, wave to us,’ said Jack.
‘Right,’ said Tim with a grin. ‘I’ll look it up and see where it is. Look out for us!’
He went off, and Bill turned to find the boat he had hired. A small, dark Greek came up, with brilliant eyes and a shy smile. He saluted, and spoke in broken English.
‘I’m Andros, sir, please. My brother, he say Mister want my boat. Mister, sir, she here.’
‘Right. Thanks, Andros,’ said Bill, and he looked at the spick-and-span little boat lying alongside. ‘Very nice boat. Now, you know the way to Thamis, don’t you?’
‘Thamis. Yes, Mister. But Thamis poor place. Andros take you find islands.’
‘No, thanks. We want to go to Thamis,’ said Bill firmly.
Andros seemed surprised at their wanting to go to Thamis. ‘Poor island,’ he said again. ‘Visitors not go there, Mister, sir. I take you fine place.’